Why is snot green and how far apart are the stars? Try our kids’ quiz

1. Beatrice, 7, asks: why is snot green?

   1. Green snot comes when white blood cells work to fight an infection

   2. It’s green because it has green slime in it

   3. It’s green when you eat broccoli and yellow when you eat bananas

   4. No one knows!

2. Arlo, 7, asks: how far apart are the stars?

   1. About 20cm apart

   2. About as far apart as two lengths of your arm

   3. About 100km apart

   4. Very far apart – about 5 light years or 47 trillion km

3. Macsen, 10, asks: how many miles an hour does wee travel?

   1. About 9.5km an hour

   2. About 100km an hour

   3. Only 0.5km an hour

   4. Faster than the Earth spins

4. Evangeline, 9, asks: why do tortoises have little pointy humps?

   1. This is called pyramiding and is when the tortoise is getting unhealthy

   2. It’s a kind of armour to defend themselves

   3. So that little animals can slide down the humps saying, “Weeeeeee!!”

   4. So they can carry baby tortoises on their back

5. Romilly, 10, asks: how many words are there in the English language that don’t have a vowel in them?

   1. Every word in English has a vowel

   2. There are three words in English with no vowel

   3. There is only one word, and it is rhythms

   4. More than 100 words

Solutions

1:A - Snot is usually clear. If it’s green or yellow you might have a cold or infection. White blood cells fight the infection, and one of the enzymes they produce contains iron, which causes the green colour in snot., 2:D - According to the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the average distance between two stars in the Milky Way is 5 light years, or 47 trillion km!, 3:A - Scientists aren’t completely sure, as the usual test is for how many millilitres you wee in a second rather than how fast it travels! But a 1985 German study found that boys emptied their bladders at between 8km an hour and 11km an hour., 4:A - Pyramiding, when tortoise shells become spiky, is to do with diet, humidity, sunlight and exercise – when tortoises aren’t getting the right amount of these things, they can develop points on their shells., 5:D - More than 100 words in the English language have no vowels. They usually have a y instead – like crypt, glyph, nymph, sylph, shyly – or are words that imitate a sound, like brrr or hmm. Can you think of any more?

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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