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If you dove into Oregon's bright blue Crater Lake, you'd have to swim 1,943 feet to reach the bottom. It's the deepest lake in the United States, and the ninth deepest in the world. But it wasn't always a lake - quite the opposite. It sits on the site of a once-massive volcano known as Mt. Mazama.

Mt. Mazama was part of the Cascade Range that stretches from California up to British Columbia and also includes Mt. Rainier. Scientists say Mt. Mazama started forming half a million years ago, as lava pushed upward and flowed out of many vents, adding to its bulk. Around 8,000 years ago, it might have stood as tall as 12,000 feet. (By comparison, Mt. Rainer, itself a dormant volcano, is the country's 17th-tallest peak, at 14,411 feet.)

But around 7,700 years ago, Mt. Mazama blew. And it blew big. Hot gas and volcanic material spewed high in the air and dropped to earth as ash and white pumice. You can still find layers of that ash 1,000 miles north, way up in Alberta, Canada. Mazama ultimately ejected 12 cubic miles of magma, and when it was done, there wasn't much left inside the mountain to hold it up anymore. So the volcano collapsed and formed a caldera, a Spanish word (meaning "kettle") that scientists use to describe this kind of volcanic depression.

The volcano was gone, but the volcanic activity wasn't. Later, smaller eruptions formed Wizard Island, which now stands 764 feet above the lake's surface. The crater is 4,000 feet deep, so the lake now fills about half of its depth.

Its water is among the clearest anywhere in the world, because no streams or rivers bring in pollutants; only rain and melted snow replenish it.

Will Mazama ever blow again? Not likely. Even though it's still considered a "young" caldera, studies of lake sediment show that it's been 5,000 years since any volcanic activity disturbed this peaceful place. There's no evidence that seismic activity might stir things up again, so if you visit Crater Lake, enjoy the view, and don't worry about volcanic activity.

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History of Crater Lake: How a Volcano Became Our Deepest Lake - Kids Discover

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If you dove into Oregon's bright blue Crater Lake, you'd have to swim 1,943 feet to reach the bottom. It's the deepest lake in the United States, and the ninth deepest in the world. But it wasn't always a lake - quite the opposite. It sits on the site of a once-massive volcano known as Mt.

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In Sierra Leone, a small West African country, the electricity comes on maybe once a week. The rest of the time, says teen inventor Kelvin Doe, people live in darkness in his hometown, a district of Freetown, the capital.

Commercial batteries are costly, so at age 13, he started making his own using basic supplies: acid, soda, metal, a tin cup, and tape. As early as age 10, Kelvin was building cool things out of stuff he salvaged from the garbage.

He made a radio station for his town and a generator (using a discarded voltage stabilizer) to power it. He found staffers for the station - their average age was 12 - and played music and reported the news, using the broadcast handle DJ Focus.

"They call me DJ Focus," he said, "because I believe if you focus, you can do an invention perfectly." Kelvin said he wanted to give a voice to the youth of Sierra Leone and enable his countrymen to debate issues. What's more, his neighbors can charge their phones using his generator.

In March 2012, David Sengeh, a PhD candidate at MIT who's also from Sierra Leone, went home to start a national high school innovation challenge. Innovate Salone, as he called it, asked teens to propose solutions to problems around them. About 300 smart kids participated, but Kelvin stood out.

He stood out so much, Sengeh arranged for him to visit the World Maker Faire in New York and also MIT and Harvard, where Kelvin lectured to college students and became the youngest person ever invited to MIT's "Visiting Practitioner's Program."

Kelvin later won his nation's Presidential Medal and met the Clinton family in New York, when he spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative's closing ceremony. He even joked with Chelsea about wearing a suit.

In 2013, he signed a $100,000 contract with a Canadian wi-fi company to develop a solar-panel technology for installation at 400 sites around Sierra Leone. He's also been working on a windmill, which may be done by the time you read this. And Kelvin will probably be doing some new cool thing by then too.

