Which is the Strongest Ape? The strongest, and biggest ape is the gorilla. Adult male gorillas may weigh more than a quarter of a tonne. Gorillas live in the forests of Africa, feeding on the fruit and shoots of trees. If a gorilla wishes to eat the shoot on the branch of a tree, it simply reaches up to the branch it wants, and with its powerful arms pulls the shoot...

Where do Marsupials live? Marsupial mammals are not nearly as wide-spread today as the other mammals — the placental mammals. Marsupials are mostly confined to the continent of Australasia, although a few are also to be found in South America. No one really knows exactly why marsupials are only found in these places, but it seems likely that the parts of the world they are found in became isolated from the...

What are Marsupials?   Marsupials are mammals which have a pouch, like the one on the kangaroo shown below. Before they are born, the voting of most mammals develop in t he mother’s womb and receive nourishment from her body through a complicated system of blood vessels called the placenta. in the womb, the young mammals are also protected. When t hey are finally born, they are quite well developed, although...

What will the cars of the future be like?   Tomorrow’s car for driving in cities may use electricity instead of petrol. It will probably have batteries to store power and will re-charge these from the electricity supply, overnight. Other new ideas are gas-turbine and steam-turbine cars. These work by shooting gas or steam through a turbine like a fan, driving it round.

When did motor cars take over from horses? Two hundred years ago it took two days to go from London to Manchester in a horse-drawn coach. Now it takes three hours in a modern car, over good roads. However, when `horseless carriages’, as cars were called, first appeared many people laughed at them. They said they were too dangerous and would not work. The first motor car on sale to the...

How does a Car Engine work?   The four pictures on the right show you what happens in a car engine. In the first diagram the piston moves down and sucks fuel in through the inlet valve. Next the piston moves up, squeezing the petrol and air mixture into the top of the cylinder. Then a spark from the sparking plug makes the fuel explode. It forces the piston down, driving...

Can a Computer Think? Before a computer can do anything at all it must be given an exact, step-by-step set of instructions called a program. It will then do just what the instructions say — no more and no less. It cannot do anything on its own. It cannot think. Computers are used nowadays in an amazing number of different ways, both to do calculations and to store information. Scientists use...

Working of The Modern Electronic Computer Modern computers can work at great speed to make calculations and control complicated operations in offices, factories and hospitals, on ships and spacecraft, at school and in the home. The pocket calculator is a kind of small computer that can do instant calculations with numbers. When you press the keys of the calculator, the numbers are changed into on-off electric signals. Each number has a...