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Who stole the Candle Wax?
On every Diwali, known as the festival of lights, our family has a big discussion on the kind of lighting we should have. And after talking about candles or electric bulbs we invariably choose the _diya_s or earthen lamps for their beautiful flames. But last year, we reached the kumhara or potter’s roadside shop a bit too late. The lamps had been sold out and the potter had a big smile on his face. So we decided to light candles....
What is the Software for Life?
We all use computers. If you use Windows on your machine, like me, you will have a small button at the the bottom of your screen called ‘Start’. Every machine in the world which has the Windows software installed has to have that button. However, we can have different screen colours, different text sizes, wallpapers etc. Similarly our bodies are essentially the same, but we have different colours, sizes, shapes and structures. Our body also has a software which is responsible for these differences between one human being and another....
What is an ISBN number?
There are hundreds of thousands of publishers across the world, and millions of books get printed every year. Moreover, a book like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a book that has been printed by several publishers. This makes the task of identifying a book very difficult. To overcome the problem of identifying books, publishers have came up with a unique numbering system. For instance, if 50,000 copies of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are printed by a publisher at one time (called an edition), all of them are identified by one number code....
Tiger Move
Santhals are a tribe found in rural Orissa and West Bengal. They believe that every individual born on earth comes destined to die by some specific stroke of fate. How the individual dies is determined at birth and this is called Dana or move (like the moves of a chess game). This move determines the kind of death the person would get – at the hands of a tiger, snake, a fall from a tree or just from old age....
What is Ribotyping?
Consider this, in a murder case, the culprit has left no clues. There are no fingerprints or eye witnesses. A perfect crime, you would say. But on close inspection, the crime branch discovers a tiny strand of hair. Back in the forensic laboratories, scientists use this strand of hair to track down the criminal and solve the murder case. But, how can you crack a mystery with a strand of hair, you would exclaim. The technique used by forensic scientists to track down the culprit is called DNA-fingerprinting....
Dealing With the Potential Danger of a Meteor Hitting Earth
Our solar system is like a busy traffic round-about. The sun is at the centre of this round-about which drives a large number of heavenly bodies, including planets, comets and large and small rocks around it. While the earth and the other planets chart fairly fixed paths around the sun, our smaller solar siblings, like rocks, do not believe in staying in their lanes. As a result, a large rock – the size of a small city – bangs into the earth every once in a while....
Man's Best Friend
Who is man’s best friend? Of course there are no points for guessing that one – the dog. The dog is the most popular domestic animal in the world. For more than 12,000 years the dog has been a companion, a protector and above all, an honest friend. But different civilisations and cultures have treated the dog in different ways. In some countries, dogs are used as guards or beasts of burden, whereas in others they are even eaten as food....
Marine Militants: Bioinvasion propagated through Cargo Ships
What would happen if all the lions in Africa are carried away to some other place? The deer population will rise as there will not be anyone to kill them. With this population boom, the deer would need more food. After a point, there will no grass left to feed subsequent generations. This would lead to the destruction of the entire ecosystem which thrives and sustains itself on the grass. And the grasslands will turn into a desert....
What does a Train Whistle tell us about the Universe?
I remember my first visit to the railway station as a child of five. The excitement of the approaching train was an experience I have never quite forgotten. At first I heard a train whistle far away, low and distant. As the train got closer, the sound of the whistle not only increased, it became shriller, and difficult to bear. So much so that I covered my ears in alarm! Once the excitement had passed, I discovered a secret – even with my eyes closed and by just hearing the whistle, I could tell whether a train was approaching or moving away....
Which Galaxy is Visible to the Eye?
The sun we see everyday is just one of the thousands of stars we see at night. Such a huge collection of stars is called a galaxy. And the stars we see belong to a galaxy called the Milky Way. There are millions of galaxies in the sky, most of whom are hidden from our view. However, there are some galaxies which can be seen with the naked eye. The most famous and the brightest of these is the M31 or the Andromeda galaxy....