In-text — The Year's Journey, Roots and Kites — Exploring the Investigative World of Science

1. 13 marksCuriosity Grade 8, Chapter 1, page 2

   The chapter says: "We don't want you to just learn new facts, we want you to learn how to find new facts." What is the difference, and why does Grade 8 emphasise the second?

   Hint. One of them runs out when you reach the edge of the book.

   Learning facts means taking in what is already known — that steam expands, that the Moon has phases. It is necessary, and it is what most of the rest of this book supplies.

   Learning how to find facts means being able to settle a question nobody has answered for you: framing it so it can be tested, deciding what to change and what to measure, running the test fairly, and judging what the result shows.

   Why the second matters more here. Facts run out at the edge of the book, and the chapter demonstrates this immediately by choosing an example — the puffing puri — that has no settled answer. If you could only look things up, you would be stuck there. Being able to investigate is what lets you keep going.

   The three-year progression the chapter draws:

   Grade	What science was shown to be
   6	Science begins with wonder — simple 'Why?' and 'How?' questions
   7	Science is always evolving — each answer opens new questions and ideas change
   8	Science is investigation — wonder and evolution combined into a way of working

   ✦ Answer: learning facts means absorbing what is already known, while learning how to find facts means being able to settle a question nobody has answered — and Grade 8 stresses the second because, as the puri example shows, the known facts run out and investigation is what carries you past that point.

2. 23 marksCuriosity Grade 8, Chapter 1, page 2

   What do the root and the kite on the page corners stand for, and what does the chapter say happens when you have only one of them?

   Hint. One is at the bottom of the left-hand pages, the other at the top of the right-hand pages — the positions are part of the meaning.

   The root sits at the bottom of the left-hand pages. It stands for the deep, solid foundation of knowledge that keeps us connected to our environment, our traditions, and our cultural and natural heritage.

   The kite soars in the top corner of the right-hand pages. It is a reminder that curiosity must take flight if we are to explore the unknown.

   Why both are needed. The chapter is explicit that investigation works only when the two are balanced — "stay grounded in real observations, while allowing your ideas to soar towards new horizons." Take away one and it fails:

   • Roots without a kite is collecting observations without ever asking what they mean, so nothing new is ever proposed
   • A kite without roots is imagining explanations with nothing to tie them down, so there is no way to find out whether any of them is right

   The puri investigation shows both at work: the imaginative part is guessing that the way you drop the dough might matter, and the grounded part is frying puris and timing them to find out.

   ✦ Answer: the root is the solid foundation of knowledge and heritage that keeps us grounded in real observations, and the kite is curiosity taking flight towards the unknown — and investigation works only when careful observation and creative thinking are balanced, since either one alone gets you nowhere.

3. 34 marksCuriosity Grade 8, Chapter 1, pages 3-5

   Trace the journey this book will take, and show how each topic leads into the next rather than standing alone.

   Hint. The chapter is written as one continuous chain, not a list of subjects.

   The chain, in the chapter's own order:

   Chapters	Topic	What links it to the next
   2	The invisible living world	A drop of water hides organisms that help us or infect us
   3	Health	So what keeps us healthy and fights those infections?
   4	Electricity — magnetic and heating effects	Science improving daily life; motors and heaters
   5	Exploring forces	Those effects rest on forces, so study the forces themselves
   6	Pressure, winds, storms and cyclones	Force spread over an area is pressure, and pressure differences move air
   7	Particulate nature of matter	To see why air exerts pressure, zoom in to the particles
   8	Elements, compounds and mixtures	Classify what those particles make up
   9	Solutes, solvents and solutions	Once things mix, ask how sugar dissolves in tea
   10	Light — mirrors and lenses	From particles to light: reflection and bending
   11	Keeping time with the skies	Rough surfaces reflect too — including the Moon, whose phases gave us calendars
   12	How nature works in harmony	Back on Earth, the patterns linking organisms to their surroundings
   13	Our home, Earth	Putting it together: what makes Earth 'just right', and what now threatens it

   The shape of the journey. It runs "from the tiny microbes we can't see to planet-wide challenges we can't ignore" — outward in scale from a drop of water to the whole planet, with each chapter opening the question the next one answers.

