What is hiccup?

Hiccup or Hiccough, is a spasmodic movement of the diaphragm, brought suddenly to a stop by the closing of the cleft between the vocal cords. It is caused by some abnormal irritation of the phrenic, that is, the diaphragmatic nerve. The ordinary case of hiccup is little more than a momentary inconvenience, resulting from indigestion. Occasionally it assumes a more serious character and becomes difficult to stop. In such instances it is the symptom of some diseased condition indicating the need of a physician. Ordinary cases of hiccup may be relieved by drinking cold water, or by holding the breath for a few seconds.

Hamlet tragedy

  Hamlet is Shakespeare's most famous tragedy. It eas presented in 1600 or 1601, and printed in 1603. It is the longest of all Shakespeare's plays, containing about 4,000 lines. Hamlet himself speaks 1,569 lines, which far exceeds the total length of the speeches of any other of Shakespeare's characters. Shakespeare obtained the base of his plot from Saxo's Chronicle of Scandinavia. Hamlet is a young Danish prince, sensitive, refined, cultivated. Grown to manhood with no knowledge of the evil of the world, such knowledge comes to him suddenly and in a way which seems to demand of him decisive action.

The Time is out of joint: O, cursed spite, 
That ever I was born to set it right!

  Hamlet fails to "set it right," and tragedy inevitably results. The action is of slow development. The relief from the strain of tragedy, so often and so successfully supplied in Shakespeare's plays by the introduction of some humorous element, is perhaps less noticeable in Hamlet than in any other tragedy. The effect of the play as a whole is sombre in the ex¬treme, yet the genius of Shapespeare has excited so intense an interest in the character of Hamlet that no other play has at all times and to all classes of readers, actors, students, and spectators been so universally attractive. The question as to whether Shakespeare intended to represent his hero as insane or as feigning insanity is one that has occasioned endless discussion, and upon which numerous books have been written.

Halcyon

Alcyone

   Halcyon is an old and poetical name of the kingfisher from Alcyone, the wife of Ceyx, king of Thessaly. When Ceyx was drowned in a storm at sea, the gods in pity for the lonely Alcyone, changed the two into kingfishers. There was a tradition among sailors that the halcyon laid its eggs in nests floating on the sea about the time of the winter solstice. In order that its nest might ride safely the bird was reputed to have the power of charming the wind and waves during this period. The calm weather usually found at this season was attributed, therefore, to the halcyon, whence the name. Even on land, pleasant mid-winter weather came to be known as halcyon days. It seems strange that the legend should not have attached itself to some gull, petrel, or albatross, rather than to the shore-loving kingfisher.

Sir Alexander Fleming

Sir Alexander Fleming was a British bacteríologist. Born Lockfield, Scotland, Aug. 6, 1881. Died London, Eng¬land, Mar. 11, 1955.
Fleming was awarded a share of the 1945 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for his discovery of penicillin. In 1928, Fleming noticed that a mold, which had apparently come through a window of his laboratory, had contaminated a culture plate on which he was growing bacteria. Around the mold was a clear circle, where all the bacteria had been killed. Fleming identified the mold as Penicillium notatum and called the bacteria-killing substance it produced penicillin. Fleming later found that penicillin kills many kinds of bacteria and is nonpoisonous to humans. Fleming also discovered lysozyme, a substance in the body that can dissolve certain bacteria.

Perpetual Motion Machines

Man's quest for free power
The first law of thermodynamics says, in effect, that you cannot get something for nothing—but that has never stopped people from trying. It is scientifically impossible to build a machine that will run without an external energy supply, yet for centuries inventors have persisted with designs for perpetual-motion machines.
One of the most common was a gravity-operated overbalancing wheel. If a weight is attached near the top of an upright wheel, the wheel will rotate until the weight reaches the bottom. If it were possible to arrange a series of weights around the wheel so that those on the way down were farther from the wheel's center
than those on the way up, the result would be an overbalancing wheel that would keep on turning.
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Fleur-de-lis

The Fleur-de-lis is an old heraldic device, commonly associated with the royal house of France. It is a stylized representation of a lily or a white iris. The fleur-de-lis symbol was used in ancient India and Egypt and has also been found on Etruscan bronzes. A popular heraldic device in several European countries during the Middle Ages, the design was adopted in France in the 12th century. The earliest French royal arms had a number of golden fleurs-de-lis scattered on a blue field. A later design, consisting of three fleurs-de-lis on the same field, was the official French coat of arms until the Revolution of 1830.

Ian Fleming

  Ian Fleming was an English author. Born London, England, May 28, 1908. Died London, Aug. 12, 1964.
Fleming was the author of the famous James Bond spy stories. Among his best-known suspense novels are Casino Royale (1954), From Russia With Love (1957), Goldfinger (1959), and The Spy Who Loved Me (1962). Several of Flermng's novels about James Bond's international adventures in espionage have been adapted as highly successful motion pictures.
  Fleming's experiences as a royal navy intelligence officer during World War II are often reflected in his novels. He worked as a special correspondent for the London Times and was a member of the editorial board of the London Sunday Times.

John Gay

John Gay (1685-1732)

   John Gay was an English poet and dramatist, born in Devonshire. After a brief apprenticeship to a London mercer, he lived for a time as a literary Bohemian, contributing satirical prose and verse to journals and reviews and soliciting the protection of wealthy patrons. In 1712 Gay was employed as secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth and later held similar posts with the Earl of Clarendon and the Duke and Duchess of Queensbeny. In 1714 he published The Shepherd's Week, a series of six eclogues burlesquing the pastoral poetry of Ambrose Philips. These poems, which established his literary reputation, were followed by a farce, What d"ye Call it (1715); Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716), a sprightly and colorful mock epic; and a comedy, Three Hours after Marriage (1717), which he wrote in collaboration with Pope and Arbuthnot. John Gay made £1,000 through the publication of his collected poems (1720) but lost it all by speculation in the South Sea Bubble. In 1724 he produced a tragedy, The Captives, and in 1727 pub¬lished the first of his popular versified Pables. His crowning achievement, The Beggar's Opera (1728), was a boisterous musical comedy which for a season drove the Italian opera out of England. Polly (1729), a sequel, enjoyed success in book form but the stage production was prohibited for political reasons. Among Gay's later works were a libretto for Handel's Acis and Gala¬tea (1732), an opera, Achilles (1733), and a second series of Fables (1738). His most familiar poems today are the ballads "Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan" and " 'Twas when the seas were roaring" and his own epitaph: "Life is a jest and all things show it; I thought so once, and now I know it."

Supernova I987A

Astronomers around the world were excited when, on 24 February 1987, a new naked-eye star suddenly appeared within the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was the first supernova seen with the unaided eye since 1604, reaching magnitude 2.9 at its peak and remaining visible for several months. The object was originally a massive blue star called Sanduleak -69 202.
The star actually exploded some 165,000 years ago, the light having taken that long to reach us. The light was accompanied by a burst of neutrinos—tiny, elusive particles. Scientists had predicted that these would be produced in very large numbers during a supernova explosion.
The study of SN 1987A continues today, with rings of light, shown in the illustration of the Hubble Space Telescope image (right), being the most recent surprises in the ongoing tale of the supernova's discovery.

