Have you ever climbed a tree and peeked into the nest of a crow or a sparrow? Or looked into that flowerpot where the noisy pigeon decided to lay its eggs? The sight of a mother hen sitting on a bunch of fresh white eggs is great, though most of us see them only when they land on the breakfast …

Although the human eye is sensitive to yellow and green, it has become a tradition to use red as a signal for caution. A ship carrying explosives would have a red flag flying to signal to other ships not to come very close. Experts believe that since the deep red colour of blood could shock people into alertness, such a …

A cloud is a mass of water droplets formed when air above the surface of the earth is cooled below the dew-point. As clouds float through the cool air above the earth they often hit areas where the air is warmer. The parts of the cloud touching the warm air then evaporate, leaving the cloud with a new shape. Winds …

Celestial bodies are spherical in shape because of gravity. Whenever enough mass gathers close together, the resultant gravity, which follows the inverse square law, pulls equally in all directions and results in a spherical shape. Irrespective of the material composition of the celestial body, a diameter of a few hundred kilometres is sufficient to create a spherical form.

Early in the 1800s, gold was discovered in Australia. Most of the ‘strikes’ were in the vicinity of the Blue Mountains near Bathurst. In 1851, a prospector named Hargraves – who had been in California during the gold-rush two years earlier – discovered rich traces of gold in Summer Hill Creek. The news spread rapidly and within two months the …

Astronauts are weightless in space because then they are continually falling between worlds, or they are falling around the earth and never reaching its center: hence they are like riders in a rapidly descending lift where everything is falling at the same speed and there is no relative motion between the lift and its occupants.

There are several forms of the sport of archery. They include bow hunting, target archery, field archery and flight shooting. In flight shooting the object is to shoot the arrow as far as possible. Special bows with a draw weight of up to 91 kg (200 lb) are used, and small lightweight arrows. In ordinary flight shooting, archers shoot while …

Acentric chromosomes are formed as a result of inversion of genes in one of the chromosomes in a homologous pair. This is a type of chromosomal aberration. Homologous loci are paired at meiosis. The meiotic anaphase will contain a chromatid connecting the two centromeres, called a chromatid bridge; a chromatid lacking a centromere altogether is called an acentric fragment. Neither …

When the British retreated from Washington during the war of 1812 they took prisoner a Dr William Beanes and held him aboard a warship in Chesapeake Bay. Francis Scott Key, an American lawyer, obtained permission to intercede for the release of his friend as the British fleet was preparing to bombard Fort McHenry, which protected Baltimore. The British agreed to …

The Incas were an Indian people who lived in the Andean region of South America. The first Inca ruler, Manco Capan (c. A.D. 1200) was believed to have been descended from the sun god. The Incas thirsted for power. They warred against and defeated their neighbours, and soon their empire extended from central Chile to the present Colombia-Ecuador border. Having …