Wood becomes waterlogged when all its calls are filled with water. It can absorb water only up to about 30 per cent of its own weight. As it does so, the wood swells until it reaches “fibre saturation point” or its maximum volume. If further water is added, it will penetrate to the cavities of the cells, but no further …

The skeleton does two very important jobs. It holds the body up, and it protects the delicate organs of the body. When a baby is born, it has about 270 bones in its body. These are small and quite soft, and as the child gets older some bones fuse together, so that there are about 206 by the time the …

This question has many parts to it. We know, for example, that eventually our star, the Sun, will die and in doing so will destroy the Earth. The very distant future, then mens the end of the Earth, but this will not occur for many millions of years and need not concern us here. It has also been suggested that …

Camels do not store water in their humps, as it is commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue. Concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes heat-trapping insulation throughout the rest of their body, which may be an adaptation to living in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it acts as a source of energy and yields …

Some people believe that the appendix ‘catches’ things like fruit pips, and has to be removed when it is full. This is not true. In fact the appendix does nothing at all, and we would manage very well without it. So, what is the appendix? The appendix is a small tube at one end of a large intestine. It is …

Hornets are wasp-like insects. Their nests are similar to the ones made by bees. Stirring up a hornet’s nest metaphorically means to stir a silent/calm situation into that filled with rage, discord or one with chaos. It also means to provoke the attack of a swarm of spiteful enemies or spirited critics. This metaphor is self-explanatory as when one ‘stirs …

It’s the world’s fastest supercomputer built by scientists at IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory for the US military. It can compute about 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. It will be primarily used for military problems, particularly to ensure the accurate functioning of ageing nuclear weapons.

RAPD stands for Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA. RAPD reactions are PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) reactions but they amplify segments of DNA which are essentially unknown to the scientists as they are random.

Mirror image is a concept from chemistry applied to organic materials. An example of this is glucose and fructose. These molecules are mirror images of each other. Although it is possible to flip glucose and superimpose it over a fructose molecule, only in 2D (flat viewing) are they similar.

Naturally available water, after having come in contact with various salts found in soil stratas and atmosphere, contains a large number of chemicals. Some of them are calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, iron, sulphates, nitrates, nitrites, phosphates and oxygen. Small quantities of these substances are responsible for the taste and odour of natural water and are useful for essential functioning of …