What makes sports fun?

What makes organized sports fun for kids? A group at George Washington University (GW), led by Professor Amanda J. Visek, has been studying this question. The research is important because lots of kids give up playing sports around age 13 or 14.

The reason kids quit? 【小题1】 So if the group can figure out what makes sports fun, maybe more kids will play longer and develop better lifelong exercise habits.

First, the group brainstormed 81 things called "fun determinants" that can make sports fun. Then they asked the players aged 8 to 18 to assess how important each thing was to their enjoyment of playing organized sports. 【小题2】 The players ranked(排名) “winning” as only the 40th most important fun determinant. Unexpectedly, they ranked "trying your best," "exercising and being active" and “getting along with your teammates" in the top 10 most important fun determinants.

【小题3】 They also compared younger athletes with older athletes as well as recreational athletes and kids who play on travel teams. The recent study revealed (揭露) more surprises. Some people think girls like sports because they want to be with their friends, while boys like to compete. 【小题4】 It's true boys placed slightly more importance on "improving athletic skills to play at the next level," but for the most part, the study found male and female athletes’ answers were very close. 【小题5】 Although there were some differences between the groups -younger players, for example, like "playing different positions" more than older players-the groups shared lots of the same attitudes toward what makes sports fun.

Children as young as 5 years old are less likely to help a person in need when other children are present, according to a new study. “Children at this age take responsibility into consideration when deciding whether to help,” explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Maria Plötner.   

Previous research has shown that children are generally very helpful, but few studies specifically looked at whether the presence（在场）of others affects this helping behavior.

To find out, Plötner and colleagues invited 60 5-year-olds to participate（参加）in the study. The children were told that they would be choosing a picture and coloring it in. Some children colored with only the researcher present in the room, while others colored at the same time with two other children.   The participants didn’t know that the other two children were actually part of the experiment and they behaved according to a script（剧本）.

Before the coloring started, the researcher noticed a water puddle and she cleaned it with paper towels. She left the remaining paper towels on the floor, just “in case（以防）something needs to be cleaned later.” After about half a minute of coloring time, the researcher “accidentally” knocked over her cup of colored water. She tried to hold the water back with her arms. After about 15 seconds, she looked at the water, and said “Oops” to call the children’s attention.

Of all the children who did get paper towels for the researcher, those who were alone with the researcher in the room were faster to help than those who were in the room with the other two children   who offered help according to the script. The study result shows that the bystander effect — a social phenomenon shown in adults — is evident in children as young as 5 years old.

Imagine that you could go into outer space, take your helmet off, and take a breath—without dying instantly, that is. Would the surrounding universe have a smell?

We think of space as a huge empty, pitch-dark and dead silent place without air. A place like that couldn’t possibly have a smell, right? As it turns out, space actually does have a clear smell. While we can’t smell anything in outer space because, as we mentioned, anyone attempting to do so would almost instantly die, what we can smell are the things that have come back from space.

Space suits, for instance, smell differently after they’ve returned from space than they did before launch. Astronauts returning from space say that their suits smell, in a word, burnt. The remaining scent of space reminds the astronauts of unpleasant burnt meat or metallic smoke.

What causes this rather unpleasant smell? Scientists believe that it could come from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a chemical compound (化合物). These things are basically high-powered materials released into space during the nuclear reactions that power stars and supernovae.

However, this smell is one of many scents that space could have. The universe is massive, after all, filled with many different elements and compounds. Scientists do have a pretty good idea of what a lot of “space stuff” is made of, giving them better ideas about what it might smell like. Most memorably, the dust cloud at the center of the Milky Way contains large amounts of ethyl formate (甲酸乙酯). This is the compound that, on Earth, gives raspberries (覆盆子) their scent. Yes, raspberries. What’s more, ethyl formate itself is created from a reaction between acid and a type of alcohol, which gives it a smell similar to a strong alcohol. (Ironically, alcohol is one of the foods that are banned from space.) The smell of space—or at least that part of space—doesn’t seem so bad anymore.