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That first definition is from Star Wars! In physics, a force is an effect, like a push or a pull, that causes an object to change its shape or its movement. A cricketer hitting a ball is a good example of a force because this batter changes the speed and direction of the ball. Other familiar forces include gravity, friction and magnetic attraction.

While legend says that the apple fell on poor Isaac’s head, his biographer wrote that he simply saw the fruit falling from a tree. He was “struck” by how the apple fell straight down. He then made the connection between the force that brings the apple down and the force that keeps planets and moons in orbit. Both are gravity!

Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911. Both prizes recognised her groundbreaking work on radioactive elements. All the physicists listed above are people who could be considered “forces of nature” because of their impressive scientific discoveries.

For the past 15 years, geologists have been trying to work out the best way to describe what the Anthropocene means for the rocks being made right now. Their plan was voted down earlier this year, but the idea is still very important.

False. Cyclones in the Southern hemisphere rotate clockwise but hurricanes in the Northern hemisphere go anticlockwise. This happens because the Earth is wider at the middle than at the poles. As the Earth spins, the equator is moving at over 1,600 kilometres per hour. In Hobart where the Earth is thinner, it’s moving around 1,250 kilometres per hour, and down at Davis base in Antarctica, it’s only going at about 600 kilometres per hour. So as air moves north or south, this speed difference makes the weather spin!