Why don’t we eat pudding for breakfast? Try our kids’ quiz

1. Kit, 3, asks: why don’t we eat pudding for breakfast?

   1. Our taste buds only enjoy sweet things after midday

   2. An old law that banned it has become tradition

   3. You can have pudding for breakfast

   4. Breakfast means to break your fast, which is best done with savoury food

2. Blake, 6, asks: what is the smallest thing in the world?

   1. Ants

   2. Quarks

   3. Atoms

   4. Particles

3. Minenhle, 6, asks: why don’t we feel the Earth move?

   1. It moves slowly

   2. The Earth doesn’t move

   3. Humans have evolved to get used to the movement

   4. It moves at a steady speed, and we move along with it

4. Rowan, 9, asks: how did people evolve from apes?

   1. When apes faced challenges, they had to develop their brains quickly. Humans evolved as a result

   2. They didn’t

   3. When the weather started to change thousands of years ago, the apes’ bodies changed and they gradually evolved into people

   4. One ape decided to shave all its fur, which kickstarted the process of humans developing

5. Caitlin, 8, asks: why can’t you tickle yourself?

   1. Your brain knows when you’re about to do it, which cancels the response

   2. The skin on your fingers is the same as the skin you’re tickling, so it doesn’t work

   3. It has to be a surprise

   4. Only your mum can tickle you and make you laugh

Solutions

1:C - You can have anything you like, but lots of sugar isn’t good for you so over time your body wouldn’t feel great if you had pudding for breakfast. Stick to healthy things that give you energy., 2:B - Quarks are teeny tiny things that make up protons and neutrons, which make up atoms. Lots of groups of atoms come together to form everything in the world., 3:D - There are no changes in what we call the Earth’s “rotational speed”. We move with it at the same speed, meaning we don’t feel the Earth spinning., 4:B - Humans didn’t directly evolve from apes. Rather, we share an ape-like “common ancestor”, meaning we’re distantly related to them. About 6 million years ago, two evolutionary paths branched off from this ancestor, one evolving into people, and the other into the chimps, gorillas and other apes we know today., 5:A - The back of the brain, called the cerebellum, is involved in monitoring movements. When you try to tickle yourself, the cerebellum predicts the sensation – this prediction is used to cancel the response of other brain areas to the tickle.

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.

Does your child have a question? Submit one here