NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 10 .1 — In-text Questions

Book page 18610 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Living beings need food (nutrition) for their growth and development. List five living beings that require food to grow.

Answer

Every living being needs food. Five from around an Indian home:

Living being	What it takes as food
Human being (myself)	Rice, roti, dal, vegetables, milk
Cow / buffalo	Grass, fodder, oil cake, straw
Sparrow	Grain, small insects
Ant	Sugar, crumbs, dead insects
Mango tree (or any green plant)	Makes its own food in its green leaves using sunlight, water and air; takes minerals from the soil

Why food is needed for growth: food does three jobs — it gives energy to work, supplies the material to build new parts of the body, and provides what is needed to repair damage. Stop the food and growth stops with it.

Q2.

Now, think of a process without which we cannot live. Count the number of breaths you take per minute after a normal walk, after a run, and after a few dance steps. Record the data and observe. Do you notice any difference in the number of breaths after each situation?

Answer

The process is respiration. Do the counting with a watch — one breath is one “in and out” together.

Situation	Breaths per minute (a typical Class 6 student)	How I felt
Sitting quietly (before starting)	about 18–22	Normal
After a normal walk	about 22–26	Slightly faster
After a few dance steps	about 26–32	Warm, breathing deeper
After a run	about 35–45	Panting, heart beating fast

Yes, there is a clear difference. The harder the activity, the more breaths per minute — and each breath is deeper too.

Why it happens: muscles get their energy by using food along with the air we take in. Running uses far more energy than sitting, so the body needs more air, faster. That is why you pant after a race and why the panting slows down again once you rest.

Check it yourself: take the readings for three friends and find the average. The numbers differ from person to person, but the pattern — rest < walk < dance < run — is the same for everybody.

Q3.

Do you notice the process of breathing in other animals like dogs, cats, cows and buffaloes? Notice the movement of their abdomen while they are taking rest.

Answer

Yes. When an animal is resting, its breathing is easy to see even from a distance.

Watch a cow or buffalo lying in the shade — its flank and abdomen rise and fall steadily, roughly 15 to 25 times a minute.
A sleeping dog shows the same slow rise and fall of the chest and belly. After running in the sun it pants with its tongue out, breathing very fast.
A cat dozing on a wall breathes so gently that you have to look closely.
A fish in an aquarium opens and closes its mouth and gill covers — that is its way of taking in air dissolved in water.

Why the abdomen moves: when air is drawn in, the chest cavity is made bigger and the organs below are pushed down, so the belly bulges out. When the air goes out, everything comes back. The movement is a direct sign that the animal is respiring — that is, that it is alive.

Try This: Lie flat on your back, place a light book on your stomach and watch it rise and fall. Then count the rises for one minute — you have measured your own breathing rate without touching yourself.

Q4.

In the process of breathing, when we inhale, the air moves from outside to inside our body. When we breathe out, the air moves from inside our body to outside. Breathing is part of a process called respiration. Do plants also respire?

Answer

Yes — all living beings respire, and plants are no exception.

How a plant does it: there are tiny pores called stomata on the surface of the leaves. These pores let air move in and out of the plant. Roots take in the air present in the spaces between soil particles, and woody stems have tiny openings of their own.

	We do it	A plant does it
Opening used	Nose and mouth	Stomata on the leaf surface (and root surfaces)
Any visible movement?	Chest and abdomen rise and fall	None — the exchange is silent and very slow
Does it stop at night?	No	No — a plant respires day and night

Try This — the activity the book suggests: ask the senior students of your school to show you stomata under a microscope. Peel the thin lower skin off a fresh leaf (a Rhoeo, money plant or lily leaf works well), put it on a slide with a drop of water and look. You will see tiny mouth-shaped pores, each between two curved cells.

A common confusion cleared: a plant makes food in sunlight, and it respires all the time. These are two different processes. In bright sunlight the food-making is much faster, which is why we usually notice only that one.

Q5.

Have you noticed white patches forming on shirts around the armpits during summers?

Answer

Yes — and those patches are proof of excretion.

The patches are formed by sweat. Sweat consists of water and salts removed by the body as waste products. When the water dries off in the summer heat, the salt is left behind on the cloth as a whitish ring.

Removal of waste products from the body = excretion

In animals, urine is also formed as a product of excretion.
The waste air we breathe out is removed too.

Why the body must throw waste out: the chemical work going on inside a living body constantly produces substances that are of no further use, and some are harmful if they collect. Excretion clears them out. A pencil or a chair produces no such waste, because nothing is happening inside it.

Did you know? Sweating also cools you. As the water evaporates it takes heat away from the skin — the same reason a matka keeps water cool.

Q6.

Do you know that plants also excrete?

Answer

Yes. The book points to a sight you have almost certainly seen on a winter or monsoon morning.

Plants excrete excess water and minerals in the form of small droplets on the leaves — you can notice this on grasses and roses. Look at a lawn just after sunrise: tiny beads of water sit along the tip and edges of every blade of grass.

How plants get rid of waste	Where you see it
Droplets of excess water with dissolved minerals at leaf tips and margins	Grass, rose, colocasia (arbi) leaves in the early morning
Waste gases released through the stomata	Not visible
Waste stored in old leaves and bark, which are then shed	Fallen leaves in autumn; peeling bark of eucalyptus and arjuna
Gum and resin oozing out of the trunk	Gum on a babool or neem trunk; resin on a pine

Check it yourself: do not confuse these droplets with dew. Dew forms all over a cold surface, even on a stone or a scooter seat. Excretion droplets sit in a neat row at the tip and edges of the leaf, where the veins end — and they appear even when the air is not cold.

The conclusion the chapter draws: all living beings excrete. Animals do it through sweat and urine, plants through droplets, shed leaves, gums and resins — but every one of them does it.

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