Who discovered the first magnet?   In about 600 BC a Greek called Thales found a rock which attracted bits of iron to it. He named this rock ‘magnets’ after the town Magnets where it was found. The rock he found was an iron ore but other substances act  in the same way. We call them magnets. Materials which are attracted to a magnet are said to be magnetic. Iron and...

How do you make a spore print?  To make spore print, you need to find a mushroom or toadstool which has gills under the cap. Carefully remove the cap from the stem ( or stipe) and place it, gills downward, onto a piece of clean white paper. Leave the cap undisturbed on the paper for a day or so. When you take the cap off the paper, you will see a...

How do fungi reproduce themselves? Under the top part of a mushroom or toadstool 9 the part called the cap) there are usually lots of thin, delicate folds called gills. Within the gills, millions of spores, which look like tiny specks of dust, are formed. When ripe, these spores drop from the gills and are carried away. Many land in places where they cannot grow into a new fungus, but those...

What are fungi? Fungi are plants, but they do not have the pigment called chlorophyll which makes the leaves, and often the stems, of other plants look green. Instead, fungi usually appear brown, red, gold or violet, like many of those shown here Green plants use chlorophyll to trap the energy which comes from sunlight,  and then  use this energy to combine water from the soil and a gas in the...

Why is the home of the Beaver so interesting? The beaver, which lives in North America and northern Europe, has a skilful and elaborate way of damming up a stream or river in order to build a house that is partly under water. He does this because he has to make sure he has enough water to get into and out of his house easily when the water ices over in...

Which Mammal has a poison spur? The male duck – billed platypus, that lives in Australia, has!  It has five very strong  each of its four feet, but the back feet have an extra claw, which  can discharge poison. It is used when fighting. In fact the feet of these dark brown, oval shaped furry mammals  are very interesting altogether. They are webbed, for the purposes of swimming, and the web...

What was a clipper ship? This was a nineteenth century wooden sailing vessel built and rigged, or equipped, for speed. With the discovery of steam and its increasing use in shipping by the early 1800s, the position of the sailing ship as a means of transporting people and goods across the oceans, was threatened. So the clipper ship was designed as a final attempt to prove the supremacy of sial over...

Why did it become important for nations to have a powerful fleet?   Following the successful Norman and Danish invasion of England by sea, which ended in the Norman Conquest of 1066, it was clear that the best way of conquering other lands  and peoples was by having a strong fleet of sea- going vessels, manned by soldiers. So it was with this though that nations realised too, that a strong...