Five thousand where, seven thousand how, one hundred thousand why. One hundred thousand why One hundred thousand how and why

Under the guidance of Professor Postnikov, I began working as a fifth-year student at Moscow Higher Technical University. Even then, he began to create diagnostics of parts using isotopes. To begin with, I was instructed to familiarize myself with the relevant domestic and foreign literature.

I go to libraries and study the wear and tear of diesel parts from literary sources.

A tradition has developed: all previously existing and currently existing methods begin their journey and are tested on internal combustion engines.

It is believed that if they hold up here, then they can be used on other machines and mechanisms.

After defending my diploma, I was sent to work at the Moscow Department of Dieselremontazh. “What kind of science is this?” - I thought. About two months later, the head of the department, I. I. Gulevsky, and the chief engineer, A. I. Shitikov, called me.

Get keys, files, overalls, a business trip and go to the Slava whaling flotilla to repair diesel engines.

Okay, I answer, I’ll go. Only under one condition - not as a master, but as a mechanic.

My statement was not caused by whim or coquetry. It’s just that during these two months I realized that I was still far from becoming a real mechanical engineer, although I graduated from Bauman, where, as you know, students are taught not only through lectures. Well, as for leading people, you don’t really learn that at an institute.

The team where I was initially assigned had first-class specialists. The only thing that impressed them about me was that I was a master of sports in boxing, and in the light heavyweight division. But a master in sports is not yet a master in production. And I decided to temporarily (this very “temporary” lasted two years) work as a mechanic - with the full approval of the workers of my team, with whom, despite all my incompetence, I managed to become friends.

The authorities were surprised, but in the end they agreed with my motives. My first business trip lasted almost six months. The subsequent ones were also quite long.

As I remember now, the foreman gave me the dirtiest job to begin with - cleaning the exhaust manifold and crankcase. In full accordance with my qualifications as a 4th category mechanic. (“By the way, I was demobilized as a mechanic, already having the 6th category.)

I finished the collector pretty quickly. Then he climbed waist-deep into the crankcase and spent a long time examining its walls and struts, covered with coke with metal particles stuck in it. I was surprised: after all, the engine has both coarse and fine filters - how did this rubbish get here?

I washed the crankcase, then got to the crankshaft so that, on the instructions of the foreman, I could register it for repairs. After measurements, it turned out that the shaft wear was within acceptable limits.

Why sand it, especially with sandpaper? - I ask the foreman. - It's not worn out.

Hiba do I know? - answers. - Let them polish, what do you want?

I'm finding out. It turns out that diesel engines are repaired according to plan, and not out of necessity, because no one can determine the moment when repair is truly inevitable.

It’s not necessary, but the engine is disassembled and polished according to a plan taken, essentially, from the ceiling. At the same time, small and large abrasive particles enter the system, bypassing the filters. The new assembly gives new distortions, new grinding is required. All this leads to significant wear and tear and, naturally, is associated with downtime and significant losses of labor and time.

It was then that I seriously thought about how to find out the time when critical wear began, so that the engine could be repaired exactly when it really needed this repair. In the next two years of working as a mechanic, and then as a foreman-chief fitter, even more various “hows”, “whys” and “whys” arose.

Once in Moscow I met V.I. Postnikov on the street. He asked about the work and suggested returning to my old topic, which now interested me not only theoretically, but, one might say, deeply.

So I returned to the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School - this time as a teacher and researcher.

Here, after several years of working in a serious and close-knit team, I became a candidate of technical sciences. Here, in 1971, I was awarded the Lenin Komsomol Prize for introducing a method for measuring engine wear under ship operating conditions.

Now on the ship “A. S. Popov" operates an installation with a program task that automatically controls engine wear. The information is directly fed to the console of the ship’s senior mechanic, Mikhail Karpovich Syromyatnikov.

We are currently developing schemes for monitoring the wear of critical parts of machines and mechanisms with remote transmission of wear information. An interesting direction for using the method of continuous wear monitoring was suggested to us by Professor Vitaly Ivanovich Krutov.

No matter how the new method is used, in any case we are talking about active, scientifically based control, that is, wear management. There are huge opportunities hidden here. Suffice it to say that timely oil changes alone increase the service life of the same diesel engine by 5–6 percent.

Perhaps in the near future, the operating time of space stations will be assessed by the wear of its critical parts, and the command to remove the station from orbit will be given after processing measurements carried out by the method of continuous monitoring.

Let's live, look, marvel - and we will certainly implement...

Children are very inquisitive by nature, their endless “why?” baffles even experienced parents, let alone young parents. More often than not, adults can answer only a few questions correctly and to the point. They don’t want to answer some questions honestly, so they have to lie, brush them off, or ignore them. Meanwhile, it is important not to leave your child’s questions unanswered, so that cognitive interest does not wane.

