1.14.1 🎤 Star Wars Sounds, Electronic Kits, Minecraft Aether, Mosquito Bites

Hello! This week I cover a few summery topics. That includes mosquitos, an interesting science experiment from Zambia that discovered the reason some people get bit more often than others AND what makes mosquito bites itch so badly. You're welcome. Also, the summer project this week is about electronic kits. I have The Aether, an interesting Minecraft mod to try, the person who made all the Star Wars sounds we know by heart, and a history of time. Hope you find a few interesting links this week.

Summer Projects: Electronic Kits

Electronics might seem obscure but it’s really about managing electrical energy to make things happen. And, of course, our daily lives are filled with electricity. Phones, microwaves, cars, and practically everything else we touch and use. Kits are a great way to learn about electronics. But there’s also context that needs to be learned as you build with kits and then projects. Because kits can hide some key learning opportunities, eventually creating projects with a breadboard and parts is the ideal way to learn.

To get started, however, there’s lots of kits that are mostly easy to hook up a few wires, maybe write a little basic code, and then watch as a light or fan or camera turns on. It’s a great experience for kids who like to work with their hands. And it helps to teach cause and effect, as well as patience and debugging.

There are a few basic boards used by most electronics project kits, starting with the Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards. There’s also any number of vendors to buy from like Adafruit and SparkFun. If you have questions, online places like Reddit and r/AskElectronics do exist to help make decisions about kits and tools.

Beyond kits, there’s a number of electronics videos on YouTube. There’s probably a local community group working on projects. And creating those projects involves finding schematics, buying parts, and then building circuits.

Most kids will need an adult around to get started with electronics. Plus it’s important to have a Multimeter to measure and confirm voltage is passing through a circuit. And a static pad to work on helps avoid frying any electronics by accident.

There’s lots to explore online. Here are some start points for electronic kit projects.

How I Started in Electronics (& how you shouldn't)
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ImnW8h9pKuk
https://www.youtube.com/@TheAMTech_Official

How to Learn Electronics: Start Here
https://www.youtube.com/embed/IU9CpR9EeA4
https://www.youtube.com/@leosbagoftricks3732/videos

Basic Electronics
https://www.instructables.com/Basic-Electronics/

How to Read a Schematic
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-read-a-schematic/all
https://www.circuitbasics.com/how-to-read-schematics/

Snap Circuits
https://elenco.com/snap-circuits-2/

Raspberry Pi
https://www.raspberrypi.org/
https://www.raspberrypi.org/learn
https://www.raspberrypi.org/teach/

Arduino
https://www.arduino.cc/
https://www.arduino.cc/education/arduino-alvik/

Arduino's new Plug and Make Kit is designed to make IoT projects fun and simple
https://www.techspot.com/news/103808-arduino-new-plug-make-kit-designed-make-iot.html

Beagle Board
https://www.beagleboard.org/

micro:bit
https://microbit.org/

Adafruit
https://www.adafruit.com/category/203 (Kits and Projects)
https://www.adafruit.com/category/965 (Circuit Playground)

Minecraft Mods: The Aether

From Simon Batt, one of our magazine writers: If you’re a pro at Minecraft, there’s a really good chance that you’ve experienced the horrors of the Nether first-hand. It’s a hellish world where monsters lurk around every corner, where dark and scary fortresses hold treasures for the brave, and if you take one wrong step, you’ll lose all your items to the infinite amount of lava in the Nether.

However, while the Nether is a really interesting part of Minecraft…why isn’t there an opposite realm? If we can have a hellish plane…why not a heavenly one?

This is where the Aether mod for Minecraft comes in. Minecraft mods are really great, as they let you redesign the game from the ground up with new things for you to explore. And the Aether mod lets you add a heavenly realm into your game.

