Monthly Archives: April, 2009
How did death valley get its name?
Death valley was named in 1849 but the survivors of a party of prospectors, many of whom died of heat and thirst while looking for gold in the valley. The hottest, driest and lowest place in the United States is Death Valley. Death Valley is a desert basin that lies mostly in Southern California. Death …
What are stars made of?
Stars are formed from gigantic masses of hot glowing gases. Hydrogen and helium are the most common gases in a star. In the clearest night sky you might see a few thousand stars with unaided eye. Every bright star is a sun, like our own sun. Scientists tell us that a star is a huge …
What is a heat lightning?
Heat lighting is the flashes of light produced by distant electrical storms. The flashes of lightning occur too far away for thunder to be heard. Sometimes, on warm summer evenings, we see so-called “heat lightning”—silent flashes of light in the distant sky. Heat lightning is really light from a flash of chain lightning that takes …
What are icebergs?
Icebergs are large, floating chunks of ice that have broken off from glaciers, to drift about in the ocean. Icebergs are the broken-off end of glaciers that tumble into the water and drift out into the sea. The biggest are huge, floating blocks of ice that weigh several million tons. Some are a mile or …
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