Why these “whys”?

The period of obstinacy, when the baby defends his “I” with all acceptable (and not so) methods, has barely passed, when a new era of the baby’s development is just around the corner - age "why" . Kids enter into it in different ways - some 2.5-3 years, someone closer to 4-5 years. In fact, this age is not a terrible phenomenon, but incredibly interesting! The baby grows, develops, his speech becomes stronger, his vocabulary expands, and the unknown, mysterious world around him gradually reveals its secrets... And it begins! What's ticking on the clock? Why does a cat need a mustache? Why does the wind blow? Why is the sky blue during the day and black at night? Where does the sun go to sleep? The baby, like the baby elephant from Kipling’s fairy tale, wants to know about everything in the world. Even about what the crocodile eats for lunch. Remember?

I have six servants,
Agile, daring,
And everything I see around is
I know everything from them.
They are at my sign
Are in need.
Their names are: How and Why,
Who, What, When and Where.

Yes, all of these “what” and “why” are nothing more than a way of understanding the world. And this method is practically the only one for the baby so far. Later he will learn to use reference books, get information from books, TV shows and the Internet. In the meantime, the main source of information is close people, mom and dad. Now for the baby they are smarter and more important than all the scientists and professors combined. And such high trust must be justified!

The baby discovers the law of constancy, and answers to questions give rise to new questions. Each new knowledge expands the boundaries of the world, and there is still so much interesting and unknown in it. So the best thing for developing children's curiosity is to diligently answer your baby's questions. Right now, in age of “why”, the love of knowledge is laid (that is, that same curiosity) , research interest, and this is the basis for further successful schooling .

How to destroy children's curiosity

It couldn't be easier! Didn't answer a couple of times. wave it off a couple of times ( “I’m busy, wait, later, not now, another time, I don’t know...”). Laugh a couple of times at the absurdity the child said. A couple of times to the question “why?” answer “on the swing!”, better “by cabbage and by cabbage!”. And the most appropriate answer would be a weighty one "Why? Because!". Just don’t be surprised if a little later you also receive a “pun intended” in response to some of your questions...

Without receiving answers to questions, the child will sooner or later stop asking them altogether. Curiosity is the norm for a child, a sign of his giftedness. And if he asks questions, that’s very good! It’s much worse if he doesn’t ask! Be patient, enlist the support of your grandparents, explain to them how important it is to answer every “why”, even if your baby asks the same question for the tenth time, do not break down in any case and, of course, do not yell at the baby. After all, the easiest way is to kill curiosity in a child, and sooner or later he will find someone who will tell him a lot of “interesting” things, but it won’t be you.

How to answer children's questions

On this occasion, I remember a very old joke:

A father and a five-year-old son are walking, the son is chewing an apple:

- Dad, why does the apple turn dark?
- You see, son, our atmosphere contains free active oxygen. At the same time, the apple contains calcium, magnesium, and, most importantly, iron. Iron reacts with free oxygen. The result is ferric oxide, which has a characteristic brown color.
There is a long pause.
- Dad, who were you talking to just now?

So let's not be like this dad, but let's answer the kids' questions in such a way that the little ones can understand.

For example, consider the children's question “Why doesn’t the sun fall?” and how you can answer it.

Yes, you need to answer children's questions. But... not for everything.

This does not mean that you should avoid answering. There are simply many questions that a child himself can answer if he thinks a little. Learn to isolate such questions from the barrage of all kinds of “whys” and “what fors.” By doing this you will do your son or daughter a good service by teaching them to think and helping them to draw an important conclusion: it is not possible to know everything, but there are many things and phenomena that can be understood and realized on their own. For example, a baby, like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince, asks why flowers need thorns. Agree, it’s quite a common children’s question. And we can easily satisfy children's curiosity. And the baby will know the answer to his question. But how much use will this knowledge bring him? What if you carefully asked: “What do you think?” The kid will begin to put forward his own versions, perhaps very fantastic ones. And maybe very faithful. And our task now is to follow his reasoning and slightly push them in the right direction with leading questions. With joint efforts, the answer will be found easily and quickly. It makes sense to say after this: “See how great you are! I didn’t know, but I thought about it and found the answer myself!” And it doesn’t matter at all that you brought him to this answer. The important thing is that the child realizes his capabilities and understands that through reasoning one can really figure out a lot of things! But it is not always possible to give a simple answer, especially if a child asks about quantum theory after hearing it on TV and remembering a sonorous phrase. Or how do you like the philosophical question about where the very first egg came from?

Children are amazing creatures, in order to understand them, you need to become a little child yourself, try to put yourself in the place of the baby, look at the world through his eyes. The child is somewhat similar to an alien. Every day he discovers new laws that we, adults, have known and understood for a long time. And we even forgot that we once didn’t know all this ourselves.

