Soil a Necessity for Plants There are various features of soil which allow plants to grow in it. The small garden outside our house may have millions of insects, organisms in it which thrive on other organic and inorganic matter in the soil which makes it fertile for plants. Soil has various layers with ‘Humus’ at the top followed by ‘Topsoil’ and ‘Subsoil’ finally the lowest layer is made of crumbled...

Land Recreated Seas are constantly attacking cliffs and beaches and eroding them. However nature is fully capable of maintaining it’s balance, which is proved by the fact, that the Seas also contribute in creating new expanses of land. Sea waters are constantly pushing up sand on the beaches, blowing wind collects the sand to form dunes and also mixes it with other forms of topsoil and wild seeds. These seeds grow...

The Size and Shape of the Earth There was a time when man believed that the earth was flat and if one was to walk to the edge then he or she would fall off into oblivion. These myths existed for a long time till the first explorers proved otherwise. today man has seen the Earth from outer space and from the Moon and ye are sure of its shape. In...

The Ice Age   Today the North Pole and South Pole are the biggest expanse of ice on Earth. What we see today is only one third of the ice that covered our planet in those days. Millions of years ago large parts of Canada, Greenland and Northern Europe were covered with huge expanses of ice. In the last million years there were many such periods called the ‘Ice Ages’. In...

The Oceans and their floor 71 per cent or the Earth’s surface is covered by water which forms the Oceans. The surface of the oceans and seas is constantly restless because wind create waves in the water and the Moon’s gravitational pull causes high and low tides. Oceanographers (scientists who study the oceans) using underwater cameras, echo-sounders, sonar and manned or un-manned submarines have studied the oceans and found that the...

Night and Day If we were to take a globe and point the light of a torch at it with one hand and then slowly spin it with our other hand, we would get a fair idea why we have night and day. In effect the torch plays the role of the Sun which is stationary and the globe is the spinning Earth, we would observe that as the Earth spins...

Winds Air which is constantly moving around the Earth is caned ‘Wind’. Wind movement is influenced by the Sun’s rays and the Earth’s rotation. Air which is heated by the Sun’s rays becomes lighter and rises upwards thus creating a low pressure area, this area is filled by cold air which is heavier. The cold air is again heated and rises while the warm air becomes cold as it moves upwards,...

The Changing Seasons The Earth takes 365 days to complete one revolution around the Sun, a tilt of 23.5° in its axis results in the poles pointing towards or away from the Sun and reversing their position once every three months. It also results in the Sun’s rays falling unevenly on different parts of the Earth thus giving us different seasons. In the month of March the northern hemisphere is tilted...