From the category archives:

General

Movie Answers

March 27, 2012 Earth and Beyond

Sorry about the delay, we were without power for a couple of days last week, apparently a bird took out a whole transformer. The girls enjoyed the extra excuse to have takeaway While I catch up and rearrange, here are last week’s answers in place of this week’s quiz. 1. The Kessel Run is right [...]

Kid Question: Why do we all have different voices?

March 26, 2012 Energy and Change

Our voices work the same as an instrument like a saxophone. Air comes from our lungs then through our voicebox, or larynx, in our neck like the reed on the saxophone mouthpiece. Next it goes out through our mouth like the pipe of the saxophone. The sound depends on the shape of the instrument that [...]

Paragon of Animals?

March 19, 2012 General science

We fascinate ourselves, we want to know all about us. But we have a blind spot, an assumption that we must be the best. There’s something to back this up – after all, we dominate an entire planet and have reached beyond. Surely this means we are the pinnacle of creation? The topmost twig of [...]

Solar System’s Biggest Volcano

March 12, 2012 Earth and Beyond

It’s been said that the reason dinosaurs are fascinating is because they’re ‘big, fierce and extinct.’ Olympus Mons, or Mount Olympus, on Mars almost fulfills those criteria – it’s the solar system’s biggest volcano, it’s a volcano, and seeing it’s on another planet it’s as inaccessible as dinosaurs. Firstly the stats – Olympus Mons is [...]

Road Runner is funny because he breaks the laws (of physics)

March 5, 2012 Energy and Change

While researching this post (watching cartoons on YouTube) I discovered that Road Runner cartoons are from the 60s – a lot older than I thought. Which shows that some things are timeless, especially what makes us laugh. Road Runner is funny because it breaks the rules. When people watch something like Road Runner they always [...]

Checking Out Cheese

February 28, 2012 Food

Cheese is a very early form of food processing to improve storage. Milk is a valuable food because it is an excellent source of protein, energy from both fat and sugars and nutrients like calcium and phosphorus, but it has to be used right away or it spoils. The very first cheeses and yoghurts were [...]

Kid Questions: Why do Fingers Wrinkle?

February 20, 2012 Kid Questions

We’re swimming several times a week and the little girl is fascinated that she turns into a giant pink sultana. She has to check each finger and toe when we get out to see how wrinkly it is. So why do our fingers wrinkle? I grew up with the old explanation, but I did some [...]

They’re out there

February 13, 2012 Earth and Beyond

Image courtesy of Luciano Mendez, a hypothetical view of moons around a giant planet in the habitable zone. Exoplanets. And if we’ve already found over 700 with just a few years of looking then how many billions really exist? It’s a crowded universe. Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars. Most we have found so [...]

Pendulum Waves

February 6, 2012 Energy and Change

First watch this video: How cool is that? And did you like the setup in the beginning when they showed you there were no tricks, it’s just a line of pendulums of different lengths. This, my friends, is all about maths. And physics, but at this level physics is pretty much applied maths. Pendulums Pendulums [...]

Bird Answers

February 3, 2012 General science

How did you do? I had good fun working out the answers. 1. Lungs in birds are very different to ours, they are more efficient. In mammals we breathe into large dead end sacks of alveoli, use some oxygen then have to get rid of the low oxygen air taking up the space. [...]