How many bridges are there over the Amazon River? Try our kids’ quiz

1. Naomi, 9, asks: how many bridges are there over the Amazon River?

   1. None

   2. Only 22

   3. 374

   4. There are far too many to count

2. Jocelyn, 5, asks: does metal burn?

   1. Yes, metal conducts heat, which is why you must never touch it!

   2. No, metal is a solid, therefore it is always at room temperature

   3. Metal can burn you if it is hot enough

   4. It can only burn you if your skin is in contact with another piece of metal, for example if you are wearing jewellery

3. Toby, 9, asks: how many times smaller than a human brain is the brain of an ant?

   1. 300 times smaller

   2. 60,000 times smaller

   3. 500,000 times smaller

   4. At least a million times smaller

4. Cleo, 8, asks: what is the largest dinosaur ever found?

   1. Tyrannosaurus rex found in North America

   2. Dippy the Diplodocus, found in North America

   3. The Patagotitan mayorum, which was found in Argentina

   4. The Muttaburrasaurus, found in Australia

5. Leo, 7, asks: how does wood get turned into paper?

   1. By carving off very thin sheets of wood and bleaching them white

   2. By putting a log into a vat of chemicals, which makes the wood chips separate into sheets

   3. By a process called pulping

   4. Paper is actually made from leaves, not wood

Solutions

1:A - Zero! The Amazon’s riverbanks are not stable enough to support bridges. There are a few bridges over Amazon tributaries, but none over the Amazon itself. , 2:C - Metal doesn’t always burn you. It depends on how hot the metal is and how long it is in contact with your skin. If the metal is very hot, for example from being heated up in a fire, it can cause a burn. , 3:D - An ant’s brain is at least a million times smaller than a human’s (estimates range from 1 million to 600 million times smaller!) But ants in a colony put all their brains together to make one big brain, so the colony might have as much computing power as a single human!, 4:C - The biggest dinosaur ever found is thought to be a Patagotitan mayorum in Patagonia, Argentina. Its bones were discovered accidentally on a farm., 5:C - Wood is made into paper by a process called pulping. Wood chips are mixed with chemicals that break down the fibres, or the chips are ground down mechanically. After that, the mixture is washed, bleached and rolled into large strips of paper that are cut to size.

Scores

1. 5 and above.

2. 4 and above.

3. 3 and above.

4. 2 and above.

5. 0 and above.

6. 1 and above.

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a weekly podcast answering children’s questions, out now as a book.

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