explain black hole to a six year old?

Question

How can I explain a black hole in language an intelligen six-year-old can understand?

He reads quite a bit and lately he has been reading space books. He is one of those kids that once something gets his attention, he wants to know everything. He is able to understand, and we have been able to help with stars, planets, comets, and that type of thing, but the black hole was difficult to explain.

Answer 1

A black hole is a place where a really big star, much bigger than our own sun, used to be before it died. When really big stars die, they explode inward because of their own weight, so fast, that they rip a hole in space itself. Black holes suck everything close to them up and out of the universe, like a giant vacuum cleaner.

Fortunately, they are very, very far away, and there are no really big stars close to us that could turn into black holes. They will never bother us because they are so far away.

Black holes are very important because they teach us about how the universe works. They are actually very good things, because a very big one at the center of our galaxy keeps our galaxy together and holds the stars in place that we see in the sky, just like our sun holds the planets in place around it.

Answer 2

First, you need to give a basic explaination of how gravity works...
Gravity is the force in the universe that draws things toward one another. Two things will give an object in space, like a star or planet for example, more gravitational pull. One is matter. This is basicly how much 'stuff' something is made of. The more 'stuff', the more gravity it has. The other is density. This means; how small of a space is that stuff packed into. Like a nerf ball can be squeezed smaller, matter can be squeezed too. The more tightly packed, or 'dense', the matter is, the more gravitational pull an object will have.

Now you can explain a black hole...
A black hole isn't really a hole. A black hole is an object in space that has so much matter squeezed so tightly that it has such a strong gravitational force that nothing, not even light can escape it.

This will probably answer the question well enough for a bright 6 year old. All the aspects of space warping and gamma rays would probably be above their head for now.
Hope this helped :)

Answer 3

You could try to explain gravity by comparing it to weight. Have the child hold a 5lb weight. Then tell him if a planet was big enough gravity would be stronger. Have him hold a 10lb weight. This is the same effect stronger gravity would have things would be heavier. Now have him imagine a weight as big as your house, or the earth. That is how much force (for examples sake not literal) that a big star would have. So that force squeezes anything beneth it. Like the nerf ball example above. Tell him once that gravity is so strong, it will compress all the matter (which causes gravity) into an infinitely small point. Try to have him imagine all the weight of the earth, on something as small as pin head (use this as a visual example).

Now this is lengthy, but by having him imagine, and use things he can relate to should make him mentally understand what a black hole is. All that gravity in such a small area reaches a point where anything going near it cannot escape its gravitational tug. You could also illustrate gravity by both of you holding a rope and safely rotate him around you with him pulling the string. The force pulling the string is akin to gravity. Have him let go and centrifical force shall cause him to step back. In that easy example you can illustrate gravity, newtons laws of motion, and centrifical force!

Now some of the responses to this question do not seem to fully understand how black holes are thought to come into existence. Nuclear fusion of simple atoms, under immense heat and pressure inside a star, fuse into more complex atoms thus produceing heat and energy. As these fuels are used up, hydrogen to helium, all the way to more complex atoms such as oxygen, iron, basically every element known in the universe, less and less energy is released. Ultimately this outward pressure, of heat and radiating energy becomes Less than the tug of gravity because of the stars extreme mass. When this happens the star begins to compress and shrink, increasing density. And if the star is large enough it reaches a critical point where the amount of gravity and mass is so large it even overcomes the physical forces repelling atoms apart. This is when it can become a black hole. Stars which do not have enough mass to overcome that critical point end up becoming nuetron stars and such. Other times referred to as white dwarfs, red dwarfs. These objects have all of the mass of a sun, compacted to a rock perhaps the size of a few city blocks. The atoms are so compressed in their final states that a pin head of this material would weigh thousands of tons on earth.

I know I ranted but hope it helps.

Answer 4

Sounds like a smart kid! If he understands planets and everything, then he probably understands gravity. Not necessarily the specifics, but you can explain that what makes things fall is gravity, and that the bigger an object is, the more gravity it has. Now apply that to an object SO big that it can make light fall towards it. But I would agree, stress to him that black holes are so far away that we are not affected by them. I remember waking up with nightmares about stuff like that when I was a kid!

Answer 5

I can remember all of these and some more. My first roller skates were made out of wood because of the war, my first pair of medal skates were made of some pink medal. My family had a business and a crank phone on the wall which we would pick up and say Mable can I talk to Ronnie. I believe or # was 68. The Bologna man came around in an open roaster followed by the Fuller Brush Man. Big school all three rooms and family had to supple the heat.

Answer 6

Here you go:

Explain that a large star is 10 million miles wide while it shines. When it has used its fuel, it can't keep it size and it gets squashed into something much much smaller.

But even though it is now small, it weighs as much as a big star, and just as Earth's gravity means he/she (the child) can't jump off the Earth, this old star has so much gravity that light can't jump off it.

So, it looks like a black hole in space because light cannot come out of it.

And it has so much gravity that everything nearby gets sucked into it.

Answer 7

Explain to her that a black hole is like a giant vacuum cleaner in space. Tell her that it has such strong suction that not even light can escape.

Answer 8

a star that has collapsed into itself and now sucks up everything around it...EVEN LIGHT!
no one is sure where black holes lead to. They're like portals to a magical, unknown place

Answer 9

Think of it as a hole in a bag that is in a bag ...you can show him physically with a bag in a bag ....poke some holes in the inside bag and then get an object and put it in the bag and show him how the object can exit one hole and enter another hole....

Answer 10

I'd simply say that a black hole sucks everything, even light, in. It is so greedy, that it won't give it back, it keeps it forever. It also grows bigger and bigger, the more it eats.