Steve Baldonado, age 9, of Santa Maria, California, for his question:

Where are the hottest and coldest snots on earth

You might expect to find the hottest spots at the equator and the coldest spots at the poles. But this is not exactly so. It is true that the coldest spots are fairly near the wintry North and South Poles. But some of the hottest spots are quite a long way from the equator. This is because the great oceans tend to warm up the cold winds and cool down the hot winds. For this reason, the world's hottest and coldest spots are on large continents, far from the gentling sea breezes.

The coldest place on earth is Antarctica, the huge icy continent that covers the south Pole. It is not a comfortable place to live and for ages nobody lived there. So there was nobody there to measure the temperature. Then teams of scientists from several countries set up weather stations, here and there on the vast ice field. While we are enjoying our summer season, the winter moves south of the equator. So the weathermen down there in Antarctica expected the worst cold in July and August.

And that is just what they got. Near the South Pole, the winter is a very long, very cold night, for the son does nbt rise above the horizon. When the blustery blizzards blow, the temperature often drops down to minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit. This is 30 degrees colder than the coldest spells near the North Pole. But on August 26, 1960, the Antarctic weather was worse than usual. At the Russian weather station, the temperature dropped down to minus 126.9 degrees Fahrenheit. And that was a world record.

The world's coldest spots are on the land, and so are the hot spots. North Africa has more than its share of dry sandy deserts. There, in late summer, the super hot desert winds blow over the country of Lybia. Sweltering heat waves reach 120 degrees and sometimes 130 .degrees Fahrenheit. Several other parts of the world have a few days as hot as this. But on September 13, 1922, the heat in Lybia was worse than usual. The temperature rose to 136 degrees Fahrenheit. This hottest day was a world record,

There are several cold spots near the North Pole, though none as cold as Antarctica. In northern Asia, the people of Siberia expect winter weather of minus 60 degrees to minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But one cold spell dropped to minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the coldest weather on record north of the equator. The coldest record in northern Canada was minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit. In January 1886, the temperature in parts of Alaska dropped to a record low of minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit.

Alaska holds the record low temperature for the United States; Death Valley holds the record high. This valley in central California lies lower than sea level and mountain ranges shelter it from ocean breezes. Summer temperatures often rise to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. But the summer of 1913 was a real scorcher. On July 10, a heat wave sent the thermometer soaring up to 134 degrees Fahrenheit. This was just two little degrees cooler than Lybia's hottest world record. Both Lybia and Death Valley are hundreds of miles from the equator, where you would expect the hottest spots on earth.