A CBT PUBLICATION

Neeraja Raghavan

By
Neeraja Raghavan
Illustrated by
Subir Roy

Children's Book Trust, New Delhi

EDITED BY GEETA MENON AND SEEMA SINHA

Text typeset in 13/16 pt. Garamond
by CBT 2004
Reprinted 2005
ISBN 81-7011-937-5
Published by Children's Book Trust, Nehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg,
New Delhi-110002 and printed at its Indraprastha Press. Ph: 23316970-74
Fax: 23721090 e-mail: cbtnd@vsnl.com Website: www.childrensbooktrust.com

CONTENTS

What Is Everything Made Up Of? Nothing!

^Hello, Who Is Speaking?'

12

I^om Green To Red

15

A Super Factory: The Green Leaf

17

How Tall Will I Be?

19

Water, A Unique Liquid

22

Milky White And Rose Red

25

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

28

What Is That I See Before Me?

32

Strange Turns Of Tops

36

How Can We Hear Ourselves?

40

The Friendly Microbes

43

Changing Face Of The Moon

46

It Is Time To Sleep

49

Instinctive Action

52

'It Gets On My Nerves!'

55

Oh, I Feel So Ticklish!

58

Laughter And Tears

60

Of Soaps And Suds

63

Will My Hair Turn Grey?

66

Whence Comes This Hail?

68

Care For A Cup Of Tea?

V

71

Hie, Hie, Hie!

74

LejjfLeft, Left-Right-Left!

76

Life In The High Seas

78

Scratch, Scratch!

82

Smiling Babies

84

N Barks

In Uniform

86

I Wonder Why
I wonder why the sky is blue
I wonder how I can see you,
How I wish I really knew
What, how, where and who?
I set out to ask and get a reply
How I looked and how I tried
To find out all the reasons why
We sometimes laugh and sometimes cry!
You see because I had to know
About the sun and the moon
And why they glow,
And what makes the nails on my toes
Grow at a pace that seems so slow.
I couldn't get all the answers fast,
In fact, I struggled until the last.
Many days and weeks went past
Until I met someone at last!

He was tall and old with a balding head

And he smiled and looked at me and said:
'My child, come, stop, sit by my side
For all you seek is right ahead!'
At first, I knew not what he meant,
So I gazed with my head slightly bent,
At the grand sphinx-like monument,
Which was looking down at us, silent.
Up above the bedpost, carved
In shining teak, firm and hard,
A sphinx-like face of ancient art
Gleamed down at us of curious heart.
Spoke the carved icon of golden mane:
'It is well true that time and again,
Many have asked, though never in vain
The questions you will ask again.

7 will tell you whatever I know,

You must hear me out before you go,
For my answers to you will only show,
What little we know and what don't we know.
And so, dear friends, this is my tale,
Of many a night that the sphinx did regale
My old friend and me with a long, long trail
Of answers for our
'questions-tail'!
You, too, can come and join him and me,
For as the sphinx said, you too, must be
One of those who along with me
Will sometime wonder curiously!
Remember, though, one serious thing,
The world is full of strange happenings,
For some we know the reasoning,
But for most we are still wondering!

'What makes up this world?' I did ask,

The sphinx gave a hearty laugh;
You will soon know the reason why
I smile: now hear my reply!

What Is Everything
Made Up Of? Nothing!
Anything that occupies space is called matter, whether it is
solid, liquid or gas. People have always wondered what matter is
made up of. Millions of years ago, they thought that everything
was made up of water. There were some who thought everything
was made up of air.
Lewis Carroll said that girls are made up of, 'sugar and spice
and all that is nice'. And that boys are made up of, 'slugs and
snails and puppy dog's tail'! But what are slugs, snails, sugar and
spice made up of? Do you know?
A long time ago (in the fourth century B.C.), a Greek scientist,
called Democritus, had an idea that everything in this universe is
made up of tiny particles, called atoms (which means something
that cannot be divided or cut). Hundreds of years later, a young
man, called Dalton propounded the atomic theory.
Dalton's theory suggests that all matter is made up of building
blocks, very much like a building is made up of bricks. These
building blocks are tiny particles called atoms, which we cannot
9

see with our eyes. 'If we cannot see them, can we find out how
they look?' asked another English scientist, Rutherford. In 1909,
Rutherford conducted a simple experiment to learn more about
the structure of the atom. We can get some idea about his
experiment with the help of a simple example.
Suppose you have to find out whether a closed box contains
air or water without opening it and looking inside. What will you
do? A simple way will be to knock at its sides and listen carefully
to the sound. A hollow sound will be heard if it contains air, and
a heavy sound if it has water. Likewise, Rutherford learnt about

what thin gold sheets are made up of, without actually cutting
them up and looking inside. He found that even though atoms
make up the gold sheet, within each atom, there is a plenty of
empty space.
The rest of the space within an atom is made up of a heavy
nucleus in the centre, and there are light electrons which move
about the centre.
Scientists have, since the time of Rutherford, learnt still more
about the structure of atoms.
In essence, Rutherford was right. Whether slugs, or snails or
sugar or spice, all matter consists of atoms which, in their turn,
are made up largely of empty space!
11

I hardly heard the sphinx tell me these things

When all of a sudden the phone did ring,
I finished talking in an impatient tone,
Then asked the sphinx: 'Who made the phone?'

'Hello, Who Is Speaking?'

An American, Alexander Graham Bell, built the first crude
telephone in 1876. Today, this is the most common means of
communication.
Energy is something without which no work can be done. There
are so many different forms of energy, some of which you may
already know; such as light, heat, sound, electricity, magnetism
and many others. Energy as a whole cannot be created or
destroyed; what we can do is to change one form of energy into
another. What this means is that light energy can be changed into
heat energy, electrical into magnetic, sound into electrical, and
so on. Just as sound energy can travel through air in the form of
vibrations or sound waves, if we convert the sound energy into
electrical energy, we can make it flow through wires!
The basic principle of the functioning of a telephone is that of
12

inter-conversion of different forms of energy. This is exactly

what Alexander Graham Bell succeeded in doing.
It will be easy to understand the way a telephone works if you
picture a 'relay race' taking place from the mouthpiece of the
speaker's telephone to the earpiece of the receiver's telephone.
In a relay race, one runner runs up to another person standing
far off, and gives him/her an object. In turn, the second person
runs and again gives the object to a third person, and so on, until
the end of the race.
When we speak into the mouthpiece of a telephone, the sound
waves that come out of our mouth make a thin metal sheet inside
the mouthpiece vibrate, that is, move back and forth. Packed
loosely behind that sheet are small carbon pieces, which feel the
vibration of the sheet, and become more or less tightly packed,

depending upon the way in which the sheet pushes them. This, in
turn, changes the amount of electric current that passes through
them. Sound waves are changed into electric waves. It is exactly
as if the first 'runner' has given the packet of sound energy to
the second 'runner', who has taken the packet in the form of
electrical energy while running. These electric waves travel
through the wires from the mouthpiece of the speaker to the
receiver of the listener. In the earpiece, the opposite conversion
takes place, that is, from electrical energy to sound energy.
This happens in the reverse order. It is, as if the third 'runner'
converts the packet of electrical energy into magnetic, while the
fourth 'runner' changes the packet into sound energy from
magnetic energy.
After the long relay race (which takes so little time that we do
not even know it is happening), we are able to hear the same
words as spoken by the speaker at the other end of the line!

14

'Which means,' I said, 'that all are same,

Made up of nothing, but differ only in name,
I call this heat, that looks like light,
In actual fact, they are all energy bright.
Tell me, sphinx, if that is so,
How do the fruits and vegetables know
When to turn deep red from green,
And when to brighten up the scene ?'

From Green To Red

No, we are not talking of the traffic signal! Have you ever
wondered how a basketful of green tomatoes slowly become red
ones? What makes a raw tomato or an apple green, and a ripe one
red? What is the cause of this magical colour change?
Just as certain colours dye the clothes you wear, plants have
pigments in them that are responsible for their colour. Green
plants have a pigment, called chlorophyll, that has the property
of allowing the plant to trap light energy and use it to make its
own food. Green plants do not need to be fed with anything
except water, fresh air and sunlight. Once they get these, they get
busy making their own food. There are other kinds of pigments
too, and these occur in different parts of the fruit in different
degrees. There are less of the carotenoid pigments in the pulp of
a fruit than in the peel. Does that name sound tough for you to
15

pronounce? Of course, not! You do like carrots, don't you? At

least their bright colour? Well, the molecules that are responsible
for the colour of carrots are called caro-teen-oydscarotenoids,
a class of compounds that catch light and respond to it by showing
a characteristic colour. Carotenoids occur in the peel of an orange,
as well as in the peel of an apple. Lycopene is the name of the main
red pigment in tomatoes. (There are many coloured molecules; you
are just reading about a few here.)
When a tomato ripens, two things happen. The amount of green
pigment (chlorophyll) slowly decreases and the amount of red
pigment {lycopene and some carotenoids) slowly increases. Have
you seen your mother leaving tomatoes sometimes to ripen in the
kitchen cupboard? Well, that is because the formation of the red
carotenoids does not require light. In fact, the fruit does not need to
remain on the vine to ripen, for raw tomatoes can be plucked off
the vine and then left to ripen in storage. Scientists are sure that the
switch which starts off the formation of the red carotenoids in
tomatoes is not light. They are trying to find out what it is!

