WHAT IS ACID RAIN?

It is a form of air pollution that is currently a subject of great controversy because of the widespread environmental damage for which it has been blamed. When fossil fuels such as coal, gasoline, and fuel oils are burned, they emit oxides of sulphur, carbon, and nitrogen into the air. These oxides combine with moisture in the air to form sulphuric acid, carbonic acid, and nitric acid. When it rains or snows, these acids are brought to Earth in what is called acid rain. The pollution may also be precipitated in dry forms. Although the term “acid rain" has been in use for more than a century it is derived from atmospheric studies that were made in the region of Manchester, England. The more accurate scientific term would be "acid deposition." The dry form of such precipitation is just as damaging to the environment as the liquid form.

The problem of acid rain may be said to have originated with the Industrial Revolution, and it has been growing ever since. The acidity of the air and acid rain have come to be recognised as a leading threat to the stability and quality of the Earth's environment. This acidity is mostly produced in the industrialised nations of the Northern Hemisphere the United States, Canada, Japan, and most of the countries of Eastern and Western Europe. The effects of acid rain can be devastating to many forms of life, including human life. Its effects can be most vividly seen, however, in lakes, rivers, and streams and on vegetation. Acidity in water kills virtually all life forms. By the early 1990s tens of thousands of lakes had been destroyed by acid rain. The problem has been most severe in Norway, Sweden, and Canada.
The problem of acid rain is not limited by geographic boundaries, because prevailing winds carry the pollutants around the globe. The destructive effects of acid rain are also not limited only to the natural environment and structures made of stone.

metal, and cement have also been damaged or destroyed. Some of the world's great monuments, including the Taj Mahal, cathedrals of Europe and the Colosseum in Rome, have shown signs of deterioration caused by acid rain.

The pH factor, is used by scientists to measure the acidity or alkalinity of liquid solutions. On a scale from 0 to 14, the number 0 represents the highest level of acid and 14 the most basic or alkaline.
A solution of distilled water containing neither acids nor alkalis, or bases, is designated 7, or neutral. If the pH level of rain falls below 5.5, the rain is considered acidic.

COULD THE TITANIC DISASTER HAVE BEEN AVOIDED?

The Titanic was an ocean liner owned by the White Star Line. This "unsinkable" British ocean liner sank on her maiden voyage in 1912. resulting in the death of more than 1,500 men, women, and children. The casualties were the highest compared to any other marine disaster in peacetime history. The seeming improbability of the event and ultimately the magnitude of the tragedy resulted in casting the Titanic into the realm of myth and legend.

The Titanic measured 270 meters long and 28 meters wide, was as high as an eleven-story building, and had a gross tonnage of just over 46,000. She was the largest moving object ever made by man. The Titanic was also considered very luxurious. The Titanic boasted of a double-bottomed hull divided into 16 compartments that would allow her to stay afloat even if three of the compartments were breached. Thinking that no more than two compartments could ever be breached at one time, her creators believed this design made the ship virtually unsinkable.

The much-publicised maiden voyage of the Titanic commenced from Southampton, England to New York on April 10, 1912. Four days later, as she sailed the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, she received a total of seven iceberg warnings, yet her captain saw no need to slow down. At 11:40 PM there was a sudden alarm of an iceberg dead ahead. The officer in charge instinctively reversed engines and swerved the wheel to avoid the iceberg.

The iceberg however passed along the ship's starboard side leaving a series of gashes at least 80 meters long. The gashes had opened six compartments to the sea.

This was something that had never been imagined. let alone planned for. The sinking of the Titanic was inevitable

Many of the passengers and crew could not believe that the Titanic would actually sink. The evacuation was disorderly at first, but as the ship began to sink, the passengers and crew soon panicked.

The ship's 20 lifeboats could accommodate only around half of the 2.227 people on board. The crew.

nevertheless followed the implicit rule of "women and children first" and rarely filled the lifeboats to capacity. Most third class passengers, many of them women and children, remained trapped in the lower decks of the ship

The Titanic sank at 2:20 AM on April 15, less than three hours after the initial impact. 1.522 people including the ship's captain, one of her designers.

most of her crew, most of her third class passengers, and most of the adult male passengers in first and second classes were lost at sea. The 705 survivors in the lifeboats awaited rescue by the Cunard liner Carpathia amid the clamour of those dying of hypothermia in the cold Atlantic water.