Who was James Hutton?

James Hutton (1726-1797)

  James Hutton was a Scottish geologist and physician, became famous for two theories on the origin of the Earth. He is called the father of modern geology.
  According to one of Hutton's theories, heat played an important part in the formation of the Earth. Hutton believed that rocks were formed from a molten mass. Most other scientists thought water had once covered the Earth and that rocks were formed when minerals settled at the bottom of the water.
  Hutton also theorized that the Earth had changed gradually by natural processes and would continue to change through the same processes. Other scientists believed the Earth was completely formed about 6,000 years ago and that only rare catastrophes could change its features.

Some facts about Balls

  One of man's oldest toys is a simple, round object called a ball. The first balls were rounded stones, which were rolled or tossed. Thousands of years ago, balls were used as weapons. They were thrown at enemies and game animals.
  Balls are rolled, tossed, and hit in many games. Baseball, soccer, basketball, tennis, bowling, football,  volleyball, billiards, golf, and many other games use balls of some kind. We usually think of a ball as perfectly spherícal, or round. This is not always so. A football, for example, is oval instead of round.
Balls can be made of almost any material, including snow. The Aztec and Mayan Indians played an old game like basketball with a rubber ball. American Indians played lacrosse and other games with balls made of animal hides. Animal skins still provide the covering of some kinds of balls. Horsehide is the outer surface of most baseballs. A football is often referred to as a "pigskin," although pigskin is no longer used in footballs. Plastics are widely used in making different kinds of balls. Others are made of solid wood and rub¬ber. Rubber balls are lots of fun to play with, because they bounce.
  There are many sizes and weights of balls. Maybe you have seen a big, heavy, sand-filled "medicine" ball in a gym. Compare that with a lightweight ping-pong ball, which you can blow across a table with a deep breath. One of the smallest balls is the kind used in a game of jacks. It must be tiny enough to fit in a child's hand. It must also be bouncy enough to give the player time to pick up the jacks.

Who was Hans Christian Oersted?

  Hans Christian Oersted was the Danish physicist and chemist who founded the branch of science called electromagnetism. Electromagnetism deals with magnetic fields developed by electricity.
  During an evening lecture at the University of Copenhagen where Oersted served as professor, he accidentally discovered that a magnetic needle was deflected by an electrical current. This discovery established him as one of the outstanding physicists of his age. After experimenting, Oersted discov¬ered that every conductor which carries an electrical current is surrounded by a magnetic field. This experiment, now known as the "Oersted Experiment," proved that electricity can produce magnetism. In 1934 the "Oersted" was adopted as the unit of
measurement of the strength of a magnetic field.

Lemures (mythology)

   Among the ancient Romans, Lemures (singular lemur) is a term applied to departed spirits, es¬pecially those of ancestors who hovered about during the night. Probably the word was derived from the festival Lemuria held 9, 11 and 13 May, when at midnight the father of the family, with special ceremonies, nine times threw black beans over his head, thus banishing the spirits from the household for another year.
   The Lemures inspired Linnaeus's Modern Latin backformation Lemur to characterise the "ghostly stare", nocturnal habits and unearthly calls of the infraorder. In Goethe's Faust, a chorus of Lemurs who serve Mephistopheles dig Faustus' grave.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was a famous zoologist, lecturer, and writer. He was one of the first to be convinced by Charles Darwin's analysis of organic evolution, and he extended and defended it. Through his lectures, writings, and committees, Huxley helped advance scientific thought.
His writings include Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Critiques and Addresses (1873), and A Manual of the Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals (1877). His essay "On a Piece of Chalk" (1868) and his essay demonstrating changes in the feet of fossil horses are outstanding.
Many of Huxley's expressions became famous. He introduced the word agnostic to describe one who believes that the existence of God or a spiritual world cannot be proved. He coined the word biogenesis to emphasize that life arises only from previous life.
Huxley was born near London, and studied by himself until he entered medical school. He became a surgeon in the British navy and spent four years in the Indian Ocean and East Indies. He wrote a pioneering account of jellyfishes, and returned to England to find that he had become famous as a zoologist. From 1854 to 1885, he taught natural history at the Royal School of Mines. He served as president of the Royal Society from 1881 to 1885.

What is Flemish?

  Flemish is a language belonging to the Germanic subdivisión of the Indo-European language group. It is spoken by about 5,000,000 inhabitants of northern Belgium and by an additional 200,000 people in northwestern France. Flemish is actually a variant of Dutch, to which it is closely related, and along with French, it is one of Belgium's two official languages.

The Lost Lemuria

   Lemuria is a name given by Haeckel to a vast area assumed to exist in past ages over the area of the present Africa, Indian Ocean and Malayan Archipelago, on the hypothesis that the existence of such a continent was necessary to explain the peculiar present distribution of the lemurs and other phenomena of geographical distribution. The discovery of the remains of lemurs in America and Europe rendered such hypothesis futile, and the idea was soon abandoned.

Classifyng the stars

  Seen through the telescope, the silvery stars turn into jewels of every color known. Since the glow of a star is from heat, te color depends on its temperature. Red stas are relatively cool, with surface temperatures of about 6,000 °F. Yellow stars, like our Sun, are hotter by thousands of degrees, and blue stars are still hotter. The hottest ultraviolet star may be more that 100.000 °F.
  Relationships exist between tbe color and size of stars and their age and Iocation in tbe galaxies. Stars tend to fall into two great categories called Population I and Population II. Population I consists of stars in the arms of spiral galaxies and in irregular galaxies like the Malleganic Clouds. Population II consists of stars in the nuclei of spiral galaxies, in elliptical galaxies, and in glo-bular clusters.
  The biggest, brightest stars in Population I are blue giants, which spread a blue radiance around them. The biggest, brightest stars of Population II are red giants, which give their surroundings a reddish-orange tint.
In Population I, the smaller stars are red and relatively cool — that is, cool for stars. The larger ones are blue and hot. Until a few decades ago, astronomers believed that the bigger stars are, the hotter they are. Then, as telescopes probed deeper into space, new populations of stars were found. Out in remote globular clusters and still more distant galaxies, the giant stars were red and cool. And even in our own galaxv some stars have been discovered that change periodically in size and brightness. These are the so-called pulsating, or variable, stars. Some change regularly; some are irregular.
  As nuclear physics developed, astronomers learned more about processes that go on in the stars. Then it became clear that different types of stars represent different stages in star evolution. Apparently Population I stars are in earlier stages of their evolution, and Population II stars are probably in later stages.