"Through innovation," he says, "We can build our nation Sierra Leone."

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How a Teen Inventor in Africa Used Trash to Reach MIT - Kids Discover

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In Sierra Leone, a small West African country, the electricity comes on maybe once a week. The rest of the time, says teen inventor Kelvin Doe, people live in darkness in his hometown, a district of Freetown, the capital.

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Freckles are harmless flat spots caused by a skin pigment called melanin. Melanin absorbs and reflects the sun's ultraviolet light, helping to protect skin from sun damage. It's also what makes some people's skin darker. Fairer-skinned folks have less melanin, so when they spend time in the sun they often get freckles instead of a tan, especially on their faces, arms, and shoulders.

The tendency toward freckling is genetic, so if your mom or dad have freckles, you're more likely to have them too. Freckles can be different colors on different people, but a single person's spots are usually the same color.

Freckles come in two basic types:

* Simple freckles are usually smaller than a pencil eraser and darker in the summer, when skin is more exposed to sunlight.

* Sunburn freckles, also called lentigines, generally are bigger than simple freckles, can have uneven borders, and don't fade in the winter. They appear where people get sunburned most, on the upper back and shoulders.

Liver spots - also called "age spots" - are another type of skin marking caused by sun exposure. They aren't caused by the liver or even directly by aging; they generally reflect how much time a person has spent in the sun.

There's no medical reason to remove most freckles, but some people just don't like them. Various treatments can get rid of freckles, but the procedures can be pretty serious, involving freezing the skin, laser zapping, chemical peels, and more. If you use sunscreen or just stay out of the sun, simple freckles may fade on their own.

Freckles don't usually turn into skin cancer, but you should see a doctor about any weird-looking or unusually colored spots.

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What Causes Fabulous Freckles? - Kids Discover

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Freckles are harmless flat spots caused by a skin pigment called melanin. Melanin absorbs and reflects the sun's ultraviolet light, helping to protect skin from sun damage. It's also what makes some people's skin darker. Fairer-skinned folks have less melanin, so when they spend time in the sun they often get freckles instead of a tan, especially on their faces, arms, and shoulders.

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When Shubham Banerjee found out how much Braille printers can cost, he decided to build one that would be less expensive to make. For his seventh-grade science fair, he created the "Braigo," a Braille printer made from parts of a Lego(R) robot-building kit and a few other items.

The 12-year-old inventor from Santa Clara, California, got curious about what life is like for blind people after seeing a flyer from a group that helps the visually impaired. "I asked my dad, 'How do blind people read?,'" Shubham explained to NBCBayArea.com, and his dad told him to Google it. That's how he found out about Braille, the language of raised dots that people read with their fingertips. It's also how he learned that Braille printers can cost $2,000 or more.

It took Shubham a month and seven tries before he got the design right. His first Braigo works by using the controller to scroll through the alphabet and pick the letter you want to print. When you choose the letter, a thumbtack creates raised dots on a narrow roll of paper.

Pretty basic, but Shubham's invention was still a hit at the science fair - and in the tech world. His success inspired him to found Braigo Labs, Inc., to continue his goal of finding alternative ways to design helpful technology that costs less to produce, so more people can use it. He plans to make his Braigo design and software open-source, meaning that anyone can use them, for free, to build their own printer.

At the Intel Developers Forum in September 2014, Shubham showed off the Braigo 2.0, an updated model that uses less energy and can do more things, like automatically print out news headlines every morning. Intel must have been impressed because, after Shubham's demonstration, the computer chip maker announced it will invest in his company! Now he's one step closer to making his dream of marketing the Braigo a reality.

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Tween Invents Braille Printer Using Lego(R) Bricks - Kids Discover

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When Shubham Banerjee found out how much Braille printers can cost, he decided to build one that would be less expensive to make. For his seventh-grade science fair, he created the "Braigo," a Braille printer made from parts of a Lego(R) robot-building kit and a few other items. The 12-year-old inventor from Santa Clara, California, got curious about what life is like for blind people after seeing a flyer from a group that helps the visually impaired.

