Grossman Emily - World-Whizzing Facts: Awesome Earth Questions Answered

FOR KIMWEI, SCOTT AND AARON, FOR HELPING ME UNDERSTAND WHATS GOING ON IN THE WORLD AND FOR HOLDING MY HAND WHEN I GOT SAD ABOUT IT.

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First published in Great Britain 2021 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Text copyright Emily Grossman, 2021

Illustrations copyright Alice Bowsher, 2021

Emily Grossman and Alice Bowsher have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: PB: 978-1-5266-0243-5; eBook: 978-1-5266-2357-7

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CONTENTS

Hi, Im Dr Emily. You might remember me from my Brain-fizzing Facts book. In which case, welcome back! Or we might be meeting for the first time in which case, hello!

Before we start , theres one important thing you need to know about me. I ask a LOT of questions . And I love figuring stuff out and finding things out about the world. My favourite feeling is when things make sense . Thats what I love most about science . That EVERYTHING makes sense and that everything happens for a reason .

In this book Ill be sharing with you some of my favourite things about our planet , and explaining WHY they happen. But first Ill be asking YOU questions and asking you to try and figure out the answers for yourself. So give them a go. Ill always give you four options to choose from as the answer. If you dont know the right answer straight away, dont worry mistakes make your brain spark and thats how you learn . Just start by figuring out if there are any answers that you know CANT be true, and why . And then see if you can think of a sensible reason why one of the others MIGHT BE . And you may well be right .

And remember, in science theres really no such thing as a stupid question . Or indeed a wrong answer . Truly. Wrong answers are just the way that we get to the right one .

Some of the facts in this book are totally random . Theyre weird things about the world that Ive discovered or read about in my time as a scientist . Some might make you laugh . Some might shock you. And some are downright gross .

But some of them are about the things that humans have been doing to our planet , and about how our planet is changing . They are about how the Earth is heating up and how our planets land and natural resources are being used up.

And about how lots of animals , plants and humans are suffering as a result.

These parts of the book might make you a bit sad . Or scared . Or anxious . Or angry . But dont worry, Ill be right there with you and Ill be giving you lots of ideas as we go along as to small things that you and your family can do to help . Plus, Ill be sharing lots of inspiring stories about exciting things that are going on in the world today that will give you hope and show you that the world can be a better place . If we all work together to make it so.

So, are you ready for the first question? Great. Then lets get started .

DR EMILY XX

Its a sunny Sunday morning and you stumble downstairs to find your favourite canine companion scratching away at the back door. You open it up and she dashes out into the back garden, chases a squirrel up a tree, and then squats down and does a wee right in the middle of the lawn. Pretty standard doggy behaviour.

But have you ever stopped to notice which way your furry friend usually faces when she is, err, relieving herself? I dont suppose you have. I mean, why on Earth would you?

Well, this is exactly what a strange team of scientists in Germany and the Czech Republic did. For TWO YEARS. Thats quite a commitment.

The team monitored a group of 70 dogs from 37 different breeds . Every time one went for a wee or a poo (the dogs, not the scientists) they made a note as to which way the dog was standing. Well, probably not EVERY time. Im sure they didnt get up in the night to wee-watch . But between them, the scientists recorded a grand total of 1,893 poos and 5,582 wees .

When the scientists compared notes, they noticed something rather strange . It seemed that the dogs were far more likely to do their business while facing either directly north or south . Weird or what?

But why do dogs do this? Sounds barking mad to me.

Well, the truth is that no one really knows. But it would appear that dogs are pretty good at sensing the Earths magnetic field . This is an invisible force field that radiates out from the Earths core and surrounds the planet, giving rise to the North and South Poles . Its as if the Earth has one ginormous bar magnet running right through the middle of it.

Sailors use the Earths magnetic field to work out which way they are going when they are lost at sea . You see, the needle of a compass will always point towards the North Pole . And by working out which way is north , and roughly where they are on a map , sailors can figure out which way to sail to get home.

It is thought that our doggy friends might have their own sort of internal compass that enables them to sense the Earths magnetic field. How cool is that?

Dogs are not the only animals who are able to do this. Next time you come across cows grazing in a field, deer standing in a line or ducks landing on a lake, whip out your compass you might be rather surprised to discover that they will probably be facing directly towards the north or south .