George Simon Ohm

Georg Ohm (1797-1854)

  Georg Simon Ohm was a German physicist who is best known f or Ohm's Law of electric conduction. This law states that the current, I, that flows in a circuit multiplied by the amount of resistance, R, is equal to the applied voltage, E. The law may be stated in symbols as E = I x R. The ohm, the unit of electrical resistance, is named in his honor. He is also known for work in mathematics and acoustics.
   Ohm was born in Erlanger, Germany, on March 16, 1787. After attending the local university, he was, in 1817, appointed pro¬fessor of mathematics at the Jesuits' College at Cologne. He remained there until 1833 when he resigned to join the faculty of the Polytechnic School of Nuremberg. In 1849, he accepted an appointment as professor of mathematics at Munich. Ohm's numerous writings were of somewhat inferior quality. One exception was a pamphlet published in Berlin in 1827 which contained a summary of what is now known as Ohm's Law. His work was coldly received by his fellow scientists, and Georg Ohm was so deeply hurt that he resigned his position at the Jesuits' College, Cologne. His work began to be recognized, however, and in 1841 he was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in London. One year later he was made a foreign member of the Society.


What is the Ohm?
The ohm is the unit of resistance to the passage of an electric current. The ohm is the resistance causing a potential drop of one absolute volt when a steady current of one absolute ampere flows through it.

What is Frustation?

  When an individual is blocked in the realization or expression of his drives he feels frustrated. The drives may be physiological (such as: for food, activity, rest, comfort, and sex) or psychological (such as desire for security, recognition, mastery, new experiences, affection, etc.). All of these drives, in the course of experience, often are organized into habits, attitudes, and ambitions. Any one or all may be blocked from salisfaction by environmental obstacles, personal defects, and inner conflicts. Obstacles presented by the environmenl are such as absence of food, opportunity for rest or sex expression, and laws and customs which are loo strictly enforced. Personal defects refer lo ill health, bodily blemishes, and lack of intelligence and social and manual skills.
  A common reaction to frustration is anger or rage, as shown by an infant when he is restrained from movement. Adults also tend lo become enraged when their freedom is abridged. Another reaction to frustration is fear, which causes individuals lo withdraw and submit when the restraint is overpowering.
  The intelligent and mature person will stop to reason when confronted with a frustration. He will look for new methods of satisfying his desires.

What is a Hyacinth?

  The hyacinth is a favorite spring flower of the lily family. It originated in Africa and Asia, and was brought to Europe in the early 1500's. It has been a popular plant in Europe for centuries and is still a garden favorite everywhere. The bell-shaped flowers of blue, pink, white, yellow, or purple, bloom in March and April on stalks which grow from 6 to 18 inches high.
  Hyacinths grow from bulbs in open beds, hothouses, and in the home. When raised in the open, they need rich, well-drained soil. The bulbs are planted between September and November.
  Early in the spring, the flowers appear. Gardeners usually tie the stems to slender stakes to protect them. In summer, after the leaves wither, gardeners dig the bulbs and store them in dry soil or sand. Florists pot the bulbs early in Septem¬ber to force the plants to blossom by Christmas.
  The soil and climate of The Netherlands provide an especially favorable place for growing flowers from bulbs. The Dutch plant hundreds of acres of hyacinths every year near Haarlem. They ship the bulbs to many parts of the world

Christiaan Huygens

  Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, discovered the polarization of light, and investigated and developed the wave theory of light. He coined the word ether for the medium in which light waves were then assumed to travel. Huygens developed an improved method of grinding telescope lenses in 1655. He built the first powerful telescopes, which made possible his discovery of a satellite and ring of Saturn. He was the first to use a pendulum to regulate a clock. He also invented the micrometer, an instrument used to measure extremely small distances.
  Huygens was born at The Hague, The Netherlands. He studied law and mathematics at Leiden. In 1663, he became a member of The Royal Society, England's oldest scientific society. From 1666 to 1681, Huygens worked in París at the invitation of Ring Louis XIV of France.

Why did the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse?

  A marching band can create rhythmic vibrations even when it isn't playing music. Sometimes you can feel the ground víbrate from marching feet. Do you know why bands and military units don't march in step across suspension bridges?

Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse

  The rhythm of the marching can cause the bridge to víbrate. If the frequency of the vibration caused by the marching matches the natural fre¬quency of the bridge, resonance can occur. Res¬onance can cause the bridge to move up and down until its structure weakens and collapses.
English cavalry troops marching across a foot-bridge in 1831 caused the bridge to collapse when they marched in rhythm with the natural frequency of the bridge. Winds can also cause vibrations in suspension bridges. On November 7, 1940, vibrations caused by a mild gale produced resonance in the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the state of Washington. In a few hours, the flexible suspension bridge was torn apart and collapsed. Engineers now design suspension bridges with heavier, less-flexible roadbeds that aren't affected by wind.

Tuning forks

  A struck bell, a plucked guitar string, and a dropped table knife will vibrate and make sounds. Each object vibrates at a particular frequency, known as its natural frequency. The frequency of a sound wave results in a particular pitch. The natural frequency of a small bell is higher than that of a large bell. When struck, the smaller bell will ring at a higher pitch.

  Tuning forks are used to tune musical instruments. The musician plays a note on his instrument and compares its pitch to the pitch made by the tuning fork. He adjusts his instrument so the pitch of each note match¬es the pitch made by the tuning fork for that note.

  When the bass player plays at the natural frequency of the tuning fork, the vibrations create resonance in the tuning fork. The vibration of an object at its natural frequency is called resonance. You can experiment with an instru¬ment to find the natural frequency of an unlabeled tuning fork by playing different notes and seeing which one causes the tuning fork to resonate.

  Finding the natural frequency of a tuning fork is just one example of resonance. Many objects have a natural frequency that is easily matched by other vibrating objects. The windows in our home rattle when the sound given off by a passing truck matches their natural frequency.

What is an abominable Snowman?

  Explorers in the Himalaya Mountains of Asia tell stories about a strange giant that is supposed to live high up on the cold, snowy peaks. Nobody has ever come close to this mysterious creature, which is called the Abominable Snowman. Some people say they have found its huge footprints. Most scientists doubt that the Snowman is a real animal. But others think it might just possibly be a leftover — a kind of man whose ancestors lived in caves thousands and thousands of years ago.

Shortage of coins

When the Italian small-change coins spiccioli began to vanish in 1965, some said the lightweight aluminum pieces were being collected by the Japanese for cheap watch cases. Others thought the coins were disappearing into cloth-covered buttons or, perhaps, simply blowing away.

In fact, the disappearance of spiccioli began in 1964 when, faced by soaring double-digit inflation, the Italian government ceased minting the silver 500-lira piece, which had become more valuable as metal than as money. Italians were expected to make change with smaller aluminum coins worth 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200 lire. But the national supply of small change was swiftly devoured by coin-operated vending machines, by tourists going home with pocketfuls of nearly worthless foreign coins, and by work stoppages at the Italian mint.

As a result, getting change while shopping became a major problem. The post office tried to solve it by giving out stamps worth a few centesimi (100 to the lira), but a huge envelope was needed to accommodate the numerous stamps required even for local delivery. Butchers passed out eggs as a fragile alternative to coins. News vendors, given 100-lira pieces for 90-lira newspapers, made change with candy valued at 10 lire, and many storekeepers dealt out such differences in the form of nougat and licorice.
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Is the story of the apple falling really true?

