The Planet Page
Our whole world, in seven rooms — the air over your head, the waters, the green earth, the ground under your feet, the weather, our home in space, and the helping hands that take care of it all. Every fact on this page was checked against the people who study the Earth for a living, and each card names its teacher.
🔭 Wonder Explorer
🎭 True — or Tall Tale?
Grown-ups repeat some tales so often they start to sound true. Tap a card to flip it over and check each tale against the people who study the Earth. Some tales are tall. One is partly true — can you find it?
🔬 The Grown-Up Deep Corner
Same truths as the rooms above — with the working shown, for the grown-ups who walk in with their kids.
On the warming planet, plainly: the house teaches the words to children first — weather is today, climate is the pattern of 30 years or more (Room 5) — because the grown-up conversation needs those words to stand on. In grown-up terms: NASA and NOAA measure the planet with satellites and instruments, and the settled observation is that Earth is getting warmer, driven mainly by heat-trapping gases people add to the air. NASA Climate Kids' own close is the house's close: "It's important to keep an eye on our planet and all the ways that it's changing. Right now, it's the only one we've got." We do not open with catastrophe for children, and we do not hide the instruments from grown-ups. Care and agency close every topic: the Helping Hands room is sized so a family can start tonight.
On grades: settled science is printed as fact on every card. Where the science is a best count, the card says so — the Amazon's "one in ten known species" (Room 3) is scientists' estimate and is printed with its grade. Where sources of record disagree among themselves (the National Weather Service's own pages give two different yearly strike counts for the Empire State Building), the house teaches only the part they agree on — lightning strikes tall places again and again — and prints no number. Contested claims are not taught to kids at all.
On the tales: the twelve cards above are swept in full, with verdicts and fences, in the house's trash file for this lane. The pattern the sweep found: most planet myths are a right feeling with a wrong mechanism — and every true mechanism turned out more wonderful than the tale it replaced.
Where we learned (sources of record):
- NASA Space Place — seasons, sky blue, Moon questions
- NASA Climate Kids — water cycle, clouds, weather vs climate
- NASA JPL Education — Ocean Worlds
- NASA Science — tides, top Moon questions
- NOAA Ocean Service — ocean water, icebergs, hurricanes, ocean oxygen, Coriolis
- NOAA NESDIS — rainbows, tides for kids
- NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory — ozone assessment 2022
- UCAR Center for Science Education — atmosphere, wind, tornadoes
- U.S. EPA WaterSense — Fix a Leak, Simple Steps, WaterSense Kids
- U.S. Geological Survey — Kīlauea, 2018 eruption
- National Park Service — erosion, Colorado National Monument
- Smithsonian Magazine / NMNH — fossil records
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — bamboo
- USDA NRCS via UC Agriculture & Natural Resources — soil life
- UW–Madison Space Science & Engineering Center — Earth's layers
- California Academy of Sciences — photosynthesis from space
- Science News Explores / UC Davis — sunflower tracking
- Forest Preserve District of Will County / UC Davis — east-facing sunflowers
- BBC Science Focus — the Amazon count
- IFLScience / Michigan State University — tree mass from air
- Missouri Department of Conservation — snowflake shapes
- National Geographic — deserts, defined by rain
- ASTM International, Standard D7611 — resin codes are not recycle codes
- NASA GPM — the true shape of a raindrop
- University of Massachusetts Amherst — recycling savings (EPA figures)
- The Old Farmer's Almanac — Dolbear's cricket law
Every fact card on this page carries its own source line, so any family — and any checker — can re-verify any single fact in one tap.