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Josephine Garis Cochrane was an independent woman of the mid-1800s. When she married husband William Cochran, she took his last name but added an "e" to the end. And when she realized no one had yet created a proper automatic dishwasher, she invented one herself!

Josephine led a comfortable life in Shelbyville, Illinois. William was a successful businessman, and the couple often held dinner parties in their large home. She even had servants to clean up afterward. But one morning after a party, she found some of her good china had gotten chipped. She was so upset, she decided to wash the dishes herself from then on. It wasn't long before Josephine wondered why no one had invented a machine to do the job ... and soon she had sketched out the idea that would become the first commercially successful automatic dishwasher.

Her design used water pressure to clean, just as today's dishwashers do. It had wire compartments for the dishes, which fit into a wheel inside a copper boiler. A motor turned the wheel while soapy water sprayed onto the dishes. It was practical, but Josephine had a hard time trying to hire a mechanic to build her machine the way she wanted, instead of insisting on building it HIS way. She finally found a man named George Butters to work with, and the Garis-Cochran Dish-Washing Machine was patented in 1886, three years after her husband died.

Josephine thought her invention would appeal to other housewives, but it was more of a hit with hotels and restaurants, maybe because it was an expensive appliance for a regular family to buy. She opened her own factory in 1897, and personally sold her machines nearly up until her death in 1913. In 1926, her company was bought by Hobart, which eventually became the modern appliance giant KitchenAid.

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Meet the Woman Who Invented the Automatic Dishwasher - Kids Discover

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Josephine Garis Cochrane was an independent woman of the mid-1800s. And when she realized no one had yet created a proper automatic dishwasher, she invented one herself!

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Amazing Animals: Puppy Battles Big Snakes

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Beagle puppy versus giant python. It sounds like an unfair fight, but Python Pete will soon have snakes slithering for safety. The two-year-old beagle is training to sniff out the Burmese pythons that threaten to overrun Florida's Everglades National Park.

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Read about unusual animals, like this miniature horse that visits hospitals, from National Geographic Kids.

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Astronauts in space eat the same things that they do on Earth, including crackers, beef, corn, and brownies. The food is specially prepared and packaged so that it doesn't spoil in space. And for every pound of food delivered to the International Space Station (grub is sent on unmanned spacecrafts) it costs about $10,000.
4. Astronauts grow taller.

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Astronauts in space eat the same things that they do on Earth, including crackers, beef, corn, and brownies. The food is specially prepared and packaged so that it doesn't spoil in space. And for every pound of food delivered to the International Space Station (grub is sent on unmanned spacecrafts) it costs about $10,000.

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Use this text features slideshow to help students with their nonfiction reading comprehension. In order for students to comprehend nonfiction text, they must have a good understanding of nonfiction text features. Students should not only be able to identify text features within the text, but they need to understand the purpose of each of the text features and how it can help them understand nonfiction text more easily.

For example, when students understand that headings divide the the text into easier to read sections and tell what those sections are about, it is much easier for them to identify the main topic of different sections.

When students understand that special print, like bold and italics, is included to point out important words, then they are more easily able to figure out what is most important in the text.

Feel free to use the nonfiction text features slideshow below to introduce students to 18 common text features. For full screen, press the arrows beneath the presentation.

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Text Features Slideshow - Teaching Made Practical

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Use this text features slideshow to help students with their nonfiction reading comprehension. In order for students to comprehend nonfiction text, they must have a good understanding of nonfiction text features. Students should not only be able to identify text features within the text, but they need to understand the purpose of each of the text features and how it can help them understand nonfiction text more easily.

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Click on the link below. Use the arrows at the top of the screen to navigate between pages. Answer each question, and then read the articles!