If it is difficult for you to translate something from an adult language into a children’s language, pick up several good encyclopedias for the little ones with clear pictures and texts that children can understand. True, if you can still find good pictures, then with texts the situation is more complicated. Encyclopedias are written by adults! And authors, just like us parents, often find it difficult to find simple words for complex things. So sometimes we have to “translate” even children’s encyclopedias. But I’m sure everyone can master a children’s language. You just need to really want it, to descend from the heights of your adult and intelligent vision of the world to the small sprout of a child. In fact, even complex things can be explained in simple language. Just don’t confuse simplicity with primitivism! The child is a very smart, thoughtful person, and in some ways even wise. He is able to understand and comprehend a lot.

Even senseless children's questions actually carry a certain meaning. Perhaps the baby is just bored, you don’t talk to him much, but he wants communication. So he is looking for ways to somehow “hook” you. The little psychologist knows, knows perfectly well what exactly throws mom out of balance! Often this results in a chain where each next question clings to the answer. "What are you doing?" "I am washing the dishes". “Why are you washing the dishes?” “To be clean.” “Why would it be clean?” “It would be nice to eat from it.” “Why would it be pleasant to eat?” Well, etc. Sound familiar? Here, at the very beginning of the dialogue, instead of answering, you can ask the child: “What do you think?” And then take the topic of conversation in a slightly different direction. Sometimes it makes sense to answer a question to which a child already knows the answer, with a bit of humor. "What are you doing?" “I’m dancing!” “No, mom, you wash the dishes!” We laughed together, and there was no irritation...

It is very important for an adult to learn to understand children's questions correctly and to delve into their essence. This is sometimes not easy: children’s thinking is structured completely differently than an adult’s. Children often ask inaccurate questions, saying one thing and meaning something completely different. Here's a simple example.

Masha, 3.10, asks during a walk: “Mom, why are the branches of this poplar so long and growing in different directions?” What's the answer here? This is the shape of the branches of this poplar, this is how nature created it... But the daughter is not satisfied with the answer and she says her own: “No, the tree draws water and food from the ground with its roots, that’s why IT HAS BRANCHES GROW!”

Do not be afraid of situations when your child asks a question to which you, unfortunately, do not know the answer.

Frankly admit this to your child, but promise to find out or offer to figure it out together. This will only strengthen your authority in the eyes of the child and show him that mom or dad can do anything. Encourage your child's interest in the world around him in every possible way, ask him counter questions in response, continuing to develop the given topic. All children love riddles; with their help, you can teach a child to think, expand his vocabulary, and develop a sense of humor.

How to teach children to ask questions

The ability to ask questions is an art that we learn throughout our lives. Each of us has faced questions that are tactless, stupid and downright stupid many times. We will serve the child well if we teach him to ask questions correctly and not be afraid to do so. It may seem strange to some, but there are many adults who are afraid to ask something incomprehensible or ask their interlocutor a question of interest. As a result, they make a lot of mistakes that could easily have been avoided. Such people often come from children who were discouraged from asking anything in childhood or were simply not taught. Therefore, it is very important to convince the child that not knowing something is not a shame. It is a shame not to look for an answer if there is an opportunity to find it. And, of course, never, under any circumstances, laugh at children’s questions, no matter how naive they may seem to you! For a child, what he asked can be very important. And an adult, with his ridicule, not only destroys a trusting relationship, but also deeply offends the child.

To ensure that your child is not afraid to ask, force him to ask all sorts of questions in the game. Try playing a simple and fun game where you first ask questions and the child answers them, and then switch places: “What is a mouth for? What is the nose for? Why do we need ears?

The answers can be both serious and humorous: “You need a nose to breathe. The nose is needed so that daddy can kiss it. You need a nose to smell flowers.” This game develops the child’s imagination and speech, and shows that often many different answers can be found to the same question. Play “why” in reverse, asking questions in a “chain”: “Why do you need a bicycle?” “To ride” “Why ride?” “Because I like it” “Why do I like it?” etc.

Invite your child to play “interview”. Let him try asking you a series of questions about some event. For example, about your work. Or about how you were little. Or about grandma. And be sure to praise your child for good questions. Your little why deserves it!

Every day in your house the stoves are lit, the primus is lit, and the potatoes are boiled.

You may be excellent at lighting a stove or boiling potatoes yourself. But try to explain: why does the wood in the stove crack? Why does smoke go up the chimney and not into the room? Where does the soot come from when kerosene burns? Why do fried potatoes have a crust on top, but boiled ones do not?

I'm afraid you can't really explain it. Or this: why does water extinguish fire?

One of my friends answered: “It’s stewing because it’s wet and cold.” But kerosene is also wet and cold, but try to put out a fire with kerosene!

