Science & Mathematics Questions & Answers

Kilocalories are commonly known as calories and abbreviated as kcal. One calorie (Kcal) has the same energy value as 4.186 kilojoules (kJ), while one kilojoule is equivalent to 0.24 calories. One calorie contains the amount of energy that raises the temperature of one litre of water by 1 degree Celsius.

The sepals of a flowers protect it while it is in bud. The flower is really a kind of shoot, in which the leaves have been altered so that they can take on the task of producing seeds. In a simple flower these leaves are arranged in circles, called whorls. The outermost are five green, leaf-shaped sepals. Inside these are …

The smell in flowers comes form the special oils that are produced in the petals, as the plant grows. When this oil evaporates, which it does very easily, it gives off a fragrance which we can smell. Various combinations of chemicals in the oil of different flowers result in a variety of fragrances. Some are pleasant sweet smells, like those …

Recently I went to the top of a skyscraper in a lift. After I had gone up a few stories, I felt a funny sensation in my ears. My eardrums seemed like they were growing and were about to burst. As I went a little higher, the sensation was worse. My fellow passengers in the lift told me to swallow …

The human eye uses light to see. Light bounces off our surroundings and into our eye through our pupil, the black hole at the center. A picture forms on our retina, the lining at the back of the eye. Our brain makes sense out of what we see. Without light, there is nothing to enter our retina and therefore we …

There are some things in nature that have a great capacity to toss back or reflect a great deal of the sun’s light that falls on them. One of them is snow. Newly formed snow reflects about 90 per cent of the sunlight that falls upon it. This means that the sun is powerless to melt clean snow. And when …

The term ‘zodiac’ stands for animals. However, all zodiac signs do not represent animals, like Libra is represented by a balance. Astrologically and astronomically, zodiac signs are representative of various pattern formed by stars. Ancient astronomers had named each zodiac by the shape formed by a few important and bright stars resembling the shape of animals, located in that section …

A virus has a very simple composition. It has a protein sheath inside which there is a strand of DNA. A virus shows some properties akin to living organisms. However, unlike other organisms, they show some properties that are akin to non-living things. They can undergo crystallization and in that form, survive for billions of years. They can survive very …

Only very rarely are the seas completely still. These were the times that sailors on the old sailing ships feared the most – even more than they feared the worst storms. They became becalmed, which meant that no wind was blowing to fill the great sails to carry them to their next port of call. The sea would be motionless …

People who gazed at the skies in ancient times believed that they could see the shapes of animals and peoples traced out in the stars. These star groups, or constellations, have the Latin names of the shapes, and astronomers use the names in identifying stars. But the stars in a constellation do not belong to any actual group in space …