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Dear Reader,
First of all, let us take this opportunity of thanking you being part of the Zeal Education family. We are sure that
you would have enjoyed the product as much as we enjoyed designing it for you! Please remember, if you have any
doubts or questions, just email us at ignite.kits@gmail.com or at zeal‐edu@rediffmail.com!
We are very excited about February, because of two exciting programs. We are having a 2‐day exhibition in
Gurgaon, Haryana, the first exhibition outside Gujarat. Also, we are having a very exciting Science Day celebration
on 23 Feb, at the Ahmedabad Management Association, Ahmedabad. As you may know, Sir C V Raman discovered
the Raman Effect on 28 Feb 1928 and that day has been celebrated as Science Day in our country. The entire week
is also called National Science Week and there are celebrations all over the country. Look out for details of our
programs soon!
This is the latest issue of our newsletter, where we will discuss one of our products in some detail. Please feel free
to email us for more information! The earlier issues are available for download on our website, http://zeal‐
kits.co.in/download.html.
We also have a special question and answer section on science and maths. At the present, we are using questions
that have been asked from us in the past. Do you have any questions to ask? Please email us your question, make
sure that you tell us your name, class and school! We will publish your questions with our answers as soon as
possible!
Finally, we have a special question of the month for you! Answer it correctly and you could win a nice prize!
B R Sitaram and B R Sandhya
Featured Product:
3D!
Those of you who have seen 3D movies like Avataar would have wondered how pictures can appear so realistic!
Basically, we can see in 3D because we have two eyes and our two eyes see the same scene from slightly different
angles. You can see this for yourself by doing a very simple experiment. Hold your finger in front of your eyes and
look at a distant scene. Close one eye and see where the finger appears to be relative to the background. Now
close the other eye. Do you see that the finger appears to move? This shows that what the left eye sees and what
the right eye sees are two different things. 3D exploits precisely this.
The basic idea of all 3D is to some how ensure that our two eyes see two different pictures. One common
technique, called anaglyph, uses two coloured filters, say red and cyan. The red filter is kept in front of the left eye
and the cyan in front of the right. When we look at a picture, the left eye sees only the red part of the picture while
the right eye sees only the cyan part. The brain then combines the two images and sees it as a single 3D image.
You can learn more about anaglyphs and other 3D techniques and even make your own 3D anaglyph glasses and
use it to look at hundreds of 3D images and videos. Our 3D kit comes along with a DVD that has more than 800
images and videos!
Excited? You can buy this product from our online store! It is priced at Rs. 300, including postage!
Experiment of the Month:
Bottle with a tap!
Here's a beautiful and simple experiment that you can do at home. It is inexpensive and lots of fun!
You will need:
) Bottle. Use a fairly stiff plastic bottle, not the ones used for water.
) A pin
Here’s what you do:
1. Make a small hole in the bottom of the bottle using the pin.
2. Enlarge the hole using the nib of a ball point pen.
3. Fill the bottle with water, holding your finger on the hole.
4. Close the bottle with the cap and remove your finger from the hole.
5. What do you see? Does the water come out?
6. Open the cap a little. Does the water come out? Can you control how much water is coming out?
7. What happens if you use a flexible bottle like a water bottle instead of a stiff bottle?
Here’s what's happening:
When you closed the cap, there was no way for air to enter the bottle. Now, water can leave the bottle only if
something else (in this case air) can take its place. Closing the cap meant this cannot happen, so the water stayed
in the bottle.
When you opened the tap, you allowed some air to enter. As soon as this happened, water started flowing out.
The amount of water that flows out depends on how much air is allowed inside, so you can use the cap as a tap!
Your Question, our Answer
Q: How old is the Earth?
A: This question is very simple to answer: look up the Internet and you will be told that it is about 4,500,000,000
years old (4 ½ billion years or 450 crore years). The answer, however, is not very meaningful. How much is 4 ½
billion years? How do I understand such a huge number?
There are several ways of trying to understand (or imagine) such large numbers. One way is called making a
timeline. A timeline converts time into distances, which are easier to imagine and compare. Let us begin with a
time period that we are familiar with. We could start with a year, but it will be better to start with something
slightly larger, say 10 years. Do you remember what happened 10 years ago in your life? Let us say you got a prize
on your school that year or came first in the class or your parents got you a cycle… I am sure you can think of some
such event.
Let us now draw a line, maybe on the playground, and mark two points on it, 1 cm apart. One point will represent
today and the other 10 years ago. Let us say you are 15 years old. Where would you mark the year you were born?
1 ½ cm from today, as 10 years is represented by 1 cm, so 15 years is 1 ½ cm. You can start marking other points:
the year your mom was born, the year your dad was born, etc. Here's what the time line may look like:
This timeline shows a 100 years of time and is 10 cm long. If I continue drawing the timeline, how long should I
make it before I reach 4 ½ billion years? Will it be as large as a scale? Can I draw it on the black board? Should I
draw it on the playground?
It is easy to find out the answer: since 10 years is 1 cm, 4,500,000,000 years will be 450,000,000 cm. That is not
convenient to use, but we can use bigger units than cm. Since 100 cm = 1m, this distance is the same as 4,500,000
m; that is also too large, so we can use an even bigger unit, a km, which is 1000 m. The distance then comes out to
be 4500 km! If you live in Ahmedabad, and you wish to draw such a line, the other end of the line will lie beyond
Singapore!!! (Of course, to draw the line, you would have to travel across the Bay of Bengal! How do you draw a
line across the sea?) There is no way you can represent such a time line even on a playground! That should give
you some idea about how old the Earth is, in comparison with us!
It would be an interesting idea to make a timeline in your school. Maybe a timeline about your own life (use 1 cm =
1 year)? Or the history of your city (Use 1 cm = 10 years or 1 cm = 50 years, depending on how old your city is)? Do
share the result with us!
Question of the Month:
The Mars Orbiter Mission is on its way
to Mars. Where does it get its fuel
from? After all, we need a full tank of
petrol or diesel to just travel a few
hundred kilometres and Mars is so far
away!
Email your answer to us at ignite.kits@gmail.com and you could win a prize!
Your email should have the subject as "QOM Jan 2014". Please do not forget to mention your name, age, class,
school and address!
We did not get any answers to last month's question, so we are continuing it for this month. Do try and reply! You
could win a free kit from us!