16

7 am hungry, sphinx,' I said, with a sigh,

And ran off, saying, 'See you later, bye.'
When we met again, after my tasty treat,
My next query was: 'How do the plants eat?'

A Super Factory: The Green Leaf

All our industries cannot match the simple green leaf. FoT
industries can only try to reach a high efficiency, limited by many
factors. Leaves, however, quietly produce things that we cannot
see with our eyes, but can sense in other ways. And they do it
with a hundred per cent efficiency.
Do you understand what this means? All the raw materials in a
factory cannot get converted into the final product; some will
remain but raw materials. Add to this the fact that machines cannot
operate with perfect efficiency, nor can human beings who work in a
factory, and you have a good set of reasons why industrial production
can never be a hundred per cent.
The quiet little green leaf has within it a highly efficient factory,
which operates with a hundred per cent efficiency. Do you know

17

why? Inside a blade of grass or a green leaf, there is the pigment,

chlorophyll. This and other molecules inside the plant succeed in
producing from water, air and a few metals and minerals from
the soil, substances as varied as the scent of a rose, the opium of
poppy, the dye of indigo and many other things.
We know that the green globules, chloroplasts, impart colour
to the leaf, and have the power to absorb light energy, which
is transformed into another form of energy, about which we
know little! This energy is able to split water into hydrogen and
oxygen, something we can do with great difficulty in the
laboratory. Then starts a long series of reactions which, for
example in a rose bush, is responsible for the colour of the rose
and for its scent. Chloroplasts on their own can manufacture starch
and sugar. The mystery is obviously hidden in these chloroplasts.
If you realize how slowly and unwillingly the leaf revealed
a few of its secrets to some of the greatest minds, you can
understand what we mean when we say that our laboratories and
factories are a long way behind the green leaf!

'Why is it, sphinx, that I don't grow

So tall that the birds will know
As the one above the tree top,
One who grows without a stop ?'

How Tall Will I Be?

I am sure you have asked that question many times. If you are
among the tallest in your class, perhaps you wish you were not.
And if you are not tall enough, I will bet you wonder whether
you will grow tall really fast!
Why is it that we can grow fatter as we age, but we cannot
simply become taller and taller? You may have seen your aunts
and uncles grow fatter even as they get older, but have you ever
seen them grow taller all the time? Why not?
Do you know that your body is made up of more than ten
million cells? As each cell grows bigger and bigger, there comes
a stage when one big cell divides and becomes two, two cells
divide and become four. This goes on and on inside you, and
inside everyone. As you grow, your muscles and bones develop
more and more cells inside them, which is why children keep
hearing, "Drink your milk, it helps you to grow!"
Fat cells are different from growth cells. Depending upon the
type of food that we eat, and the kind of exercise that we do, the
fat cells add themselves to the existing cells. There is no limit to
the amount of fat cells that we can add, so we can go on getting
fatter all through our lives. As the number of cells inside your
bones and muscles increase, naturally they get bigger. However,

20

this does not mean that you will go on growing and never stop.
This is because, as your body makes new cells, old cells wear out.
Another and more important reason is that there are certain
organs in your body called glands. There are tear glands, sweat
glands, oil glands, glands that help you digest your food, glands
that help your heart to beat faster, glands that help you grow and
so on. One such gland, called the pituitary gland, is like the captain
of a ship. This fellow controls all the other glands, and orders
them, 'Hey, guys! You must all work together!' Along will come
a day when this smart gland, the pituitary gland, will tell all the
other glands, 'You know, I think it is time you folks stopped. Just
take it easy. This body has grown enough for now.' And by then,
you will be somewhere between sixteen and twenty-three years
old. By which time your legs will be about five times as long as
they were when you were a baby, your arms will be about four
times as long, and your head will be about twice as big. Surely,
that is enough? Well, whatever you may think, your pituitary gland
certainly thinks so!

21

'Have you ever noticed one thing?'

Asked the wise old sphinx, gently smiling,
'We drink a liquid everyday,
Which we can keep in any which way.'

Water, A Unique Liquid

Do you know that more than seventy per cent of the world is
made up of water? The commonest liquid on earth, and yet
the strangest in many ways. Do you ask why we call it strange?
Have you noticed that water has no shape of its own? No colour,
no smell, no taste. Pour it into a glass and it takes the shape of
the glass; what is more, you can see right through the glass of
water. On a cold day, oooh! It is so-o-cold! And on a hot day...why,
there it goes again! Does this water have no character of its own?
It feels cold if the day is cold, and hot if the day is hot! In a cup,
it looks like a cup, and in a botde, like a bottle! With sugar,
22

it tastes sweet, and with salt it tastes salty. Here is a copycat if ever
there was one!
In fact, all the while, water is really very unique. It simply
pretends to be a copycat. You have seen how water is wet, have
you not? I mean, you cannot dip your hand in water and lift it out
dry. Why is that? It is because water, like anything else, is made
up of molecules. Water molecules tend to stick together. They
hold onto each other like real buddies. They would not even let
go of each other when any other object comes in contact with
them, like say, a glass, or a cup or even your hand. A bunch of
water molecules gang up and touch the object, making it wet.
Like most liquids, the molecules in water are not as tighdy held
together as in solids. Take the book you are reading now, for
instance. It has a definite shape, and is a solid. It is made up of
molecules that are so tightly packed that they do not move about
as freely as water molecules do. This explains why water takes up
the shape of the container it is poured into. Air is made up of
23

molecules that are so loosely packed that they spread all over the
place available to them. Gases cannot be kept tightly shut unless
a lot of pressure is applied to the container they are held in. The
gas molecules are dancing about so fast that they cannot wait to
jump out into any inch of available space!
Water, you must have heard is said, will find its own level. This
means when water is poured into columns or tubes, it will fill
those tubes only upto a point, that is, the original level of liquid
from which it is poured. The height of this point is determined
by the force felt by the water due to the air above it, called the
atmospheric pressure. It also depends upon the energy that is
contained within the water to stretch itself out, called the surface
tension. It makes sense, doesn't it? If you wanted to spread
yourself out, how far you could do so would depend upon two
thingsyour own strength and that of those around you. Which
is the reason why the water that rises up a pipe can do so only upto
a certain point.
This means that water is neither too rigid nor too loose. Unlike
most liquids, it has no colour, taste or smell. These properties
are because of the elements hydrogen and oxygen, that form water.
These two elements react to produce a highly stable substance.
What does 'stable' mean? It means that water is so happy being
as it is, it does not need to change in any way. It is content to keep
flowing in the river, or tossing about in the ocean, or sitting still
in the lake. It absorbs no light, so it has no colour. It has no gases
to let off (unless it is fouled up), so it has no smell. Since it hardly
reacts with anything, it cannot produce a smell unless the
substance that we put into it has a smell.
Water is a wonderful thing. How many of us can be like it?
Adjusting, flowing, free, mobile, hardly noticeable and yet very,
very useful!

24

The world is full of colours bright,

Some deep red and others just white,
What is it that tells each thing to show,
Just that colour and just that glow ?

Milky White And Rose Red

Have you ever wondered why milk is white? And a rose
is red?
Would it not be funny if milk was red and all roses were white?
Colour is so typical of everything, that we often call a colour by
an object that we have seen in that shade.
What makes anything coloured?
There are so many differently coloured objects, but all of them
appear the way they do for the same reason. Light that falls on
the object bounces off it and reaches our eyes, where we 'see'
the colour. In fact, the ordinary light is not ordinary at all, as
demonstrated by Isaac Newton almost three hundred years ago.

