General Grant tree

I am stunned, how big tree this is! It is the second largest tree in the world tree and it is estimated that it is over 2000 years old tree a much younger age closer to 1,650 years.

General Sherman Tree

It is the tallest Giant sequoia trees in the world and the biggest in terms of volume, known as world's largest single organism by volume. It occupies the height 275 feet.

Rock Port Tree

Rock Part is the Big tree and it is one of the most famous live oaks in the world and it was named State Champion Coastal Live Oak in 1969. It is said that it is over 1000 years old tree and largest in the world.

Tree That Owns Itself

It is placed in Athens, Georgia. The tree was considered by some to be both the biggest tree in Athens and the most famous tree in the United States. It is the original tree and fell in 1942 and a new tree was grown from one of its acorns and planted in the same place. But the current tree is known as Son of The Tree That Owns Itself.

Hangman's Elm

It is also known as Hanging Tree. It stands 110 feet tall and has a diameter of 56 inches. It is determined that this English Elm was 310 years old, making it the oldest known tree in Manhattan.

Two Leg Tree

It's really strange tree that has two legs known as Two Leg Tree.

The Basket Tree

Its stem has basket structures known as Basket Tree.

Cube Tree

Its stem has cube structures known as Cube Tree.

Pistachio Tree

Pistachio fruit is a drupe, it contains elongated seed, which is edible thing. The seed commonly known as nut. The seed has a mauvish skin and light green flesh, with a distinctive flavor.

Pistachio nuts in and out of the shell

The pistachio shell is a beige color, it is dyed red and green in color. Roasted pistachio nuts can be artificially turned red if they are marinated prior to roasting in a salt and strawberry marinade, or salt and citrus salts.

It demonstrated over a 10% reduction in LDL (bad) cholesterol in those who consumed up to 126 grams of salted pistachio nuts a day, which was about 20% of their total energy intake. It remains to be seen if trials in which the participants eat pistachios but control their own diets, result in reductions in heart disease or stroke.

Latest study reveals that pistachio nuts are bring down levels of bad cholesterol in the blood. But Nutritionists warn that eating too many pistachios may lead to excess weight, which is not good for the heart.

Lebanon Cedar

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The shoots are like dimorphic and they are known as long and short shoots. The leaves are in green color and vary from glaucous blue-green with stomatal bands on all four sides.

Lebanon Cedar forest

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The trees were used to build the military ships, houses and temples by ancient Phoenicians. Isaiah used the Lebanon Cedar as a metaphor for the pride of the world. The Egyptians used its resin for mummification.

It has special significance that has been national emblem of Lebanon. It is also the main symbol of the Cedar Revolution. The forest of the Cedars of God in BSharri and the Barouk forest are national reserves in Lebanon.

A variety of mammals occur in social groups for various reasons. They find it more convenient to move long distances in groups for safety reasons because they can exploit some resource more effectively as a group an because they can defend some resources better as a group against their competitors.

During the rainy season a good number of elephants move in to the Bandipur Tiger Reserve. During the day, they graze in herds of ten to twenty, at noon, near tanks, whereas a hundred elephants may be seen together. Again the same animals form large herds to move from one area to another. It is seasonal migration.

Elephants certainly find safety in numbers, to safeguard their calves. The bulls often live and wander by themselves, but the females in such a group are always vigilant about the calves.

At the slightest alarm the cows rush together to form a protective front for the calves. A very different kind of social group that finds safety in numbers is that of smaller deer and antelopes, such as chital and blackbuck.

Herbivores of this size cannot defend themselves in times of danger. The species that live in forested habitats such as barking deer and four horned antelope are largely asocial. But species that live in more open habitats cannot hide themselves behind shrubs and trees, so they hide themselves behind each other.

Mammals come together to feed themselves more effectively. This is the case with chimpanzees whose groups have no definite territory.

They call each other on discovering good sources of food. The carnivores that hunt into packs such as wild dogs cooperate even more effectively in bringing down victims larger than themselves.

Finally they may form bands to defend a territory over which they feed. They come together against other groups of the same species. The spotted hyena in Africa is known to do this. Even monkeys such as Hanuman Langur do this. At Mount Abu, Hanumans Langur females fight with females of neighboring troops at territorial boundaries and find definite strength in numbers.

Mount Everest - Nepal

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Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world attracts of all levels. It is located in Everest from Kala Pattar in Nepal. The height of Everest is 29,002 ft (8,840 m).