Later analysis of the disaster suggested that if the Titanic had hit the iceberg head-on, her bow would have crumpled but she would not have received any fatal wounds to her starboard side and therefore she would have remained afloat. Even if the engine speed had not been reduced, the ship would have turned more quickly with the greater forward motion, and a collision could have been avoided altogether.

In 1994, samples of the hull were retrieved from the site and examined by metallurgists who were interested in the ship's physical composition. The samples of the damaged hull appeared jagged rather than bent, and the scientists soon discovered that the steel used to construct the ship's hull was brittle, far more brittle than modern steel, because of its high sulphur content. When the hull met the iceberg, the steel plates did not bend inward, instead they fractured. Scientists believe that if the ship's builders had used higher quality steel that had more flexibility, the hull would have absorbed more shock, suffered less damage, and the ship might have remained afloat long enough for most of the people to be rescued.

How can a snake swallow food that is bigger in size than its muoth

Snakes cannot chew their food. They have small teeth, which point backwards and are used to draw food into their mouth. Whatever a snake kills, it must swallow full, usually headfirst so that limbs, furs or feathers don't get trapped on their way down.

The jaws of the snake have developed two unusual features, they have a freeing mechanism that unlocks the jaws so that they can open wide, and the lower jaw is multi-hinged, giving it greater expansion. The combination of these two factors enables a snake to cover prey that is larger in diameter than the snake's body.

The process of swallowing the entire prey is very laborious and in other animals it would block off the air supply. Snakes have a mobile opening to their windpipe, which is thrust out safely from one side of their mouth, allowing them to breathe even while they are swallowing

Does a cobra really dance to the tune of a snake charmer?

The snake charmers play a harmless trick on spectators, by making it look as if the cobra is dancing to their tunes. To the cobra, the music is irrelevant because it cannot hear anything. When it is suddenly released into the open from the darkness, it is threatened and reacts by rising and spreading its hood. It mistakes the swaying pipe of the charmer for another snake, and the movements of the snake charmer hold its attention. Unlike humans, a snake cannot swivel its eyes, so the cobra bobs and sways its head in tune with the movement of the pipe, to keep a close watch on it. This gives the impression that the snake is dancing to the music played by the snake charmer.

What is a constrictor?

Snakes, which kill their prey by constriction, that is, by squeezing them until they are suffocated are called constrictors. Constrictors are non-poisonous snakes. Python's and Boa's are constrictors.

How do snakes move forward?

Snakes have descended from four-legged ancestors. Some primitive snakes, such as boas and pythons still have remnants of their hind legs in the form of small protrusions in their bodies.

Losing their legs has given lot of advantages to snakes. They can slip into very small openings, such as nests or burrows of prey and they can also hide from their enemies - other larger snakes, birds of prey or animals like the mongoose,

Snakes have developed long and extremely supple backbones, to give them swift movement. The snake spine is made up of several hundred vertebrae, each of which is joined, to a pair of mobile ribs, by muscle tendons. Some of these tendons connect adjacent ribs, while others join ribs that are several vertebrae apart. These tendons combined with muscles allow a snake's ribs to swivel, and exert a rippling backward pressure on the surface over which the snake is travelling.

Snakes can move faster by using a side-to-side flexing motion, called squirming. Some snakes to move across sand use an exaggerated form of squirming, called side winding.

Which is the World's fastest snake?

Contrary to many people's beliefs, snakes actually move quite slowly: most snakes can't go faster than 7 km/hour. The African black mamba, which can move at upto 11 km/hour, is the world's fastest snake.

Why do snakes keep flicking out their tongue?

Snakes have restricted senses. Their eyes detect movement at close distances, but they can't see distant objects. Their ears lack external openings, and are mainly used to control balance and to sense ground vibrations.

