EPISODE 1: Why do my Dads feet smell?
The short answer? Bacteria farts.
Smelly feet come from sweaty feet.
Your feet are covered in about 250,000 sweat glands. Together, they can make nearly a cup of sweat each day.
Your hands can sweat just as much, but we don’t usually wear shoes on the end of our arms, so the sweat is allowed to evaporate away, cooling us down.
Shoes trap the sweat inside. This gives the tiny bacteria living on your skin a lovely warm, damp, dark place to grow.
Sweat on its own doesn’t smell at all. However, as the bacteria feast, they release different chemicals. What we smell is bacteria farts and poo.
The same bacteria give some fancy cheeses their taste and smell.
To stop your feet smelling, try wearing socks. Socks soak up most of the sweat, leaving less food for the bacteria.
In 2017, 12-year old Connor Slocombe won the American National Rotten Sneaker Contest. His secret ingredients: never wearing socks and treading in animal poo and fish guts.
If your Dad’s feet smell that bad, I suggest a peg for your nose! Or buying him a nice pair of sandals!
Episode 2: Why doesn’t the moon fall down?
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The short answer is that the moon IS falling down, but it’s also moving sideways so it keeps missing the earth.
The first thing to know is that the moon is really far away. Even though it can look huge, it’s actually close to 400,000km from Earth.
That's as tall as if everyone in Ethiopia brought their giraffes and stacked them on top of each other, or as high as 50,000 Mount Everests!
The second thing to know is that the moon also travels sideways at about 3,683km/hr. That’s over 3 and a half times as fast as a jet plane.
We know it goes that fast because the moon goes around, or orbits, the earth nearly every 28 days.
Put these things together, and we have earth’s gravity pulling the moon directly towards earth, but the moon’s sideways movement makes it miss.
If the earth stopped pulling on the moon, it would fly off in whatever sideways direction it was travelling in.
On the other hand, If the moon stopped travelling sideways, it would hit earth and we would not be having a very good day.
In reality, the moon is actually moving away from Earth at around 4cm a year. On your 50 billionth birthday, space scientists have calculated that moon will stop drifting away and settle into a new orbit.
Episode 4: Can snails fart?
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Can snails fart?
In short, maybe...
We all know that farts are smelly gas that comes from down below! These farts are made by your stomach, as it digests food, and as a waste by-product from bacteria that live in your intestines too!
When someone, or something farts, this gas is expelled out the uh, end, and into the air.
Now, snails don't have a bottom like you or I, and their digestive system is a little different. Snails poop out of something called a syphon, which is actually next to their heads!
Distant cousins of the snail are squids and octopi, and in some cases, bubbles have been seen coming out of their siphons. But is this a real fart?
Real farts contain a gas called ‘methane’ (among many others). In 2006, scientists conducted an experiment to detect snail farts. The snails were kept overnight in glass containers to capture any methane. In the end the scientists did not find any methane, so the snails had not farted!
So, can snails fart? Scientists need to do more study on the actual digestive system of snails to definitively answer this question, but for now, let’s say; hopefully, maybe.
If you’d like to learn more about animal farts, check out the link in the description below to a database called “Does it fart?”
Episode 4: Can snails fart?
​
Can snails fart?
In short, maybe...
We all know that farts are smelly gas that comes from down below! These farts are made by your stomach, as it digests food, and as a waste by-product from bacteria that live in your intestines too!
When someone, or something farts, this gas is expelled out the uh, end, and into the air.
Now, snails don't have a bottom like you or I, and their digestive system is a little different. Snails poop out of something called a syphon, which is actually next to their heads!
Distant cousins of the snail are squids and octopi, and in some cases, bubbles have been seen coming out of their siphons. But is this a real fart?
Real farts contain a gas called ‘methane’ (among many others). In 2006, scientists conducted an experiment to detect snail farts. The snails were kept overnight in glass containers to capture any methane. In the end the scientists did not find any methane, so the snails had not farted!
So, can snails fart? Scientists need to do more study on the actual digestive system of snails to definitively answer this question, but for now, let’s say; hopefully, maybe.
If you’d like to learn more about animal farts, check out the link in the description below to a database called “Does it fart?”
Episode 5: How does my tummy turn food into poo?
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How does my tummy turn food into poo?
In short, through a long process called digestion.
Digestion occurs in your digestive system, starting at your mouth, and ending at your bottom. The digestive system is (usually) a one-way trip.
The main parts of your digestive system are your mouth, stomach, small and large intestine and finally, your colon.
Digestion starts as soon as you put food into your mouth. As you chew, you tear the food into small pieces and your saliva starts to break it down further.
Next, the food moves down your oesophagus and into your stomach. In the stomach, acidic juices chemically break down the food even further.
The next stop is the small intestine. This is a long coiled tube about as wide as your parents thumb and about 1 ambulance long, or 6m. Here, gut fingers (or cilia) on the walls of your intestine absorb nutrients your body needs as your food passes by.
The second last stop is the large intestine. Here, water is absorbed out of your food, and it becomes poop. Then your colon delivers it to the final destination, the loo. If everything goes to plan. On average, this whole process takes a bit over 2 days.
If you ever find yourself at the museum of old and new art in Hobart, Tasmania, check out the cloaca professional to see a machine digest food and poo, in real time.