Shortly after finishing college, while living on his family's farm, English mathematician Isaac Newton watched an apple fall from a tree and wondered if the force that caused it to fall, gravity, also applied to orbiting bodies in space, such as the Moon. Why did they not fall away, instead of remaining in an orbital path? Prior to this time, gravity had been thought of as a force that only functioned on Earth. Newton explained the movement of orbiting planets as the result of motion along a straight line combined with the gravitational pull of the Sun. Newton put aside his notes for seventeen years, until astronomer Edmond Halley convinced him to write up his results. Three years after that, Newton's book was published.

The Mayan calendar

A sun calendar that was used in past times was that of the Mayas. It probably goes back to the year 580 B.C. According to a renowned Ameri¬can archaeologist, Sylvanus Griswold Morley, it was the first seasonal and agricultural calendar in America.

The Mayan calendar was similar in some respects to that of the Egyptians. It consisted of 360 days, with a period of 5 days, necessary to complete the year, added as a short month. As we saw, the Egyptians dedicated the 5 extra days in the year to the gods, but the Mayas considered them as evil days upon which no work could be done, no journey undertaken and no marriage performed. As in Egypt, arrangements for the extra days were left to the priesthood.

The Mayan calendar was arranged differently from that of the Egyptians. The year had 18 months of 20 days. The 20 days within each month were divided into four 5-day series, corresponding to our weeks; each day had its own name. The 20 days of the month began with a cipher; henee the days were numbered from O to 19 inclusive, not from 1 to 20 inclusive, as we would count the days in our months.

Inserted with the Mayan sun calendar was another imposed by the priests, who used a time system of their own for ceremo¬nial rites and purposes. This was the permutation system, or tzolkin. In this system there were 20 months of 13 days each existing within the framework of the 18-month 20-day year. It was as if we were to have a 260-day year start on January 1. The 260th day would correspond to September 17 : the first day of the new 260-day year could then correspond to September 18.

Apparent magnitude of well-known stars and other heavenly bodies

In the second century B.C., the Greek astronomer Hipparchus arranged the stars in six grades or classes, of brightness, or apparent magnitude. (As applied to a star, the word "magnitude" has to do with brightness and not with size.) The brightest stars were put in the first grade, the next brightest stars in the second grade and so on. Hipparchus' classification was adopted and improved by Ptolemy of Alexandria in the second century A.D. Our present system of apparent magnitudes is based on the work of these men, though the light values assigned to the different magnitudes have been greatly refined. In the case of the heavenly bodies that are brighter than the stars of the first magnitude, each increasing stage of brightness above 1 is indicated by the appropriate numeral (0, 1, 2, 3 and so on) preceded by a minus sign.

• Sun —26.7
• Moon —12.5 at brightest
• Venus —4.3 at brightest
• Mars —2.8 at brightest
• Sirius A —1.5
• Júpiter —1.3
• Canopus -0.9
• Alpha Centauri A 0.33
• Vega 0.1
• Capella 0.2
• Arcturus 0.2
• Rigel 0.3
• Procyon A 0.5
• Betelgeuse 0.9 (variable)
• Altair 0.9
• Saturn 1.
• Mercury 1.
• Aldebaran 1.1
• Antares 1.2
• Spica 1.2
• Pollux 1.2
• Fomalhaut 1.3
• Deneb 1.3
• Regulus 1.3
• Castor 1.6
• Bellatrix 1.7
• Mira Ceti 2.2 (variable)
• Shedir 2.3
• Polaris 2.3 
• Mizar 2.4
• Alcyone 3.
• Alcor 4.
• Uranus 6.

The Nobel Prize

  Alfred Nobel (1833-96), the Swedish engineer who invented dynamite, left $9,000,000 in a fund to provide yearly awards for men and women whose work has benefited mankind. There are five Nobel Prizes—in physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, literature and for the promotion of peace. The physics and chemistry prizes are awarded by the Royal Academy of Science in Stockholm; the medicine prizes by the Caroline Medical-Chirurgical Institute in Stockholm; the literature prizes by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm; the peace prizes by the Swedish Parliament. The names of candidates are submitted by persons qualified in the various fields. Although the winners are generally announced earlier in the year. the actual ceremony of awarding the prizes takes place annually on the anniversary of Nobel's death, December 10. A gold medal and a diploma accompany the money.

Missing Money

Billions of dollars worth of U.S. coins and bills disappear from circulation annually—more than $70 million in pennies alone in a typical year. Some of this vanished money simply gets lost, or is worn out, added to collections, or squirreled away in cookie jars and piggy banks. Some of it languishes forgotten in the pockets of unworn clothing or lurks in the obscure corners of handbags, upholstery, drawers, and closets. But much of it slips away into a shady labyrinth of international finance designed to evade taxes and "launder" illicitly earned money, making it seem to have a legitimate source. This practice is so pervasive that U.S. Treasury officials estimate they can physically locate only about 20 percent of the bills they print. Much of the remaining 80 percent presumably disappears into the global laundering apparatus.

Cassiopeia A

  When Cassiopeia A (3C 461) exploded as a supernova some 9,700 years ago, a gigantic, circular shell of gas raced out into space. Today, this still-expanding supernova remnant is too faint to see with amateur equipment, but its powerful energy is detectable at radio wavelengths. The radio output emission is created by high-speed electrons spiraling around magnetic field lines as the expanding cloud collides with thin gas between the stars.
   Radio images of the cloud, the brightest radio source outside of the Solar System, show gas racing away from the spot where the star exploded. By calculating this speed and the distance traveled by the gas since the explosion, astronomers estímate that the light from the explosion reached Earth around 1680, creating a 5th magnitude star. No record exists of anyone noticing this short-lived supernova in Cassiopeia.

Who was Augustin Jean Fresnel?

   Augustin Jean Fresnel was a French engineer and physicist, was born in Broglie, Normandy, and studied at the École Polytechnique and the École des Ponts et Chaussées. After spending several years as a government engineer in various parts of France, Fresnel lost his post because he declared his allegiance to the Bourbons when Napoleon escaped from Elba. Through the influence of Dominique Arago, he subsequently became secretary of the government's lighthouse department in Paris. There he invented the lighthouse lens which bears his name, introduced revolving lights, and designed the Fresnel concentric wick, which greatly enhanced the brilliancy of lighthouse lamps.
   Fresnel extended his researches to the kinematics and the dynamics of light and, independently of the investigations conducted by Thomas Young, discovered the phenomenon of interference, or effect caused by the meeting of two beams of monochromatic light. Fresnel insured acceptance of the undulatory theory of light when he introduced the idea that the vibrations of the ether are transverse to the directions of the beams of light.
   The validity of the undulatory theory was further confirmed by Fresnel's investigations of the modifications in interference brought about by polarized light.

Who was Girolamo Frescobaldi?

