Small world experiment

Hi there! Have you ever played a game where you have to connect two people with just a few steps? Like, if you were trying to connect your teacher and your best friend, you might say "My teacher knows someone who has a dog, and my best friend's neighbor also has a dog, so they both know someone with a dog!" That's kind of like what the small world experiment is all about.

Scientists wanted to see how connected different people in the world were. They asked a bunch of people to try to connect two strangers through other people they knew. For example, if they were trying to connect someone in New York with someone in California, they might ask someone in New York who they knew in California, who that person knew in California, and so on. What they found was really interesting!

Even though the strangers were really far apart and didn't have any obvious connections, they could be connected through just a few other people. And this is true for lots of people - most of us are only a few "steps" away from knowing anyone else in the world. That's why they call it a "small world" - even though the world is really big, we're all connected in some way!