How do gliders fly?

Gliders soar across the sky by riding on air currents.  Airplanes without engines are called gliders.  They are very light, with long, slender wings.

A glider can glide downhill on air.  It also can soar  upward on rising wind and heat currents in the air.

These updrafts are caused by warm air that rises upward from sun-heated plains.  In hilly land, up currents can come from wind that rises up a hillside.  There are also rising currents in large, puffy clouds.

When a glide pilot finds a rising current of air, he sets the rising air push his light glider upward.  Then no glides downhill until he finds another rising current.

A good glider pilot can soar aloft for many hours.  In flight, gliders are controlled like regular airplanes.

Most gliders are launched by pulling them into the air like kites at the end of a long line towed by automobiles or airplanes.

Once aloft, the glider unhooks and is trees to sail without power on the air currents. – Dick Rogers

What is pond life?

Pond LIfe

Pond life is made up of many kinds of plants and animals that live in a community in or near a pond.  

A small pond may look like a quiet place.  But if you look carefully, you may see that the pond is really a little world of its own.

In spring and summer the pond is teeming  with many kinds of plant and animal life.

Water striders skate over the surface of the pond, while near shore, a crayfish grabs and eats a worm.  Later it, too, becomes a meal for bass or a wading bird.

Small, fish-like frogs (called tadpoles); water beetles and snails are also found in many ponds.

On some pond surfaces, the nectar-filled pond lily is the delight of the bee.  Frogs and dragonflies use its pads for resting platforms.

As winter nears, pond life become less active.

In the North, frogs and turtles spend the winter buried in the muddy bottom of the pond and only a few pond creatures stir under the ice. – Dick Rogers

How did April Fools’ Day start?

April Fools' Day

The custom of playing jokes on April 1^st may have come from an old Hindu spring festival in which people were sent on foolish errands.

The first day of April is a fun day—April Fools’ Day.  On this day people day play silly harmless jokes on their friends.  The victim is called an “April Fool.”

No one knows how the idea of April Fools’ Day began, but we do know that people have played pranks on that day for hundreds of years.

Some people think that they custom came from an ancient spring festival held on that day, in which people were sent on foolish errands just for the fun of teasing them.

Still another idea is that April Fools’ Day began a long time ago when New Year’s Day was on April 1^st.  When New Year’s Day was changed to Jan. 1, some people forgot and still celebrated at the old time.  So they were called April fools.

In France a person who has a joke played on him on April 1 is call an “April fish.”

If a joke is played on you in England on April Fools’ Day you are called a “noodle.” – Dick Rogers

How did the navel orange get its name?

The navel orange gets its name from the small second fruit, resembling a navel, embedded in one end of the main fruit.

You will know the navel orange by its bright golden color and by the curious formation, like a tiny orange, growing at the end opposite the stem.

Navel Orange

The navel orange is really two oranges in one.  A small second fruit that does not fully develop is embedded in one end of the main fruit.

It produces a hollow that resembles a navel—the hollow in the middle of an abdomen or belly.

Other types of oranges sometimes produce double fruits, but navel oranges do so regularly.

Navel oranges grow on trees with shiny leaves that stay green all year.

The trees produce many beautiful, white, fragrant blossoms.  The orange are picked when fully, ripe.  Navel oranges are popular eating oranges because they are normally seedless.  To grow new seedless trees nurserymen graft stem buds from an adult navel orange tree onto the young rootstock of other citrus trees. – Dick Rogers

Who was Aesop?

Aesop

According to legend, Aesop was a Greek author of fables in ladybird which animals acted like people.  Each story taught a lesson.

Perhaps you know the stories about the goose that laid the golden egg, the lion and the mouse, or the tortoise and the hare.

According to legend, these and many other well-loved fables were told by a marvelous storyteller named Aesop (pronounced EE sop).  Aesop is supposed to have lived long ago in Greece.

Not much is known about Aesop’s life.  Tradition says that he was once a slave, ugly and deformed in body.  But he had a brilliant mind, and he enjoyed telling fables in which animals acted and talked like human beings.  Each fable was a short story made up to teach people a lesson about life.  Aesop’s wisdom so impressed his master that he was freed.

In Aesop’s fables, moral lessons and bits of wisdom are taught in such a delightful way that they have been handed down from generation to generation.  Aesop’s many fables have been translated into almost every language in the world. - Dick Rogers

What makes the wind blow?