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1644) was an Ital¬ian musical composer and organist, was born in Ferrara. Frecobaldi early gained a reputation as a singer, and later as an organist, and in 1614 was appointed organist at St. Peter's, Rome. This position he held, with a short interval of absence in Florence, until his death. Frescobaldi's compositions, which are numerous, include both instrumental and vocal pieces; among them a collection of five-part madrigals, Ricercari et cantoni francesi, Capricci sopra diversi soggetti and Arie musicali a piu voci.

Hecate (mythology)

  In Greek mythology, Hecate was one of the deities of the lower world. She was the daughter of Titan and Night. Her worship was connected chiefly with caves. Even the temples built in her honor were placed at the entrance of a subterranean chamber.
  Hecate was intrusted by Zeus with the magic powers of heaven, earth, and sea. She might be cruel, or she might be kind. She had the power of bestowing good and of averting evil, or of bringing misfortune. People of rank erected her image in front of their houses. It was placed frequently at the crossings of roads where, at the new moon, offerings of food were presented, and left for the consumption of poor people.
  In statuary, Hecate appears in a hideous form. Three heads and three pairs of arms spring from the same body. Serpents issue from the drapery at her feet and are twined in her hair. She bears a lighted torch and a sword in her hand, and is accompanied by two black, shaggy dogs. When placed at a crossroad, the three heads were usually those of a horse, a lion, and a dog. The three heads are doubtless symbolical of the three-fold nature which was ascribed to this mysterious goddess, her powers extending to the heavens, to the earth, and to the under world. It was probably on this account that she became variously identified with Selene, goddess of the moon, with Diana, goddess of the chase, and with Persephone, goddess of the lower world.
  As a deity, Hecate was the goddess of witchcraft and sorcery. It was she who sent demons and phantoms to hover about spots where murder or other hideous crime had been committed. In Macbeth, it may be remembered, the guilty king speaks of "pale Hecate's offerings."

Hector, the Trojan prince

   Hector, the hero of the Trojan army. He was the son of King Priam and Hecuba. His wife was Andromache, the daughter of the king of Thebes. While Achilles, the Greek, was sulking in his tent, refusing to fight, Hector slew Archilles' dearest friend, Patroclus. This aroused Achilles, who presented himself at the head of his men and rushed into the thick of the fray. Achilles slew Hector with his own hand, tied him by the feet to the tail of his chariot, and dragged him three times around the walls of Troy.
   In his grief the aged King Priam went in person to the Greek camp and begged the boon of his son's body. This he received and took back to the beleaguered city, where Hector was buried with great pomp. Our account of Hector is derived from Homer's Iliad. Homer writes as a Greek, yet the valor and manly qualities of the Trojan Hector arouse the poet's admiration.

Who was Black Hawk?

   The chief named Black Hawk (1767-1838) led the Sauk and Fox Indians in Illinois. In 1804, the Sauk and Fox tribes agreed to give their lands east of the Mississippi River to the United States. But Black Hawk thought the agree-ment was unfair. He and about 500 warriors joined the British in fighting against the U.S. during the War of 1812.
   Most of the Sauk and Fox Indians had left their homes and settled in a reservation west of the Mississippi by 1830. Black Hawk still refused to move. When white settlers began to take over the land, he led his men in a rebellion known as the Black Hawk War. After several victories, the Indians suffered a painful defeat in 1832. Black Hawk finally surrendered and was sent to live on a res¬ervation in lowa. The failure of his rebellion marked the end of Indian settlement in Illinois.

Otto von Bismarck

   The man who gathered many small kingdoms into modern, powerful Germany was Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898). He was born in Prussia, now northern Germany. Bismarck studied law at the universities of Gottingen and Berlin. After serving in the Prussian legislature for 11 years, he became ambassador, first to Russia, then to France.
   In 1862, he became prime minister of Prussia. Prussia was then one of 39 weak German states. Bismarck wanted to unite all the states into one strong nation. He organized 22 states into the North German Confederation, in 1867, with Prussia as leader.
   To unite the rest of Germany, Bismarck steered Prussia into three wars. First, Prussia fought with Austria against Denmark. Then Prussia turned against and defeated Austria. Prussia's war with France, from 1870 to 1871, established the German Empire. The German states not in the confederation helped Prussia win, then found themselves part of the empire.
   Wilhelm I became emperor. But Bismarck became chancellor (chief minister of state) and had all the power. He ruled for 19 years, and was called the "iron chancellor," because he allowed no one to disagree with him, and because he said that only "iron and blood' could unite Germany. In 1888, Wilhelm II be¬came emperor. He was jealous of Bismarck's power, which he wanted for himself. So he forced Bismarck to retire in 1890.

How is astrology used today?

The most popular form of modern astrol-ogy is called natal (birth) astrology. Natal astrology involves plotting the positions of the sun, moon, planets, and stars at the exact time of a person's birth, creating a chart called a horoscope. Astrologers believe that the horoscope pro¬vides information about that person's Signs of the Zodiac. traits and the sequence of his or her life events. When casting a horoscope, an astrologer maps the planets and stars against the backdrop of the zodiac. The zodiac breaks the celestial sphere into twelve regions, each one defined by a constellation residing within it. The twelve zodiac signs are: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.

What is a Genius?

  A genius is a person who is far more gifted in some way than most people. He may be an artist or a scientist or an inventor. He may write music or poetry. He may be gifted in still some other way. Geniuses are often so deeply interested in one thing that they do not pay much attention to anything else. Many of them are thought of as odd.
  Albert Einstein was surely a genius. Much of what he thought and wrote has to do with great problems about the universe. His ideas helped to bring on the Atomic Age. Thomas Edison earned the name of genius by his many inventions. Newton, Galileo, Mozart, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci are a few of the other geniuses the world has known.

Egypt, "The gift of the Nile"

Nile river

   Many centuries after the early period of Egyptian history, a Greek historian named Herodotus wrote of his travels in Egypt. "All Egypt," he said, "is the gift of the Nile." Herod¬otus wrote accurately, for he was describing a remarkable feature of Egyptian geography. Each year, from June to October, rain and melting snow from the mountains at the source of the Nile cause the river to overflow and spread out over the flatland of the southern Nile Valley. The flood reaches its highest level at the beginning of September. As the flood recedes, the gentle slope of the land allows the water to drain off gradually. A layer of silt, or fertile soil, which the river has carried along in its flood, is left behind.
   From earliest times Egyptian farmers have planned their work according to the flood. They know when it will come every year. They harvest their crops before it begins, then wait for the water to soak the hard, dry earth before it drains off and leaves its new, fertile soil. There is little or no rainfall in Egypt, so the flood moisture is sufficient for only one planting. Early in their his¬tory, however, the Egyptians learned to irrigate the land by using water from the Nile and carrying it to the fields in short canals. Then they could plant and harvest two or even three crops a year.
   You can easily see the importance of this regu¬lar flooding of the Nile. Each year the valley receives a fresh layer of soil. Because of this, the land of the Nile Valley has been farmed continuously for more than 6,000 years. And it is still farmed today.

