My Science School

Reconciliation

The word reconciliation corresponds to the restoration of friendly relations. It can also denote the action of making one belief or view compatible with another one. It can also be used for the action of harmonization or making financial accounts consistent.

Origin

Reconciliation has been around since the mid 14th Century. It is derived from the from Old French reconciliacion and directly from Latin reconciliationem, meaning "a re-establishing, a reconciling". The meaning "act of harmonizing or making consistent has been in recorded usage since 1729. After going through a trough of low usage in the beginning of the 20th Century, the word has risen to prominence once again and has been used extensively in this century.

Usage

Hours of negotiations were required to bring about a reconciliation between the two concerned parties.

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Footloose

Meaning:

Footloose means unshackled, Used as an adjective, footloose describes a person who has no responsibilities, and hence is free to do what he wants or go wherever he pleases. The term is also used to refer to an industry that is unrestricted in its location or field of operation, meaning it will not be affected by factors such as resources, land and labor.

Origin:

 The term is said to have entered English in the late 17th Century. It has been used to mean free to move the feet, unshackled." It is derived from foot (n.) + loose (adj.). Over time, it has acquired the figurative sense of "free to act as one pleases".

Examples:

Jack always yearned to be a footloose adventurer.

Ved is footloose with no family responsibilities to tie him down.

Footloose industries are able to effectively respond to market fluctuations.

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Anicut

Anicut is a dam built in a stream for maintaining and regulating irrigation.

Origin:

 This noun is said to have been in use since the 18th Century. It is interesting to note that this word has its origin in India. It is said to have originated from the Tamil words "anai" meaning dam and "kattu", meaning build. What was anaikattu gradually became anicut in the hands (or tongues) of the colonising British.

Example:

The Grand Anicut is an engineering marvel created in stone.

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Nettie Stevens was an American geneticist who discovered that sex is determined by chromosome.

Nettie Maria Stevens was born on July 7, 1861, in Cavendish, Vermont. The family moved to Westford, Massachusetts, after her mother's death. In 1896, she joined the then newly established Stanford University earning her under graduation and post graduation degrees there. She received a Ph.D. in cytology (the study of structure and function of cells) from Bryn Mawr College in 1903. Her Ph.D advisor was the geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan.

In 1904, Nettie was offered a research assistantship position at Carnegie to investigate the topic of heredity and sex determination. Thanks to Gregor Mendel, by 1900, rules of heredity were known to the scientific community. It was well established by then that parental traits pass to offspring and that the offspring inherits an equal number of chromosomes from each of its parents. But scientists did not know what determined the sex of the offspring.

By studying the cell division in the male common mealworm, Nettie identified a large chromosome and a small chromosome - we now call these X and Y. She concluded that a particular combination of the chromosomes X and Y

was responsible for the determination of the sex of an individual an individual that inherits XX will be female and XY will be male this was evidence that a physical characteristic-in this case the sex of an individual - is linked to differences in chromosomes.

Edmund Beecher Wilson of Columbia University Americas first cell biologist independently made the same discovery as Nettie, later in 1908. Bat Thomas Hint Morgan has been credited with the discovery of sex chromosomes because of his related work on white mutant gene of fruit flies and was even awarded a Nobel Prize in 1933 for the same. Nettie was neither recognized immediately after her discovery, nor invited to speak on theories on sex determination while Morgan and Wilson were. Experts attribute this to gender discrimination Nettie remained an associate in experimental morphology from 1905 until her death in 1912 date to cancer. Nettie Stevens discovered two new species of single-celled organisms: Lionophora macfarlandi and Boveria subcylindrica. She also documented their life cycles.

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What you need:

An empty soda can. A PVC pipe, A towel

What to do:

1. Place the can on the floor or on a big table on its side.

 2. Rub the length of the pipe with the towel. Hover it close to the can and start moving it horizontally, parallel to the ground.

What happens:

The can rolls with the motion of the pipe! You can roll it back and forth without even prodding it!

Why?