An 'ordinary' ray of light is made up of seven colours, which are

the colours of the rainbow. They are: violet, indigo, blue, green,
yellow, orange and red.^i^hen a beam of light passes through
droplets of water, it splits up into its seven colours, and we see a
rainbow in the sky. Further, Isaac Newton showed that when
these seven colours mix together, they form the white colour.
Have you ever tried painting a colour-wheel with bands of the
seven colours? When this wheel rotates very fast, you will be able
to see greyish-white as a result.
Is it not strange that light appears to be just a simple ray,
although it is actually made up of so many colours? Whether we
see the seven colours or not, these colours strike any object
whenever light falls on it. Each time these colours hit an object,
the particular object selects the colours that it can absorb, and
allows the others simply to bounce off its surface. For instance,
26

a green leaf is green because the leaf absorbs all colours except
green, and it is the green colour which reaches our eyes. So we
see the leaf as green. A red rose, similarly, allows only red to reach
our eyes and absorbs all the other colours. A white substance, or
milk, absorbs none of the colours but reflects the whole band of
seven colours. When these seven colours mix, they appear as white.
A black object absorbs all the colours, so we do not get any light
from it falling on our eyes, and we see it as a dark and black object.
You may well ask why does a leaf not absorb green, or milk
does not absorb any colours at all? It all depends on what a leaf,
or milk is made up of. There are pigment molecules inside a leaf,
chlorophylls, which are the cause of a leaf's green colour. There
are no pigment molecules in milk, so it does not absorb any light
at all.
Finally, that is what it all boils down to. What each thing is
made up of, and the nature of the molecules that make up an object
decide its colour. Why are you fair-skinned and your brother dark,
is because of the pigments in your bodies!

27

By this time it was well into the night,

And as we sat, in starlight bright,
My old friend asked me if I knew
Why stars twinkle. 7 don't, do you?'

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

On a clear night, have you watched the stars? Twinkling away
quietly, like a million diamonds in the sky, they make you feel
there is some movement of these bright bodies so far away from
the earth. In fact, as you may know, stars are shining bodies that
give out their own light and it is the earth which moves around
one such star, the sun. Why then, do stars look like they are
moving ever so slighdy? Have you noticed another aspect? Only
the sun looks like a big ball, all the other stars look like pinpoints
of light, somewhat star-shaped. Why is that so?
A star is a huge ball of glowing gas in the sky. What makes it
28

glow? There are mainly two gases in a starhydrogen and helium.

These two gases give out a very powerful form of energy known
as nuclear energy. (It is the stuff that bombs are made of!) It is
not surprising that these gases make the star very hot, so that it
continues to shine until it runs out of hydrogen. It is rather like
an engine running out of fuel, and that is when the star explodes
into a huge cloud of gas and dust. Since the sun is the star that
lies closest to the earth, we can see it as a ball-shaped object. All
the other stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, are so far away that
they appear to us as pinpoints of light, if they can be seen at all
by us. Do you know that there are more than 200 billion billion
stars? (That number has twenty zeros after 2!)
Stars are of different sizes, colours and brightness. Some are
so huge that they would more than fill the space between the
earth and the sun. Such stars have a diameter that is about one
thousand times as large as the sun's. The smallest stars are smaller
than the earth. Though they appear to be very close together,
29

stars are actually far apart. The star nearest to the sun is more
than 25 million million miles away from the sun.
Some stars are yellow like the sun, while others glow blue or
red. The colour of the star will depend upon how hot it is, rather
like the colour of glowing ashes changing from white-hot to redhot to black, as they cool. Have you watched a dying fire's embers
change colour? The colour of starlight changes because of changes
in energy.
Just as the sun appears to move across the sky during the day
30

(but, in fact, it is the earth which is moving), so also the stars

appear to move across the sky at night. This movement comes
from the spinning of the earth, not from that of the stars. The
stars move, but their movement cannot be seen from the earth as
they are too far away. Stars twinkle because starlight comes to
us through moving layers of air that surround the earth. Have
you looked through the smoke that moves above the flame of
a candle? If you have, you would have noticed that anything that
is seen through the moving smoke appears to be moving, too!
Actually, it is the air between our eyes and that object which is
moving, so we think the object itself is moving. It is exactly the
same thing that happens when we see stars twinkle.
Where do stars go during the day? Nowhere. TRey stay right
where they are, only the sunlight is too bright for us to be able to
see the stars. Shine a torch inside a room full of bright bulbs, and
you would not be able to see the torchlight. Not until you turn
all the lights off will the torchlight become visible. So the starlight
becomes visible only when the sun is no longer shining bright in
the sky.
Do you not think a lot of what we 'see' is not really so? Stars
seem to move and twinkle, but actually they do not. Stars seem
to disappear during the day, in fact, they do not. Why, our eyes
have stories to tell! Not only eyes.. .watch out!

31

When we do see with our eyes,

A flying saucer in the sky,
Whence came it there, do we know?
How does it come, where does it go?

What Is That I See Before Me?

Have you been on the road on a hot, dry day? Did you, by any
chance, see a pool of water just up ahead, which disappeared as
soon as you came near it? If you did, you are not the only one to
have seen such a sight. The sight of a welcome oasis 'just up
ahead' has fooled many a weary traveller in the desert.
This is called a mirage. The word comes from a Latin word,
mirare meaning 'to look at'. You may look at something which
may appear to be there, but no sooner do you get close to it,
and poof! It disappears! Does that mean there is some magic
going on?
In fact, there is no magic at all. Have you learnt that light travels
as rays? And that these rays travel in straight lines? But if the rays
move through layers of air that are of different thickness (or
density), the speed at which they move through the thinner layer
is different from the speed at which they move through the thicker
layer. A ray of light bends as it travels from a thinner layer to a
thicker layer of air. On a hot and dry day, the hot air near the
surface of the road bends (or refracts) light rays from the sky
towards our eyes. If we happen to be travelling along the road,
we see a part of the sky on the road in front of us. Had it not
32

been for the bending of the light rays, we would not have been
able to see this! Sometimes, the resulting image includes part of
a cloud. So we see what looks like a distant lake. It is not actual,
it only appears so.
Can we photograph a mirage? Yes, because light rays make up
a mirage, they can be photographed. Trees are sometimes seen
upside down, as they look in a pool of water. This is because the

33

layers of air of different density bend the light rayscoming

down from the treetopupward again. This happens along our
line of vision, and our eyes automatically trace the ray back to a
virtual (not real) image, and we actually see the top of the tree
which lies beneath the horizon. In fact, it has happened to sailors
at sea that they cannot see a distant ship because of hot air layers,
but they do 'see' the ship in the sky, upside down!
The ancient people knew about mirages, but the concept
remained scientifically unexplained until the late eighteenth
century. Gaspard Monge travelled on Napoleon's expedition to
Egypt in 1798, and he saw such images. He soon realized that the
bending of light waves in the atmosphere caused them.
Today, there are scientists who believe that 'flying saucers'
are, in fact, nothing but mirages.
What we are saying is that you may see something which may
34

not be real! Like when you see yourself behind the mirror, are
you actually there behind the looking glass? How then do you
know when to trust your eyes? Think it over.
'Then how on earth will I know,
That what I see is really so,
And it isn't just a faint mirage,
Or a bent ray of light looming large?'
'Ah, my child, you ask a very difficult thing,'
Said the sphinx, gently smiling,
'For to know and understand reality,
It is not enough with the eye alone to see.'

35

What makes things move, what makes them stop?

What is it that keeps a spinning top
From falling over once it is spun,
And why does it fall before a spin is begun?

Strange Turns Of Tops

How things move depends upon a number of things. Most of
all, it is important to understand that there are laws which govern
the motion of all objects. They may seem just to happen, but in
fact, they do not. The two famous scientists, Galileo and Newton,
are mainly responsible for discovering the Laws of Motion.
Simply put, if an object is left alone, and is not disturbed, it
continues to stand still if that is what it was originally doing, and
continues to move with a constant speed in the direction in which
it was originally moving. That makes sense, does it not? I mean,
why on earth should an object that was standing still start
36

moving unless it was pushed? And why should a moving object

change its speed or direction of movement unless it was
disturbed? Galileo called this the Principle of Inertia. Inertia is
the name given to the property oFa body to remain in its original
state. (You will understand exactly what that means when you
are asked to jump out of a comfortable bed to study mathematics.
What you experience is a kind of inertia!)
Why, then you may ask, do moving bodies come to a stop even
when there is no obvious disturbance to their motion?
For instance, if we slide a block across a table, why does it
stop sliding after awhile? This is because the block is not really
left to itself, it is, in fact, rubbing against the table. This slows it
down and causes it to come to a stop finally. The same is true of
a spinning top that slowly comes to a stop, even if we do not
touch it. The surface it is resting on, the air around the spinning
top, all these are not leaving the top to itself, which is why its
motion ceases after awhile.

