Blog by Vanshi | Digital Diary

A small cottage interior . there is an entrance back right [ which may be curtaineg ]. another door to the left must be a practical door.

the furniture is simpls consisting of a small tabie towards the left a chair or two and a divan rather upstage on the right. On the tabls is a tetephone. 

[ when the curtani rises gerrard is standing by the tabls making a phone call. he is of medium height and wearing horn rimmed glasses ......He is dressed in a lounge suit and a great coat. his voice is cultured.]

well tell him to phone up directly. i must know..... yes I expect i ii still be here but you mustn count on that in about ten minutes time. Right ho  goodbye.

any thing you like i know all the answers. but before we degin i should like to change my position you may be comfortable but i am not .

sit dowe there asd no funny business [ motions to a chair and seats himself on the divan by the bag ], now then we have a nice little talk about yourelf

  at last a sympathetic audience lll tell you the story of my life how as a child i was stolen by the gypsies and why at the age of thirty two i find myself in my lonely essex cottage how.....

You have learnt about physical and chemical changes in the previous class. You know  that a change in which  no new substances are formed and which can generate be reversed by reversing the conditiond  is called a physical change. In physical changes only the properties likes shape size colous or state of the substance get changed. The common examples of.  physical  changes are melting of ice melting of wax boiling of water dissolution of sugar in water etc.

The changes in which two or more substances react to form new substance having different properties are called chemical changes or reactions. Chemical changes take place  around us all the time.  Burning fuel cooking food. Photosynthesis  etc. Are the examples of chemical changes or reactions . In this chapter we will study more about chemical changes.

                                  SUBSTANCE

Any material with a specific chemical composition is called substances.  There are two major types of substances pure substance and mixture. 

Heat and temperature 

                 WHAT IS HEAT?

Sir Benjamin Thompson and James Prescott joule performed various experiments and explained  that heat is a from  of energy. We often describe different substances as hot or cold.  Hot and cold are relative terms. It means that something is considered as hot 

When it is compared to something which is colder.

Heat is a form of energy that spontaneously moves from the systems to its surroundings or vice versa. It happens due to the movement of tiny particles that  make up solids liquids and games.  If we put warm and cool objects together Heat is transferred from warm object to the cool object until both objects have the same temperature.  This stage is known as equilibrium stage. Hotness or coldness of a body is measured in as temperature.  The hotter an object is the higher is the temperature. Temperature is mostly measured degree Celsius ( *c ) 37.

Animals fibres

You have studied in previous classes that plant fibres mainly cotton and flax are major natural cellulose fibres. Cotton grows within a pod or bll from developing seeds and flax is obtained from  the start and riit of the plant. Let us now study about  silk and wool. These fibres are derived from the animals  so these are called animal fibres. 

Wool is the hair and fur of sheep and silk is the secretion of the silk caterpillar.  Protein fibres are hygroscopic they absorb moisture without feeling wet. In the winter when people go from dry indoor air into damp outdoor air wool absorbs moisture and generates heat protecting the Wearer from the cold.

                             Wool

We wear sweater in winter to protect ourselves from the cold. Wool is ideal for making such clothes. 

Wool can be obtained from hairy animals like sheep goat yek and camel. Llama and alpaca found in south America also yield wool. However sheep is the main source. The feence is cut off from the body of certain hairy animals to obtain wool. The process is called shearing.

The ant and the grasshopper

A lazy person cannot get any success in his life. He suffers whole of his life. Read this lesson carefully. When I was a very small boy I was made to learn by heart certain of the fables of la fountain and the moral of each was carefully explained to me. Among those I learn a fable the ant and the grasshopper which  is  devised to bring home to the young the useful lesson that is an imperfect world world industry is rewarded and giddiness punished In this admirable fable I apologies for telling something which everyone is politely but inexactly supposed to know the ant spends a laborious summer gathering its winter store while the grasshopper sits on a blade of grass singing to the sun  comes and ant is comfortably provided for but the grasshopper has an empty larder.

The wettest place on earth 

Deep in Indian northeast villagers use grass for soundproofing their huts from deadening rain clouds are a familiar sight inside homes and a rust sign tells visitors that they are in the wettest place on the earth. 