No, it’s better not to try: you’ll have to call the firefighters. You see, the question is simple, but the answer is not so easy. Would you like me to tell you twelve more riddles about the simplest things?

1. Which is warmer: three shirts or a triple-thick shirt?
2. Are there walls made of thin air?
3. Does fire have a shadow?
4. Why doesn't the water burn?
5. Can water explode a house?
6. Why does the stove hum when it is heated?
7. Why does beer hiss and foam?
8. Is there transparent iron?
9. Why is the bread pulp full of holes?
10. The stove heats because it is heated. Why does a fur coat keep you warm?
11. Why is a cloth dress ironed through a wet rag?
12. Why can you skate on ice, but not on the floor?

These questions are unlikely to be answered by one in ten readers. We know very little about the things that surround us. And often there is no one to ask.

You can get a book about a steam locomotive or a telephone, but where can you find a book about baked potatoes or a poker?

There are such books, but you need to read a lot of them to answer at least our twelve riddles. But you can guess not twelve, but one hundred thousand such riddles.

Every thing in your room is a mystery.

What, how, why is it made of? How long ago was it invented?

Here you have a fork and knife on the table. They are always together, like brother and sister. Did you know that the knife is at least fifty thousand years older than the fork? Primitive people still had a knife, although it was not iron, but stone, and they began to use a fork only three hundred years ago.

People know when and by whom the telephone and the electric light bulb were invented, but ask them: how long ago was the mirror and handkerchief invented, how long ago did they start washing with soap, eating potatoes?

Very few people will answer these questions.

We read with enthusiasm about travel to distant, unexplored countries and do not realize that two steps away from us, or even closer, lies an unfamiliar, amazing, mysterious country called “Our Room”

If we want to explore it, we can go on a journey at any moment. We don't need any tents, guns, or guides. You don't need a map either.

We won't get lost along the way.

Here are our stations:
Water tap. Stove. Table and stove. Shelf with pots. Buffet. Closet.

Station one. Water tap

How long have people been washing?

It's rare that a city doesn't have running water these days. Each of us spends ten to twelve buckets of water a day. And in the old days, in the 15th–16th centuries, a resident of a city like Paris used only one bucket. So figure out how often he could wash himself and how much water he spent on washing clothes and cleaning rooms.
And it’s no wonder that they spent little water: there were no water pipes then. In some places there were wells in the squares, and water had to be carried in buckets, as is still the case today in small towns. The bodies of cats and rats were often found in wells.
In the old days, people not only lacked water, but also lacked cleanliness. People only recently began to wash themselves every day.
About three hundred years ago, even kings did not consider it necessary to wash themselves every day. In the luxurious bedroom of a French king you would find a huge bed, so large that it could not be made without the help of a special tool - a “bed stick”. You would find a magnificent canopy on four gilded columns, looking like a small temple. You would find there magnificent carpets, Venetian mirrors, watches by the best craftsmen. But no matter how hard you searched, you would not find a washbasin there.
Every morning the king was given a wet towel with which he wiped his face and hands. And everyone found that this was quite enough.
Our people were cleaner. Foreigners who came to Moscow were amazed that Russians often went to the bathhouse. Doctor Collins wrote:
The baths are very popular here and bring in a lot of income, because faith obliges Russians to go to the bathhouse. When the stoves flare up, they usually splash cold water on them. Some run out of the bathhouse, lie naked in the snow and then return again.
But let's return to Paris. The Parisian rarely changed his linen: once a month, or even twice. Then they thought not about having a clean shirt, but about having more expensive lace on the cuffs and better embroidery on the chest. At night, the shirt was taken off along with the rest of the dress and they slept naked.
Only about two hundred years ago did they reach the point where they began to change their underwear more often.
The handkerchief also appeared quite recently. He is only two or three hundred years old.
At first, only a few people used the scarf. Among the most noble and important people there were many who considered a handkerchief an unnecessary luxury.
Lush canopies over the beds were installed not so much for beauty as to protect themselves from insects falling from the ceiling. In ancient palaces such umbrellas against bedbugs are still preserved. There were no visible or invisible bedbugs even in the palaces.
The canopies were of little help. The bugs nestled in their folds even more comfortably.
There was no sewerage. In Paris, slop was poured directly onto the street from the windows. Dirty water flowed into a ditch dug in the middle of the street. The stench from the ditch was so strong that passers-by tried to stay close to their houses.
Our Moscow was also dirty. When gas pipes were laid in Moscow in 1867, the remains of wooden pavements from the 15th–16th centuries were discovered underground. On top of the oldest pavement there was an arshin layer of dirt, then there was another pavement - a later one - and on top of it again a layer of dirt.
It’s no wonder that in the old days people got sick much more than they do now. No one knew then that where there is dirt, there is infection. It happened that entire cities died out from terrible diseases - plague, smallpox. Out of ten children, only five lived to be ten years old. Beggars, disfigured by smallpox and leprosy, crowded around every corner.
What made us healthier and stronger? A water tap, a bar of soap, a clean shirt.