Hypnotism

Hypnotism is an artificial sleep or artificial somnambulism. It resembles sleep in that the person hypnotized appears unconscious, is insensible to most sense impressions, and, on being aroused, remembers little or nothing of what has occurred while he was in the hypnotic state. Hypnosis is, of course, an abnormal condition. Hypnotism closely resembles mesmerism, and the terms are used often synonymously; but hypnotism, as understood at the present time, differs theoretically from mes¬merism, whose supporters claimed that the mesmeric condition was induced upon the subject by an emanation, called animal magnetism, from the person of the operator. Of late years extended researches in the subject of hypnotism have satisfied investigators that no magnetism or force of any kind is transmitted to the subject from the operator, but that hypnosis is a mental con¬dition purely. It is claimed even that it is an entirely natural condition. In hyp¬notic sleep, while apparently unconscious and to a degree insensible, the mind of the subject is more or less active, and the nervous system keenly susceptible to certain impressions. The operator controls to a great extent the volition of the subject. He may influence him to play an assumed part. the subject acting apparently in the firm belief that he is in reality the individual he has been told to represent. It is, however, an entirely incorrect use of the word, hypno¬tism, to apply it to the mental influence exerted or thought to be exerted by one indi¬vidual over another while both are in a normal condition. Hypnotism implies sleep. The human mind is always more or less susceptible to suggestion. In ths hyp¬notic state, it is peculiarly so. When awake, the will controls measurably the effect of any suggestion the mind receives. While in the hypnotic state the will is dormant, and the suggestion seems to make its impression without any influence from the will of the subject.
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Who was Hyperion?

In Greek mythology, Hyperion was one of the Titans, son of Uranus (the sky) and Gaea (the earth). He became the father of Helios (the sun), Selene (the moon), and Eos (the dawn). Hyperion was the original sun god and is represented as gloriously bright and beautiful. In astronomy, the name Hyperion is given to one of the satellites of Saturn. Longfellow has given the name Hyperion to a romance which he published in 1839. It is an account of the travels of a young man through foreign countries, and is interspersed with legends, poems, and philosophical discourses.

How does astrology compare with astronomy?

  In ancient times, men were filled with wonder by the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. They came up with creative explanations for what they saw in the sky. Ancient astronomers, who charted the stars and planets night after night, invested the celestial objects with a host of god-like qualities. They named planets and star groupings after the gods of their particular religión and felt that some of these bodies were, indeed, gods. In this way, the fields of astronomy and astrology advanced together for several centuries. The birth of modern astronomy in the early 1500s was the point at which the two paths went their separate ways. Once Nicholas Copernicus determined that the Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun and Galileo Galilei crafted the first telescopes, the skies became much less mysterious. Those who held to the mystical beliefs about the cosmos continued on their own separate quest for greater understanding.

What is Automation?

Automation seems to be a very complicated process. But really it is just a way of having machines do work without human operators controlling the machines every moment they are running. In other words, an automated system is a system that works by itself. Every automated system has two parts— a machine (or many machines) that does the work, and another machine that controls the first one.

The simplest automated system is the light bulb in your refrigerator. The light bulb does the work— lighting up the refrigerator. The little button that pops out when you open the door is the control. It is connected to the light and it "tells" the light what to do.

Another automated system is a mechanical dishwasher. Inside the cabinet is a machine that washes the dishes, rinses them, and dries them. Also inside the cabinet is a device that "tells" the machine what to do and when to do it. What good would it do if the machine dried the dishes before it washed them?
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How little Jack Horner became a big owner?

  According to legend, the original Horner was steward to Richard Whiting, the last of the abbots of Glastonbury. In the 1530's, the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it is said that the abbot, hoping to placate Henry VIII, sent His Majesty an enormous Christmas pie containing the deeds of 12 manors. The task of carrying the pie to London was entrusted to Horner, who managed to open the pie and extract the deeds of the Manor of Mells in Somerset—presumably the "plum" mentioned in this rhyme:

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner

Eating a Christmas pie;

He put in his thumb,

And pulled out a plum,

And said "What a good boy am I"

  Certainly, one Thomas Horner did assume ownership of Mells, but both his descendants and the present owner of the house, the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, claim that the rhyme is a slander. Horner, they say, bought the manor from the King; his name wasTom and not Jack; and there is evidence that the rhyme existed before the Tudors.

What are Seyfert galaxies?

Seyfert galaxies are spiral-shaped galaxies characterized by an exceptionally bright nucleus that produce spectral line emission from highly ionized gas. Like the Milky Way, they consist of a central disk of stars with starry arms that extend outward and wrap around the disk like a pinwheel, but Seyfert galaxies display very faint arms and a very bright nucleus. The nuclei, in addition to emitting radiation in vis¬ible light wavelengths, also give off infrared radiation, radio waves, and X-rays. They contained very hot gases: hydrogen, ionized oxygen, nitrogen, neon, sulphur, iron, and argon. These gases are prone to explosions, which cause the nucleus to rotate much faster and more violently than the rest of the galaxy. Seyfert galaxies greatly outshine the other galaxies in a cluster. Some even approach the brightness of quasars, the brightest and most distant objects from Earth. The nuclei of Seyfert galaxies are also similar to quasars in that both types of objects emit radiation from all across the electromagnetic spectrum. This pattern has led some astronomers to theorize that the nuclei of Seyfert galaxies may be faint quasars. Another recent theory about Seyfert galaxies is that they are a stage of development through which all giant spirals pass. If this is true, our own Milky Way galaxy may spend 10 percent of its existence as a Seyfert galaxy.
Seyfert galaxies were named after Carl Keenan Seyfert, the astronomer who first identified the class in 1943.

The first human heart transplant

   Christiaan Barnard was the South African surgeon who performed the first human heart transplant. This historic operation took place on December 3, 1967. Barnard removed the healthy heart of a young woman who had been fatally wounded in an automobile accident. He transplanted her heart into the chest of Louis Washkansky, a 55-year-old man whose heart was failing. Washkansky lived for 18 days with the transplanted heart.
   Although Washkansky died of pneumonía soon after the transplant, the operation was considered a success—Washkansky's new heart beat strongly until the end. Barnard performed his second heart transplant opera¬tion a month after the first one. This time, the recipient of the transplanted heart lived for 18 months. Barnard continued doing trans¬plant operations with critically ill patients. His innovative surgical procedures included another first. In 1974, he transplanted a sec¬ond heart in a human being. The hearts were linked together, forming a kind of double pump to circulate blood throughout the body.
   Christiaan Barnard was born on November 8, 1922, in a small town called Beaufort West, South Africa. His father was a minister and the family was quite poor. Barnard's mother had high expectations of her children and urged them to work hard and strive to be the best in their classes. Barnard studied hard and was admitted to medical school in Cape Town, South Africa. He received advanced training in heart surgery at the University of Minnesota in the United States. It was in 1958 that Barnard returned to South Africa and introduced the revolutionary new technique of operating directly on the heart—the procedure called open-heart surgery.
   Barnard retired as a surgeon in 1983. The effects of chronic arthritis eventually made it difficult for him to operate.

What does fin de siècle mean?

