Kids News - Articles for Grade 6

Pedestrian etiquette – things like not walking into oncoming traffic or keeping to the right of the sidewalk – comes naturally to humans. However, while robots have been programmed to accomplish many things, teaching them to navigate among crowds has proved a challenge because it is hard to accurately predict each person’s path. Now, a team of MIT engineers, led by Steven Chen, have overcome the hurdle with a knee-high autonomous machine that can seamlessly weave itself through pedestrians, paving the way for errand-running and pizza delivering robots....

Every year on September 19, residents of Mexico City conduct an emergency evacuation drill to mark the anniversary of an 8.0 magnitude earthquake that killed about 10,000 residents in 1985. Yesterday was no exception. At 11:00 am, thousands of people left their homes, offices, and shops and made their way to the predesignated safe zones. Little did they know that within just two hours, the evacuation warning bells would ring again. Only this time, they were instantly followed by the violent shaking of a 7.1 magnitude earthquake....

A week ago, on Tuesday, September 12, Apple unveiled its latest offerings to eagerly awaiting fans. The 2017 product showcase held at Apple Park, the company’s new “spaceship” headquarters in Cupertino, CA, included an upgraded Apple Watch, 4K Apple TV, as well as the next generation iPhones – 8 and 8 plus. Just as the presentation appeared to be drawing to a close, company CEO Tim Cook, took to the podium mouthing the late Steve Job’s familiar, “one more thing . . .” phrase, before introducing the much-anticipated iPhone X (“ten”)....

On September 6, the sun let its presence be felt by unleashing two massive solar flares. The first eruption, classified as an X2.2 flare, the strongest since 2008, occurred at 5:10 a.m. ET. Shortly after, at about 8:02 a.m ET, the star spewed out a bigger, and more spectacular, X9.3 flare — the most powerful on record since December 2006....

Male humpback whales are well-known for the long sweet melodies they sing during the breeding season. The soulful songs that last anywhere from ten to twenty minutes, are not random noises, but carefully orchestrated themes that keep repeating and developing. Scientists are not sure if the mammals sing to attract partners or to deter rivals but once they get going, they tend to repeat the same tune over and over, for long periods of time....

Just days after Hurricane Harvey struck Texas and parts of Louisiana, leaving behind unprecedented destruction, an even stronger tropical cyclone was reported heading towards Florida. Irma, the most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history, first brought chaos to the Caribbean, devastating islands like Barbuda and St. Martin on September 6, where it struck with Category 5 winds that at times reached up to 185 mph....

Tony Stark, aka Ironman, constantly seen manipulating 3D holographic images and floating displays projected in mid-air from his phone or tablet. Unfortunately, the rest of us are not as fortunate because the current computer-generated holograms are too bulky to be integrated into our personal devices. However, if a team of researchers from Australia's RMIT University and the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) is right, we may all soon be able to mimic Ironman, at least, when it comes to playing with 3D holograms....

Scientists have long known that the world’s first flower bloomed between 250 million and 140 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs dominated the earth. The single mutation was so successful that flowering plants, or Angiosperms, now make up almost 90% of all plant species, far outnumbering seed plants like conifers, that appeared on earth much earlier, between 350 million and 310 million years ago....

Over a 100 million years ago, an 18-foot (5.48 meter) long, 2,500-pound (1,133 kg) pineapple-shaped dinosaur met an untimely death when it was swept away by a river in what is now Alberta, Canada. Fortunately for us, its body ended up situated back-first on the muddy floor of an old seaway. This helped preserve the ancient behemoth’s front half in such extraordinary 3-D detail that the armored dinosaur almost looks alive....