Why do they wash with water?

Why does water wash away dirt? Maybe she simply carries it away with her, like a river carries away an abandoned piece of wood?
But check it out. Hold dirty hands under the tap. Will this make them clean?
I'm afraid not. After all, no one washes like that. When we wash, we always rub one hand against the other. And for what? In order to erase, scrape off dirt.
It's the same with underwear. Laundresses don’t just put laundry in water, but wash it, rubbing it with their hands and even brushes.
Washing clothes means erasing dirt from them, just as we erase what is written on paper with an eraser. And when the dirt is cleaned off, it is not difficult for the water to carry it away.

How did a man make soap bubbles work?

But here we forgot one thing, without which we never do laundry.
What kind of thing is this?
Soap.
If we washed our clothes or washed ourselves without soap, we would always be dirty. Soap is the most powerful enemy of dirt. For example, soot. It is especially difficult to clean. Soot is tiny pieces of coal with sharp, jagged edges. Such a coal will get into the recess of the skin, get caught, and you won’t be able to scratch it out.
But take soap in your hands and lather them well.
The soap will attack the soot, pull it out and expel it from all pores and folds.
How does it do this?
Let's think about it.
Which soap cleans better - the one that produces more foam, or the one that barely foams at all?
The one that gives more foam. So it's all about the foam.
What is foam?
Look at her. It is all made up of small soap bubbles, small balloons with a shell made of water. And these bubbles grab and carry away the soot. Soot particles stick to the foam bubbles, and the foam is easy to wash off.
They do the same thing in factories when they want to separate and wash the ore from the “waste rock” - from the stone. Both ore and stone drown in water. But in the foam, if you chop them up, they don’t sink. Foam bubbles have a lot of power. The bubbles lift both pieces of ore and pieces of stone and carry them to the top. And then the selection begins. Pieces of rock cannot stay on the bubbles for long and fall to the bottom of the apparatus. But the ore particles do not fall. In the end, the apparatus produces a crust of ore, which is easy to remove.
This means that soap bubbles are not only good for fun. The man is cunning - he even made soap bubbles work for himself.

Why do they drink water?

Here's a simple question again. So simple that it seems there is no need to ask.
And if you ask, it turns out that out of ten people only one knows why they drink water.
You will say: they drink water because they want to.
Why do you want to?
Because you cannot live without water.
But we can’t live because we use up water all the time and we need to replenish it.
Breathe on the cold glass. The glass will fog up and become covered with droplets of water.
Where did the water come from? From your body.
Or, let’s say, you’re sweating on a hot day.
Where did the sweat come from? Again, from the same place - from the body,
And since you consume and lose water, you need to stock up on it from time to time.
A person loses as many as twelve glasses of water per day. This means he needs to drink or eat the same amount.
Do they eat water?
The fact of the matter is that they eat. In meat, in vegetables, in bread - in any food there is much more water than solid material, in meat there is three times more water than solid material, and a cucumber consists almost entirely of water.
And you yourself have almost as much water as a green cucumber. If you weigh 40 kilograms, then you have 35 kilograms of water and only 5 kilograms of solid material.
The body of an adult contains less water: about three-quarters of its weight.
You ask:
- Why don’t people spread across the floor like jelly?
The whole point is that it doesn't matter what the thing is made of. The most important thing is how it is built.
If we look at a piece of meat or cucumber under a microscope, we will see many cells filled with juice. This juice does not pour out of the cells because they are closed on all sides. That's the secret.
This means that water is the main material from which our body is built.
It is not surprising, therefore, that a person can live for a long time without food, but cannot live even a few days without water.

Can water explode a house?

Water appears to be a harmless substance. And sometimes water explodes like gunpowder. What gunpowder! Water is twenty times more dangerous than gunpowder if you don’t know how to handle it.

There was a case when water blew up an entire five-story building and killed twenty-three people.

This was in America about forty years ago.

How could this happen?

The fact is that there was a factory in this house.

On the lower floor there was a huge cauldron built into a large stove. It held the same amount of water as a large pond.

When the stove was heated, the water boiled in the boiler, and the steam flowed through the pipe into the steam engine.

Once the driver was lazy and did not pump up the water on time. There is very little water left in the boiler. And the stove continued to burn. This caused the walls of the boiler to become hot. The driver didn’t think about it - he went ahead and poured water into the hot boiler.

Do you know what happens when you pour water on a hot iron? It all immediately turns into steam.