The answer is static electricity Static means stationary. When you nub two objects against each other (like the pipe and the towel), they develop stationary electrical charges. To understand why this happens, we have to go to the microscopic level. Everything in our world is made up of tiny particles called 'atoms. These atoms are, in turn, made up of even smaller particles known as electrons, protons and neutrons. The protons and neutrons remain inside the atom but the electrons like to use any excuse to jump in and out of the atom. When you rub two objects together, the electrons from one object jump to the other. This exchange of electrons is what is termed as electrical charge. Electrical charges attract or repel each other depending on their kind. If two objects have same electrical charges, these charges repel each other. Opposite charges, on the other hand, attract. The can and the pipe seem to have opposing charges on them. So wherever the pipe moves, the can follows.

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What you need:

A drinking straw, card paper or any stiff paper, tape, scissors

What to do:

1. Cut the paper into three strips. Each strip should measure 1 inch (2.5 cm) by 5 inches (13 cm).

2. Take two of the strips and tape them together in the shape of a hoop. Make sure that both their overlapping ends are at least an inch long so that the hoop stays in shape after being taped.

3. Make another smaller hoop with the last strip of paper making sure to overlap its ends a bit more as well.

4. Tape the hoops to either end of the straw, with the straw on the inside of the hoops, at their base.

5. Now, try tossing the whole thing into the air, like you would a paper plane. The smaller hoop should be in front and angled slightly upwards.

What happens:

With a little practice, you can make your hoop glider fly further than any paper plane! Time for that race with friends!

Why?

The two hoops help keep your straw lifted and balanced in the air. The larger hoop helps to create 'drag' or air resistance. This is a sort of friction force that air exerts on moving objects to oppose their motion. Thus if an object is flying fast, it experiences more drag as the air tries to slow it down. But although the speed is reduced due to drag, the force also makes sure that your glider doesn't just whizz to the ground and instead glides slowly through the air. The smaller hoop in front acts like the nose of the glider and makes sure that it doesn't veer off-course. Also, remember that under the influence of gravity two objects. irrespective of their weights generally fall downwards at the same speed That means if you throw a feather and an iron ball from the third floor of a building, they will reach the ground together (of course other factors such as air drag need to be eliminated or reduced to observe this). So despite your two hoops being heavier than the straw, the entire thing travels together and reaches the ground together too!

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Have you ever wondered how the night sky would appear from the Red Planet? Some say it would be pretty similar to that on a clear Earth night, but with one key difference - instead of just one moon, you would see two. One might resemble a bright star and the other, a pale space potato! And through a telescope they look nothing like our Moon; they are highly uneven masses covered with lumps, bumps and huge craters. But like our Moon, they always show the same face to their planet. Meet Deimos and Phobos, the only natural satellites of Mars!

Only around 12 kilometres wide, Deimos is the smaller of the two. It takes a little more than 30 hours to complete an orbit around Mars. Phobos measures 22 kilometres across (for comparison, the diameter of our Moon is 3,474 kilometres). However, it orbits very close to Mars, and takes only about eight hours to complete a revolution!

Unfortunately for Phobos, it is coming closer and closer to Mars - its orbital distance is reducing by about 1.8 centimetres every year. At this rate, one day it will either crash into the Red Planet, or get pulled apart by the gravitational effect of Mars and form a ring of debris around it. Either way, this will be a spectacular event. But we will have to wait 50 million years more to see it happen!

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Perseverance pays! Maybe that was what the American astronomer, Asaph Hall, felt after he discovered the Martian moons in 1877!

Asaph Hall was just 33 years old when he joined the prestigious U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) in Washington, D.C. in 1862 as an astronomer. Though the very next year he was made the Professor of Mathematics in the USNO, Hall retained an active interest in the study of planets, moons, stars and their orbits. The year 1877 brought Mars especially close to the Sun and the Earth in a rare phenomenon called the “perihelic opposition.” During this time, Hall was in charge of his observatory’s 26-inch refracting telescope (telescope that uses lens for magnification), the world’s largest during that time, and he decided to use it in his search for Martian moons.

