Debbie Frudman, age 13, of Rochester, New York, for her question:

Can Greenland be called a continent?     

A continent, of course, is a large land mass but nobody ever stated how large it must be. It must be large but there are no other clues to gui.de.us. Long ago, geographers.decided that the earth has seven continents and the boundaries between them. The biggest land area is divided into Asia and.Eurape. The smallest continent is the island of Australia  but even this continental land mass covers an area of almost three million square miles.

Though there is no set rule, it seems that a continent must have several million square miles of dry land. This may be why Greenland does not qualify.= Its area is only 840,000 square miles which is less than one million. Australia is more than three times larger and North America.is.10 times larger. However., though Greenland is not a continent, it can claim to be the largest non continental island in the world.