Schala Metzner, age 7, of Montgomery, Alabama, for her question:

Why does the sun come up in the east?

On a merry go round you see a whole circle of changing scenery. You know that this is because you are swinging around and the scenery is not really moving. It so happens that our world is an enormous merry go round, shaped like a ball. We don't notice it spinning because we are so used to it. But we can tell if we look up and watch the sky. The scenery up there seems to be moving. The sun, the moon and most of the stars rise in the east, march over the sky and set in the west.

Actually, the view up there changes because the earth spins us around to face different parts of the sky. And the big old merry go round always turns toward the east. The eastern sky comes to meet us while the western sky sinks out of sight. In the mornings, the earth turns us to face the sun coming up in the east.