Some time ago naturalist Sharon Collman of the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington posted on the Internet some science information provided by school children, most of whom were enrolled in fifth or sixth grades. I share some of their insights with you.

• When people run round and round in circles, we say they are crazy. When planets do it, we say they are orbiting.
• While the earth seems to be knowingly keeping its distance from the sun, it is really only centrificating.
• Most books now say our sun is a star but it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.
• Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun but I have never been able to make out the numbers.

• Genetics explain why you look like your father and if you don't why you should.

• In looking at a drop of water under a microscope, we find there are twice as many H's as O's.
• To most people solutions mean finding the answers but to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up.
• We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on.
• Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dog's tongue will kill the strongest man.

• It is so hot in some places that the people there have to live in other places.
• South America has cold summers and hot winters but somehow they still manage.

• Talc is found on rocks and on babies.
• Many dead animals in the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil.
• In some rocks you can find the fossil footprints of fishes.
• Lime is a green-tasting rock.
• There is a tremendous weight pushing down on the center of the Earth because of so much population stomping around up there these days.

• The law of gravity says no fair jumping up without coming back down.
• Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there.
• Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.
• Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it's brother against brother.
• When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms but when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions.

• You can listen to thunder after lightning and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it, you got hit, so never mind.
• I am not sure how clouds get formed but the clouds know how to do it and that is the important thing.
• Clouds just keep circling the earth around and around. And around. There is not much else to do.
• Water vapor gets together in a cloud. When it is big enough to be called a drop, it does.
• Humidity is the experience of looking for air and finding water. We keep track of humidity in the air so we won't drown when we breathe.
• Rain is saved up in cloud banks.
• Rainbows are just to look at, not to really understand.
• The wind is like the air, only pushier.
• A blizzard is when it snows sideways.
• Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound.

    The future of science may not be in competent hands but it will surely be developed by creative minds.