Introduction Have you ever asked a question Of course you have Everything around us from the deepest darkest spot in the ocean to our twinkling stars above fires up the imagination and inspires us to want to know more But there’s a funny thing about questions they always seem to lead to more questions Check it out Question Is the center of the Earth hot Answer Yes How hot does it get If we can’t travel to the center of the Earth to take its temperature how do we measure it Is that why volcano lava is so hot What would happen if I threw a big diamond into a vat of lava If the human body is 18 percent carbon can I be turned into a diamond
That’s perfectly fine The universe is a big complex and puzzling place but humans have a powerful tool to help us make sense of it It’s called SCIENCE Ask Test Repeat It works Science isn’t just a class at school It’s not a thing Science is a process of asking questions in a way that helps us find answers that we can test to see if they’re true At least based on what we know at the time It’s okay if the questions are hard and the answers confusing at first Scientists spend a lot of time scratching their heads That just means you need to keep asking more questions Real Kids Real Questions Every question in this book came from kids who visited the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto Canada at a café where the amazing and intriguing things they asked were captured in a computer and laser-cut into personalized wooden coasters They even got to keep them Cool Educators and science researchers who work at the Centre came up with answers But that’s just the beginning Hopefully this book will spark some new ideas and get you to ask yourself one very big question What are you wondering about these days
CHAPTER 1 I’ve got questions about Whipping Up a Batch of Planet Earth Pretend you live on a planet without air water or rock beneath your feet What does that look like Hint not much Luckily planet Earth is made up of amazing elements like oxygen carbon and sodium that give us everything we need to thrive Check out these answers to some of your most elemental questions