37

I am sure you must have spun a top sometime in your life. It is

fun, is it notto see the little object poised on its sharp point
and spinning at a terrific speed without falling over? How does it
do that? You know that a top will not stand on its point, but will
fall down if we try to rest it on its pointed end. Yet it manages to
spin away resting on that very point! Is that not strange? Not
really, if only we remember the principle of inertia. Every atom
in the top moves in a circular plane, its tip rotates around a line,
called axis of rotation. (An example of a plane is the surface of
your book; that of a line is a thin piece of string.)
The force of gravity makes a top topple over if we simply try
38

to rest it on its tip. (This is the name given to the pull that the
earth exerts on every single object, and the pull is greater if the
object is more massive.) Once we give it a force, large enough to
set it spinning, it continues to spin on its tip, without falling over.
This is because the spinning force we have given it is enough
to balance the force of gravity. In fact, the larger and heavier the
top, and the faster it is set into a spin, the easier it will be to keep
it spinning. Each little atom on the top is moving along with the
top, and it would continue its movement in the same direction.
If you try to tilt or topple the top by gently pulling it forward,
every atom in the top will try to resist this change by continuing
its motion in the plane perpendicular to the rotation axis. The
axis of rotation also seeks to retain its original direction. In other
words, the top continues to spin in the direction that it started to
spin, as the law states.
Now along comes your neighbourhood bully, and sticking his
tongue out, he pulls the top with such force that wham! It does
indeed topple over! How did that happen? Well, he also had to
obey a certain law. You see, the bully knew just how much force
to apply so as to exceed the force which was keeping the top
spinning. Once he did that, the top had no choice but to fall!
'Ah, now I see the law,' I said,
'That lets the top stand on its head.
To get something to move from rest,
It needs a force to manifest. '
'That is right, my child,' the sphinx did say,
'And once you have it on its way,
Its motion will not simply end,
Till a greater stopping force we send. '

39

'When I shout out from a mountain top,

Why is it, sphinx, the shout won't stop ?
And if I shout along the plain,
Why don't I hear it come back again?'

How Can We Hear Ourselves?

Have you ever heard an echo? Sometimes, if you walked into
a large and empty room, and called out your name, you would
have experienced your own voice calling out your name back to
you! If you have gone to the mountains and shouted out from
among many peaks, you would have heard what is termed as an
echo. What is an echo? How is it created?
Whenever we hear any sound, it is because the object or person
producing the sound has disturbed the air around us. We say that
sound waves have been produced; these waves are carried to our
40

ears as we hear the sound. You have seen waves in the water,
have you not? Such waves are also produced in the invisible air,
so we cannot see them. If there is no air, we cannot hear any
sound. In the higher peaks, the air is very thin, and often
mountaineers can barely hear each other, because not many
waves are produced in the absence of air.
The first important condition for any sound to be heard,
whether it is an echo or not, is that air or water (called a medium)
must be present for the sound waves to travel. For an echo to be
produced, there should be something that comes in the way of
the sound waves (called an obstacle or barrier). The obstacle
should be located at a distance that is quite far from the person
shouting. The reason for this is that when you call out your name
among the mountain tops, the first sound you hear is due to the
sound waves produced immediately near your ear. The second
sound (echo) you hear is due to the train of waves that travelled
41

all the way to a mountain, hit the side of the mountain, and
bounced back to your ears. (This is similar to the reflection of
light waves by a barrier.) Since this journey takes some time, the
echo is heard but after a gap of a few seconds.
Not all obstacles can cause echoes, however. Some objects
absorb the sound instt \d of reflecting it. This means that the
sound does not bounce back and there is no echo. Sometimes,
you may hear more than one echo. This happens when there are
many such barriers, and each barrier sends back the sound waves
at different intervals to your ears, depending upon how far away
each barrier is from you.
In a small room, the first sound and its echo are so close to
each other in time that we hear them together. This means that
a non-absorbing barrier always produces an echo, even if the
barrier is very close to us, but we can only hear it when we are far
away from the barrier.
In fact, scientists use echoes to measure the depth of the ocean.
They explode a small bomb at the tip of a ship, so that the sound
hits the bottom of the ocean and comes back to the ship. When
they measure the time taken for this, they can easily calculate the
depth of the ocean by using a simple formula. Clouds reflect
sound and cause echo. When we hear the rumbling of thunder,
this is the result of the first sharp clap being reflected again and
again by the clouds.
There was once a castle in Italy that used to produce thirty
echoes for a word said in a loud voice. Do you wish you could
take your neighbourhood bully there and call him names?
Sorry, it has now been demolished!
When I speak in a very loud tone
I may just hear one sound alone,
If I wish to hear the hidden echo
Before a reflecting barrier I must go.

42

My old friend was feeling low,

So to perk his health he had to go
To the drug store for a red tonic,
Without which, he said, he felt quite sick.
After that, he didn't look quite so ill
With the tonic he had also a pill,
How did the tonic and the pill know
What to do and where to go ?

The Friendly Microbes

Have you ever fallen sick and stayed in bed for a few days?
Did you have to drink bitter syrup and swallow colourful
capsules? I am sure you have tasted such medicines at least once
in your life.
Some of these medicines have fancy-sounding names. They are
called 'Antibiotics'. When these substances are put into your body,
they kill or stop the growth of certain kinds of germs. They
help your body fight disease. They are actually made from
tiny bacteria and moulds, a form of life called microbes. These
43

microbes are able to produce chemicals that kill other diseasecausing microbes. Scientists have discovered that there are
friendly microbes as well as not so friendly ones. The latter
cause diseases, while the former help fight them! The diseasecausing germs grow in our bodies by dividing from one germ
into two, from two into four, and so on, very rapidly. Soon these
germs eat up the food that should normally go towards making
the body strong, so the patient feels weak even after eating
a meal.
The scientists grow the friendly microbes in the laboratory,
collect the chemicals which they produce until they are in large
quantities, and then make these chemicals into capsules or pills
for you to buy from the local drug store.
How do antibiotics cure diseases? How do they get to the right

44

part of the body to work there? Strangely enough, science still

does not provide the answer. Some scientists believe that
antibiotics work by cutting off the supply of oxygen to the
disease-causing germs. Without oxygen, the germs cannot go on
dividing, so their number slowly decreases. Another group of
scientists believe that an antibiotic works by preventing germs
from taking in food from the patient's body so that the germ
finally starves to death. Still another theory is that the germ
mistakes the antibiotic for part of its usual diet, eats it and
is poisoned.
You must be familiar with another class of tablets called painkillers. Aspirin is believed to act by stopping the body from making
the chemicals that are needed for us to feel pain. Other painkillers
act on the central nervous system (also see chapter 'It Gets On My
Nerves!' for explanation of how the nervous system works) and
make us feel less pain.
It is quite likely that one or more of these theories work at
any given time and, when we take more than one medicine at
a time, each of these probably works in a different way. While
one drug may work by killing the germs, another may just
weaken the germs so as to allow the body's natural defences
to take over. What does 'natural defences' mean? This means
the chemicals produced in our body naturally. Some of these
may themselves work towards fighting diseases, and when the
disease-causing germs are weakened, we may be able to recover
from our illness by way of weakening the germs with the help
of medicines.
We owe our knowledge of the germ theory of disease to
Louis Pasteur, the famous nineteenth century French scientist.
Alexander Fleming, the twentieth century discoverer of penicillin,
stated, 'Without Pasteur, I would be nothing.'

45

The moon is shining with a soft glow,

It appears to me almost yellow.
But yesterday it was sparkling bright,
How does it change from yellow to white?

Changing Face Of The Moon

Have you noticed how the moon looks a dirty yellow on some
days and white on others? Does it mean the moon is changing
everyday? What is it about the moon that makes us see a different
colour on some days?
The moon shines because of the sunlight that is reflected off
its surface. The moon has no light of its own. If we were to stand
on the moon, we would see the earth shining because of the
sunlight reflected off the earth's surface. In fact, the sunlight
reflected from the surface of the earth also bounces off the moon's
surface; it is called 'earthshine', because it is sunlight that has
travelled to the earth and then reached the moon.
Of all the sunlight that strikes the moon, only seven per cent
46

is reflected by it. On the other hand, the earth reflects 36 per

cent of the sunlight that falls on its surface. The moon has no
atmosphere unlike our earth. When sunlight (which contains all
the colours of the rainbow) strikes the moon, we see the colours
which are allowed to pass through the earth's atmosphere. It
appears silvery-orange to us because the atmosphere of the earth
has blocked off the darker light rays reflected from the sun.
Astronomers say that the moon is actually dark brown. Brown is
the colour of cooled lava and pumice (volcanic glass) which make
up the surface of the moon.
As it rises, the moon appears orange because the atmosphere
at the horizon is so thick it shuts out the silver rays. There are
patches that we can see on the moon, for some areas on the moon
are of higher brightness than others. This has a reason, there are
slopes and valleys on the moon which cause shadows and some
bright spots. During full moon and the days immediately
preceding and following it, the sun, earth and moon are in a direct
line in that order. The shadows cannot be seen in this period
because the sun's rays strike the moon directly. (It is the same
reason why your shadow is the shortest at twelve noon, when the
sun is directly over your head.) Occasionally, a 'ring around the
moon' is caused by the reflection of moonbeams from ice crystals
in the upper atmosphere.

