by Marc Aronson
The main attraction at the Speedway is its track: a 2.5-mile oval designed for high speeds. Cars get so hot during the race that their tires reach 212° Fahrenheit, almost the temperature of boiling water. And they are tremendously loud. Each of the Indy race cars emits about 120 decibels, roughly the same amount of noise that a jet makes.
The only two U.S. stadiums that even come close in size are Michigan Stadium, home of the Michigan Wolverines, which holds 107,501—less than half the total of the Speedway—and FedEx Field, home of the Washington Redskins, which seats 91,665.
THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MOVIES EVER SHOWN IN AMERICA
BIG MOVIES ARE BIG EVENTS THAT make actors big stars. But what defines a “big movie”? One word: money. The more money a movie makes, the bigger a blockbuster it is. In Hollywood, it doesn’t even matter if you think the movie is great or boring. It just matters that a lot of people pay to see it.
This is how much money these movies made from people actually going to the theater to see them. It doesn’t count all the extra millions of dollars that came from DVD or video sales.
1. Titanic (1997) $600,779,824
2. Star Wars (1977) $460,935,665
3. Shrek 2 (2004) $436,471,036
4. E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $434,949,459
5. Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999) $431,065,444
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) $423,032,628
7. Spider-Man (2002) $403,706,375
8. Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith (2005) $380,262,555
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) $377,019,252
10. Spider-Man 2 (2004) $373,377,893
But it also costs a lot to make a movie and advertise it. Let’s take Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. It made about $425 million in theaters. That’s nearly half a billion dollars. Who got it all?
Theaters took about one-third of all the ticket sales and kept it for themselves. That’s about $120 million. So the moviemakers made about $305 million, right? Not quite. With all of its special effects, shipbuilding, filming around the world, the hundreds of workers, and actors’ salaries (Johnny Depp made $20 million for starring as Jack Sparrow), the cost to make the film was $225 million. That brings the American total down to $80 million, not counting all the advertisements on TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet. For a big movie like Pirates, advertising can be almost $50 million. That brings the total down to $30 million.
There’s more. It costs about $1,500 to make individual copies of a movie and send it out to the theaters. Pirates was shown on more than 8,500 screens when it was released. That adds up to almost $13 million. Now Pirates is down to about $17 million. That gets split between all the companies that produced the movie and the banks that helped pay for it.
The big companies all get a few million dollars, and hope that their next movie is as big as Pirates. Which is why there are so many sequels: If you went to see the first movie, you’ll probably pay to go see the next one, right? That’s why all of the biggest blockbusters, except for Titanic and E.T., are part of a series or are sequels. Makes you wonder what the next big sequel will be, doesn’t it?
HOW TO
CREATE A BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE
SOME OF THE MOST POPULAR MOVIES of all time have each used exactly the same formula to get you interested, excited, and coming back for more. In fact, the formula is something of a secret, but we’re going to share it with you.
Take a lead character who is missing one or both parents. Add a sidekick (preferably two), and throw in a very nasty villain—who usually has nasty helpers of his own. Now add a wise individual who understands the ways of the world, and top it off with a potential girlfriend. Hard to believe it’s that easy, right? Well, check this out. Now you can write your own movie.
As you can tell from the next page, this works especially well for Disney movies and superheroes. Here’s one more secret: This formula was identified by a man named Joseph Campbell, who traced it all the way back to ancient mythology.
Want to know another trick? Read just about tiny folktale (works best if it’s European), or your little brother’s picture-book version of a folktale, and there will always be three challenges—for Goldilocks the porridge is too hot, too cold, and just right; for the Three Little Pigs, one builds a house out of straw, one out of sticks, and the smart third one uses bricks: for, well—see if you can find any exceptions and tell us. One hint, look for a culture that is not so interested in the number three, and you might have to search to the four corners of the world.
EARTH’S EXTREMES
THE HIGHEST POINT on the Earth’s surface is Sagar-matha (Nepalese for “head of the sky”), also known as Mount Everest, which is located on the border of Nepal and Tibet. The top of the mountain is 29,028 feet above sea level. More than 2,000 people have climbed it, but one out of every ten dies. English explorer Sir Edmund Hillary and his Tibetan guide Norgay made the first successful summit of Mount Everest, without a map and without a path to follow. In 1953, they didn’t have cell phones or special jackets, unlike today’s climbers, who almost always use modern technology. They were just intent on climbing up 29,035 feet—almost five and a half miles into the sky—and doing it together.
THE LOWEST POINT on the Earth’s surface is the Marianas Trench, located in the Pacific Ocean between Japan and Indonesia. Its deepest point is 35,798 feet below sea level. Only two people have made it all the way down. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh piloted a small submarine just 50 feet long called the Trieste to the bottom of the ocean—and below. They entered a section of the Marianas Trench known as the Challenger Deep, which took them all the way down to the bottom. That’s nearly seven miles straight down into the water, and the pressure is eight tons per square inch (equal to four cars standing on top of one postage stamp). No one has ever gone deeper since that amazing day in 1960.