Mount Kilimanjaro - North Eastern, Tanzania

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Mount Kilimanjaro is located in North Eastern Tanzania. It is rising 4,600 m (15,100 ft) from its base. The summit of Kilimanjaro is covered by GSM mobile phone network provided by Vodacom.

Mount Feathertop - Victoria, Australia

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Mount feathertop is the second highest mountain in the Australia state of Victoria. It rises to 1,922 metres (6,306 feet). Mount Feathertop as seen from the saddle to the South in early Spring. The strange news of this mountain is there are two huts on this mountain. One is Melbourne University Mountain Club (MUMC) hut is situated on the North-West Spur. Second one is Federation Hut is situation at the top of Bungalow Spur near Little Feathertop.

Pilot Mountain - North Carolina, USA

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Pilot Mountain is located in North Carolina. It rises to a peak 2,421 feet (738 m). this mountain is part of the State Mountain state Park.

Finsteraarhorn - Switzerland

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Foinsteraarhorn is located in Switzerland. It rises to 4,274 metres (14,022 ft). It is the third most prominent peak in the Alps.

Sugarloaf Mountain - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Sugarloaf Mountain is located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It rises to 1,299 ft.

Table Mountain - Cape Town, South Africa

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Table Mountain is located in cape town, South Africa. It rises up to 1,086 m (3,563 ft). It is significant for tourist attractions. Here most of the visitors will come and enjoys the table mountain national park and this beach.

Panorama from the top of the Table Mountain

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This is a part of the table mountain.

Table Mountain Aerial Cable car

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Table Mountain Aerial Cable car takes passengers from the lower cable station on Tafelberg Road, about 302 m above sea level, to the plateau at the top of the mountain.

Yushan Mountain - Nantou County, Taiwan

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This mounatian is located in Nantou County, Taiwan. It rises to 3,952 metres (12,966 ft).

In Taiwan, this mountain is a part of one of the Yushan National Park. The mountain is a favorite of Taiwanese mountain climbers.

In 1803 John Dalton proposed the theory of atoms. Dalton was an English chemist and mathematician, who was the first man to develop a scientific atomic theory of atoms. He considered the atom to be the smallest part of matter. Dalton carefully weighed different samples of gases, solids and liquids and discovered that they weighed different. He realized that all matter was made up of extremely tiny particles, which he too called atoms.

When Dalton stated that the atoms of different elements have different properties and different weights, he started the scientific knowledge of the atom. Daltons work on the nature of matter provided the basis for modern atomic theories. He devised a system of classification by atomic weight. His work on gases led him to the law of partial pressure of gases, which came to be known a as Daltons law.

About a hundred years later, Ernest Rutherford a New Zealand physicist, tried to explain what the atom was and how it functioned. He developed the atomic theory, which closely resembled that of the solar system. He recognized that nuclear nature of the atom. According to him there was a heavy nucleus in the centre, with a positive charge of electricity. This was surrounded by negatively charged electrons.

The Danish physicist, Niels Bohr worked with Rutherford in Manchester, England. Later on his own he worked out the new atomic structure which is known as the Bohr model. He received the Nobel Prize in 1922 for physics. During World War II he escaped from the Nazis and fled to USA. There he took part in the work on the atom bomb.

Today scientists have proved that the atom is not the smallest particle of an element. It is made up of still smaller particles. That was the work of another great scientist.

In another experiment, Galileo rolled a ball down a slope. With this he proved that a body moving on a perfectly smooth horizontal surface would neither speed up not slow down.

Sir Isaac Newton, the English physicist and mathematician laid the foundation of modern physics. It was the who discovered the law of gravity. As a young boy while sitting under an apple tree he began to wonder why objects always fell down instead of going up. His mind dwelled on this subject for a long time. As he grew older he started to investigate the phenomenon of gravitation. Finally in 1685 Newton expounded the Universal Law of Gravitation.

According to this law, all objects fall to the earth with the same acceleration regardless of mass. He wrote down in great detail his observations and theories with mathematical calculations. His famous book, Principia, was published with the aid of Edmond Halley, the English astronomer who financed it.

Much later Albert Einstein attempted to explain what is gravity. His theory was a very complicated one that required a very scientific mind to understand it. As science has taken leaps and bounds in the field of astronomy we now know that the force of gravity is 6 times more on the earth than on the moon. The planet of Jupiter has a still stronger force of gravity. A person on that planet would weigh three times more than he would on the earth.