Initially it must have been quite frustrating for Hall, because after catching a glimpse of what appeared to be a moon on the 10th of August he could not find it again. He was about to give up. But his wife, Angeline Stickney (who was also a mathematician), motivated him to keep trying. Finally on the night of 12 August 1877, Hall discovered Deimos, and on 18 August 1877, Phobos! The biggest feature on Phobos, a nine-kilometre-wide impact crater, was named “Stickney” in the light of Hall’s wife’s contribution to the discovery of the two Martian moons.

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The formation of Valles Marineris was a puzzle that left many scientists scratching their heads. Erosion by an ancient melting glacier? Tectonic action? Volcanic activity? Theories were many. But what everyone agreed upon was that the story of this canyon system was closely tied to the history of the Tharsis region!

Around four billion years ago, when Mars was at its ‘volcanic’ best, enormous quantities of magma collected underneath its north western part. The ground swelled up to form the Tharsis bulge. Over the years, as more and more lava spilled out, volcanoes grew in size to become giants like the Olympus Mons, Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons. Finally, the pressure build-up was so great that it cracked the Martian crust! These fractures expanded in time, forming the system of chasmata that we know as the Valles Marineris - this is the commonly accepted theory today.

These cracks also released the water stored below the Martian surface. The escaping fluid washed away the sides of the chasmata making it still wider. The channels found in chaotic terrain on the eastern end of Valles Marineris may be the result of such flooding events. But we still don’t have all the details. Was it a single large flood episode followed by smaller ones later, or a series of floods within a short period of time? Nobody knows!

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Scientists say there may be mainly two factors that help Martian volcanoes grow enormous.

One, Mars has a weak gravitational pull (which is only about one-third that of the Earth’s) and a thin atmosphere. Magma, or the molten material under a planet’s surface before it becomes lava, contains not only melted minerals but also gases trapped within it. As magma approaches the surface, the effects of low atmospheric pressure helps gas bubbles expand faster. This pushes out huge quantities of hot ash and other debris in a large explosion called a Plinian eruption. The low gravity also makes it easier for magma to collect under the Martian surface in magma chambers, larger and deeper than those found on the Earth. So when a volcano erupts on Mars, there is more lava produced and the low gravity keeps it flowing for longer periods.

Two, Mars does not have any active tectonic plates. The Earth’s crust (along with the upper mantle) is in the form of huge jigsaw-puzzle-like pieces known as tectonic plates. As these plates gradually move, their boundaries (which are points of weakness) may get aligned above areas of the underlying mantle that are hotter than the surrounding regions, permitting magma to move up and form volcanoes. When the plates move again the flow is cut off. In Mars, however, there is hardly any tectonic movement. So lava is able to continuously flow and pile up at a single location.

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Did you think that the area occupied by Olympus Mons (300,000 square kilometres) was unimaginably big? Wait till you hear how much of Martian land the shield volcano Alba Mons covers. At least 5.7 million square kilometres! That’s more than half the size of Europe!

With respect to area, Alba Mons may be the largest volcano on Mars. But it stands only 6.8 kilometres tall; that is hardly one-third the height of Olympus Mons! You can guess looking at its dimensions that this volcano has a very gentle slope. With an average slope of just 0.5 degrees even at its steepest northern side, this “mountain” looks nothing like the ones we have here on the Earth!

In reality, until 2007 Alba Mons (Latin for “white mountain”) used to be called Alba Patera (Latin for “white saucer”) because of the white clouds found around the volcanic craters of the mountain. Today, Alba Patera refers only to the two calderas (hollowed out regions found on top of volcanoes after an eruption), the larger of which is more than 100 kilometres wide. They are relatively shallow though - only about one kilometre deep! Curved fault lines, called Tantalus Fossae and Alba Fossae, run on the eastern and western sides of the volcano. We can also find evidence of lava flows and surface water run-off around it.

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If you focus a telescope on the Red Planet on a clear Martian “sol,” you will see near its centre, a dark scar stretching over nearly half its face. This is Valles Marineris, the largest canyon system on Mars.

In Latin its name means “Mariner valley.” But Valles Marineris is quite unlike any of the river valleys we see on the Earth. Nearly seven kilometres deep, it surpasses the world’s deepest gorge, the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in Tibet, China, by close to a kilometre. At certain points it may be as deep as 10 kilometres, and as wide as 200 kilometres! It is also more than 4,000 kilometres long; this is nearly double the distance between Kochi and Delhi! For comparison, the famous Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA, is only 446 kilometres long, 29 kilometres at its widest and 1.9 kilometres at its deepest.

