• Question: Why is water wet? Why do people die? And why do people go to the poo? Why is the sky blue? Why am i here?

    Asked by emtungatt to Cat, Daz, Holly, Johnson, Pamela on 22 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by danpreedy.
    • Photo: Pamela Lithgow

      Pamela Lithgow answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Water isn’t wet. Wetness is a description of our experience of water
      People die because their cells get worn out or something else goes wrong and all the bits stop working together
      People poo because they don’t use all of the food they eat so the stuff they don’t want has to be discarded
      The sky is blue due to the diffraction of light. Blue light travels as smaller waves and is scattered more so we see it.
      You are here because your mum and dad had a baby, then the government said you had to go to school, then your teacher made you do “I’m a scientist get me out of here” so you are now here asking me these questions!
      Pam

    • Photo: Cat O'Connor

      Cat O'Connor answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi Emtungatt and Danpreedy,

      I think Pam answered all your questions perfectly. But I have a question in return: Why do you think you are here? 😀

      Cat

    • Photo: Darren Braddick

      Darren Braddick answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Hi emtungatt!

      Sorry it’s been so long for me to reply – so many questions.. 🙂

      Well, Pam’s answer is super!

      For water, I cannot add much, wet and wetness are our feelings, and the sensation is true for most liquids we experience. Because our bodies are mostly made of water, most other liquids can be quite dangerous to us!

      People die usually because of disease. Since nobody has ever identified a single living thing that cannot die, we can probably assume that life is actually designed to end eventually. That is possibly why nature puts such a high importance on sexual reproduction – to ensure the species continues after the individuals die!

      As for people ‘doing number two’, well that’s to remove nasty stuff like undigested food, but it will also continue used up things like dead blood cells and removed toxins and stuff. I guess it also has a very high content of living bacteria, because they live inside your gut all of your live. They are usually good thought, and do not cause sickness. Maybe this is why when you are sick, you have the effects of being sick (vomiting) and diarrhea!

      The sky is blue because it is a property of light. The light of the sun is absorbed and bounced by everything. The same reason for why plants are green – they absorb all the colours of light except green, which we see because it is ‘bounced’ back to us. However, sky is basically just gas and air, and so its unlikely the blue is because of the same absorbing and bouncing as physical objects like plants. Pam’s answer is therefore more accurate 🙂

      As for why you are here, well, do you mean in existence? Why do you exist, why do you come to school, why are on you on this website? Well, you came because you are an intelligent and free-thinking individual and posed a very nice set of a questions to us. And you exist because your parents created you!

      I hope this helps answer you!

      Daz

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