From the category archives:

Kid Questions

Kid Question: Why do things rot?

June 4, 2010 Kid Questions
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This question was apparently inspired by a YouTube video, I don’t know if it was this one or not but it’s lovely in a macabre way.  In fact if you search for ‘rotting fruit’ or similar on YouTube you come up with all sorts of interesting time lapse photography.  Put aside the learned squeamishness of [...]

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Kid Questions: How Does Blood Get in You?

March 19, 2010 Kid Questions
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Blood is made of two different things called cells and plasma.  The plasma is like water, and that’s where it comes from.  When you drink the water goes into your tummy and through your gut.  There are blood vessels (the tubes that blood runs in) very close and touching your gut, and the water gets [...]

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Kid Questions – How Do Plants Grow, and Why Do Weeds Grow?

March 12, 2010 Kid Questions

Plants are actually very similar to animals – they do a lot of the same things but stay still, and they need a lot of the same things like water, nutrients and energy.  They just get them in slightly different ways. Plants get their energy from the sun, they collect it through their leaves.  They [...]

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Kid Questions – Where does the sun hide at night?

January 30, 2010 Activities

This is a great question because it’s so easy to demonstrate, all you need is a ball and a light, preferably a lamp or torch. Firstly it helps if they have an idea that the earth is a sphere.  If they’ve travelled a bit it’s great, you can show them on the ball where they’ve [...]

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Kid Questions: Where do starfish come from?

December 3, 2009 Kid Questions

I’ve had a great time checking this one out, I’m always a biologist at heart.  And starfish are really fascinating! General: Starfish are echinoderms (e-KY-no-derms) like sea urchins.  There are a lot of different types, like there are different types of mammals.  They all have a central body with their mouth and gut in it, [...]

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Kid Questions: Why does it look blue under our skin?

November 26, 2009 General science

Actually the question wasn’t anywhere near as coherent as that, it was more along the lines of “Mummy!  Your boobs are blue!”  So here’s a very simple explanation of blood circulation. Have you seen blood when you cut yourself?  It looks red and it runs a bit like water.  It has a very special job [...]

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Kid Questions: Why do we have noses?

November 17, 2009 General science

This is such a great question!  Partly because I’m a human biologist at heart so I like talking about things like this, partly because at one level the answer is “We don’t know.” Firstly, noses are for smelling.  We don’t think about it much, but smelling is the oldest sense and is very important.  All [...]

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Kid Questions: Stars

November 11, 2009 Earth and Beyond

Lots of questions this week! “What are stars made of?” Stars are made out of a special type of air.  Air is a mixture of different things, some we breathe, some are good for plants.  Some of them are what stars are made of (mostly hydrogen and helium).  But there is a lot more than [...]

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Kid Questions: How did the earth’s atmosphere form?

November 3, 2009 Earth and Beyond

The atmosphere is the skin of air around the earth.  It’s gone through several different stages since the earth formed. The quick version is that the first atmosphere came from volcanoes and was mostly water and carbon dioxide.  As it cooled down it rained and made the oceans and a lot of the carbon dioxide [...]

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