science

The Little Mole

The Little Mole is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Little Mole rather than just read about it. In short: The Little Mole (Czech: Krtek, Krteček) is a series of cartoons as well as the name of their title character, an anthropomorphic mole, created by Czech animator Zdeněk Miler between 1957 and 2002. The first short film premiered at the 1957 Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for the best directing achievement.

Key takeaways

The Little Mole belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Little Mole to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Little Mole from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Little Mole (Czech: Krtek, Krteček) is a series of cartoons as well as the name of their title character, an anthropomorphic mole, created by Czech animator Zdeněk Miler between 1957 and 2002. The first short film premiered at the 1957 Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for the best directing achievement.

History

Little Mole was first seen in 1956 in Prague, when Miler wanted to create a children's cartoon about how flax is processed. He wanted a strong Disney influence to the cartoon by choosing an animal for the leading role, and decided to pick a mole after stumbling over a molehill during a walk. The first film, called Jak krtek ke kalhotkám přišel, had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 1957, where it was awarded two Golden Lions. Production of further episodes started in 1963 and since then, around fifty episodes have been created. The first episode of the cartoon was narrated, but Miler wanted the cartoon to be understood in every country of the world, so he decided to use his daughters as voice actors, reducing the speech to short non-figurative exclamations in order to express the mole's feelings and world perception. Miler's daughters also became the bottleneck of the creation process as they were the ones who got to see the whole film first, thus Miler was able to decide whether the message of the movie was able to get to children or not. The only episode where the mole talks is the first one. In the United Kingdom, the cartoons were transmitted by BBC with English narration by Colin Jeavons. Book adaptations were also published in English.

Developments

Space travels On 16 May 2011, a plush toy of Little Mole was present on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour, where it accompanied the U.S. astronaut Andrew J. Feustel, whose wife is of Czech ancestry, on the STS-134 mission. It is the first animated character sent into space. Several years later, Little Mole flew into space with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

US toy market plans In May 2012, Bloomberg announced that Apple Inc. planned to help Little Mole enter the $21 billion U.S. toy market for the first time.

Mascot Mole was the mascot for the 2015 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Prague, and was subsequently used to promote the Federation's Athletics for Children programme.

3D adaptation In 2016, China Central Television Animation and Little Mole a.s. (founded by Zdeněk Miler's granddaughter, Karolína Milerová) created a remake version called The Little Mole and the Panda. Two series were filmed in 2016–2017; the project was cancelled in 2019.

Alfa Romeo Racing partnership On 23 May 2019, Alfa Romeo Racing, a Formula One team, announced Little Mole as the new team partner. Frédéric Vasseur, principal of the team, said that the goal of the partnership is to capture the imagination of hundreds of thousands of children and get them closer to the sport using Little Mole's big follower base all over the world. Mole's iconic figure is appearing on the sidepods of the cars for the rest of the 2019 season.

Filmography In 2000, a DVD collection was published under the English title The Adventures of the Mole. From 2002 to 2004, a set of 60 DVDs entitled Nejlepších večerníčků (lit. 'best bedtime stories') was released, some of which included Little Mole animations. Included in the list below are the DVD numbers for films in this set. Short films

Feature films

Clips

See also Czech animation Cinema of the Czech Republic

References

External links

Krtek at IMDb Big Cartoon Database – Krtek episode info

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Little Mole

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Little Mole claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Little Mole before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Little Mole ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Little Mole

In research: The Little Mole appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Little Mole in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Little Mole is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Animal characters in films, Animated characters introduced in 1956, Animated film series, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Little Mole outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Little Mole in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Little Mole means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Little Mole out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Little Mole in simple terms?

Why does The Little Mole matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Little Mole?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Little Mole.