Venus flytraps, like the rat-eating carnivorous plant featured in issue two, tend to grow in boggy soil that’s low in nutrients, hence they need to find another source of food to sustain them, namely insects that happen to land on their leaves. These leaves are about eight to 15cm long and are ‘hinged’ along the midline with spiny teeth around the edges. The folding and trapping action is triggered by pressure on six sensitive hairs which, when ...
A computer virus is a little program written especially to do a certain task on a computer with a known operating system and known weaknesses. If you tried to run the virus program on a mobile phone, it probably will not work, as most viruses are written for just one OS. Computer viruses
don’t evolve by themselves so it’s unlikely that viruses will be able to infect operating systems other than that which they are written for. ...
It's what you've all been waiting for: the sneaky preview of issue 3 on sale 31 December
The jet engine explained
Discover how oilrigs extract oil from the seabed
Sharks – all you'll ever need to know about these underwater killers
We take an in-depth look at the classic Spitfire fighter plane...
Check out this excellent animation from NASA which charts the life of a star from creation to white dwarf stage.
Stars are created when groups of space dust and gases, due to internal nebula turbulence, collapse under their own gravitational attraction. As the cloud collapses a dense, hot core is formed which continues to collect dust and gas before turning into the heart of a protostar. ...
Not to be petted!
Paleontologists have discovered a dog-sized ancestor to the T.Rex in New Mexico's fossil-rich Ghost Ranch. The remains of the dinosaur, named Tawa Hallae, were discovered when hikers noticed exposed bone poking out of the ground. Now fully unearthed and in fantastic condition for a creature which had hollow bones (hollow bones tend to be crushed easily), Tawa stands at a length of two metres (tail included) and pre-dates the T.Rex and Velocirapter, dated ...
If you haven't yet got your copy of issue 2 of How It Works, here's a small selection of our favourite features to whet your appetite. Don't deprive yourself – feed your mind. It's on sale till the end of the year.
We take a look inside the most advanced battle tank in the world
The largest ...
We've been enjoying the BBC's Life television series here at How It Works, especially when time-lapse photography has been on display. Here is a short clip showing this cinematography technique in action.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG17TsgV_qI[/youtube]
Time-lapse photography works by shooting a series of frames at a significantly slower rate than that which they will be played back. So for example, instead of shooting and displaying 24 frames for a single second of video playback – the speed at which film is projected at – ...
Take a look at this short clip from the BBC's Time Watch series on how Stonehenge evolved through numerous iterations.
While the multiple stages of building Stonehenge are relatively understood by modern archeologists, how they were erected and their exact purpose and usage, are still fiercely debated topics. Many theories have been postulated for what the site was used for, some suggesting that it was a domain ...
Good old Ray Mears, where would any budding adventurer be without him? Well, if they hadn't watched this video, then probably both cold and wet. A great clip from Ray's Extreme Survival TV show on how to build a woodland shelter. You can learn more extreme survival in the next issue of How It Works, where ex-SAS survival expert John 'Lofty' Wiseman gives his top-tips on desert survival techniques....
Find out what Top Gear stalwart Jeremy Clarkson thinks about the G-Wiz electric car
It’s no supercar, but GoinGreen’s G-Wiz automatic electric vehicle – quite popular in London – gets a classic Top Gear critique from Clarkson in this clip featuring an electric car and a table. But who will win? Fight!
