Free inside every game The 28-page “Book of Y” reveals the science behind every one of the board game's 261 questions, in fun, easy to understand language. You won't believe the cool things you will learn!
T or F: You could light a campfire on the moon if you had wood, paper and matches
Book of Y explanation: Building a fire with wood, paper and matches requires oxygen to allow the paper and the wood to burn. The moon doesn't possess enough gravity to hold an atmosphere of gas around it. So there is no oxygen to allow the fire to burn. You couldn't even light a match on the moon!
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If you and an elephant were floating in space and you pushed on the elephant, which of you would move away from the starting point faster? a) you; b) the elephant; c) both would move the same speed; or d) the duck
Book of Y explanation: Have you ever heard of Isaac Newton? He's the guy that first talked about gravity as we now think about it, supposedly because an apple fell on his head and gave him the idea. Well, Mr. Newton later created some "laws" of motion to describe how objects move. In space, one of Mr. Newton's laws says that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". Basically this means that if you and a friend who weighed exactly the same were floating out in space and you pushed him, the force you used would push him away from you, but would also push you away from him at exactly the same speed. But now there's this elephant that has far more mass than you do. You push on an elephant, and the same force pushes you back and the elephant away from you. But since you have much less mass you'll float backwards faster. Your push against the giant elephant will cause him to very slowly drift away… his mass is too great for your force to make him move fast.
T or F: We have less chance of finding intelligent life on planets around very large stars than we do of finding it around smaller or medium-sized stars
Book of Y explanation: Giant stars only have a life of around 30,000 years. This is not much time for life to evolve and grow on its planets. Intelligent life takes a long time to develop once life starts, so the chances of finding it around a short-lived giant star are worse than if we searched around smaller stars.
T or F: A dog would not need a space suit to survive in space because its fur coat would keep it warm
Keeping warm is only one of the challenges in space. Two other important challenges are breathing and air pressure. First, there is no breathable air in the middle of space…. A dog needs a planet's atmosphere to breathe, so he could not breathe in space. Second, the body of an animal that lives on earth is accustomed to the air pressure on earth. As you move away from the surface of the earth, the air becomes thinner and thinner. In space, there is nearly no air at all, so the air pressure is close to zero. This means an animal that has internal pressure in it's body that normally is used to push against the air pressure on earth would not be able to live in the middle of space without a pressurized suit like the astronauts wear.
T or F: If you start counting by ones (1, 2, 3…) and your friend starts counting by twos (2, 4, 6, 8…), your friend would reach "infinity" first
Book of Y explanation: Neither of you would ever get to infinity. In fact, infinity isn't really a number. It's more of an idea. The idea is that some things never end. No matter how high you count, you could always add one more to it, right? That's why we think of numbers as "infinite" and call the idea of having an end that has no real end "infinity".
"No Wrong Answer" question: If you were invited to visit another planet to live with beings from that world for one week, would you do it? Why or why not?
Book of Y explanation: No-Wrong-Answer question… what do you think?
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