Oddly enough lifelong residents of mawsynram a small cluster of hamlets in . Meghalaya state have little idea that their scenic home holds a Guinness record for the highest average annual rainfall of  11 , 873 millimetres 467 inches just thirty years ago mawsynram had no paved roads no running  water and no electricity making its six_ months long monsoon an insufferable experience for its mostly impoverished residents. Landslides still occur regularly ocking the only paved road connecting the hillside hamlets. Rainwater still seeps into the mud huts occupied by some villagers. And while most homes have electricity power cuts are quite common in place. Every winter the people of mawsynram spend months preparing for the we season  ahead anticipating non stop rain and no sunshine for several days at a time. They hence repair their bettered roofs. They cut and hoard firewood source of light and fuel for cooking. They buy and store food grains since few will venture out ship  during .

The export quality 

The comparison of the cottage industries to a departmental store makes me smile. Fixed prices, Yes sections for this and that maybe but similarities end there and initial impact is more like entering Aladdin s cave than the purposeful efficiency of a departmental store.

The entrance lobby in keeping with the prevailing sprint of the wedding season is an ostentatious display of gold glitter colour and craftsmanship a mixture of old an new past and present Elaborate wedding sarees in reds and deep pinks and ornate antique palanquin hiding a veied and decked up bride a delicately painted wooden horse with an embroidered saddle bearing bejewelled and brocaded groom brass pots carved wooden chests and more costumes hang in suspended animation.

Stephen Hawking 

Stephen Hawking a British physicist, chase understanding of the universe as his field of study.

He came up with a theory about the origin of the universe. He propounded that the universe began with a big bang. He also declared that the universe would end up as a huge black hole. What is a black hole? A black hole is far out in space. It is dark because it does not reflect light but sucks light in .you can look upon a black hole as a light guzzler. But it is not called by that name. Names often end up as misnomers. Think of a sunayan with a squint or a Sundar who is as ugly as a road. No black hole has a hole. Has a in reality, it is tightly packed with matter and hence very dense. The forecast by Stephen Hawking of the origin and likely end of the universe was truly sensational. Most physicist found much wisdom in the world. A few held other views but even they agreed that the theory projected by Stephen Hawking was worth further study . That was something that pushed him in to the limelight.

Till then very few had seen Hawking fewer still knew of the tremendous odds set in his path the fact is that hawkins is totally incapable of moving on his own and spends most of his time in a wheel chair. He has been devastated by a rare and incurable motor neuron disesy called amyotophic lateral sclerosis or ALS in short.

Peace in time of struggle

On April 15, 1912 one of the deadliest Marutime disasty in history occurred. At 2: 45 am on April 15: 5 days after its original deoaparture from Liverpool, England, the The titanic struck a large iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. The ship titanic was the second in a three ship set the Olympic titanic and Britannica. She was 300 yards long, and weighed several hundreds of thousands of pounds. The great ship, made mostly of metal, was thought to be unsinkable. Then the impossible happened. Captain Edward John Smith had altered the Titanic's course slightly to the south, hoping to avoid the icefields that had been spotted and reported by other ships. Unfortunately the change in course didn' t help much. In the late hours of April 14, the titanic collided with a large iceberg. Upon striking the Beth, the titanic flood compartments made for just such an occasion, began to fill with water. The titanic could have stayed a float if only 4 of the compartments were flooded but the water quickly filled 6 making the bow sink slowly into the 28F degree ( - 2 celscel degree) water. Many passengers were actually spotted playing soccer with the chunks of ice, unaware of the danger posed to them .

Night of scorpion 

I remember the Night my mother was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours of steady rain had driven him to crawl beneath a sack of right.  Parting  with his poison flash of diabolic tail in the dark room he risked the rain again. The peasants came like swarms of flies and buzzed the name of god a hundred times to paral the evil one . With candles and with lanterns throwing giant scorpion shadows on the sun baked walls they searched for him he was not found. They clicked their tongues. With every movement that that the scorpion made his poison moved in mother blood. They said. May he sit still' the said.may the sins of your previous birth be burned away tonight they said. May your suffering decrease the misfortunes of your new birth they said. May the sun of evil balanced in this unreal world against the sun of good become diminished by your pain, they said May the poison purify your flesh of desire! And your spirit of ambitious they said and they sat around on the floor with my mother in the center, the peace of understand  on each face. More candles,