Science & Mathematics Questions & Answers

In 1800, Matthew Flinders was a young naval lieutenant with a passion for exploring. He sailed around the Australian coast with a friend called George Bass in a small boat they named ‘Tom Thumb’. Once, on going ashore, they were menaced by hostile natives but Flinders won them over by trimming their hair and beards! Later, in 1801, finders sailed …

Coeur de Lion, the Lion Heart, was the nickname of King Richard I of England (1157-99). From his youth he was engaged in almost constant war against his father, his brothers, or the king of France. Richard became king on his father’s death in 1189. He went off on the Third Crusade, and, captured on his way home, was imprisoned …

In 1827 a railroad was built from Baltimore to Ohio to counteract the prosperity that canals were bringing to Philadelphia and New York. It was originally intended to use horse power. But in 1830 a cheap, though not very reliable, method of propelling trains was tried out. The Baltimore and Ohio’s sailing car ‘Aeolus’ made its maiden voyage in the …

Radio and radar waves, microwaves, infrared rays, light rays, ultraviolet rays, X-rays and gamma rays all form what is called the electromagnetic spectrum. They are all various kinds of radiant energy and they differ only in their wavelength of frequency. Those with long wavelengths are generally called waves and the shorter ones rays. Before 1800, only light was known, as …

Archimedes, the renowned Greek scientist who lived from about 287 to about 212 BC, was asked to find out whether the King’s crown was made of pure gold or of gold mixed with a less valuable metal. The story goes that one day, preoccupied with his seemingly impossible task, he filled his bath to full and the water overflowed as …

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovski was born in Russia in 1857. He spent his life teaching in school and doing practical and theoretical research work in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics. In 1883, long before the first aeroplane had been built, he began to consider the many different factors involved if man were to journey into space. In so doing, he …

Tommy was (and still is) the nickname of the British soldier – the typical private. The custom began with the use of the name in specimen forms laid down in Army Regulations after the Napoleonic Wars, to show how forms should be filled in with the soldier’s name and other details about him. As Rudyard Kipling wrote: Oh, it’s Tommy …

From earliest times man have dreamed of traveling in space, exploring new worlds, reaching for the stars – an apparently impossible dream. Then rocket research which took place during World War II gave a great impetus to space travel for which rocket propulsion is essential. After many experiments the first major break-through came in April 1961 when a Russian, Yuri …

A cragger is a member of a carbon reduction action group. Such a person is interested in reducing her carbon footprint. The word has made it to the growing lexicon of green terms in the Collins Dictionary.

A warmist – or global warmist – is a person who believes that the human race is primarily responsible for warming. Once a term used for scientists who so believed, it has now taken on a pejorative meaning. There are ‘deniers’ who believe that while global warming may be true, warming and cooling has been happening for millions of years, …