THE HOTTEST SPOT on Earth is Al Azizyah in Libya, Africa. On September 13, 1922, it recorded the hottest outdoor temperature ever measured: 136° Fahrenheit (57.8° Celsius). Located on the northern edge of the Sahara Desert, Libya is considered one of the hottest countries in the world. Many of its inhabitants travel across the desert land as nomads, living in tents and searching for food and water. And, presumably, trying to get out of the heat.
THE COLDEST SPOT on Earth is Antarctica. On July 21, 1983, at the outpost of Vostok, scientists recorded the coldest outdoor temperature ever measured: -129° Fahrenheit (-89° Celsius). Vostok is uninhabited, except for the occasional brave researcher.
THE DRIEST PLACE on Earth is Arica, Chile, which gets a fraction of an inch of rain—3/100ths of an inch, actually—every year. That means it would take 30 years to get an inch of water. Its dryness is so unusual because the city is a beach town sitting on the Pacific Ocean.
THE WETTEST PLACE on Earth is Lloro, Colombia, which gets an average of 40 feet of rain a year (523.6 inches, to be exact). The locals make their living from chopping down the trees in the town’s “cloud forest,” where it rains just about every day.
THE TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH gets hotter as you go deeper and deeper into the ground. The center of the Earth is 4,000 miles straight down and estimated to have a temperature close to 9,000° Fahrenheit. Scientists have figured this out using computer models of how much pressure must be built up at the Earth’s core. They use these models to calculate how hot the core must be, although no one has ever drilled down more than 7.5 miles.
MOON MANFACTS
BEFORE NEIL ARMSTRONG PUT HIS FOOT on the silent surface of the moon, no man had ever stepped anywhere outside of Earth. But Neil and his partner Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin set down on a place that the rest of us only see up in the sky. The third member of the mission, Michael Collins, piloted their return craft. Nobody knew if it would work, but they made it—one of the great achievements in all of history.
Each NASA Apollo spacecraft had three crew members. Two of those members descended t
o the moon in the Lunar Module, while one stayed behind to control the Command Module. In all, six of these missions made it to the moon. And each visit to the moon had something a little different about it, thanks to the men who walked on it.
1. Apollo 11 (1969) Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin There are no solo photos of Neil Armstrong on the moon because the plan to take his picture was interrupted by a surprise call from President Richard Nixon.
2. . Apollo 12 (1969) Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan Bean Bean left a banner from his high school, Paschal High in Texas, on the moon.
3. . Apollo 14 (1971) Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell Shepard was the only man to ever play golf on the moon. He said his golf ball soared for “miles and miles.”
4. . Apollo 15 (1971) David Scott and James Irwin Irwin developed heart trouble on the mission, but the zero gravity of the moon and the pure oxygen in his suit kept his heart working just fine.
5. Apollo 16 (1972) John Young and Charles Duke These two astronauts spent the most amount of time on the moon: 3 days.
6. Apollo 17 (1972) Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt These two were the “last men on the moon,” and drove 22 miles over its surface in a specially built Lunar Rover.
ROAD TO THE RED PLANET
NASA’s next set of flights to Mars are all designed to place machines on the Red Planet. All of the knowledge they gain will help prepare for the big day when humans finally reach another planet.
SCHEDULED DEPARTURE VEHICLE PURPOSE
Spring 2007 Phoenix Look for water
Fall 2009 Martian Space Lab Check for chemical building blocks of life
Not yet set Still being planned Bring back rocks
Not yet set Still being planned Drill beneath Martian soil
2016 A very expensive machine; the Mars trip will probably have a flight crew from more than one rich nation. Human contact
SPACE DISTANCES
SPACE IS NOT THAT FAR. It’s just under 300 miles away, or the distance from Phoenix to Los Angeles, or from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. Sure, you have to go through a few layers of atmosphere to get there, but it’s pretty close. After that, however, the distances get really extreme. Here’s what you have to get through to reach space.
Troposphere (Fig. A): from ground level up to 12 miles. This is where clouds and almost all the water vapor over Earth exist. Mt. Everest reaches almost halfway up through it.
Stratosphere (Fig. B): 12 miles to 30 miles up. The stratosphere absorbs a lot of the sun’s radiation, so a lot of chemical reactions occur in this layer. It is also where the ozone layer exists.
Mesosphere (Fig. C): from 30 miles to 50 miles up. Here’s where heat begins to completely disappear from the atmosphere. Many gases are trapped in this layer, which is where objects hitting the atmosphere tend to burn up. Clouds made of ice also exist here.
