Is white light really coloured ?   Have you ever seen a rainbow ? We see rainbow when there are lots of tiny drops of water in the air and the sun shines through them. Ordinarily sunlight is white and water is clear, so how do they give a coloured rain-bow? The answer was discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, an English scientist who lived in the seventeenth century. Ordinary white light...

Where does Light come from?   Natural light comes mostly from the sun. The sun is a huge ball of fiery gas and is tremendously hot. Light from the sun reaches us during the day when we are on the side of the Earth turned towards it. The first men de-pended on the sun and could only see well during the day. The only way they had of making light was...

Can we split Atoms? Ordinary chemical changes like burning and rusting do not alter the nuclei of the atoms. However, the nucleus of an atom is not solid. It is made up of even smaller particles called `protons’ and ‘neutrons’. Normally a nucleus cannot be broken up. However, some substances have atoms with very large nuclei made up of hundreds of neutrons and protons. Some of these nuclei are unstable and...

What is an Atom? Suppose we were to take a piece of an element, say iron, and keep dividing it up into smaller and smaller pieces. The smallest bit of iron we could have would he an ‘atom’. Each element has its own atoms. All iron atoms are alike. All oxygen atoms are alike. But iron atoms are different from oxygen atoms. Look at the diagram of an oxygen atom. In...

What are chemical elements and compounds? When Water boils into steam or freezes into ice it looks feels very different. However, if steam is cooled down, or ice is heated, they return to liquid water. Both are really just forms of water. Steam is water as a gas and ice is water as a solid.  If we heat paper instead of water it catches fire and burns into smoke and ash....

Which important discoveries were made in China?   The World owes several important discoveries to the people of China. One is so identified with the country that it is known by its name —that is, china or porcelain. The Chinese discovered how to make this very fine form of pottery more than a thousand years ago. People in Europe prized porcelain very highly  but the Chinese refused to tell others how...

What is the Bayeux Tapestry? The Bayeux Tapestry is a hand of 70 m 1,230 ft) long and 5o cm 20 in N.A. embroidered in wool of different it made up of some 70 scenes, accompanied Latin inscriptions. Along the top and hot tom are decorative borders, depicting strange birds and scenes from fables. No one is quite sure about the origins of the Tapestry, but the evidence suggests that it...

American and German literature  In the middle of the eighteenth century American literature had its beginning. One of the first American writers to be known out-side his own continent was Washington Irving, who lived from 1783-1859. His Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow showed Europe that America already had her own legends and way of life. Fenimore Cooper, at the same time in The Pathfinder and The Last...