LEARN SOMETHING NEW
For tiny scientists
What would happen if you fed carrots to a Bengal tiger? How does a hurricane form and how do veins work? If you put square wheels on a bicycle, would it still move?
Anyone who has spent time in the company of a five-year-old will have probably found themselves trying to answer questions like these – and most likely getting in a bit of a muddle when the questions start to get more complicated. “But mummy, what exactly is a tricuspid valve?” Umm....
If you need a bit of help keeping up with the questions from your fledgling medic or mechanical engineer, then Tinybop is here to help. This Brooklyn-based developer has a suite of innovative educational apps to cover a huge range of interests, from building machines to the workings of planet earth. Each app allows children to explore by tapping and swiping to uncover hidden details.
Animal magic
Interact with the animations in Tinybop's Mammals app to find out all about elephants, kangaroos, tigers, bats and sloths.
Make the kangaroo run and see how it affects her cardiovascular system or see the gestation and delivery of a baby elephant by tapping to make the foetus grow and move down the birth canal. Feed the tiger a hunk of meat and watch him digest it. Yes, you can also try giving him carrots. (He’ll spit them out in disgust).
Human instinct
The Human Body app allows you to explore the workings of our bodies. Start with the immune system overall, for example, and then look individually at a lymph node and make white blood vessels attack a bacterium.
Rearrange bones and see the body slump into a mushy heap or enable your device's microphone to watch as the sounds around you enter the ear and trigger the auditory nerve.
Weather here or now
With Weather you have the chance to changing the weather patterns. Why not stir up a tornado? Make thick clouds gather in the sky and then zoom in to see the storm causing destruction to a farm.
As with all the Tinybop apps, there are lovely little touches: go 15,000m above ground and tap on the plane as it hits some turbulence to see what happens.
Rise of the machines
Each of the sections in the Simple Machines app works like a mini game. If you need some help figuring out what to do, just swipe the screen to reveal some extra instructions.
Find out about incline planes, for example, by shooting little pinballs around the screen and angling the planes to keep them airborne. And now is your chance to see how fast you can go with various different wheels – even square ones.