The same thing happened here. The water all turned into steam, too much steam accumulated in the boiler, the boiler could not stand it and burst.

It happened even worse: in Germany one day twenty-two boilers exploded at once. All the houses around were destroyed. The wreckage of the boilers lay half a kilometer from the explosion site.

What a terrible thing water vapor is!

In your house, too, several thousand steam boilers explode every day, but not large ones, but small ones. When the wood in the stove cracks, it means that water is exploding it. There is no such thing as completely dry firewood; there is always water in the firewood. Due to the intense heat, the water turns into steam and breaks the wood fibers with a crash.

Hard water

Solid water - ice - also sometimes explodes.

Steam explodes houses, and ice destroys entire mountains. It happens like this.

In autumn, water gets into the cracks of the rocks. In winter it freezes - turns into ice. But ice takes up more space than water, although not by much - only by one tenth. Under the pressure of ice spreading in all directions, the strongest stone cracks.

This is also why water pipes burst. To prevent them from bursting, you need to warm them for the winter - wrap them with something, for example, felt.

Why can't you skate on the floor?

One boy I asked why you can't skate on the floor replied:

Because the ice is slippery and very hard, but the floor is not so hard and not slippery.

But there is also a stone floor; it is slippery and hard, but you still can’t ride on the stone floor.

When we skate on ice, the ice melts under the pressure of our skates. A layer of water forms between the skates and the ice. Without this layer of water, skating on ice would be as difficult as on the floor. Water, like oil in a car, reduces friction between the skate and the ice.

The movement of glaciers from the mountains occurs for the same reason. Under the weight of the ice, its lower layers melt, and the icy river glides along the mountain slope, like your skates on a skating rink.

Is there such a thing as opaque water and transparent iron?

Everyone will say that the water is clear. But in fact, it is transparent only in a thin layer. It is night at the bottom of the oceans because the sun's rays cannot penetrate the entire thickness of the water.

But not only water - all substances in a thin layer are transparent, but not in a thick layer. Take, for example, a piece of white, transparent glass and look at it edge-on. The glass will seem neither white nor transparent to you.

Recently, one scientist prepared a plate of iron one hundred thousandth of a millimeter thick. This plate is transparent, like glass, and almost completely colorless. By placing it on the page of a book, you can easily read the smallest print.

The scientist prepared the same transparent plates from gold and other metals.

Station two. Stove

How long ago did people learn to make fire?

How merrily the firewood crackles in the stove on a winter evening! When you look into the fire, it is easy to imagine many amazing things - burning cities, besieged fortresses. The crackling of logs resembles volleys of guns, and the flames seem to be soldiers running up the fortress wall.

In the old days, people thought that small fire lizards - fire spirits - lived in fire. And there were those who considered fire to be a deity and built temples in its honor. For hundreds of years, lamps dedicated to the god of fire burned in these temples without going out.

The custom of maintaining an unquenchable fire is one of the most ancient on earth. Many tens of thousands of years ago people did not know how to make fire. They did not make fire, but found it, just as they find precious stones now. It’s no wonder that fire was then treasured. If it went out, there would be nowhere to get another one: after all, people did not know how to make fire.

It happened that lightning set a tree on fire. People looked with fear at the fiery beast, which was devouring the tree, breaking branches with a crash and licking the bark with its tongue. It was scary to come closer, but I didn’t want to leave: on a cold night it was warm and cheerful near the burning tree.

Primitive man was a brave creature. He often had to fight both a huge shaggy mammoth and a mighty cave bear. In the end, there were brave men who were not afraid to approach the dying fire.

We do not know who was the first to decide to grab the burning branch and bring home this strange loot. This was probably done not by one person, but by several in different places. Be that as it may, there were brave, inventive people who tamed fire, just as wild animals are tamed.

The invention of Edison, who made the first electric light bulb, is nothing compared to the invention of these furry, long-armed, club-footed people. Without fire, we would still be little different from orangutans or gorillas.

A bright fire illuminated the caves and dugouts of primitive people. But many thousands of years passed before people learned to make fire.

Having learned to make fire, a person could not be afraid of losing it. If a storm or rain extinguished the fire, you could always light a new one.

But for a long time unquenchable lamps burned in the temples, recalling the time when they did not know how to make fire, when fire was a rare and precious find.

Oddly enough, the most ancient method of making fire has survived to this day. Primitive people made fire by rubbing one wooden stick against another.

We also make fire by friction - matches on boxes.

But there is a difference, and a very big one. Lighting a match is a matter of an instant, but to light a piece of wood, even very dry, you need to tinker for about five minutes, or even more. Yes, and you need to be able to. Anyone can light a match, but try to make fire using the primitive method. I seriously doubt that anything will work out for you.

Why do matches light?

