Saturday, November 29, 2008

Colourful Corals

Attractive scars that bring beauty to the earth!!!!!

Coral reefs are some of the beautiful under water structures. They cover 619000 sq. km of the earth surface.A coral reef takes 1000 of years to form. Coral have flourished and built reefs in shallow tropical seas for more than 440 million years. It is composed of living and dead skeleton. Coral reefs are teamed with different wild lifes.





Sea Fans


Coral reefs are made up of many individual animals called coral polyps
They are primarily nocturnal. At night a coral polyp will stick its tentacles out of its vase and let the tentacles wave in the current. When plankton floats by they sting them with its tentacles and brings the plankton inside its shell to have for lunch.





Yellow Polyps seen at night


These are the red- soft corals



Giant Clam are the biggest living selfish. they grow upto 1m(3 feet) long and are inhabitated by symbiotic algae. A clam opens its shell to feed on its food which is generally plankton and closes it, if danger threatens.



Coral reefs found under the red sea off the coast of Jeddah.




Coral reefsfound on Perhentian Island, Malaysia.



Corals compete for light and food bearing currents. Coral reefs are home to all types of fish.



These reefs grow along coastlines.



Symbiotic algae live within corals and give them their bright colours.




Coral comes in all colours from red and yellow to blue and green, and grow in a variety of shapes and size including delicate fan corals, upright stag-horn corals and dome-shaped brain corals. Now, these attractive corals are under the serious threat from increased pollution.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Mysterious Circles


Are aliens circling us????





Crop circles are complicated geometric patterns, usually seen in wheat fields. Crop Circles range in size from several inches to a few hundred feet across the field. Some people believe that the patterns may be the imprints of an extra-terrestrial crafts, or they may be the message from extra-terrestrials themselves.


Crop circle found in a wheat field.


Some believe that they could be the result of natural forces such as tornadoes, heat or strong winds which flattened the crops, but the regular shapes of most crop circles make this unlikely.


The most famous theory is that the circles are made by people as a hoax. They gradually build up designs by flattening the wheat, using very simple equipments such as planks of wood and rope.



Early crop circles where of simple circular designs. But after 1990, more complex patterns such as words, smiling faces, flowers and even patterns of ancient motifs are sited.





Alton Barnes in England, June 2004






A crop circle in the form of double(six-sided) Triskelion composed of circles.

The mystery circling around these circles still continue to haunt us.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Great Ancient Egypt Projects You Can Build Yourself

Ebook



Great Ancient Egypt Projects You Can Build Yourself
Nomad Press | PDF | English | 130 pages | 22.7 MB


From reed boats, papyrus, and amulets to pyramids, pharaohs, and mummies, this interactive activity book explores the fascinating lives of ancient Egyptians with more than two dozen hands-on projects. The text covers ancient Egyptian food and housing, games and toys, farming, medicine, clothing and jewelry, as well as gods, pharaohs, hieroglyphs, pyramids, temples, and mummies. Engaging projects that use easily obtainable materials and require little adult supervision build on what is taught in each section and include building a shaduf, making a 1:1,000 scale model of the Great Pyramid, cooking flatbread, recreating papyrus, mixing perfume, designing a cartouche using hieroglyphs, and making sandals in the style worn by King Tut.

School Arts Magazine

This truly fascinating book makes connections to history, math, and science while focusing mainly on the art and culture of ancient Egypt.

Children's Literature

There is a wealth of interesting information and clever hands-on projects in this slim book. There is a good timeline of pharaonic history, but most of the text concerns daily life—building boats of papyrus and houses of mud bricks, using the waters of the Nile in ingenious ways to irrigate fertile farmland, making jewelry and make-up, and playing games. For each chapter, there is at least one activity—making a papyrus boat with drinking straws, plastic beads for an Egyptian necklace or amulets, and board games. Many of the projects could help teachers fulfill curriculum objectives without anyone having to fill in spaces on a worksheet, but the activities should definitely be tried ahead of time. Many will take longer than the 20—30 minutes suggested in the text, and some of the ingredients will be unfamiliar. A recipe for date candy, for example, calls for cardamom seeds, which are actually large pods and need to be ground for use in most food. The sepia-colored printing and the variety of fonts is often distracting and unappealing, but these are minor problems in an otherwise interesting presentation of an overdone subject. The glossary, index, and additional resources are thorough.

Download link

http://rapidshare.com/files/165667627/Great_Ancient_Egypt_Projects__JinoL_DownArchive.zip

note:
download the above zip file and unzip using winzip or winrar program and use any PDF reader software like adobe to view the file.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Stinking Corpse Lily


Rafflesia arnoldii
was discovered in the Indonesian Rain Forest by an Indonesian guide, working for Joseph Arnold in 1818, thus, deriving it's name from Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition.

The flower of Rafflesia or Corpse Lily is the largest and smelliest flower in the flower. It measures almost 1 m across and weighs approximately one kg. It's a flower with an odour like rotting flesh. the smell attracts flies which helps in the pollination of the flower.


Bud of Rafflesia Flower



Centre View of a Rafflesia Flower






The flowers are found in south-east Asia and has no leaves, stems or roots. Its is a parasite. It steals readily made nutrition by growing thin threads into another plant, such as a jungle vine.

The Rafflesia flower is the state flower of Sabah in Malaysia, as well as for the Surat Thani Province of Thailand.