48

I can tell just from a yawn,

It is time to bed I be gone,
But how is it the birds can tell,
When to sleep and wake as well?

It Is Time To Sleep
Whatever sleep is for, we cannot do without it. (If you have
stayed up late studying for an examination, you will know
what I mean, on the next drowsy morning.) Some people have
managed to stay awake up to six or seven days without any
apparent ill-effects, but in laboratory experiments animals that
are not allowed to sleep eventually die. This shows that like food
and water, sleep is essential for life to continue among animals
and human beings.
What happens to us when we sleep? The brain is far from
resting during our sleeping hours. It is highly active, though the
nature of activity is different from the kind that goes on during
waking hours. In fact, the brain is so important in controlling
sleep that it is thought that sleeping only occurs in higher
vertebrates with fairly well developed brains. Scientists have
studied the changes in the brain when we sleep by noting what
are called brain-wave patterns. (This is a pattern which is recorded
by certain instruments that are connected to the brain of the
sleeping person or an animal.)
49

Some scientists believe that sleep is necessary because it is

a method of conserving energy. During sleep the muscles relax,
the heart rate and respiration slow down, and the body
temperature falls. Sleep can help animals avoid extremes of
temperature. Birds and animals pass through the same stages of
sleep as humans and the same type of brain-wave pattern.
How do we know it is time to sleep? We see the time and we
50

know it is bedtime! But what about those who cannot tell the
time by looking at a clock, like the birds and animals?
The brain controls the daily 24-hour cycle of sleeping, waking,
as also body temperature variation. Both temperature and
alertness rise with the morning and fall towards the evening,
reaching the lowest point during deep sleep. In the absence of
clocks or cues to indicate day and night, human volunteers living
alone adopted a 'day' that lasted between 26 to 30 hours, during
which they slept up to ten hours and stayed awake up to 20 hours.
It is as if there is a biological clock within our bodies, which tells
us it is time to sleep even if we do not have any idea of the actual
time of the day. This shows that the rising and setting of the sun
is one of the reasons why we are so used to a 24,-hour day. If we
did not see the rising and setting sun, we would probably also
have a 26-to 30-hour 'day'. Blind laboratory animals have been
found to adopt such long 'days'.
It is the alternation of daylight and darkness that resets the
clock in us to a 24-hour day. Most birds fly only in the daylight
and sleep at night. In all cases, their body clocks are matched
with the daily routine of day and night. During a total solar
eclipse, when there is sudden darkness in the middle of the day,
you will notice the birds huddling among the trees, joining their
voices in a puzzled twitter. It is one time when their body clocks
and the outer clock of daylight are not quite matched! When
severe cold threatens a bird or animal, it reduces its energy needs
by going in for a long sleep called hibernation. Its heartbeat,
metabolism and body temperature are greatly reduced. It
is almost as if the bird or animal is 'dead', though actually it is
alive. Thus, sleep is the body's way of getting rest, fighting bitter
cold and regaining energy.

51

I asked:
'There are some acts that many a time
Take place with no reason nor rhyme,
When we see danger, what tells the brain
To protect ourselves, time and again?'

The sphinx answered:

'In order to survive this life
We need to handle stress and strife,
With instincts that help us to face,
Many a danger in many a place.'

Instinctive Action
Some actions that we perform are automatic. We do not even
have to think about jerking our fingers away when we get an
electric shock from the fridge, or a cooler; or pull our hands
away from a flame. How is it that certain things do not have to
52

be taught to us? What tells the body how to act in such a situation?
In the animal world, instinctive action (as it is called) is even
more common. Bees, ants and wasps lead very complicated lives,
in which hundreds of thousands of insects live in the same nest
and do many different jobsall quite naturally. We say that these
social insects live not by thinking, but by instinct; human beings
live partly by thinking and partly by instinct. The latter kind of
behaviour requires no learning and is called innate, meaning
'existing at birth'. Usually such behaviour is triggered off by
a simple situation, for example, imagine five persons of different
ages in a dark room. Suppose suddenly one of them turns on the
light. At first everyone blinks. Then their pupils become smaller
to protect the eye from excess light. Nobody in*the room has to
think about making his or her pupils smaller.
A herring gull that is newly hatched from its shell is drawn like
a magnet to the red dot on its parent's bill. The chick pecks on
the dot, prompting the parent to spit out a piece of partially
digested food into its little mouth. This is instinct. The birds

53

mother and chick, know what to do. It does not matter that the
chick has never before seen this behaviour or that its mother has
not had a chance to give it a lesson in table manners; every newlyhatched herring gull acts the same way.
We say that such actions are based upon instinct. The truth is
we know little about how they happen. We know that instincts
are usually related to survival, and that they are programmed
into the brain of every creature. Young birds who have never
seen a snake, for example, know instinctively to avoid the
poisonous reptiles.
The simplest instinctive action is the reflex. Sit on a chair and
swing your left leg over the other. Hit the top of your left knee
with a light hammer. You will find that your knee jerks out of its
own accord. This is an example of a reflex action. Laughter and
tears are acts that sometimes take place without a thought. They
are reflex actions, though sometimes we can control our laughter
and tears.
Nest building, food-gathering, mating, attack and escape
movements are all examples of instinctive behaviour. Some of
these behaviour patterns are so firmly set, that they are completed
even when it is clear that they will fail to produce the desired
result. If an egg under incubation by the greying goose is pulled
away from under her and removed from her sight, she will
continue as if she is pushing it into the nest.
There are certain groups of molecules called genes in our
bodies and also in animals, that control instinctive behaviour.
Changes in these genes can affect the behaviour of the creature.
Scientists are still debating how much of animal behaviour is
learned and how much is instinctive.
When you smell the cake that is being baked in your mother's
kitchen, your mouth starts watering; you do not have to tell it
anything! Your instinct is at work.

54

When we trip and fall down in pain,

There is, in fact, a long, long chain
Of messages sent out from the brain
That keep us from falling down again.

'It Gets On My Nerves!'

Have you noticed that a pinprick on our finger hurts as,
yet we can cut our fingernails without experiencing any pain?
We can cut our hair with the sharpest scissors without feeling
any pain at all, but just try to place the edge of those scissors
against your head...my! Even the thought hurts, does it not?
What causes pain? Why do we feel it in some places and not
in others?
In order to feel any sensation, whether pain or pleasure, we
must have cells that are alive and connected to nerves. Our
fingernails and hair are made up of dead cells and do not possess

55

any nerve fibres at all, so it is not surprising that they do not

cause us pain or pleasure. Nerves carry the sensation of pain to
the brain, and the brain acts somewhat like a complicated
computer. The nervous system is made up of billions of cells
called neurons or nerve cells. Tied together in cord-like bundles,
these nerve fibres (or nerves) act like a bundle of wires that c a n y
information very rapidly throughout the body. (The speed at
which signals travel through nerves is simply astounding
a maximum of 300 km per hour, a speed at which even the fastest
car cannot travel!) Special neurons are found in the brain and the
spinal cord.
You will be able to understand the way our nervous system
operates if you remember one simple thing that energy can be
changed from one form into another. Light energy can be
converted into electricity not only in solar cells, which you
may have seen, but also within our own bodies. Nerves carry
messages rather like electric wires carry electricity. These electric
impulses, as they are called, are nothing but packets of
electrical energy. It is these electrical energy packets that make
up nerve messages.
Take a simple example. If a person sees a tiger on his path, it
will not take him/her long to run for his/her life! The person's
reaction may take only an instant, but the reaction actually is the
result of many complicated processes within the nervous system.
Since these take hardly any time, we seldom think about them.
As shown in the illustration, in a stepwise manner, these are the
things which occur:
There are special neurons in the eye which translate the light
rays that reflect off the tiger into nerve messages.
These nerve messages travel at a terrific speed through the
neurons to the brain.
The brain receives the messages, understands them, and
suggests the action to be taken.
'Run!' says the brain, again in the form of nerve messages.
56

These nerve messages travel to the neurons located in the

muscles of the legs, as a result of which the person runs.
At the same time, the brain sends out messages to other parts
of the body, for example, 'Look here, heart! You must beat faster
so as to send more blood to the leg muscles, as they need it!'
Since these steps happen so very fast, we are on our feet before
we know it!
Even the most advanced computer made by man cannot match
the human brain in its speed and complexity. This is the reason
why the brain is so important for proper functioning of the body.
If we feel pain and the nerves in the brain do not tell our body
what to do, can you imagine the dreadful result? We are lucky
indeed to have a terrific computer inside us!

