How long would it take a rocket to get to the moon? The kids’ quiz

1. Esther, 5, asks: how long would it take a rocket (with a crew) to get to the moon?

   1. About two hours

   2. About a day

   3. About three days

   4. About seven days

2. Bethan, 8, asks: how did Covid start?

   1. A laboratory accident

   2. It spread from animals infected with Covid to humans

   3. It developed in humans naturally

   4. It was triggered by bacteria in out-of-date food

3. Conrad, 6, asks: how many companies or businesses are there in the world?

   1. Between 3,000 and 4,300

   2. Between 3 million and 4.3 million

   3. Between 300 million and 430 million

   4. There are too many to count!

4. Evangeline, 8, asks: does the sky ever end, and if it does, how far up is it?

   1. The sky ends at the surface of the moon

   2. The sky – or Earth’s atmosphere – doesn’t have a fixed end, but scientists have come up with an imaginary boundary that is 100km above sea level

   3. The sky ends at Mars

   4. The sky sometimes disappears entirely, so it’s hard to say

5. Ida, 6, asks: how many solar systems are there in the universe?

   1. There is only one

   2. About 60,000

   3. Approximately 1 billion

   4. At least 50 billion – scientists are still in the middle of counting them all

Solutions

1:C - It takes about three days to get to the moon in a rocket with a crew. Without a crew it can take under nine hours!, 2:B - A 2022 paper says it’s likely that Covid originated in animals, and spread between various species before infecting humans., 3:C - It’s hard to estimate the number of businesses, as it depends what you count as a business, but different organisations put the number at between 300 million and 430 million – more than the number of people living in the whole of the United States (which is about 342 million)!, 4:B - You could say the sky “ends” at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, but because it thins gradually, it’s hard to pinpoint where space begins. The scientist Theodore von Kármán came up with an imaginary boundary to mark the start of space, called the Kármán line, which is generally accepted to be 100km above sea level., 5:A - The only real solar system is ours, because the word “solar” comes from our sun. There are many other stars with planets orbiting them, but there’s only one solar system because there’s only one sun.

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.