It takes thousands of years for magma to harden into rock. In other places the cold, hard rocks near the surface cannot withstand the pressure of the magma beneath them. They crack a little bit and the magma rises up along the rocks.

Magma often remains hot enough to stay in liquid form until it reaches the surface of the earth. It then flows through the cracks and spreads out on the ground. Magma that reaches the surface is called lava.

Magma usually starts cooling while it is still being pushed upward. As the magma slowly rises, certain minerals in it grow into big crystals sooner than the other minerals do. These crystals float in the magma. When this magma reaches the surface of the earth, the liquid rock turns to a solid state in a short time.

The big crystals carried in the liquid are "frozen" into the fine-grained lava rock. The whole rock is then made of many large crystals embedded in a very fine grained tock, such as basalt. Such rock is called Porphyry. It is very attractive and is often used as a building stone.

The warm sea current drives away many species of fish like the tuna and anchovy, away the coastal fishing grounds. They need to feed on plankton to survive but they are unable to do so as the plankton have left the area for colder waters. The warm ocean current also kills several species of fish and plants.

The El Nino is an important factor in the global weather. The change in the ocean currents is related to two centres atmospheric pressure located near Easter Island in the eastern South Pacific and over Indonesia and northern Australia in the west. This phenomenon disrupts the entire climate of the area.

High atmospheric pressure maintains a hot, dry weather in ht east and a wet, cool condition in the west. The easterly winds blow away the warm waters from the south American coast. The trade winds even out the difference in pressure between the areas. Gradually the winds relax and the warm water - El Nino- flows back to Peru.

El Nino lasts for about 18 months or so. However, occasionally and very unpredictably, its lasts for a longer period with catastrophic consequences around the world. For example, the 1990 occurrence was not fully spent till 1993. the El Nino of 1939 continued to 1941 and caused extensive droughts in Bengal.

The El Nino has had disastrous effects all over the world. It has been the cause of famine in Africa an Indonesia leaving thousands dead. Bush fires broke out in the Galapagos Island. Australia suffered the century's worst drought.

El Nino has resulted in torrential rainstorms in California and South America, which destroyed houses, washed away roads and bridges and harvest and the wildlife, as the sea had become very warm. It brought about an unprecedented number of typhoons in Japan in 1991. There were record snowfalls in the Rocky Mountains.

Earlier scientists felt that El Nino was a consistent phenomenon and could be detected early enough without much trouble. Now however they have concluded that it is quite unpredictable and its cause is still known. Research is still on to unravel this intriguing mystery.

Most gems are unusual forms of common minerals. For example, diamond is a different form of carbon like the less valuable, graphite, which is the substance in the lead pencils. Diamonds are crystals of pure carbon, which are hard and brilliant in its sparkle. On the other hand, graphite is dull and grey.

Natural or rough diamonds look like small pebbles of cloudy glass. When they are cut and polished they sparkle. The most valued diamonds are either colorless or blue-white. Diamond is the hardest known natural substance and can be cut only with another diamond. They were formed under great heat and pressure mostly in cores of volcanoes. They are found in igneous rocks. The largest producers of diamonds are South Africa, Siberia, Australia, Brazil and India.

Quartz is a very common mineral common mineral found in sand and many other rocks. A perfect quartz crystal sometimes contains traces of iron and manganese in it. If it is purple color it is called amethyst. They are chiefly found in the Ural Mountains, India, U.S.A., Uruguay and Brazil. If the quartz is yellow then it is a citrine.

The mineral beryl forms crystals chiefly in granite. The emerald and the aquamarine are two forms of beryl. The emerald is a clear green in color and naturally occurs in Colombia, the Ural Mountains, in Russia, Zimbabwe and Australia. Aquamarine is light blue in color.

Not all gems are minerals. There are some gems like pearls and amber which are really not gems in the true sense. They are actually organic gems as they have organic origins. They are formed with the help of animals and plants. For example, pearls are gems, which are formed inside the shells of oysters. Both the oyster and nature combine together to form the pearl. Similarly, amber is the fossilized remains of the resin of pine and fir trees, which have been buried under rocks for million of years.

Man today has perfected the art of manufacturing synthetic gems. Similar conditions as there were in the earth's crust during which these gems were formed, are created in the laboratory. Minute diamonds can be made synthetically from graphite. They are used as cutting tools like the dentists drill, glass-cutters and saws for cutting rocks. Synthetic rubies are used in lasers. Synthetic sapphires and emeralds have also been made successfully. General Electric Co. in U.S.A. first produced synthetic gems in 1955.