57

'Now I know about nerves,' I said.

'They get orders from inside my head.
If they take back signals from outside,
Why do I laugh when you tickle my side ?'

Oh, i Feel So Ticklish!

The best way to make a serious person laugh is to tickle him or
her! In no time, you will have the person burst out into loud
laughter. The famous scientist, Charles Darwin, was the first to
point out that the innate response to tickling is squirming and
straining to withdraw the tickled part. If a fly settles on the belly
of a horse, it automatically makes the muscles around that spot
contractthe equivalent of squirming in a tickled child. This is
an instinctive reaction, meant to escape attacks on sensitive parts
of the body like the soles of the feet, the armpits, belly and flank.
The horse does not laugh when tickled; however the child laughs,
but not always.
The interesting thing is if you try and tickle yourself in the
same spot where you are 'oh-so-ticklish' when touched by
another person, you will find that you don't feel ticklish at all! It
obviously means that your reaction depends upon who tickles
you! Therefore, both the body as well as mind play a part in the
feeling of ticklishness.
A child will laugh only when he perceives tickling as a mock
58

attack, that is, he knows that the person tickling is pretending to

attack him without meaning any harm. For the same reason,
people laugh only when tickled by others and not when they
tickle themselves. Scientists carried out experiments at the Yale
University in the USA, where they found out that the babies,
less than one year old, laughed fifteen rimes more often when tickled
by their mothers than by strangers. They mostly cried when tickled
by strangers. This was because they understood that their
mothers were playing with them for fun, but with strangers they
were not sure.
Some scientists have suggested that tickling excites certain
small, fine nerve endings just beneath the skin, especially on the
palms and soles. The first and most obvious reaction to this is
laughter. In addition the pulse quickens, the blood pressure rises,
and the body becomes alert.
Try this out: sit in a group of people, all of whom you should
not know. Close your eyes and ask any one of them to tickle you.
See how you react!
59

'Although we know,' the sphinx did say,

'How falls the night and what brings the day,
We still haven't found out the reasons why
We sometimes laugh and sometimes cry.'

Laughter And Tears

What makes people laugh? You would be surprised but
scientists are still trying to find out the answer. In fact, the best
explanations that we have are still only theories, without any
firm evidence.
Here is what we know about it. Laughter is an expression of
many feelings and is found only among human beings.
Psychologists continue to study two basic questions about
laughterwhat makes people laugh? And what is the purpose
of laughter? They think that an odd or abnormal situation or
things provoke laughter, and that laughter helps people to release
their extra energy, get rid of tension, flush out their lungs, and
make social contact.
What we do not know is why people laugh. Laughter is
spontaneous act mostly, which involves the contraction of fifteen
facial muscles and is accompanied by certain irrepressible noises.
It is an activity that is not related to the struggle for survival,
60

unlike breathing, eating, drinking and reproducing. What this

means is that human beings will not die if they do not laugh.
However, they will become very tense and depressed and may
require a psychiatrist's help if they do not laugh for long periods.
Although laughter is a unique reflex in that it has no apparent
biological purpose, it does have great psychological value. It
provides relief from tension.
If that is all we know about laughter, what about crying? What
makes people shed tears? Certain glands in the eyes produce tears.
Tears are essential to bathe the eye and they carry no germs, that
is, they are sterile. Each human tear gland is in the upper and
outer part of each eye and they produce tears continuously. It is
surprising that even though the eye is warm, constantly exposed

61

to air throughout the day, blinked over and open to evaporation,

only half to two-third of a gram of tears is produced in a
day Laughing, yawning, coughing, vomiting also induce tear
production, in addition to bright light, wind, foreign bodies,
infections, inflammation and, of course, emotional triggers.
Onions give off a strong-smelling substance that irritates our
eyes, and in order to protect ourselves from this irritation, we
'cry'. When the flow is greatly increased, as in crying, the tears
flow over the eyelid onto the cheek. A 'good cry' will certainly
produce in excess of half a gram of tears. All vertebrates
produce tears, but no animal other than man has shown that it
can weep in response to some form of sadness or shock.
Although crying and laughing are opposites in terms of the
feelings that trigger them off, they involve many of the same
brain circuits and muscles. We know this from the fact that there
are patients who, having brain damage, lose control over laughing
as well as crying.
So we, human beings, are special. We are the only creatures
that laugh and cry. What does it matter that we do not yet
kiio vV why?

KJ

62

KJ

7 will show you some fun,' the sphinx smilingly said.

And as I watched curiously from my bed,
I saw big, fat bubbles come bobbing in a spray,
From a sudsy tub, they danced their way.

Of Soaps And Suds

Surely you have had fun with soap bubbles at some time or the
other? If you have not, try and work up a good lather in a bucket
full of soapy water, try and blow bubbles through a ring. You
will see the most beautiful colours inside each bubble as it gently
bobs along.
Why does soap form a lather with water? Why does not
a mixture of, say, milk and water lather?
You probably know that if oil and water are present together,
the oil will float on top of the water, and a thin oil-water boundary
will be seen between the two layers. To understand detergent
action, you will have to remember this simple fact.
First, let us understand what we mean by a soap or a detergent.
Anv substance that enhances the cleansing action of water is called
a soap or detergent. This is made up of a cleansing agent called a
surfactant. A surfactant is a special t)^pe of molecule which has
63

a long tail and a short head. The head likes water and turns itself
towards water while the long tail dislikes water and turns itself
away from water. It is a special property of surfactant that it
allows oil and water to become friends with each other. Thus, a
bunch of such molecules in water will line themselves so that the
water-hating tails point away from the water. These tails are fond
of grease and oil, and it is here that the grease from the dirty
clothes, that we wash, goes and collects itself. Thus a layer of
oily dirt and soap floats on top of the water and soap mixture.
This gets washed away when we rinse the dirty clothes.
Had there been no soap, the oily part of the dirt would not
have left our clothes, as you know that oil and water do not mix.
It is as if the surfactant shows its head to the water (which the
water likes), and its tail to the oil (which the oil likes). Now the
surfactant sits in the boundary between the oil and water, rather
like a link between two enemies. The surfactant is also known as
emulsifier.
Any substance, not necessarily only soap, that has the property
of collecting at an oil-water boundary is called a surfactant or
emulsifier. Soap or detergent is only one such example. Every
surfactant will have some detergent action, to a greater or lesser
extent. Foam is formed when the oil-water boundary is shaken
hard by air, when excess soap present allows the air to enter into
the soap-water mixture and form bubbles. This is why we need
excess soap to form a lather, we cannot hope to get lather if we
are stingy with the soap! The amount of foam formed has nothing
to do with the cleaning power of the soap, as there are excellent
detergents that cause little foam and there are poor detergents
with high foaming power.
So do not get fooled by a sudsy soap! It may or may not be
a good detergent.

65

'You are old and wise,' I stopped

'How is it that your hair turned
'Yours will, too,' my wise friend
'Our age is shown right from the

to say,
grey?'
said,
head.'

Will My Hair Turn Grey?

As you know, hair is made up of dead cells. In fact, hair is
nothing but dead skin. In the cells of the hair, however, there
is a substance that is absent in skin, called keratin. It is this
substance that makes hair hard and strong unlike our soft skin.
Keratin is also found in fingernails, cat's claws, horse's hooves,
the scales of crocodiles and the feathers of a bird such as
the sparrow.
Each hair is rooted below the point where it joins the skin.
It grows from a tiny pocket called a follicle, fed by tiny blood
vessels that nourish the hair roots and make them grow.
The colour of a person's hair depends largely on a substance
called melanin. This is the name of the pigment that is contained
in hair cells at the time when they are formed in the root.
Special cells called melanocytes make this pigment. All human
66

beings have the same number of melanocytes, but the activity

of these cells varies among individuals and races. Some races
have more active melanocytes that make more melanin. This is
the reason why people of different races have hair of different
colours. (In the case of red hair there is an additional pigment
present.)
It is the amount of this colouring in the cells that makes the
hair dark or light. As people grow older, less and less melanin is
contained in the newly-formed melanocytes. Owing to this, hair
gradually turns grey or white.
It has been found by some scientists that shock can turn the
hair of a person grey, though why this happens is still not clear.
Some feel that shock or worry cause less pigment to be deposited
in the hair, while others feel that air bubbles begin to appear in
the hair after shock. The presence of air bubbles in place of
pigment in the hair makes it look grey.