Valles Marineris runs below the Martian equator on the eastern side of the Tharsis bulge and Chryse Planitia, a circular plain where the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Viking 1 spacecraft landed in 1976. This fascinating canyon system is made up of a number of chasmata (its singular form is chasma), or deep and steep-sided fractures on the Martian surface. It starts with a chaotic system (a rough terrain with cracks, ridges and plains mixed together) on the east, and ends in a region of crisscrossing valleys, called Noctis Labyrinthus, on its west.

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When dust storms rage around Mars, they cover the globe in a rusty haze, blocking the planet from our view. But when the dust starts settling, what do we get to see first? The majestic peak of the tallest mountain on the planet! Meet Olympus Mons, a shield volcano, and the largest volcano in our solar system!

Simply put, a “shield” volcano is one that looks like an ancient warrior’s round shield. It is wider rather than tall, and has very gentle slopes. This is because the lava erupting out of this volcano is not very thick. It keeps flowing down the sides, and the volcano gradually grows wider over the years.

It probably took Olympus Mons more than a billion years to reach its present size. Spread over an area of 300,000 square kilometres, Olympus Mons is almost as big as our state of Maharashtra! Its volume is almost 100 times that of the biggest volcano on the Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

The average slope of Olympus Mons is only about three degrees. This means that to climb to a point just one metre higher on the mountain you will have to walk a little more than 20 metres! Imagine climbing to its summit which is almost 21 kilometres above the Martian surface!

Even the tallest mountain on our planet, Mount Everest in the China-Nepal border, is only 8.8 kilometres high.

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The short answer is - yes! In fact, Mars was volcanically very active around three to four billion years ago. The largest volcano discovered in our entire solar system is also said to be found on Mars!

Most of the major, known volcanoes are concentrated in two areas of the planet - Tharsis and Elysium volcanic regions. With a diameter that is roughly 4,000 kilometres, Tharsis bulge is by far the biggest volcanic region on Mars. It is home to 12 large volcanoes, including Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons. Together, these three volcanoes standing in a line on the crest of the bulge is known as the Tharsis Montes. (“Mons” is a Latin word meaning “mountains,” and its plural is “Montes.”)

On the western side of the Tharsis bulge we can find Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain and volcano on Mars; and on its northern side, Alba Mons, or Alba Patera, the largest volcano on the planet in terms of area covered. Compared to the Tharsis region, the Elysium is smaller - it is only about 2,000 km wide. Its three main volcanoes are Elysium Mons, Hecates Tholus and Albor Tholus. (In Latin, “tholus” means a “dome.”) It was in the Elysium region that scientists found the “youngest” volcanic deposits on the planet, indicative of Mars having had volcanic activity as recently as 53,000 years ago!

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Somewhere around four billion years ago, volcanism started picking up on Mars. Scientists say that most part of the Tharsis bulge, the largest volcanic region in Mars, must have formed by 3.7 Gya (in Geology, Gya means Giga years ago, or billion years ago). But this was by no means the end of volcanic activity in the region, or on the planet. Lava and ash from newer eruptions continued to bury the older volcanoes over the years - it is said that the base of certain smaller, but ancient, volcanoes in the Tharsis region, called Tharsis tholi, lie about four kilometres below the current Martian surface! Intense volcanic activity on Mars continued till about 3 billion years ago, which was then followed by smaller isolated eruptions. It was believed until recently that volcanoes on Mars are presently inactive.

But thanks to the photographs taken by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express Orbiter in 2004, scientists have evidence that Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars, erupted somewhere between 1.1- and 2 million years ago. This meant that the mountain was quite young, in geological terms, and may still be active! More exciting news came this year with scientists finding a dark area in the Elysium region of Mars, something that might be a relatively fresh volcanic deposit of ash and rock. Based on this, scientists now believe that the Red Planet may have been volcanically active as recently as 53,000 years ago!

Picture Credit : Google