From the category archives:

Kid Questions

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 [...]

Kid Questions: Why do we see the lights after they are switched off?

December 5, 2011 Kid Questions

If you stare at a light for about 30 seconds then turn it off or look away you will still see a light in front of your eyes. This is called an afterimage, or technically a positive afterimage. In the back of your eyes are lots of little cells called cones. When certain types of [...]

Kid Questions: Do Frogs Have Lips?

November 7, 2011 Kid Questions

The quick answer is ‘no,’ frogs don’t have lips. They have some very interesting features in their mouths, but lips like we have belong to monkeys, apes and us. Primate lips There are 5 types of large animals we’re most familiar with – fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Mammals have very different mouths to [...]

Kid Questions: Do Sharks Have Tongues?

October 31, 2011 Kid Questions

The answer to this one is yes and no. Land animal skeletons and tongues are very different to fish and sharks, with very different jobs. Land Animals Our tongues are full of muscles and covered with sensitive skin and lots of nerves. They are very mobile and help mammals eat and drink, move food around [...]

Kid Questions: How do Bees Carry Pollen?

October 28, 2011 Kid Questions

I discovered with this one that different types of bees carry pollen differently, there are two main ways. One important thing to remember is that in spite of what you may see in movies, most of the pollen collecting bees are girls and any pollen that is spread is by accident – the bees would [...]

Kid Questions: Why do we use glass for mirrors and windows?

October 17, 2011 Activities

At first this sounds really weird – we use glass for windows so we can see through it, but we also use glass for mirrors and we can see ourselves. Why does it act differently in different things? The answer is that it isn’t really the glass that makes the mirror. Good quality glass is [...]

Kid Questions: What Makes Willy-willies?

October 11, 2011 Earth and Beyond

Living where we do we get lots of willy-willies. They range from a few leaves swirling around on the ground to columns of dust and leaves that you can definitely feel. When I was in Halls Creek we used to call them ’30 second cyclones’ because they could be strong enough to knock over things [...]

Kid Question: Why do balls bounce?

September 12, 2011 Energy and Change

I suspect big girl was actually asking this to delay being kicked outside, because bouncing the little rubber ball down the hall was not going down well. But it’s a good question anyway, and like all good distractions it led to lots of other things to do. Bouncing balls is a fun one because kids can [...]

Kid Question: Does water go straight to your bottom?

August 22, 2011 General science

“I mean bladder? I mean when you drink it does it go straight through you?” I was pretty happy to hear big girl ask this, because it was one that confused me for years. I had quite a logical but completely wrong image in my head, I suspect most kids do. From an early age, [...]

Kid Question: Why is Grass Green?

January 24, 2011 Earth and Beyond

One of the classics with different levels of answers. Chlorophyll Firstly grass is green because plants use light from the sun to make food. This is called photosynthesis and uses a chemical called chlorophyll that looks green. It stores light from the sun and transfers the energy into chemical reactions that eventually produce sugar. Photosynthesis [...]