DIU Activities > Alumni
Sharpen Your General Knowledge
Shamim Ansary:
What Is Temperature?
emperature is a quantitative measure of hotness.
In many substances, temperature is proportional to the thermal energy in the object, but the relationship between temperature and energy depends on many factors.
Shamim Ansary:
How Did the Minute Originate and Why Are There Sixty Seconds In a Minute and Sixty Minutes In an Hour?
Around 2400 BC, the ancient Sumerians, who used six as their mathematical base, divided a circle into 360 degrees, with each degree subdivided into another 60 parts, and so on.
The Romans called these units minute prima, or first small part, and secunda minuta, or second small part.
This system was perfect for round clock faces, and that’s why we use minutes and seconds as divisions of time.
In ancient astronomy, a minute can also mean a unit of time equal to 1/60th of a day, or 24 minutes.
Shamim Ansary:
How Many People Have Died From Volcanoes In the Past 500 Years and How Do Volcanoes Affect Life On Earth?
At least 300,000 people worldwide have died as result of volcanic activity since 1500, and many more lost their homes.
Scientists estimate that volcanoes pose a risk to about 500 million people today.
It has been suggested that volcanic activity contributed to the Permian-Triassic and Late Devonian mass extinctions, among others.
One of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth’s geological history which formed the Siberian Traps, continued for a million years and is considered to be the cause of the “Great Dying†about 250 million years ago.
The Permian–Triassic extinction event is estimated to have killed 90% of species existing on earth at the time.
Gas emissions from volcanoes are a natural contributor to acid rain.
Volcanic eruptions also throw ash into the atmosphere which pose a hazard to flying aircraft, especially jet aircraft that have turbine blades which are easily damaged by ash particles.
The 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull caused major disruptions to air travel in Europe.
Shamim Ansary:
What Causes the Different Shapes of Volcanoes?
A volcano’s shape is determined by the type of eruption, the environment (other rock formations in the area and their chemical makeup), and the makeup of the volcanic materials.
Explosive eruptions may blow off the tops of volcanoes in a flash, while gentle flows of lava build sloping cones over long periods of time.
Volcanoes vary in shape and in how they erupt. Eruptions can be slow, as in volcanoes in Hawaii, or they can happen very suddenly, like a Pelean eruption.
Shamim Ansary:
What Is the Slowest Growing Plant In the World and Where Does the Saguaro Cactus Come From?
In general, cactus plants are the slowest growing plants on earth.
One kind of cactus, the saguaro, grows just one inch in the first ten years of its life.
The saguaro cactus doesn’t grow a branch until it’s 16 years old, and after that, it grows just an inch a year.
But some pine trees that live very far north in the cold Arctic or very high up on a mountain can grow even slower than a cactus.
One tree, a Sitka spruce, growing in the Arctic, grew only 11 inches in 98 years.
The saguaro doesn’t begin to flower until it’s about 60 years old.
The saguaro cactus can be found in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, in Baja California, and the Mexican state of Sonora.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version