What is the tallest tree?

The tallest trees are the California Redwoods.  The tallest towers some 366 feet in height. 

In the magnificent redwood forests along the Pacific Coast from Central California to southern Oregon you can look up at the world’s tallest trees.  The tips of the loftiest redwoods tower more than 350 feet above the ground.  The tallest is about 366 feet high!  It is believed to be the tallest of all living things. 

The trunks of these massive trees are often 12 or more feet across, with reddish-brown bark a foot thick.  Their lowest branches may be 100 feet above ground. 

Some are more than 1,000 years old.  This means they were fully grown long before Columbus arrived in America.  These giant trees have great market value.  The soft, reddish wood is valued for its resistance to decay and insect enemies. 

A single tree may yield enough lumber to build five houses. – Dick Rogers

What is a Spanish moss?

SPANISH MOSS IS AN AIR PLANT THAT CAN BE SEEN IN SOME SOUTHERN STATES HANGING IN LONG, GRAY STREAMERS FROM TREES. 

Spanish moss is a plant that can be seen hanging in long, gray streamers from the limbs of trees in the cypress swamps of the South.  It is not really a moss at all, but an air plant that belongs to the pineapple family. 

Spanish moss spends its entire life perched in trees.  Unlike mistletoe, a plant that steals its food from the tree it grows on, Spanish moss lives entirely upon what it can get out of the air. 

The only help it needs from the host tree is to be lifted up into the sunlight. 

It has no roots.  It’s long, slender stems and leaves, which look like hair hanging from the trees, are covered with scaly hairs that take in water and food from the moist air.  It has tiny yellow flowers, but not many people notice them. 

The seeds are formed in tiny pods.  When these open, the seeds are carried by the wind.  Some find a perch and can start growing.  Spanish moss is sometimes dried and used to stuff furniture.  – Dick Rogers

How many bones do I have in my body?

THE HUMAN SKELETON IS MADE UP OF ABOUT 200 SEPARATE BONES.

Like a building, your body, your body is supported by a firm framework.

This framework is made of bone and is called a skeleton.  It is made up of about 206 separate bones.

Human Skeleton

Sixty-four of these bones are in your hands and arms alone.  Oddly enough, a baby may have as many as 350 bones.  As a child grows older, some bones grow together to form single bones.

Your bones grow in different shapes and sizes.  Some are long and tubular, like an arm or leg bone.  They can be flat, like the bones in your head and hips, or ring-shaped like the bones in your spine.

Your biggest bones are your strong thighbones.  Your smallest bones are the three tiny bones in the inner ear.

Joints between most bones allow your body to bend and twist.  The bones are held together at the joints by bands of tough tissue called ligaments.

Your muscles pull on the bones and make them move when you walk or run. – Dick Rogers

What is hieroglyphic writing?

Hieroglyphic writing is a kind of ancient Egyptian writing in which picture characters stand for objects, words and sounds.

Several thousand years ago the Egyptians wrote a kind of writing called “hieroglyphic” (pronounced hy er oh GLIF ik), from two Greek words meaning “sacred carving.” 

  

Hieroglyphics Writing

At first glance hieroglyphic writing looks like picture writing.  There are pictures of men and women birds, animals and many other objects.   But it is not true picture writing.   

In some cases the pictures stood for words and sounds, not for the things in the picture.   A picture of the sun might stand for “day” or “heat,” for example.   

Many pictures and songs stood for single word sounds, just as our letters do.  A picture of a hand might stand for the so8und of “d,” and owl for “m,” and so on.   

In this manner, the Egyptian could write down any words they knew.   The direction of the writing varied, sometimes it went from left to right, but more often it read from right to left. – Dick Rogers

Why do we have two sets of teeth?

Sets of Teeth

Our second set of teeth are stronger replacements for the smaller baby teeth as the jaws change and crow bigger.

Everyone grows two sets of teeth:  a first (primary), or baby teeth, and a second, or permanent set.  Nature has given us two sets.  Teeth small enough for a child would be too little for use by an adult.

When we are born we have, hidden in our jaws, the beginning of all our teeth.  Our first set of teeth begin to push up through the gums when we are about 6 months old.  Most of us have all our baby teeth at the age of 2 ½ or 3.

In the meantime, our second set is forming in the jaws.  At about the age of 6 our baby teeth become loose and fall out, and permanent teeth grow in their place.  As the jaws grow larger, more teeth push, up until finally we have our full set of 32 permanent teeth.

The last four teeth are slow to grow.  They do not push up until we are nearly grown up.  Bu that time we are supposed to have gained some wisdom, so these last teeth are called “wisdom teeth.” – Dick Rogers

Why does Venice have canals?

The City of Venice Italy was build on many small islands in the Arciatic Sea.  The canals that separate the islands are the streets of the city.  Perhaps there is no other city like Venice.  In Venice that streets are canals filled with water. 

City of Venice

Venice is an old and beautiful Italian city built on the sea.  The city stands on a cluster of small islands.  In between the islands are strips of the sea, and these are the famous canals of Venice. 

The biggest canal, called the Grand Canal, winds through the center of the city.  The buildings which line the canals are built on piles, or posts, sunk deep in the mud. 

Motor launches and graceful Venetian boats called gondolas carry people along the many canals.  When not in use, the boats are moored to posts that resemble big peppermint sticks.

At one time, Venice was a rich trading port.  Now, much trade goes to other ports.   But Venice is still famous as a historic center of art and architecture, and for its canals and gondolas.  – Dick Rogers

Why does the leaning Tower of Pisa lean?

The tower leans because it is slowly sinking in the soft ground.  The Leaning Tower of Pisa is a famous bell tower at Pisa, Italy.  The tower tips so far to one side that it looks as though it would fall over.  But it has been leaning for over 600 years!

Tower of Pisa

Why does it lean?  Of course, it wasn’t supposed to lean when it was built.  Yet it began to lean long before it was finished.

Builders began to work on the tower in 1174.  The stone foundation was not built on time enough ground to support the heavy marble tower and it began to sink unevenly into the soft soil.

But the builders went on adding story after story until the tower was 180 feet tall.  Since it was finished it has leaned a little more as the years went by.

Even today little by little the tower continues to tilt more each year.  It is now leans over 17 feet to one side.  Some people estimated that the tower will topple over within the next 100 years. – Dick Rogers

What is pollen?

Pollen

The tiny yellow grains that are found in flowers are pollen.  The flowers use it in making the seeds that will grow into new plants.  

Plants make the pollen in the saclike anothers of their flowers.  Pollen grains are so small that they look like tiny specks.

If you look through a microscope, you can see that pollen has different shapes in different kinds of plants.  Some pollen grains are smooth and other kinds of pollen are covered with knobs and spines.  Before a seed can form, a flower must be pollinated.  This means that a pollen grain must fall on another part of the flower called stigma.

When a pollen grain of the same kind of flower catches on the sticky surface of the stigma, the pollen grains sends out a tiny threadlike tube.  The tube grows down to tiny egg cell inside the seed case.  Now the eggs are fertilized and will become a seed. – Dick Rogers