Can you cook an egg on a car bonnet on a sunny day? Try our kids’ quiz

1. Colin, 6, asks: can I cook an egg on the bonnet of a car on a hot day?

   1. Cars conduct heat so well that you could even do it on a rainy day

   2. On a very hot day and if you wait long enough – yes!

   3. No, eggs need very high heat to cook

   4. Yes, you can cook anything on a car bonnet

2. Felix, 5, asks: how do thunder and lightning happen?

   1. They are sent from the Greek god Zeus

   2. Lightning is stored energy from the sun that is released during storms

   3. Positive and negative charges connect with a flash of light, which heats the air and causes thunder

   4. Clouds take electricity from telephone poles and shoot it down as lightning

3. Ellie, 10, asks: what is the largest fruit in the world?

   1. Mango

   2. Jackfruit

   3. Watermelon

   4. Pumpkin

4. Joshua, 8, asks: what is the difference between snow and hail?

   1. Hail is a kind of snow that doesn’t melt when it reaches the ground

   2. Hail is ice that falls from clouds and can be bigger and harder than snowflakes

   3. Snowballs that are packed too tightly turn into hail

   4. Hail happens when the temperature reaches below zero degrees

5. Carl, 8, asks: what’s the highest flying bird?

   1. The white stork

   2. The Andean condor

   3. The whooper swan

   4. The Rüppell’s vulture

Solutions

1:B - Eggs begin to cook at about 65 degrees Celsius. On a very hot day, with a black car that will best absorb sunlight, you could cook an egg on a car bonnet. It might take a while, though! , 2:C - During a storm, the charges in clouds cluster into groups of negative and positive. If negative ones in the cloud connect to positive ones on the ground, it forms a channel of electricity and a flash called lightning. This heats up the air around it, which expands and contracts quickly, creating a boom of thunder., 3:D - Pumpkins are actually fruit, not vegetables! The largest and heaviest fruit ever grown was a pumpkin 3.56 metres wide, weighing 1,226 kilograms – about as heavy as a small car! , 4:B - Snow is made up of tiny ice crystals that form in the clouds. Hail is created from drops of water that build up in thunderstorms, which freeze as they reach the top parts of the clouds, and grow as additional water freezes on to them., 5:D - The Rüppell’s vulture is the highest flying bird. It can fly up to 11,000 metres high – similar to a commercial plane’s cruising altitude!

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.

• One of the answers to Question 2 was amended on 12 June 2023 to refer to charges rather than to electrons.

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a weekly podcast answering children’s questions, out now as a book.

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