The 50 states sit on the wide middle of the continent of North America, plus Alaska in the far north and Hawaii out in the Pacific Ocean. The country is so wide that when children in Maine are eating breakfast, children in Hawaii are still asleep - six hours behind.
Each state gets to decide some of its own rules. The age you start school, the food in the school canteen, even the school holidays can be different from one state to the next. A child moving from California to Florida might find a whole new way of doing the school day.
The states share the same flag - 50 white stars on a blue square, one for each state, with 13 red and white stripes for the 13 places that joined together first. Every time a new state joined the country, a new star was added. The last stars were added in 1959 when Alaska and Hawaii joined.
Across those 50 states, you can find almost every kind of landscape on Earth. Snow-covered mountains in Alaska. Hot deserts in Arizona. Steamy swamps in Louisiana. Tropical beaches in Hawaii. Endless flat plains in Kansas. And the Grand Canyon in between, a hole in the ground 446 kilometres long and up to 1.8 km deep.