Snakes use their tongues to lead them to prey

In the roof of its mouth the snake has an organ known as Jacobson's organ, which consists of two sacs with many nerve endings that are extremely sensitive to smell. When a snake flicks out its tongue, it picks up scent particles from the air, the ground and other surfaces. The twin prongs of the fork like tongue cary these back to their respective sacs, where it is sampled and identified. Along with its nostrils, the combined action of smelling and tasting enables the snake to follow prey and track down its mate.

Some snakes, such as boas and pythons, can track their prey, by sensing the creature's body heat.

In pit vipers and rattlesnakes, pit organs below the eyes and on each side of the head detect minor changes in temperature (as little as 0.2 °C). Even in the dark, these kinds of snakes can track and strike warm blooded prey accurately by flicking their tongue and moving their head from side to side to keep it on target.

What is tsunami

A tsunami is one of the most powerful and feared natural disasters. It is a large and destructive water wave, which has enough energy to destroy an entire coastal community in moments. Seismic events such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions are the most common cause of tsunamis, but the impact of cosmic bodies, such as meteorites, can also generate the formidable waves.

The word tsunamis a Japanese word, represented by two characters. Tsu, meaning. "harbour," and nami meaning, "wave." Although tsunamis are often referred to as tidal waves, this is not true. The gravitational effects of the moon, sun and planets generate tides, and tsunamis are not connected to tides.

A tsunami may be 100 kilometres fong and can travel more than 640 kilometres per hour. The force of a tsunami as it reaches shore is enormous, and it will continue to travel until its energy is completely dissipated. This means that it may travel inland several hundred feet. carrying with it boats, large rocks, and other heavy debris. All low-lying coastal areas are vulnerable to tsunami attack

An earthquake 19 kilometres offshore that registered 7.0 on the Richter scale generated the tsunami that devastated the North-western coast of Papua New Guinea on July 17, 1998, Three waves measuring more than 23 feet high struck a 28 kilometer stretch of coastline within six minutes of the earthquake. Three coastal villages were swept completely clean by the deadly attack and nothing but sand remained. The death toll due to this tsunami reached more than 1,200 and most of victims were the elderly and children.

Why are outer planets known as " The Gas Giant"

Why are the outer planets known as "the gas giants"?

The inner planets are rocky and tiny compared with such mammoths as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These planets are sometimes called the gas giants'. because they are composed largely of hydrogen and helium, which make up about 98 percent of the universe.

There is a huge difference in character between Mars, which is the last of the rocky planets and Jupiter, which is the first of the gas giants. The reason for this difference has been the subject of long standing debate between astronomers. Many believe that the solar system formed from a vast cloud of swirling dust and gas. Most of this dust and gas collapsed to the centre of this mass, and formed the Sun. Part of the rest was pulled together by gravitational attraction, and made up the planets. The Sun contracted, became hotter, and erupted in an atomic fire, blowing away most of the nearby dust and gas. As they warmed up, the planets closer to the Sun lost their hydrogen and helium, leaving only their rocky cores. The outer planets on the other hand were too far away from the Sun's heat, and therefore kept their gases:

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, has a diameter of about 143000 km, which is about eleven times that of the Earth. Its volume is around one thousand times that of Earth. The outer planets though being so vast are extremely light in density-around a quarter of the density of typical material from Earth

Pluto is the only far outer planet that does not fit the patter. It is smaller than our Moon and extremely cold. It is believed to be completely covered by frozen methane, a gas that turns to ice at -182.5°C. How this small planet has got out there among the giants is a puzzle to astronomers. One theory is that Pluto was once a moon of Neptune, and during an extraordinary encounter between Pluto and Triton, which is the largest moon of Neptune, Pluto escaped and took up its own lonely orbit in space.

What is big crunch

What is the big crunch'?

Scientists believe that the universe is expanding and galaxies are moving apart. If the gravity of all cosmic material restrained the outward push enough.

the expansion could stop. and the universe could begin to contract. This could mean either the end of the universe in a "big bang in reverse, or an endless series of expansions and contractions (a pulsating universe). The possible finale to a contracting universe when all the galaxies smash together is known as the 'big crunch.

Why do some planets have rings?