   The turn at the end. The final chapter does not simply describe the Earth. It notes that human activity is changing the planet's temperature and disrupting climate patterns, and that we are both the cause and the only possible solution — which is why the chapter closes by saying that observing, measuring and experimenting will be key to protecting the balance life depends on.

   ✦ Answer: the book runs from a single drop of water outward to the whole planet, each topic raising the question the next answers — microbes lead to health, electricity to forces, forces to pressure and weather, pressure to particles, particles to mixtures and solutions, then light, the Moon and calendars, ecosystems, and finally the Earth itself.

4. 43 marksCuriosity Grade 8, Chapter 1, pages 6-7

   The chapter insists that "you don't need a fancy laboratory to do simple experiments" and that a kitchen is a wonderful place to observe and ask questions. Do you agree? What does a kitchen actually offer an investigator?

   Hint. Think about what an experiment genuinely requires, as opposed to what it looks like in pictures.

   What an experiment actually needs. Something you can change, something you can observe, a way to keep everything else the same, and a record. It does not need glassware. A kitchen supplies all four generously.

   What a kitchen offers:

   • Controllable conditions — heat that can be turned up or down, timing, quantities that can be measured with ordinary spoons and cups
   • Fast, visible results — dough rises, oil bubbles, sugar dissolves, all within minutes, so you can repeat a test many times in an afternoon
   • Repeatable materials — the same flour and the same oil are available tomorrow, which is what lets you check a result rather than merely obtain one
   • Genuinely open questions — the book's own example, the puffing puri, is not fully understood by scientists, so this is not a pretend investigation

   The real requirement. As the chapter puts it, all you need is curiosity, careful observation, and asking what happens if...? The limiting factor is the quality of the question and the care of the record, not the equipment.

   A fair qualification. Some questions genuinely do need instruments a kitchen cannot supply — you cannot see microbes without a microscope, which is where the next chapter begins. The claim is that a laboratory is not needed to start, not that it is never needed.

   ✦ Answer: yes — a kitchen supplies controllable conditions, quick visible results, repeatable materials and real unanswered questions, so what limits an investigation is the care of the question and the record, not the equipment; though some questions, such as seeing microbes, do eventually need instruments.

Solutions written by the tuition.in editorial team and checked against NCERT Curiosity — Textbook of Science for Grade 8 (hecu101.pdf), Chapter 1 'Exploring the Investigative World of Science', pages 1-7, Reprint 2026-27. HAND-WRITTEN throughout. CHAPTER STRUCTURE VERIFIED AGAINST THE PRINTED CONTENTS PAGE (hecu1ps.pdf p.18), which lists all 13 chapters and their start pages. This chapter carries NO exercise section and NO numbered questions - it is a seven-page opening letter to the student. Its assessable content is the four 'Probe and ponder' prompts on page 1, the worked puri investigation on pages 6-7, and the framing material on pages 2-5, and the 14 questions here cover exactly those. TWO POINTS OF SCIENTIFIC HONESTY. First, the book states explicitly that puri puffing 'is not really completely understood by scientists today', so the solution presents the uneven-setting account as a hypothesis to be tested and says plainly that it is not settled science. Second, the sand-versus-stars comparison was worked as a Fermi estimate in Python rather than asserted: a 0.5 mm grain at 60% packing gives about 5e9 grains per cubic metre, and the shortest quoted world coastline (356,000 km) with a 30 m wide, 5 m deep beach gives about 5.3e10 cubic metres, hence about 3e20 grains; the most sand-unfavourable assumptions (1 mm grains, shortest coastline) still give 3e19, against 1e11 to 4e11 stars in the Milky Way - a gap of about 1e8 that no reasonable change of assumptions closes. The solution also flags that the familiar opposite claim compares sand against the ~1e22 stars of the observable universe, not our galaxy, and notes the coastline paradox as the reason the coastline figure itself ranges from 356,000 to 1,160,000 km.. Questions are referenced from the NCERT textbook for identification.