How did the moon get its craters?

Moon's Crater

The moon is the earth’s nearest neighbor.  Even a small telescope brings to view the many craters that pockmark the moon’s rugged surface.  Some are miles wide and thousands of feet deep.

Scientists believe that the craters were created by ancient volcanoes and by huge meteors crashing into the moon from space.  Rocky mountains and broad, dry plains also stretch across the moon’s pitted surface.  Long ago, people thought that the dark plains were seas and gave them such fanciful names as the Sea of Serenity and Bay of Rainbows.

The mountains are given such names as Alps, Pyrenees,  and Carpathians, after mountain ranges on the earth, while many of the craters are named for astronomers.

The bright areas of the moon are made by the high mountains ranges, which catch the sunlight better than the plains.

It is fun to imagine that the light and dark spots look like pictures.  Some people see the man in the moon. – Johnny Wonder

Photo courtesy:  hyperphysics.phy-astr

 

What are clouds made of?

Clouds

Pluffy dark clouds and fluffy white clouds—all clouds are made of the same thing.  They are made mostly of tiny droplets of water drifting about on currents of air.  Water to make clouds comes from oceans, lakes and streams.

Everywhere water is continually evaporating into the air in the form of an invisible gas called water vapor.  Often the water vapor is carried upward by currents of warm, rising air.

As the moist air rises it cools.  As it cools, some of the water vapor condenses, or changes back to liquid water, in the form of tiny droplets, like the ones you moist breath makes when it hits the cold air on a winter day.

Many millions of these droplets, too small to fall, cluster together and make up the clouds in the sky.

Sometimes a cloud looks fluffy and white because the sun is shining through it.  Storm clouds may look dark and gray because they are too thick to let much sunlight through.

Visual source:  reefed

What is a greenhouse?

Greenhouse

A greenhouse is a glass building to which flowers and other plants can be grown all year – even when the ground is white with snow.

No matter what the weather is like outside, it’s always just right for the plants inside a greenhouse.  The glass roof and walls let in just the right amount of sunlight and then keep the heat of the sunlight from escaping.

Most greenhouses are also equipped with heaters and airconditioners to supply warmth in the winter and cool the greenhouse in the summer, as well as sunlamps for artificial sunlight and water controls for the proper humidity (moisture in the air).

In the greenhouse, the atmosphere can be made to resemble a small tropical jungle or a hot, dry desert.

In some parts of the world people might never see such plants as orchids or giant farms if there were no greenhouses.

A small one enables the home gardener to grow fresh vegetables the year round.

Visual source:  clubalbuquerque

What makes a rainbow?

Rainbow

The colors in a rainbow are made by sunlight shining through raindrops in the air, which separate the light into the colors of the spectrum.  

A rainbow occurs at the end of a storm, when the sun begins to shine while the air is still filled with raindrops. 

When the sunlight passes through the millions of water drops in just the right way, the white light breaks up and scatters into the many colors of the spectrum. 

If you are looking in the direction of the drops, with the sun at your back, you will see a rainbow of color arched across the sky in beautiful bands of orange, yellow, green and blue, with red at the top of the arch and violet at the bottom. 

The colors bump to each other so that we rarely see more than four active colors in a rainbow. 

A rainbow disappears soon as there are no longer any raindrops.  You can make a rainbow yourself on a sunny day.  Turn the lawn sprinkler on.  Stand with your back to the sun and look at the spray.  You will be able to see a rainbow. – Johnny Wonder 

Visual courtesy:  missouriskies

Why do sunsets look red?

Beautiful Sunset

During the evening, when the sun is near the horizon we may see a beautiful sunset.  The reds and oranges of a sunset are caused by the filtering action of the sky. 

Sunlight, as we know, is made of many colors.  We can see the colors that make up sunlight when we look at a rainbow.  As sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the different colors are scattered by the air. 

During the day, when the sun is directly overhead, its rays do not have to travel through as much of the atmosphere to reach the earth.  The sunlight is scattered in such a way that we see more of the blue rays.  But at sunset, when the sun is low in the sky, the light rays must travel through much more of the earth’s atmosphere to reach the viewer. 

As a result, the shorter blue rays are soon scattered out and we can see more of the longer orange and red rays of sunlight – and we have a reddish sunset.  The red color of sunrise is caused the same way. 

Photo courtesy:  scienceblogs

What is a Rain Forest?

Rain Forest

A Rain Forest is a very dense and dark forest that grows in a land where the rainfall is very heavy.  A rain forest is a large, very thick forest in a land where rain is very heavy throughout the year.  The closely crowded trees need at least 80, and often much more, inches of rain each year.

 

Most rain forests grow near the equator.  Here it is warm all year round, and rain falls nearly every day.  The tall trees raise their leafy branches high above the ground.  The leaves are usually so crowded that little sunlight can filter through, and the forest is often dark.

 

The heavy rains wash much of the plant food from the surface soil.  As a result, the floor of a rain forest is often bare because smaller plants cannot grow in the dim light and poor soil.  Many people think of rain forests is jungles.

 

Jungle differs from tropical rain forests.  A dense carpeting of creepers, vines and undergrowth generally covers the ground in a jungle.  Some jungles have a few trees.  Dense jungles may grow in dry climates where rain forests can’t.  Jungles are among the least livable places on earth.  Poisonous plants, snakes and wild creatures live in them.

Photo courtesy:  igougod

“What makes the colors in a rainbow?”

Colorful Nature

A rainbow occurs at the end of a storm, when the sun begins to shine white the air is still filled with raindrops.  When the sunlight passes through the millions of water drops in just the right way, the white light breaks up and scatters into the many colors of the spectrum. 

If you are looking in the direction of the drops with the sun to your back you will see a rainbow of color arched across the sky in the beautiful bands of orange, red, green and blue, with red at the top of the arch and violet at the bottom. 

The colors blend into each other so that we rarely see more that four or five colors in a rainbow.  

A rainbow disappears as soon as there are no longer any raindrops in the air.  You can make a rainbow yourself on a sunny day.  Turn the lawn sprinkler on.  Stand with our back to the sun and look at the spray.  You should be able to see a rainbow. 

Photo courtesy:  digital-photography-school