What is a heat lightning?

Heat lighting is the flashes of light produced by distant electrical storms.  The flashes of lightning occur too far away for thunder to be heard.

Sometimes, on warm summer evenings, we see so-called “heat lightning”—silent flashes of light in the distant sky.  Heat lightning is really light from a flash of chain lightning that takes place beyond the horizon.  Chain, or forked, lightning is the lightning you see zig-zagging across the sky in any thunderstorm.

We just don’t hear heat lightning’s thunder because we are too far away.  We don’t see the lightning either.  We see its light reflected from high clouds.  Lightning is a big electric spark that spears its way across the sky.  During a thunderstorm, electrical charges are built up in the clouds.  If the charges become great enough, a flash of lightning occurs.

As the lightning flashes across the sky, it quickly heats the air in its path.  The heated air expands (spreads out) rapidly and sets a great sound wave in motion which we hear a few moments later as thunder.

What are icebergs?

Icebergs are large, floating chunks of ice that have broken off from glaciers,  to drift about in the ocean.  Icebergs are the broken-off end of glaciers that tumble into the water and drift out into the sea.  The biggest are huge, floating blocks of ice that weigh several million tons.  Some are a mile or more across and tower hundreds of feet above the surface.

An iceberg floating in the sea does not look nearly as big as it really is.  About seven-eighths of it is below the water, out of sight.  Icebergs are made up of fresh water ice, since they are formed on land from snowfalls.  Their white color is caused by tiny bubbles of air trapped in the ice.

Ocean currents often carry icebergs hundreds of mile out to sea before they melt and finally disappear.

In 1912, a large ocean liner, the Titanic, struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean and sand, with a great loss of life.  Since that time, the United States Coast Guard has patrolled the North Atlantic shipping lanes, warning ships of the location of large icebergs.

What Are Windmills Used For?

Windmill

A windmill is a machine that uses the power of the wind for pumping water and generating electric power.  A windmill is a machine that uses the power of the wind to do work of some kind.  In the United States, windmills are generally to be found on farms where they serve as a cheap source or power for pumping water from wells and driving electric generators for electric power.

The kind of windmill commonly used to bump well water has a big wheel with several blades.  It is usually mounted on tail tower so that the blades will catch the full force of the win.  A tall vane acts as a rudder and keeps the wheel facing into the wind.

By the means of gears, the turning wheel provides the power to work a pump, a small electric generator, or to do some other useful job.  Of course, a windmill is not of any use unless there is enough wind to turn it.  Today, many farmers don’t use windmills to get water from their wells.  They use electric pumps to do the work because they are more dependable.-Dick Rogers

What is a shooting star?

Shooting stars are tiny meteors that glow white hot when they hurtle from out of space into the earth’s atmosphere. 

If you look up at the sky long enough on a dark, clear night, you may see the fiery streak of a “shooting star” flash across the sky. 

Shooting Star

While “shooting star” may be a pretty name, it is not accurate, for real stars are great glowing balls of gases far out in space.

The “shooting stars” that streaks across the sky are bits of rock and metal called meteors.  Many billions of meteors zip around through space.

Many of them come so close that they are captured by earth’s gravity, and are pulled toward earth.  As the speeding meteors hurtle into the earth’s atmosphere, friction with the air causes them to glow white hot.  Then we see them as blazing trails of lights.

Meteors rarely blaze for more than a few seconds.  Most of those we see were originally no bigger than a grain of rice.  They usually burn up before they reach the ground.

Meteors that survive their fall and land on earth are called meteorites.-Dick Rogers

What does the inside of the earth look like?

Beneath the earth’s rocky crust are the hard mantel, hot liquid outer core, and the solid metal inner core.

Have you ever tried to dig a deep hole—maybe all the way to the other side of the world?  Of course, you could dig only a few feet.  But suppose you could dig a hole straight to the center of the earth.  What would you find on the way?

Earth

First comes the crust, or rocky “skin,” that covers the earth.  This may be about 30 miles thick in some places.  As we go down into this crust, we find that it  begins to get hotter and hotter.  At two miles below the surface of the earth, the temperature is hot enough to boil water.   Next comes a layer of hard, black rock, about 1,800 miles thick.  Inside this layer is the earth’s core.  The core seems to be a kind of super-hot liquid metal.

Scientists think that in the center of this core there lies a ball-shaped inner core of solid metal, which forms the very center of the earth itself.  We have been able to find out about the inside of the earth by studying earthquakes.  Probably we will never get to look at the earth’s core, but someday we will know more about it.-Dick Rogers

What makes the ring around the moon?

The ring around the moon or sun is caused when the rays of light are bent and reflected by clouds of ice crystals high in the sky.  A big, shining ring of light sometimes appears around the moon.  The ring is not really around the moon—it only seems to be:

The “ring around the moon” is caused when the moon shines on clouds of tiny ice crystals high in the sky.  The ice crystals bend and reflect the moonlight to make a halo, or circle of light.  Sometimes two bright spots, that look like a little moons, can be seen in the halo.  They are called “moon dogs.”  We can sometimes see a halo around the sun, and we can also see “sun  dogs,” as the sun shines through clouds of ice crystals.

Haloes are often seen in Arctic regions.  These colored rings are generally red on the inside, then orange, yellow and white on the outside.  When you see a ring around the moon or sun, it usually means that a storm is coming.  Smaller haloes sometimes appear around the moon of sun when light rays are bent and reflected by clouds of droplets.-Dick Rogers

What Is A Minotaur?

Minotaur

The Minotaur of Greek legend was a man-eating monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man.

The Minotaur (pronounced MIN O TAWR) was a mythical monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man.

One of the myths of ancient Greece told that King Minos of Crete, an island in the Mediterranean Sea, kept the Minotaur imprisoned in a labyrinth—a winding maze of passageways from which no one could escape.

It happened that Androgeos, son of King Minos, was killed by the people in a town in Greece.  As a punishment King Minos sacrificed seven Greek youths and seven maidens each year to the Minotaur (who ate them).

The Greek hero Theseus, at last, killed the Minotaur and escaped from the labyrinth by following a thread.

Nowadays, we do not believe in myths.  But there probably was a King Minos.  And it so happens that the ruins of an ancient palace on the island of Crete has so many winding passageways that it resembles the legendary labyrinth!–Dick Rogers