Fin de siècle is a term used to characterize the decade of the 1890's. The phrase is French and means "the end of the century." Fin-de-siècle writers and artists rejected the Victorian tradition and tried to find new methods and aims for their work. They believed that a work of art should be valued for its own sake, rather than for its moral point. The "decadent" poets, such as Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde, were particularly fascinated by the strange beauty of death and decay. Another fin-de-siècle literary current was the Realistic movement, as illustrated by the plays of George Bernard Shaw.

How do we measure energy?

We measure energy by the amount of work it does. We measure it in foot-pounds. For example, 20 foot-pounds is the amount of energy it would take to lift 2 pounds 10 feet, or 10 pounds 2 feet, or 5 pounds 4 feet. We also measure energy in cal¬ories. A "small calorie," the kind people count when they are dieting, is a thousand times bigger — so a man on a strict diet might eat only enough food to give him 3,000,000 foot-pounds of energy a day. We also measure energy in joules, ergs, horsepower-hours, kilowatt-hours, and all sorts of units, depending on the kind of work we mean.

Heinrich Heine

H. Heine

Heinrich Heine, (1797-1856) was a German poet, born at Düsseldorf, of Jewish parents; studied in Bonn, Gottingen, and Berlin. His first important work, Reisebilder, appeared in 1826, and his greatest, the Buch der Lieder, was published in the next year. Heine traveled widely in Europe, and finally settled in Paris, where he became intimate with the Romantics, including Víctor Hugo, De Musset, and Chopin. He wrote of them in Die Romantische Schule, 1836. His works were now banned in Germany, and in reply to this he wrote German Philosophy and Literature, an essay, and Deutschland, 1844, a satire. In his best work, his lyrics, he wavered between sentimentality and cynicism, but he had a keen appreciation of emotion and a perfect style for the expression of it. The lyrics have been frequently translated, and set to music by Schumann, Brahms, and Grieg, among other composers.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770-1831) was a German philosopher, born in Stuttgart; educated in theology at University of Tübingen. Taught at Univ. of Jena, 1801-16, where he worked out his philosophical system; professor at Univ. of Heidelberg 1816-18; then professor at Berlin. Hegel was the last of the four great German idealist-philosophers of that period, the others being Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. Hegel's system is a culmination of the idealistic philosophy of Kant. To Hegel, the world is a world of reason, reason being the essential nature of reality. It is philosophy's task to set forth this rationality in a systematic, comprehensive way. His system has three main divisions: the logic; the philosophy of nature; the philosophy of spirit, or mind. Hegel's first important treatise, the Phenomenology of Mind appeared in 1807. His Science of Logic, 1808 analyzes and develops the conceptions underlying the various forms of experience by a 'dialectical method.' Other works include the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and the Philosophy of Right. Most of his works are available in English translations. His theories have had a profound influence on German philosophy and also on British and American thought.

What is Hedonism?

Hedonism is the philosophic theory which holds pleasure to be the supreme good. The ancient Greek school of Aristippus and the Cyrenaics stressed the immediate happiness of the individual; the Epicurean school modified this by insisting that some consideration for others was necessary to happiness. Utilitarianism, a modern form of hedonism, has as its aim the collective happiness of men, the greatest good for the greatest number. Its leading exponents are: J. S. Mill, Bentham, Hume, and Sidgwick.

What does Hegira mean?

  Hegira, or Hijra, is a term referring to the flight of Muhammad from Mecca, in June, 622 A.D. After its flight he became ruler of Yathrib, later called Medina, and there laid the foundation of Islam. The Moslem calen¬dar begins with that year.
  Technically, the first Hegira occurred in 615 A.D. when a group of Muslims was counseled by Muhammad to escape persecution in Mecca and travel to the Kingdom of Axum, which was ruled by a Christian king. Muhammad himself did not join this emigration.

King Midas

  The story of Midas is a Greek myth. Midas, the story tells, was a king in Asia Minor. He loved gold more than anything else. When the god Dionysus offered to grant him a wish, Midas wished that everything he touched might turn to gold.
  The wish was a very foolish one, as Midas soon found out. His food turned to gold as soon as it touched his lips. To keep from starving he had to beg the god to take away his golden touch.
  Dionysus told Midas to bathe in a certain stream. He did. And that is why, the Greeks said, there was a vast amount of gold afterward in the sand of the stream. It was this gold which made Croesus, the famous king of Lydia, very rich.

Periscope

  A periscope is an optical instrument which enables a person to obtain a view otherwise impossible to see. Periscopes allow a submarine crew to survey objects on the surface of the water. A simple periscope can be made by mounting two mirrors on an angle within a tube or a narrow box. A person can look around a corner or over a fence with this homemade periscope.
  A submarine periscope consists of a long, stainless steel or bronze tube. The optical lenses and prisms are sealed at the top by a glass window so they are watertight. When the periscope is raised above the surface of the water, light enters through the window. The light striking a right-angle prism at the top, is totally reflected downward through several lenses to a second prism or a mirror. At this level the light is again totally re-flected to the eyepiece, and thus to the observer.
  Periscopes are also used for other military purposes. Warships and gun turrets may contain range-finding periscopes designed to protect the operator from enemy fire. Tanks use periscopes, as do foot soldiers in trenches.
  Periscopes are employed to observe radioactive materials. This is one way scientists can see over or through protective walls.

What is a Jester?

Jester

A Jester, or buffoon was a person maintained by a monarch at court to pass away the time with jests and sharp sayings. Alexander the Great and others of the ancients are said to have maintained jesters. During the Middle Ages the fool was a regular attendant of monarchs and the nobility. His traditional dress was distinguished by mock emblems of royalty. He carried a fool's scepter in his hand, and, in place of a crown, wore a fool's cap of cheerful colors, ornamented frequently with jingling bells and a pair of ass's ears. He also wore a broad collar, not infrequently wide enough to serve as a cape. His lower person was clad in hose, with long, upturned toes. The fool was often a person of unusual shrewdness, who, by standing at his master's elbow, was able to help him out of many a hard scrape. If he thought his master about to part with money too readily, he would be able to suggest that a fool and his money were soon parted. Not infrequently the fool was really a controlling mind in matters of great importance. He was supposed to have very little mind, but to speak it freely on all occasions without danger of reprimand or punishment. Wamba of Scott's Ivanhoe is an interesting character of this sort.

Bells

 The Liberty Bell

  The idea of bells is old. More than 2,000 years ago Jewish priests wore little bells on their robes. The kings of ancient Persia wore bells for decoration, too. The Chinese also had bells long ago. But big bells were not much used until about 1,500 years ago. Builders then began to put bell towers on churches so that the bells could call people to worship.

  From then on bells were used more and more. Town criers rang bells when they had news to tell. Curfew bells told boys and girls when they must be in for the night. Clocks struck the hours on bells. Many cities built bell towers.

  Bells are made of many kinds of ma¬terial. Glass, china, wood, and metal are among them. Most big bells are made of bronze. Some beautiful small bells are made of silver.

  A bell makes its sound when it is struck. Many bells are struck by clappers which hang down inside them. These bells ring when they are swung. Some bells have balls inside. These bells ring when they are shaken. Other bells are rung without being moved. They are struck by hammers.

