Roger Mortensen, age 10, of Eugene, Oregon, for his question:

Where is the world's longest canal?

Canals are man made waterways and man has been making them for thousands of years. If the canals in all countries could be stretched end to end, we would have a man made waterway 26,000 miles long    long enough to reach around the equator plus 1,000 miles more. We think of the famous canals as the Panama of Central America and the Suez of Egypt. These_glamorous waterways are long, but they are not the longest in the world. The Panama is 50.7 miles song, and Suez is 101 miles long. Russia has a  waterway 224 miles long and the Gota Canal of Sweden measures 350 miles. But we have a canal waterway that is longer than any of these. It is the old Erie Canal, now known as the New York State Barge Canal. Its total length measures 800 miles and on the way it makes use of several natural lakes. The man made canal sections are 524 miles long    which makes it the world's champion in length. The old Erie Canal was completed in 1825 and the extended Barge Canal now reaches from the Hudson River to Lake Ontario.