The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Science
The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Curiosities and wonders; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Questions and answers; Science -- Miscellanea; Technology -- Miscellanea
But, say you, sometimes the water in the ocean is dark green, and yet
the sky is never green. Quite true, and I will try to tell you what
produces the green color. This happens sometimes where the water is
shallow, either near the shore or out further where there is a sandbar
or other shallow place. Sometimes at such points the sunlight strikes
the water at such an angle that the rays go clear to the bottom and are
reflected from that point--the bottom--to our eyes. In such a case the
light will be changed through a combination of the color of the bottom
at that point and the color of the sky itself at the time to make the
color green as it is reflected to our eyes from the bottom.
Why Does Water Run?
Water runs because it has not enough of anything in it to make it stick
together.
In school language we call this sticking-together-thing “cohesion.”
The principle of cohesion makes all the difference there is, so to
speak, between solids, liquids and gases. A brick, a stone, a stick
of wood, or a piece of iron and all other solid substances have a
certain amount of this property of cohesion, and the particles stick
together, enabling us to build buildings and other things which become
permanent structures. These solid substances are either naturally
cohesive or else man, as in the case of the brick, has brought together
certain things with little or no cohesion and made them stick together
permanently. In the case of the brick, he takes a quantity of clay,
which is cohesive only to a certain degree, bakes it in an oven and
it becomes hard enough--more cohesive--so that he can pile one on top
of the other and make a building. Then he puts sand, mixed with other
things--lime and water--between the bricks to hold the bricks together,
and makes a structure that will last. Two bricks have no natural
cohesion for each other and, therefore, they can only be held together
by something that has cohesion within itself and also for the bricks.
The lime, sand and water make mortar which is cohesive when properly
mixed, while in themselves neither lime nor sand have much cohesive
property, and water has none at all.
Liquids have little or no cohesion. Water has none, or very little.
Syrup has a good deal more, but will run over the edge of a piece of
bread and butter if you are not careful.
Gases have no cohesive properties at all and, therefore, fly all over
the place, through any opening they can find, either at the top of the
room or under the crack of the door. They are always trying to get to
some place else and will keep moving as long as not confined. Gases can
move in any direction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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