Thermosphere (Fig. D): from 50 to about 250 miles up. This is where space starts turning black because there aren’t enough molecules to scatter light. Atoms are so far apart that they can become electrically charged by the sun’s radiation, and radio waves from some broadcasts are bounced off them so that they will travel beyond the horizon. The space shuttle and lower-Earth orbit satellites operate here, at about the 103-mile mark.
Exosphere (Fig. E): from 250 miles on to the rest of the universe. Space starts here, the last part of the atmosphere where molecules and gases can leave Earth. Space is thought of as a vacuum where atoms are spread out so far that they don’t form molecules of anything—although in reality, some gases still exist in space.
Satellite band: 22,300 miles up. This is the orbit in which satellites can hold a fixed position above a specific point. At this height, a satellite is traveling at the same speed at which the Earth rotates because it is at the far edge of our planet’s gravitational pull. Most satellites are placed in this geostationary orbit, meaning they stay fixed above one particular point on the Earth all the time. At 22,300 miles up, temperatures are at absolute zero (-459° Fahrenheit).
Astronomers measure distance in space by light-years, because miles are too small. It would be like trying to measure the United States in inches. Would you rather say 190,080,000 inches or 3,000 miles? A light-year equals 5.88 million million miles (a trillion miles), and is the distance light travels in one year, at the speed of 186,282 miles per second. Some good space distances to know are:
Moon (Fig. F): 238,854 miles away. It’s the closest object in the solar system to Earth.
Mars (Fig. G): 36,000,000 miles away (at its closest). It’s our nearest planetary neighbor.
Sun (Fig. H): 93,000,000 miles away. It takes about eight minutes for light from the sun to reach Earth. That means that if something happened on the sun right this second, we wouldn’t see it for another eight minutes.
Proxima Centauri (Fig. I): This is the nearest star to our sun; it is 4.3 light-years away.
The distances in space are hard for us to imagine. So try this: Let’s make the sun the size of a volleyball. If it were this small, then Earth would be the size of a pinhead and Jupiter, the largest planet, would be as big as a marble. At this size, our Milky Way Galaxy is about the size of a huge shopping mall and its parking lot, with the volleyball and pinhead and marble sitting on the ground next to one another. And even at this size, Proxima Centauri is still 4,000 miles away. That means if our shopping mall galaxy were located in New York, our nearest neighbor would be in Rome, Italy.
COOL THINGS TO EXPECT IN YOUR LIFETIME
Invisibility cloak. There’s nothing magic to this because it won’t really make you invisible. Instead, a small camera on the neck of the cloak will send images of what is directly behind you to the front of the cloak, which acts as a type of computer or movie screen. The person looking at you will see what’s behind you, making it appear as if you’re not there. Scientists have already developed simple versions of this cloak and call it “optical camouflage.”
Flying cars. Actually, they will be more like tiny airplanes or helicopters. Able to drive on highways and then quickly lift off, they will be able to hover high above the ground and then park in your driveway. Nearly a dozen companies have already developed early versions of the flying car. Another technology already used in some high-speed trains, magnetic levitation, may allow cars to “float” a few feet above the road without wheels.
Space flight for tourists. NASA and the U.S. Air Force have handled almost all manned U.S. space flights for the past half century. But in the last few years, a few companies have developed rockets that will take a small group of people into space for the ride of their lives. Regular flights are not expected to start for several more years, but a few of these companies are already taking reservations.
Computers in your skin. Today, people carry around wallets that contain their money, library card, driver’s license, medical insurance card, and a bunch of other items. By putting a single chip underneath the skin on your arm (where you can’t feel or see it), the need for a wallet and ID will be eliminated. You can store all your information in the chip and then wave your arm in front of a cash register or a library scanner and the information will be transferred to other computers. Several hundred people in the world already have embedded chips that are used for medical emergencies (a doctor can scan them to get a patient’s medical history immediately). Eventually, it will be used to help track movements of convicted criminals or used to make sure children don’t get lost. The chip won’t quite make you a robot, but it will be the first step in combining computers with humans.
The end of coins and cash. Electronic wallets that act just like cash have already been tested in Europe and parts of the U.S. Much like subway or bus cards, they are loaded up with money from a bank or specialized machine that is deducted when purchases are made. So start collecting your coins now, because someday they’ll just be a distant memory. But, hey! What happens if you need to flip heads or tails for something? Maybe scientists better figure that out, too.
Microscopic m
achines. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. That’s incredibly small, especially when you consider that one strand of your hair is 80,000 nanometers wide. Nanotechnology is the science of creating materials and devices measured in nanometers, meaning their size is down there at the level of atoms and molecules.
Using components no larger than a few molecules, scientists will build machines so small you can’t even see them. For example, these tiny machines might be injected into humans to clear away blood clots or cancerous cells. Manufacturers are already using nanotechnology to develop materials that are stronger, yet lighter, than steel. Some scientists worry about nanomachines getting into the air and people breathing them in, but we’re not going to be at that level for a long time. But it still makes for an interesting