Questions to ask: What does an archaeologist do? How can they tell how old one fossil is compared to another one?  

Suggested Answer: They study history and pre-history by digging up and analysing old objects and the remains of previously living things i.e. fossils. Older things are usually found in deeper layers. They can also use radiocarbon dating. All living things contain an element called carbon. A very small amount of carbon is radioactive. Radiocarbon is lost when living things die. We can estimate how long something has been dead by measuring how much radiocarbon is left compared to normal carbon. (It only works for things that are <50 000 years old though, so not Lingwu Amazing Dragon!). 

Sharing with kids: Liquid water is essential for all living things. Earth is the only planet that we know of that has liquid water and living things on it. But did you know that Mars used to have water and probably even had living things on it too? But all the liquid water was boiled off when Mars lost its atmosphere. Many scientists are working hard to show that Mars has liquid water underneath its surface (which may be even contains simple forms of alien life!). 

Questions to Ask: What are the three states of water? Why is liquid water essential for life? 

Suggested Answer: Solid (ice), liquid (e.g. drinking water) and gas (e.g. shower steam). Living cells are separated from the environment by a barrier called a cell membrane. Liquid water allows things like nutrients and waste materials to be easily dissolved (think how Milo disappears into milk) and therefore be easily carried in and out of cells. Without liquid water, cells can’t get what they need to live from the environment and can’t get rid of waste.  

Sharing with kids: As we get old, cells in the body that no longer do their jobs are stopped from dividing. These cells still cause trouble by giving out chemical signals that damage their neighbors. Scientists think that we might live longer if we get rid of old damaged cells that are a bad influence. One way might be by using medicines.

Questions to Ask: Why is it important to stop damaged, useless cells from dividing? What other ways besides taking medicines might we increase our chances of living longer?

Suggested Answer: You only want healthy cells that do their job to keep dividing. You do not want useless cells dividing, taking over and becoming a cancer tumour. A healthy diet and exercise.

Sharing with kids: Engineers want to make an underground transport system that will let us travel super-fast between big cities. A trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco would only take half an hour instead of taking six and a half hours. People will travel in pods inside underground tunnels that have almost no air (but there will be air inside the pods for people to breathe!). No air means there are no air particles to slow down the pods. We call a force that slows down an object’s movement through liquid, air, or gas a ‘drag force’ or resistance.

Questions to Ask: How would a super-fast underground transport system affect the way people live and work?

Suggested Answer: This question is designed to get kids to put their thinking caps on! E.g. people would spend less time in traffic and that people could live far from where they work in the city. The ability to live far from work would mean people’s living places would be spread out instead of ‘bunched up’ near the city.

Sharing with kids: You might have heard of many weird things about the weather in the top half of the world (the Northern Hemisphere) lately. Things like many fires in normally colder places like the Arctic and Sweden, and having lots of floods and very hot weather for a long time in Japan. Scientists think that the reason why we’re seeing more and more of this weird weather is related to things that humans started doing about 300 years ago. These activities release ‘greenhouse’ gases.

Questions to ask: What is the ‘greenhouse effect’? How is it related to climate change?

Suggested Answer: The natural greenhouse effect: heat from the sun’s rays is trapped near the Earth’s surface by natural gases in the atmosphere, keeping the Earth warm, like a greenhouse. The man-made greenhouse effect: In the last few centuries, more greenhouse gases have been added by many human activities (e.g. gas/oil/coal burning, making plastics, using fridges, hairsprays). Because of this, Earth has become warmer. This has many effects such as affecting the weather (climate change) and causing sea levels to rise, which in turn will affect how life on Earth.