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Curious Questions from Curious Minds!
Welcome to Curiopedia, where imagination and discovery take shape! Discover something new today with these curious questions from children. Click on the ‘View Answer’ button to find out the answer! If you want your (child’s) curious question answered and featured here, submit it now.
Month Year
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Colour-full facts
Why are school buses yellow?
Sreegugan V.S. , Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
View AnswerColours play an important part in our lives. The wavelength and frequency of a colour defines its characteristics and use. For example, in a traffic signal, red is used as the Stop! sign. Similarly, yellow (and the yellow family of colours) gets your attention faster than any other colour. Even when you are looking straight ahead, you an see a yellow object from the corner of your eyes. Hence, for safety sake, all school buses have to be painted yellow.
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Lustrous affair
How are pearls formed?
Sanjuda S , Erode, Tamil Nadu
View AnswerPearls are made by mollusks like oysters and mussels. A pearl forms when an irritant such as a grain of sand finds its way into the mollusks’ shell. The animal senses the object and coats the irritating grit with layers of a shiny substance its body produces called aragonite and conchiolin. These two materials are the same substances the animal uses to build its shell. Layer upon layer of this coating, called 'nacre', is deposited over many years, until a lustrous pearl is formed.
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Flame facts
Why does a flame have different colours?
Harshith , Kannur
View AnswerThere are different colours and temperatures within a flame, and these two are related to each other. This means, the different colours we see in a flame due to the varying temperatures. Normally, parts closer to the burning fuels are hotter and hence will appear whitish-blue; the more distant parts are cooler and hence will appear orange-reddish. For example, the blue colour of a flame is it’s hottest part burning at 1400 °C. The nature of the fuel and the amount of oxygen available also affect the colour of a flame. Interestingly, these facts also enable astronomers to determine the temperatures and compositions of faraway stars.
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Dream away
Why do we dream?
Dwitipriya Mukherjee , Bengaluru, Karnataka
View AnswerWhen we go to sleep, our body does not switch off completely. Organs continue to work, albeit not as hard as they would when we are awake. One such organ is the brain. Dreams are a way for the brain to process and file all the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and events that we have experienced through the day — which ones to remember, forget, or if there is a problem — how to solve it. Sometimes, our brain likes to let its imagination run wild, giving things we know a fantastical makeover. Ever dreamt about being chased by your exam paper? Or drowning in a sea of ice-cream? This should explain it.