The rings around some planets have presented astronomers with a major puzzle for centuries

Christiaan Huygens. the Dutch mathematician and physicist, who invented the pendulum clock. studied Saturn with a powerful telescope and said that the planet was surrounded by a flat ring, which encircled it at its equator. In 1665. a French-Italian astronomer, by name Gian Domenico Cassini, noticed that there were two rings, one inside another This is still known as the Cassini division.

Saturn's rings shine more brightly than the planet itsell. The rings are gigantic, stretching some 272000 km, which is more than twenty times the diameter of the Earth. Voyager probes have sent back a mass of a data about the rings surrounding the distant gas giants, but there have not been any convincing explanation for the formation of the rings.

One theory is that the rings are formed when a moon or perhaps an icy comet, comes too close to a large planet and gets torn apart by gravity. As the pieces break away. they go into independent orbits around the planet. and through constant collisions eventually become clouds of fine dust and gas. This theory is supported by the fact that only the largest planets, with the strongest gravity have rings.

Another theory states that the rings were formed in the earliest days of the solar system from the same materials that made up the planets. For a time, the large planets might have resembled a flattened disk of gas and dust. Gravity pulled the more solid material into smaller space, and eventually condensed it into a planet and the remaining dust and gas tightened into the ring system that we see today.

Planet facts:

The largest planet: Jupiter (Equatorial diameter: 142,880 kilometres)

The smallest planet: Pluto (Diameter - 3,000 kilometer)

The brightest planet: Venus

The hottest planet: Venus (Surface temperature:462° C)

The coldest planet: Pluto (Surface temperature-214° C)

The fastest planet. Mercury (Average orbital speed: 172,248 kilometre per hour)

What is universes

What is the Universe?

Over the ages man has developed various concepts about the universe. Ancient astronomers and mathematicians believed the universe to be centred around a motionless earth. This concept was then changed by Copernicus who gave the theory of the universe being centred around the Sun. It was in the 19th century that the perception of the universe was further widened. British astronomer Herschel came ont with the view that the Solar system was part of a much bigger star system, namely the Galaxy. This vision was again expanded in the 20th century by American astronomer Hubble, who contented, that the universe consisted of millions of galaxies.

According to modern astronomy the universe consists of everything that is in the cosmos and that can affect us by means of physical forces. This therefore excludes anything that is physically undetectable.

How did the universe begin?

There are many theories regarding the beginning of the universe. The pulsating theory says that the universe cyclically spreads and contracts, cach cycle taking billions of years. One of the most commonly accepted theories in modern times is the 'Big bang theory. According to this theory the universe began some 10-13 thousand million years ago with the explosion of an unimaginably dense ball of matter or primeval atom and has been expanding since then.

There is no satisfactory answer as to why the Big Bang occurred, but the theory is supported by the evidence that the universe is constantly expanding.

Will the Sun ever burn out?

The great fire of the Sun has burned non-stop for around 5000 million years and there is no apparent sign of it going out. We on Earth soak up only about one-hundred-millionth of the Sun's vast energy. The rest of its awesome output of heat and light vanishes beyond the planets and into space.

The Sun is composed of almost 75 percent hydrogen and 25 percent helium, plus much smaller amounts of oxygen, carbon, neon, nitrogen, magnesium, iron and silicon. It is known as a main sequence star, one that shines by burning hydrogen.

At the Sun's heart, the hydrogen was once compressed with such force that it started a nuclear reaction. In this giant furnace, the hydrogen is converted by nuclear fusion into another combustible gas, helium, in a reaction similar to that in an H- bomb. Thus, the Sun is both burning fuel and creating it. As the hydrogen store diminishes, its stock of helium grows. The light and heat now coming from the Sun were actually produced in its core many million of years ago.

The helium that the Sun produces is only about

92.3 percent of the hydrogen it burns. The other 7.7 percent is in several forms of energy, mainly heat, light and X-rays. This loss of hydrogen is slight when compared to the Sun's enormous bulk. Even though it is composed of light gas, the Sun weighs some 30000 times as much as the Earth. The Sun loses about 4 million tonnes of matter every second.

Scientists predict that the Sun has enough hydrogen to keep the fire going for another 5000 million years, about as long as it has already burned.