Primitive man did not have the tools that we have. He had neither a saw nor a plane.
He sawed and planed with a sharp stone or bone. It was not easy to work with such a tool. We had to rub and scrape for so long that the wood would heat up and sometimes even catch fire. This probably made people realize that fire could be produced by friction.
In order for wood to catch fire, it must be very hot. This means that you need to rub one stick against another for a very long time.
Another thing is matches. The match head is made of a material that ignites even with slight heat.
Simply touching a match to a hot iron, such as a hot stove door, is enough for the match to ignite. And if you touch the door with the other end of the match, there will be no flash.
That's why you don't have to rub the match against the box for five minutes. Just strike it and it will light up.

How long have people had matches?

Matches were invented quite recently. In 1933, the first match factory turned exactly one hundred years old. Until this time, fire was produced in a different way. Instead of a box of matches, people who lived a hundred years ago carried in their pocket a small box with three strange objects: a piece of steel, a small stone and a piece of something like a sponge. If you asked what it was, you would be told that steel is flint, a pebble is flint, and a piece of sponge is tinder.
A whole bunch of things instead of one match!
How then did they make fire?
Look at this fat man in a colorful robe, with a long pipe in his teeth. In one hand he holds a flint, in the other a flint and tinder. He strikes the flint with the flint. No result! Again. Nothing again. Again. A spark jumps out of the flint, but the tinder does not ignite. Finally, the fourth or fifth time, the tinder flares up.
Strictly speaking, this is the same lighter. The lighter also contains a pebble, a piece of steel - a wheel, and tinder - a wick soaked in gasoline.
Making fire was not so easy. At least when European explorers wanted to teach the Greenlandic Eskimos their way of making fire, the Eskimos refused. They found that their old method was better: they made fire by friction, like primitive people, by rotating a stick placed on a piece of dry wood with a belt.
And the Europeans themselves were not averse to replacing flint and steel with something better. Every now and then all sorts of “chemical flints” appeared on sale, each more sophisticated than the other.
There were matches that were lit by touching sulfuric acid; there were matches with a glass head, which had to be crushed with tongs for the match to flare up; Finally, there were entire instruments made of glass of a very complex design. But they were all inconvenient and expensive.
This continued until phosphorus matches were invented.
Phosphorus is a substance that ignites at the lowest heat - only up to 60 degrees. It would seem that it is impossible to think of a better material for matches. But phosphorus matches were no good compared to ours.
They were very poisonous, and most importantly, they caught fire too easily. To light a match, it was enough to strike it against the wall or even the boot. When the match ignited, an explosion occurred. The head shattered into pieces like a small bomb. Having burned, the match left behind a nasty memory in the form of nasty sulfur dioxide. In addition to phosphorus, the head also contained sulfur, which, when burned, turned into sulfur dioxide.
About sixty years ago, “safe” or “Swedish” matches finally appeared, which we still use today. There is no phosphorus at all in the heads of these matches; it is replaced by other flammable substances.

Why doesn't the water burn?

Some things catch fire when you heat them too much. Others burst into flames even from low heat. And there are also those that don’t burn at all.
Water, for example, does not burn.
Do you want to know why?
Yes, for the same reason why the ash doesn’t burn.
The water itself came from combustion.
What must be burned to make water?
Hydrogen gas, the same one that fills balloons and airships.
Now they began to fill airships with another gas - helium. Helium does not burn, which is why it is safer to fly on such airships.

Where does the wood go when the stove is lit?