Minecraft Mods: The Aether
https://kidscodecs.com/minecraft-mods-the-aether/

The Aether modpage
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/aether

The Aether 2 modpage
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/aether-ii

Aether now with Minecraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E5EmmoXsdE
https://www.youtube.com/embed/9E5EmmoXsdE

Minecraft Heaven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d90rDyWYGmk
https://www.youtube.com/embed/d90rDyWYGmk

Creating Sounds in the Star Wars Movies

Ben Burtt is a sound designer who is famous for creating the sounds in Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Wall-e. He created Chewbacca’s voice by blending sounds from bears, lions, walrus, and badgers. Darth Vader’s breathing sound was created by putting a microphone inside a scuba tank regulator. And he used mule sounds to create the Tusken Raider yowl. In these Roadtrip Nation videos, Burtt shows how he created these any many other sounds. His biography also is inspirational for kids and young adults: feeling stuck in his 20s and learning how to deal with inevitable rejections.

Ben Burtt, Sound Designer
https://roadtripnation.com/leader/ben-burtt

How sound designer Ben Burtt made Star Wars’ iconic sound effects | Roadtrip Nation
https://www.youtube.com/embed/WBKKXjNf1sE

The failed experiment that won Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt an Oscar | Roadtrip Nation
https://www.youtube.com/embed/74ZzE89mxWA

Ben Burtt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Burtt

Question: Why Do Mosquito Bites Itch?

From the US Cleveland Clinic medical center:

"When a mosquito secretes saliva into your bloodstream, your body registers the saliva as an allergen. Your immune system then sends the chemical histamine to the area where the mosquito bit you to remove the allergen from your body. Histamine is what causes your mosquito bites to itch and swell. Most people have a mosquito bite allergy."

But wait, there's more science!

"Mosquito bites are small, raised bumps on the skin resulting from a female mosquito feeding on human blood.

Mosquitoes are small, flying insects. They have six legs and long mouthparts — used to feed on blood and nectar. Only female mosquitoes feed off of blood.

Mosquitoes bite and suck blood for reproduction. Though male mosquitoes only eat flower nectar, female mosquitoes eat both flower nectar and blood. The females need the protein in blood to develop eggs."

Mosquito Bites
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17695-mosquito-bites

How to Stop Bug Bites from Itching
https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/how-stop-bug-bites-itching

How Mosquitos Smell Humans

Since we're talking about mosquito bites, Nature magazine had an interesting write up about research into the reasons mosquitos prefer to feast on some people but not others. If you get bit a lot while your friends don't suffer, here's the reason:

"In tiny sleeping pods, separated from mosquitoes by a layer of mesh, human volunteers sacrifice a good night’s slumber in the name of science – to support innovative research that could turn the tide on the devastating malaria epidemic.

Connected to a large central mosquito house, or ‘flight cage’ in the remote village of Macha in southern Zambia, the unique body scents emitted by the sleeping volunteers provide data for what scientists have called “the world’s largest multi-choice smell test”, which asks why mosquitoes like some humans more than others. ...

“Humans that are most attractive to the malaria mosquito have body odour or human scent signatures that are enriched for a class of molecules called airborne carboxylic acids, and also other compounds that are produced by the bacteria that live on our skin,” explains McMeniman, the study’s lead author.

Diet, genetics and resulting physiology all play a role, along with the microbes that live on skin surfaces. But whether changes in diet can make humans less attractive to mosquitoes is an “exciting area for future research”, he adds.

On the scent in the quest to learn mosquitoes’ preferred humans
https://www.nature.com/articles/d44148-024-00140-8

Human scent guides mosquito thermotaxis and host selection under naturalistic conditions
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(23)00532-8

What mosquitoes are most attracted to in human body odor is revealed
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/19/world/mosquito-human-body-odor-malaria-scn/index.html

This Week

Our Sunday issue this week has fun often offbeat links, for example, 32 places that scientists are looking for aliens. And there's links to a new way to count, a glitch in Einstein's theories, 50 AI writing tools you can try, listening to blue whales, and more.