Homework Help

When creativity is harnessed for useful ends, that is when we get amazing inventions. Can you think of a better computer? Somebody did. Otherwise there would only be a few of them; they would be really slow--and they would take up entire rooms! Or, how about a cell phone? Those were inspired by the communicators on the original Star Trek series.

Virginia educators (and librarians!) are very interested in helping kids realize their potential in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. Indeed, Virginia has a history of producing some very inventive people.

It takes three sets of people -- the president, the judges, and the Congress -- to make our government work. If the president does something wrong, it's up to the judges and Congress to hold him accountable. If laws are made by Congress that people think are not really fair, the judges can strike them down, or the president can choose to veto them before they become laws. Supreme Court judges are appointed by the president, but they usually stay on long after the president has left office, so as time passes we have a mix of different political views.

How do the Sun and the Moon affect the Earth? Without the Sun, the Earth would be a big ball of frozen mud, just another asteroid, drifting in space with no gravity to anchor it here and nothing to give us heat and light. We could not be here without the Sun.

How does rain happen? Long ago the Ashanti people believed that Anansi, the Spider, brought the rains that would put out fires in the jungle. In old Britain, the legendary Green Man was supposed to have rainmaking powers, and Zeus brought the rains for the ancient Greeks.

Today, we know that when warm, wet air rises into the sky and cools off, its water condenses out of the clouds as rain. Rain and snow can also happen when a batch of warm air meets a batch of cool air. The two kinds of air usually do not mix. The warm air is less dense than the cool air and will slide right over it. As the warm air goes higher, it cools off, and the moisture separates or condenses out of the cooled air and falls as a slow, steady rain.