   The biggest bell ever made was never rung. A piece broke out of it before it could be. This bell is now standing in Moscow. People can go inside it. The bell is almost as tall as a two-story house. The biggest bell in use is in Moscow, too. Another very large bell is in a pagoda in Burma. The United States has a famous bell—the Lib¬erty Bell.

Some Facts about Foods

Pickled ants, smoked seaworms, blubber, fried tadpoles—to some people these are fine foods. Many of our foods would be just as strange to people of other lands. But whether we eat pickled ants or pickled peaches, smoked seaworms or smoked ham, blubber or butter, food serves the same purpose for us all.

In the first place food is a fuel. It keeps our bodies running. It gives us energy to work and play. It keeps us warm, too. It does for us very much the same things gasoline does for an automobile.

But it does much more for us than gaso¬line does for an automobile. No one expects his automobile to get bigger because he keeps putting gasoline in it. He does not expect the gasoline to mend a punctured tire, either. But our food makes us grow, and it furnishes the materials we have to have to mend cut fingers and broken bones. Food also gives us materials that make our bodies run in just the right way.
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Leonardo Fibonacci

  Leonardo Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician. Born Pisa, Italy, about 1170. Died about 1230.
Fibonacci was the outstanding mathematician of the Middle Ages. His famous work on arithmetic, alge¬bra, and number theory, the Líber abad, carried on the work of Arable mathematicians and established Arabic numeráis and the decimal system throughout Europe. In this work, Fibonacci began the fruitful practice of representing various numbers in a problem by a single letter. He is known also for his discussion of an interesting sequence of numbers called the Fibonacci series.

Fibonacci spiral

Fibonacci numbers, also called the Fibonacci series, a series of numbers first studied by the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci (1170-1230). The series is usually written 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ... Each term in the series is the sum of the two preceding terms. Thus, the next term after 34 would be 55. The Fibonacci series is encountered in certain plants whose leaves spiral around their stems. In some of these plants, adjacent leaves may seem to have rotated through a half turn (½). However, in others the fraction may be 1/3, 2/5, 3/8, 5/13, 8/21, and so on. In these fractions both the numerators and the denominators form Fibonacci series.
   Fibonacci numbers are also connected with the golden section, a geometric ratio known to ancient philosophers. The golden section is created by dividing a line segment into two parts so that the ratio of the smaller part to the larger part is the same as the ratio of the larger part to the whole line segment.

What does groat mean?

Groat or Fuppence is the name of an old English coin. The term literally means great, and was applied originally to large copper coins worth more than a penny. In the reign of Edward III a silver groat of the value of eight cents was coined. Three groats made a shilling. It has not been coined since 1856. Like the American cent, the term has passed into proverbial use to denote a small sum or little value. It appears in "Not worth a groat," "I care not a groat," etc. The term groats, applied to hulled oats or meal used for food, is of very different origin, being allied to grit.

Groat coin

How is Fiberglass Made?

   Fiber glass is very strong and flexible and is resistant to extreme temperatures, moisture, oils, and caustic chemicals. In combination with plastics, fiber glass is becoming increasingly important as a structural material.
   Fiber glass is made from glass marbles that are melted and poured through tiny boles. As the molten glass drops through the boles, it forms into threads, which are subjected to air or steam pressure. The size of the holes and the amount of pressure determine the thickness of the threads that are formed. These threads can be spun into yarn. Fiber glass yarn can be woven into fabrics that resemble cotton, wool, or silk. Drapes and curtains are among the many textile producís made of fiber glass.
   Another kind of fiber glass, called glass wool, is drawn in short fibers directly from a batch of molten glass. Glass wool is made into blankets or matting that is used for insulation against heat and sound.
   Many materials are made by combining fiber glass with various plastics. These materials, generally also called fiber glass, can be pressed into sheets or molded into various shapes. They are used for acoustical ceilings, roofing shingles, tile, and construction boards in a wide range of texture and flexibility. Thin fiber glass sheets are suitable substitutes for metal in the manu¬facture of storage tanks, air ducts, and similar products.
   Fiber glass composition material has become increasingly important in the construction of automobile bodies and boat hulls. Automobile bodies and some boat hulls of this material are formed by a hydraulic press in a single operation. Most such boat hulls, however, are made by pressing many sheets of fiber glass onto a mold by hand. Fiber glass boat hulls and automobile bodies do not corrode and are easily repaired.

The sea as a sculptor

The power of the sea

The power contained in a breaking wave is immense. A wave may strike the shore with a force equal to the pressure of six thousand pounds per square foot. These waves can hollow out or pull down rock cliffs. In some parts of the British Isles they are eating away the coast at the rate of 15 feet a year.
  Storm waves tend to tear down the shores. Gentle waves are the builders, for they may leave numberless grains of sand against offshore bars to build up new beaches.
  Behind these new sheltering sand bars, tidal marshes grow up. They are built of sediment left by waves and washed down from the land by streams.
  Miles of new land like this are built along shorelines where the land has been lifted up so that a gentle slope of the continental shelf is now above water. There are many such beaches along the southeastern United States. For every cliff that crumbles under the hammering of the sea, somewhere a new beach is being built, a new coral reef is growing, or a new volcanic island being thrust up.
  The sea and its shores are ever changing. As glaciers grow or melt, they greatly change the amount of water in the seas. Earthquakes change the shapes of ocean basins. There was a time when much of North America was covered by sea. At other periods Alaska and Siberia were joined by a land bridge, and most of the East Indies were a part of Asia—so high did the land masses rise.
  There will be other changes in the future which we cannot foresee. We can only be sure that through the ages the sea will continue its miraculous labor.

Thomas Hardy - some facts

Thomas Hardy

• Thomas Hardy, (1840-1928) was a notable English novelist.
• He was born in Dorsetshire.
• Thomas Hardy studied architecture and practiced his profession for some years, but since 1873 has devoted his time to literature.
• Among Hardy's best known novels may be mentioned For from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, Two on a Tower, Tess of the D'Urbermlles, The Three Wayfarers, and Under the Greenwood Tree.
• Hardy is recognized as one of the foremost English novelists.
• Hardy's poetry, first published in his fifties, had a significant influence over modern English poetry.
• A few of his poems, such as The Blinded Bird, expose his love of the natural world and his firm stance against animal cruelty.
• A number of prominent composers, including Benjamin Britten, Gerald Finzi, and Gustav Holst, have set poems by Hardy to music.

What is Hardness?

Diamond, the hardest substance

Hardness is the quality of a solid substance which enables it to scratch or resist being scratched by another substance. For instance, glass will scratch copper, therefore it is harder than copper. The degree of hardness of iron, steel and some other substances is affected by heating and cooling them. Talc is the softest and diamond the hardest substance. In the following list the substances are arranged in the order of their hardness.

1. Talc
2. Gypsum
3. Calcite
4. Fluorpor
5. Apatite
6. Feldspar
7. Quartz
8. Topaz
9. Sapphire
10. Diamond