How do calculators know the answers and were dinosaurs pink? The kids’ quiz

1. Elina, 7, asks: how do calculators know every answer?

   1. Gods whisper them the answers

   2. A tiny person inside them does all the maths

   3. From the internet

   4. They use electronics and programmed rules to calculate the answers

2. Neena, 9, asks: how do we know dinosaurs were not pink?

   1. They might have been!

   2. Pink isn’t a scary colour

   3. Dinosaurs were green, so they blended into the grass

   4. Dinosaurs are lizards, and lizards are never pink

3. Ivy and Arthur, 10 and 8, ask: who lives at 8 Downing Street?

   1. The prime minister’s mummy

   2. Prince William

   3. MrBeast

   4. No one!

4. Aariya, 8, asks: why do people have birthmarks?

   1. From eating too many chocolate buttons

   2. Because they are a child of destiny

   3. Birthmarks are random, caused by unusual blood vessels or pigment cells

   4. No one knows

5. Joey, 10, asks: how many blocks of cheddar cheese are there in the world?

   1. Cheddar cheese only comes from Cheddar Gorge, which makes exactly 777 blocks of cheddar a year

   2. It used to be made only in Cheddar’s local area, but now it’s made everywhere so it’s too hard to count

   3. There are always exactly 4 million blocks of cheddar

   4. None – it isn’t made now

Solutions

1:D - Calculators turn buttons pressed into electrical signals. These go to its microprocessor, which turns the numbers into a code of ones and zeros, where one is an electrical pulse and zero is no pulse. The sum is done using this code, then the processor turns the answer back into numbers and sends it to the screen., 2:A - Some dinosaurs might have been pink. We don’t know their colours, but they’re related to other reptiles as well as birds, which can be very colourful., 3:D - No one lives at 8 Downing Street because the original houses numbered 1 to 8 were knocked down in 1825. Only 9, 10, 11 and 12 are still there. No 10 is the prime minister’s house., 4:C - Birthmarks generally happen due to unusual blood vessels or if there’s too many pigment cells in the skin. Some can be inherited, and some might come from certain medical conditions., 5:B - Cheddar cheese originally had to be made close to Cheddar in Somerset, England, to be called cheddar. But now it’s made all over the world so it’s impossible to work out how many blocks there are.

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.