Why is a little finger called a pinkie and how many lions are left in the world? The kids’ quiz

1. Aariya, 7, asks: why is a little finger called a pinkie?

   1. It’s from the Dutch word “pink”, meaning little finger

   2. Before dummies were invented, babies would suck their little finger until it turned pink

   3. Cavemen assigned the colour pink to their little finger when finger painting

   4. In ancient Rome, thieves were punished by chopping off their little finger, and thief is “pinkolus” in Latin

2. Ella, 7, asks: is black a shade or a colour?

   1. It’s a colour

   2. It’s a shade

   3. It’s neither

   4. It depends

3. Esther, 6, asks: how many lions are there in the world?

   1. About 6,000 – the same as the number of people in a small UK village

   2. About 12,000 – the population of a small town

   3. About 28,000 – like a medium-sized town

   4. About 72,000 – the population of a large town

4. Rocco, 10, asks: why does water make clothes darker despite the fact that water has no colour?

   1. The water absorbs the dyed colour of the clothes

   2. Light waves don’t reflect effectively off damp clothes

   3. Water does have colour!

   4. Scientists aren’t sure

5. Renuka, 10, asks: why are Oreos called Oreos?

   1. The word Oreo is short and easy to pronounce

   2. The Greek word “oreo” means nice and attractive

   3. It comes from “or” (French for gold and the colour of the original tin)

   4. Nobody knows!

Solutions

1:A - The word “pinkie” comes from the Dutch word “pink”, used to refer to the little finger. , 2:D - Encyclopedia Britannica gives two possible answers! If your definition of colour is all the ways human eyes process the light spectrum, then black is a colour. However, if your definition is the way physics describes it (purely the visible spectrum of light waves), then black (and white) aren’t technically colours at all., 3:C - The International Union for Conservation of Nature says there were about 200,000 lions a century ago, but now there may be only 28,000 lions left in the wild, and other sources put this estimate even lower., 4:B - When we look at a red T-shirt, the lightwaves reflect and travel to our eyes. That’s how we see it’s red. If the T-shirt gets damp, a thin layer of water sits on the surface and disrupts the reflection of these light waves. This means less light reaches our eyes, and the T-shirt looks darker., 5:D - Nobody knows the true origins of the name “Oreo”, but A, B and C are all well-known theories.

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.