67

We hardly spoke when there was a crash,

As thunder broke, we made a hasty dash
To the nearest shed, and a grand hailstorm
Started with a bang, on a day so warm.

Whence Comes This Hail?

Hailstones are messengers from the heavens above. If only
they could speak, they would be able to bring us tales of the
skies so far, above us! Actually they do speak, but in their own
language, which we must try to learn. A hailstone's shape, colour
and size are its way of telling us about its origin and the place it
has come from.
Hail usually forms at a height of two to seven miles above the
surface of the earth. So you see, these small pieces of ice have
come from regions of atmosphere that you and I can only dream
of! What is more, they need warm weather to form. The reason
is that hot air rises up from the earth's surface, expands and cools
rapidly during this expansion. It cools to very low temperatures
and rises so fast that raindrops are carried along with it, up to
the regions where the air gets very cold. There it meets with snow
which is found at these temperatures on mountain tops and forms
pellets of cloudy ice. It is interesting to note that rings of hard,
clear ice are formed if freezing occurs slowly, and milky layers
are formed if freezing occurs so quickly that bubbles do not
have time to escape. So a hailstone has its story of creation hidden
in its structure. A cloudy hailstone tells that it froze very rapidly,
while a clear one tells of its slow formation. In fact, a cloudy
stone has entrapped within it bubbles of air from up to seven
miles above!
The largest stones are of grapefruit or softball size while the
smallest are pea-size. For a hailstorm to occur, the weather must
be warm and the region must be mountainous. The most
favourable conditions occur in the USA, Russia and Argentina.
68

The high mountainous region of Kenya also has a very high

incidence of hailstorm.
Hailstones spend some time dancing within the cloud that
formed them! Wind drafts carry the stones up and down within
the cloud and in the process they form their layered structure.
Finally, when they are too heavy to stay up above, they fall swiftly
to the earth. Some fall at a speed close to 88 miles per hour,
while many fall at 22 to 44 miles per hour.
A hailstone really comes down to us, dancing its way from the
regions above! The next time you see a hailstorm, take a close
look at a hailstone. You can understand its unspoken language if
only you care to look.

'Come, sphinx, relax, for you must be

In need of a refreshing cup of tea.'
I paused, as the sphinx laughed to say:
'Do you know why tea cheers up your day?'

Care For A Cup Of Tea?

Can you imagine life without tea? The drink that serves as a
refresher for more than half the world. What is so special about
it anyway? What gives tea its flavour? And why is it that some
teas have a stronger flavour than the others?
(When you are feeling tired and sleepy, a cup of tea works
wonders on your mood. It lifts your spirits and makes you feel
more energetic. This is called a stimulating effectj
/There are three main properties that tea possessesits
refreshing (or stimulating) quality, its special flavour, smell (called
aroma) and lastly, its colour and pungent taste. Scientists have
found that the first quality is due to the presence of a compound
called caffeine, the second due to an essential oil, and the last
71

due to compounds called tannins. (In fact, tannins are responsible

for the brown colour of barks of trees as well.) Tea tannins have
a bitter taste.
The flavour of tea depends both upon the type of plant as
well as the method used for processing it. Fermented or black
tea is processed by allowing it to get exposure to oxygen, and
this results in a beverage that is amber-coloured, and is without
bitterness.
Another form of processing yields what is called semifermented or oolong tea, which is made by partial exposure to
oxygen. The leaves are allowed to wilt partially in the natural
way, either by spreading them on trays in the factory or in the
Rolling machine for processing tea

72

Tea leaves being treated in steam

sun. After this, the leaves are rolled and 'fired' at high
temperatures. Such varieties of tea are often scented with flowers,
like jasmine, to yield pleasant-smelling tea.
I Green tea is a third variety of tea that has been processed by
first sterilizing (killing the germs) the leaves, in steam or over
charcoal fire. Treated leaves are then rolled and fired. In India
tea is generally made by this process^)
You can see that tea must necessarily taste different depending
upon its origin and mode of processing. Tea-tasters have the
interesting job of finding out the taste of different types of tea.
They sip cups of tea made from various varieties and record the
taste and flavour. In one study tea-tasters were given tea that had
no aroma at all, and even though the compounds that were
responsible for their taste were still intact, none of the tasters
recorded any flavour for the tea! If the cup of tea that is served
to you has no aroma, you might not be able to detect a taste! So
you see how important it is to tempt the palate with a pleasant
aroma before taking a sip!
73

'When I drink a liquid all too quick,

Why is it, sphinx, that I go hie?
And once I pause to stop my breath,
Why do the hiccups meet their death?'

Hie, Hie, Hie!

There is pin-drop silence in the class. All the students are writing
their mathematics test with full concentration. You are still
chewing the last morsel of lunch quietly, since you had no time
to eat during the break. All of a sudden, you find yourself going,
Hie, Hie, Hie! As everyone turns to look at you, you turn pink
with embarrassment and stop your breath for a few seconds. Lo
and behold! When you take the next breath your hiccups have
disappeared! Has this ever happened to you?
Hiccups are short sounds produced by the automatic
movement of a muscle that lies at the base of the chest, the
diaphragm. The diaphragm separates the chest cavity from the
stomach cavity. This is a dome-shaped muscle that contracts and
relaxes to draw air in and out of the lungs. Breathing in means
74

that the diaphragm contracts and breathing out means it has to

expand. Normally these movements of the muscle are gentle and
take place in a quiet rhythm. However, if you eat something which
either makes your stomach expand too fast or irritates the inner
lining of your stomach's wall, this will make the diaphragm
contract suddenly. This automatic muscular movement is called
a spasm. Immediately you will take in a breath by yourself since
the contraction of the diaphragm and breath intake are linked
activities. But this breath will be cut off by the automatic closure
of the little opening between your vocal chords. It is this opening
(the epiglottis) which prevents food from getting into the air
passages leading to the lungs. The movement of the vocal chords
will produce a characteristic sound, Hie! Naturally since breath
intake is what started it all, by stopping the breath for a few
seconds, the whole process of hiccuping will come to an end.
Hiccups seldom last more than a few minutes. Rarely do they
last several hours. People can stop hiccups by breathing deeply,
drinking or holding their breath.

75

And now, my child, I will speak to you

Of left-handers, who with left hand do
All their work, and drink and eat,
With their left hand they will even greet.'

Left, Left, Left-Right-Left!

Most people prefer to use their right hand for eating, writing,
holding things and doing work. However, people differ
considerably in the range of activities for which they prefer a
given hand. They also differ in the skill of each hand for various
types of activities.
Why do most people use mainly their right hand? Scientists do
not agree on the origin of this preference. Some people believe
that right or left-handedness is inherited, which means that
children of left-handed people have a greater chance of being
left-handed. Others feel that a child is trained to being right or
left-handed and, there is no natural preference for an infant. Still
others feel that there are forces within the mother's womb that
make the foetus inside prefer to use its right hand.
It is possible that all three hypotheses are true. It has been
found that left-handed parents more often have left-handed
offspring than right-handed parents have. Even at birth, most
babies tend to move one armusually the rightmore than the
76

other. When scientists tried to prevent the infants, in a study, from

developing a preference for one hand, they were unsuccessful,
the infants still ended up preferring the particular hand at the
end of the study. It was also observed that most babies shift
their preference in the first year at least once.
There is some evidence that human beings have it in their
genes to be more prone to right-handedness. Photographs of
the fingerprints of a foetus have been found to indicate the use
of the right hand more than the left during the fourth and fifth
months of the foetus's time in the mother's womb. The debate is still
on among scientists on whether preference for using a particular
hand is acquired and learnt behaviour, or is it instinctive.
The human brain has two big halves, the left and the right half.
Each half has nerves that cross over the level of the neck and go to
the opposite side of the body. Those who believe that the genes
dictate the choice of a person in using a particular hand say that
the left half of the brain (which sends messages to the right side of
the body) is stronger in a right-handed person, while the right half
of the brain (which sends orders to the left half of the body) is
stronger in a left-handed person. There is, as yet, no firm evidence
for this, it is still a theory that needs more proof to substantiate it.
By far, most children are right-handed but psychologists
discourage parents from forcing those who are not to switch over
from the use of left hand to the right. Although many children
have been successfully trained to use and prefer the right hand
for any activity with no harmful effects, it is generally agreed upon
by scientists that children who are left-handed should be allowed
to remain so.