Wind Blow

Wind is caused chiefly by the uneven heating of the earth by the sun.  All winds, from gentle breezes that rustle leaves to raging hurricanes, are caused chiefly by the uneven heating of the earth by the sun.

When the air near the ground gets hot, it expands or swells.  This makes it lighter, and light air rises.

As it rises, cooler, heavier air flows in to take its place.  This movement of air makes a wind.

When the air moves slowly, we call it a breeze.  When it moves fast and strong, we may call it a gale or a hurricane.

If you live by the seashore, for instance, you may feel a cool sea breeze on a warm day.

During the day, the land becomes warmer than the sea and so does the air above it.  As the warmer, lighter land air rises, cool winds blow in from the sea to take its place.

All night the land cools more rapidly than the sea, and the breeze is reversed.  It blows out to sea.

What is true in your area is true on a larger scale of the big winds that blow over the earth.

A wind gets its name from the direction it comes from.  A north wind, for example, is one coming from the North blowing toward the South. – Dick Rogers

When did dentistry begin?

The first school for dentists was founded in 1840.  Dentistry, the art and science of treating disease of the teeth and the parts of the mouth, is rather new.

There were no real dentists with about 250 years ago.  But people needed dentists for many centuries before that.

In ancient times, there was not too much knowledge concerning the teeth and how to treat them.  Magic was often called on to cure a toothache.

In ancient Greece, about 2,500 years ago, there were “dentists” who pulled teeth.  But they usually pulled only loose teeth.

During the Middle Ages barbers took over the pulling of teeth.  It was not until 1840 that dentistry became a profession.

To be a dentist today, a person must study for several years and take an examination in order to receive a license to practice.

After a dentist’s name one often and the letters “DDS.”  There stand for “Doctor of Dental Science (or Surgery).” – Dick Rogers

How does a radio work?

A radio changes the radio waves sent out by a broadcasting station back into sound waves that we can hear.  When you listen to a radio, you may wonder how the sounds get to your radio from the broadcasting station.

The answer is that your radio picked up the sounds in the form of radio waves.  You can’t see or hear radio waves, but they move through the air around you all the time.

Radio

At a broadcasting station a microphone changes the ordinary sound waves of voices or music into electrical signals.

A transmitter, or sender, changes the electrical signals into radio waves and sends them out into the air in all directions from a tall, broadcasting antenna.

When radio waves strike the antenna inside your radio, the antenna turns the radio waves back into weak electrical signals again.  The radio makes these weak signals much stronger.

Finally, the loudspeaker changes the electrical signals back into sound waves, and you hear a copy of the sounds made at the broadcasting station. - Dick Rogers

Why did pirates fly the Jolly Roger flag?

Pirates have always fascinated many people.  They love to read tales of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and other bold and wicked pirates.

Pirates of long ago swarmed over merchant ships on the high seas to rob them of their treasure.

Jolly Roger Flag

Because piracy is against the laws  of all nations, early day pirates could be tried in all countries and punished.

Therefore, pirates in the past flew the flag of no nation, but defiantly flew their own flag.  Their flag was the Jolly Roger—the black flag of piracy, with its white skull and crossbones.

Just before they attacked a ship, they raised the Jolly Roger to “strike terror on” everyone who saw it.

There are many stories of buried pirate treasure.  Some pirates did bury chests of treasure in secret places that they were never able to come back to and get.  Many people have looked for pirates’ treasure and a few have found some. - Dick Rogers

Why do woodpeckers peck on wood?

When a woodpecker pecks, it is usually searching for insects that are living in the bark of the tree.  When a woodpecker pecks, it may be searching for food, it may be digging out a nest, or it may be drumming out a “song” to its mate.

Woodpecker

Most kinds of woodpeckers are our good friends.  They eat insects that harm trees.  Using its strong, sharp bill, the woodpecker digs out insects that are living in the cracks in the bark of trees.

In the springtime a woodpecker calls to its mat by drumming out a tattoo on a dry limb or the roof of a house with its strong bill.  

Woodpeckers make holes in the trunks of trees for their nests.  They leave chips of wood on the bottom to cushion the white eggs.

The California woodpecker stores acorns in holes that it drills.  The woodpecker is not storing the acorns to eat.  A small worm has bored into each acorn.  Later, the woodpecker will return to feast on the fattened worms.

Only a few woodpeckers sometimes harm trees.  The unwelcomed ones are the sapsuckers.  As their name indicates, the drill rows of holes in the bark of trees and drink the sap as it drips from the holes. - Dick Rogers