Category Kids Queries

The ground beneath your feet might feel as solid as a rock, but it’s actually moving every minute of every hour of every day. Earth’s crust is broken into ‘’plates’’ that fit together like puzzle pieces. They’re always on the march, a phenomenon known as continental drift. (The plates creep about as fast as your fingernails grow.) When the plates scrape against each other, they can slip and create an earthquake. Most earthquakes are harmless because they happen far from populated areas or deep beneath the surface of the land or the ocean, but big ones have far-reaching effects. A powerful earthquake in Alaska, U.S.A., in 1964 sunk boats as far away as Louisiana. Earthquakes can cause landslides, fires, and structural damage to cities and roads. Undersea quakes can unleash powerful tsunamis that slosh over the land.

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The green color in leaves and blades of grass comes from a pigment called chlorophyll, which absorbs sunlight during photosynthesis, one of the most important natural processes on Earth. During photosynthesis, plants and trees use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide in the air and water into energy-rich sugars for food. That’s why leaves are at their most lush and greenest during the summer months, when the longer sunlight hours kick photosynthesis into overdrive. One bonus product of the process is oxygen, which is essential for life. In other words, most life on Earth is solar powered.

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Consider seawater’s awful taste a warning: It contains more salt than your cells and organs can handle. Ocean water is nearly four times saltier than the fluids in your body. Your kidneys need freshwater to flush out excess salt, so every gulp of seawater will just make you thirstier and thirstier. You’ll need to take in more freshwater than seawater to avoid dehydration and eventually death.

Although people can’t drink seawater, some marine mammals (like whales and seals) and seabirds (like gulls and albatrosses) can drink seawater. Marine mammals have super efficient kidneys, and seabirds have a special gland in their nose that removes salt from the blood.

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All that dissolves salt makes seawater more dense (or heavier) than freshwater – and objects float more easily in dense water  The saltwater of the ocean influences your buoyancy, or the ability to stay afloat. The buoyancy of salt water helps to increase your swimming speed as you will be closer to the surface. Unlike pool swimming, the germ factor in oceans is usually not as serious due to water circulation. Nevertheless, illnesses can result from microscopic sea life or swallowing too much sea water. Free space is also a benefit to ocean swimming; if one area is crowded, you can easily move elsewhere to find a location for uninterrupted swim.

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The next time you sputter after accidentally swallowing seawater at the beach, consider this: That bitter liquid around you once washed the land. Each drop of refreshing rainwater contains an itty-bit of carbon dioxide absorbed from the air. That gas gives rain a slightly acidic bite, which washes away rocks and soil when the drops splash against the ground. This process creates salty sodium and chloride ions that follow streams and rivers into the ocean. All those ions add up; roughly 3.5 percent of the seawater’s weight is from salt.

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Evolution has armed carnivorous plants with a wild and variety of traps for capturing, killing, and devouring dinner. Consider the pitcher plants, whose leaves are disguised as cups of sweet nectar. Bugs that belly up to the pitcher for a drink tumble inside, where they’re trapped by tiny hairs and digested into goo by special enzymes. Some plants have sticky tentacles that work like flypaper to snare insects. The Venus flytrap, the most famous of the carnivorous plants, has leaves lined with interlocking hairs that snap shut when disturbed by insects. At that point, a trapping plant becomes a sort of short-term stomach where the bug is boiled down into nutrients. The leaf hairs are so sensitive they can tell the difference between a bug (which springs the trap) and a raindrop (which does not). So the next time your parents tell you to eat your vegetables, look at the bright side – at least your vegetables aren’t eating you!

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