Bedtime Math

How much Lego would you need to build your own house? A company made an estimate to figure that out! A Lego brick is about 1/4 inch thick/tall, 5/8 inch wide, and 1 1/4 in long. Meanwhile, a *real* clay brick is 2 1/4 x 4 x 8 inches. So you need 9 x 6.4 x 6.4 Lego bricks for...

Rubber duckies are fun in the bathtub – but how about in the ocean? In 1992 a giant load of rubber duckies

We just love that someone made this suit for his pet guinea pig, Lucky. Armor is metal clothing that long-ago soldiers called knights used to wear while sword-fighting. But because metal is stiff and heavy, it was made into tiny chain links that can bend. That’s why it’s called “chain mail” armor. Who knows why Lucky needed chain mail, but his owner finally sold the suit onli...

In the big blue sky, the Sun looks like a small, shiny circle. But the Sun is actually really huge – 100 times as wide as Earth. So our friend Evy H. asked, how much does the Sun weigh? Well, “weight” means how much Earth’s gravity pulls down on a thing. But its “mass,” or the amount of stuff in it, is 2 nonillion kilograms, which is a 2 followed by thirty zeroes! On...

The oyster may look like just another slimy sea creature with a shell. But some oysters hold a prize inside: a pearl. When a scratchy grain of sand gets inside, the oyster coats it with smooth stuff called “nacre.” The layers build for up to 6 months to make a shin...