They brought a heavy bundle of firewood from the barn and threw it with a roar near the stove. The logs are strong and healthy. The smell from them is as if they brought a Christmas tree into the room.
The stove was lit. Look, after an hour or two there was nothing left of the bundle. Just a wet spot on the floor from melted snow and a handful or two of ash in the stove.
Where did the bundle go?
Burnt out.
What is it - burned out?
We need to investigate this matter. So the candle, too, when it burns, disappears. Well, does it completely disappear or does it just seem?
Let's do this experiment. Let's take a spoon and a candle. Let's hold the spoon over the candle. The spoon will become cloudy and covered with water droplets.
Where did the water come from? It is clear that from a candle, nowhere else.
Now wipe the spoon and hold it over the flame. The spoon will be covered with soot - pieces of coal. Where does the coal come from? Again from a candle.
Why was coal not visible before?
Yes, for the same reason why beams or nails are not visible in the house. Beams, nails, bricks become visible only during a fire. It’s the same here: coal becomes noticeable only when we start a small fire - we light a candle.
OK then. When a candle burns, it produces water and charcoal.
Where do they go?
The water flies away in the form of steam. It is this steam that sits on the spoon when we hold it over the flame.
But where does the coal go?
When a candle smokes, the coal flies away in the form of soot - small pieces of coal - and lands on the ceiling, on the walls, on surrounding things.
But if the candle burns well, there is no soot - all the coal burns out.
Does it burn?
What is it - it burns?
The whole story starts all over again. Where does coal go when it burns?
One of two things: either it disappears, disappears completely, or it turns into some other substance that we simply do not see.
Let's try to catch the invisible one.
For this we need two jam jars and a candle stub.
The candle stub should be placed on a wire to make it easier to lower it into the jar.
And you need to pour lime water into the glass.
We will prepare this water like this: take a little quicklime, dissolve it in water and strain through blotting paper. If the solution turns out cloudy, we will strain it again until it is completely clear.
Now light the cinder and carefully lower it to the bottom of the empty jar. The candle will burn and burn and go out. Let's take it out, light it and put it in the jar again. This time the candle will go out immediately, as if it had been immersed in water.
This means that there is now something in the jar that is preventing the candle from burning.
What could be there? After all, the bank looks completely empty.
Let's do this then. Add lime water to the jar. The water will become cloudy and turn white. And if we pour lime water into another jar, where there was nothing, the water will remain clear. This means that in the jar where the candle used to burn, there is some kind of invisible gas that makes the lime water cloudy.
Scientists called this gas carbon dioxide. They found that carbon dioxide is also produced when coal burns.
Now we can answer the question of where the candle goes. It turns first into coal and water. The water flies away, and the coal burns and turns into carbon dioxide.
The same thing happens with firewood. Firewood also turns into coal and water. The coal burns, although not all of it: a little unburnt coal always remains in the stove. And the burnt coal, that is, carbon dioxide, flies away along with the water vapor into the chimney. The white smoke that comes out of chimneys in winter is water vapor, condensed into droplets of water in the cold. And if the smoke is black, it means the stove is smoking; There is a lot of unburned coal left in the smoke - soot.

Why does the stove hum when it is heated?

On a winter day, as soon as the stove is lit, music starts in the room. The stove hums and sings like a big trumpet in an orchestra, and the stove doors ring and rattle like copper cymbals.
Where does this hum and ringing come from?
To make the pipe hum, you need to blow into it.
Who blows the stove?
The point here is this. When we light the stove, the air in it heats up. And warm air is lighter than cold air. It rises up, and cold air from the room enters the vacated space. The result is draft - an air flow passing through the stove from bottom to top.
This is easy to check. Place several small pieces of paper on the card, so that they are at the very edge.
Hold the card near the hole in the stove door. Pieces of paper will fly into the oven one after another.
What took them there?
A stream of air that flows from the room into the stove. An airy stream carried away the scraps of paper, just as a river carries away a chip thrown into it.
This means that no one blows into the stove, but the air itself enters there.
But is it true that when you heat the air, it rises?
You can see this with your own eyes. Place a burning candle or lamp on the window on a sunny day. You will see the shadow of a flame on the windowsill, and above it the flowing shadow of rising air. That is why the flame always stretches upward: the air rises and carries the flame along with it.
Now do you understand why holes are made in the stove door? For air. But what is air for?
To keep the wood burning in the stove.
Without air - for example, in a tightly closed stove - wood will not burn. The better the draft, the better the wood burns. You yourself have probably noticed: when the draft is strong, the wood burns well, and when the draft is bad, the wood barely burns.
Scientists examined the air in the laboratory. They found that air is a mixture of gases. Most of all it contains nitrogen and oxygen. Oxygen is the gas needed for combustion.
When the wood in the stove burns, this is what happens. From the coal that is in firewood and from the oxygen that comes with the air, carbon dioxide is obtained. And water is made from hydrogen and oxygen.
This means that during its journey along the route “stove - chimney” the air completely changes. There is less oxygen left in it, but in return it takes water and carbon dioxide from the stove and carries it into the pipe.

Why does water put out fire?

If you put a candle in water, it will go out. And why?
Because a candle needs air, not water, to burn. This is why water extinguishes fire: it prevents air from approaching the burning object.
There is another way to put out the fire: cover it with a blanket or cover it with sand. A blanket or sand will prevent air from approaching the fire, and the fire will go out.

Riddle about the stove

Solve the riddle.
The stove is lit, but there is no fire. Where the air comes in, the smoke comes out. What it is?
This is a man.
After all, when we breathe, we inhale air and exhale water and carbon dioxide. Just like a stove.
You can easily check this. Breathe on the spoon, it will fog up. Here's some water for you. Now blow through the straw into the limewater. The water will become cloudy. Here's carbon dioxide for you.
Our nose serves as both a door where air enters and a chimney.
And what we eat burns in our stove. This is why our body is always warm.

Razg. Lots of questions (usually used to describe curiosity). /i> Goes back to R. Kipling’s poem “Six Servants”. BMS 1998, 468.

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