77

I now asked the sphinx of choppy seas,

Of jumping waves that toss as they please:
'What happens to the life within?
Do creatures live or just sink in?'

Life In The High Seas

Can you imagine how it must feel to be living in the sea? Always
tossing and moving, living creatures within the ocean must be
constantly on the move themselves. For them stillness must be a
thing unknown. What happens to them when the ocean currents
are very strong like during a storm? How are the fish and other
creatures able to survive?
It is believed widely that at one time (more than 450 million
years ago), life existed only in the seas and fresh waters. So it is
78

not surprising that there are still many more living creatures in
the sea than on the land. The ocean teems with over 200,000
species of living organisms. Most sea life occurs in shallow waters
where light penetrates and allows photosynthesis to take place.
However, most of the ocean has very little life. There is
abundant life only in certain regions and man has already set up
fisheries in these regions. Current fluctuations occur in many
parts of the world and this is probably why there are some good
and some bad years of fishing.
Sea animals and plants adopt different techniques for survival
in the choppy waters. Creatures that live in the deep ocean spend
their entire lives moving through water. Only their swimming
stops them from sinking into the dark depths. It is known that
many species swim several hundred vertical feet each day in
response to varying light conditions, while others prefer the more
79

or less permanent twilight conditions of deep waters. Near the

shore there are no dark depths, for the bottom is within the reach
of sunlight. The floor near the shore is crowded with living things
that 'sit' rather than swim.
There are certain sea anemones, which hide in cracks and
crevices where the sun does not shine directly on them. So they
do not dry up and can retain their moisture. Other species survive
by ganging up in groups so that bits of shell and debris stick to
their body mass and catch moisture. Such groups may be exposed
to direct sun for hours but they can still survive. Still other animals
in the sea wear hard protective shells which they close protectively
during periods of exposure. There are 'splash zones' where
relatively few animals dwell. Only snails and microscopic plants
can be found there. The majority of marine organisms are
adapted to living in saline waters withstanding extremes of
temperature and mechanical shock. There are animals that handle
shock by attaching themselves tightly to rocks in order to avoid
being swept away. Seaweed has to be very tough as it is found
only in shallow water where the waves beat to and fro. It is for
this reason that there are fewer kinds of plants in the sea than on
land as not many varieties can survive the tough seas.
Those animals that cannot change themselves do the next best
thing, they move their houses! They go and live where the ocean
fluctuates only between certain ranges of temperature, light,
salinity and currents. Scientists call them biological indicators,
since their very presence shows that the particular region has these
characteristics. Deeper down the water is out of reach of the
waves and is quiet. Here the bottom of the ocean is covered with
animals that feed on the small organisms that drift down from
the surface, some of them crawl around on their legs while others
fix themselves to the bottom permanently
How clever you have to be to survive the ocean currents! Are
you not lucky to be a creature that lives on the land?
81

I now wanted to know the reason why

When for some reason my skin turns dry,
Why it starts to itch and itch,
What does dryness have to do with it?

Scratch, Scratch!
When the weather turns dry or cold, you surely must have
experienced your skin turning dry too. If you live in a very cold
part of the world, you may even find that it wrinkles up and
itches so much that you feel like scratching it. Your feet, face and
hands must be the most affected as the skin in these parts of the
body gets maximum exposure.
Skin is the largest organ of the body and the only one exposed to
the outer world. It plays a very important role. It keeps out foreign
substances (like bacteria, sharp objects, and water), retains fluids,
protects us from harmful raj^s, cools us when hot and keeps heat in
when cold. It makes an important vitamin (vitamin D), receives
signal (or stimuli) from the environment and excretes water, salt
and organic compounds.
Skin is only 0.4 to 3 millimetres deep. Have you heard the
saying, 'beauty is skin-deep'? It means a person's beauty is only
from the outside layer, as thin as the skin. For the skin to remain
beautiful, it needs to be soft and smooth. The water present in
82

the skin should not dry up when the weather is dry as that will
make the skin look wrinkled and cracked. The fat produced by
the skin is the best insulating material against moisture, as oil and
water do not mix. So the water from the skin cannot evaporate
when it is covered by a layer of fat. Owing to the fat layer, water
does not wet the skin readily but runs off it, thus preventing a
cold feeling due to evaporation. As a result of washing with soap,
however, the fat layer is dissolved and any trace of it is removed
when we dry ourselves with a towel. After washing, skin lacks
oily layer and is much more sensitive to outside influences than
before. During wet and cold seasons we cannot do without the
protection of the fatty layer of the skin.
Skin is actually one of the busiest organs in our body. It
manufactures billions of new cells daily and sheds billions of
dead cells. The dead cells are found on uncared for skin and will
come off with clean stocking or underwear as these are peeled
off the body.
When the pain nerves in our skin are stimulated just a little, we
do not feel pain but we feel itchy instead. Certain small fibres in
the top portion of the skin are moved by a gentle stimulus, like
insects or fabric, to produce a sensation that we call itching. Dry
skin does not have any fat layer on it and dead cells are exposed.
Itching is the body's signal, 'Remove dead cells! Apply a layer of
fat!' Scientists still do not know why skin is the only organ in the
whole body that can feel an itch.

'Sphinx, I have noticed one strange thing, '

I said, 'When my baby sister is sleeping,
She seems to smile and suddenly pout,
Although she does not wake when I shout!'

Smiling Babies
Do you have a baby brother or sister? You may have spent
some time near the crib, if you have one.
If you have seen a baby asleep in its crib, you may have noticed
that it seems to smile and pout in its sleep. What makes a baby
do that? When a baby smiles for the first time, parents feel a
great sense of happiness, which more than makes up for their
sleepless nights! Yet many child psychologists are of the opinion
that a baby's earliest smiles do not necessarily mean what his or
her parents imagine they mean!
It is believed that there are three kinds of smiling in infants.
Reflexive smiling occurs in newborns, usually when they are
asleep or nearly so. This is not a typical smile in that it lacks the
crinkling around the eyes that usually marks a true smile, and is a
fleeting response to no particular stimulus. What this means is
that a newborn baby smiles in its sleep by itself and without any
known cause. Although some scientists felt that the earliest smiles
are linked to the gas that forms inside a baby's body after it feeds,
present-day scientists do not agree with this.
Non-selective social smiling begins from two to eight weeks
after birth. The smile is now a full-scale, crinkly-eyed one that
comes -w"hen the baby is wide awake. At this point, the baby
smiles without choosing what or whom to smile at. It will smile
equally well at its parents and family as well as at strangers. The
baby will smile even at a piece of cardboard with two dark circles
suggesting eyes!
Finally, at the age of five or six months, babies reach the
stage of selective smiling when most of their smiles are reserved
84

for their familiar caretakers. Some psychologists feel that a baby's

smiling is often not a social response like an adult's but an
expression of the infant's delight in learning that his own behaviour
can make something happen, for instance, he may smile when he
discovers that every time he flings up his arms, someone gives
him a playful poke in the ribs.

85

' Why is it, sphinx, that the barks of trees

Can't have just any colour they please,
Brown in colour, all look quite the same,
But trees differ in flower, fruit and name?'

Barks In Uniform
Nature has used her paintbrush to splash colours over flowers,
fruits, birds and animals, but she seems to have run out of ideas
when it comes to barks of trees. All of them are brown, perhaps
varying only in the particular shade.
Why is this so? Nature must surely be very wise with a purpose
behind the creation of coloured petals in flowers. If flowers were
not so attractive, bees and butterflies would not go to them so
easily to suck their nectar and cause pollination. Without
pollination, how would flowers reproduce? It is their beautiful
appearance that draws these flighty messengers to flowers and
ensures the survival of their species. Barks of trees, on the other
hand, do not have any such function. Their role is to act as a firm
support for the tree without any need to look attractive. What is
important is their hardness, toughness, height and width, rather
than their colour. So nature has concentrated on these aspects of
the bark of a tree by making it a firm and solid support.
86

Further, the main chemical compounds present in the bark of

a tree, called tannins, are brown in colour. They lend the uniform
colour to the tree's bark, the particular shade varying owing to
different amount of tannin present in different trees. This is the
reason why the barks of all trees are brown in colour.
87

f / a v e you ever wondered what makes you laugh when someone

tickles you? Or why some people are left-handed and some righthanded? Or why do babies smile in sleep? Well, how about a sphinx
to answer these and many more such queries as and when they
occur to you? The book explores, with the sphinx, the scientific
principles behind the day-to-day happenings. It is necessary to
wonder why and to know the answers in some degree!