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WHY DO PLANTS HAVE ROOTS?

A plant needs roots for two chief reasons: 1. As a means of anchoring itself to the ground. 2. To absorb water and minerals from the soil. The roots of most plants grow in the soil. By elongating their tips, roots are always coming into contact with new portions of soil. Thousands of tiny hairs project from the surface of the young root which absorb the materials from the soil. Types of roots: 1. Some plants have large bulbous roots called taproots. 2. Grasses have fibrous root systems. Soil in which there are many fibrous roots is protected from erosion. 3. Some tropical orchids that grow on trees have spongy roots.
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WHY DO WE GET THIRSTY?

All of us have had the experience of being thirsty at times, but can you imagine how it would feel to be thirsty for days? If a human being has absolutely nothing to drink for five to six days, he will die .  Feeling thirsty is simply our body's way of telling us to replenish its liquid supply. 1. The reason for this thirst is caused by a change in the salt content of our blood . 2. There is a certain normal amount of salt and water in our blood . 3. When this changes by having more salt in relation to water in our blood, thirst results. There is a part of our brain called the 'Thirst centre'(Hypothalamus) . It responds to the amount of salt in our blood. When there is a change, it sends messages to the back of the throat. From there, messages go to the brain, and it is this combination of feelings that makes us say we are thirsty. *Avoid eating too much of salt*

WHY DO WE TAKE ANTIBIOTICS?

Antibiotics are chemicals . When these chemicals are put into the body they kill or stop the growth of certain kinds of germs. In other words they help your body to fight off disease. Many modern antibiotics are made from microbes, which are tiny living things . For example, bacteria and moulds are microbes. The microbes used in making antibiotics are chosen for their ability to produce chemicals that wage war on the microbes of disease. In simple terms this means that man is taking advantage of the struggle that goes on in nature among microbes. Antibiotics are very effective at curing diseases and work in various ways. One antibiotic may act in different ways against different germs . It may kill the germs in one case and in another only weaken them and let the body's natural defences take over.

WHY DOES MICKEY MOUSE HAVE FOUR FINGERS?

Why does Mickey Mouse have three fingers and one thumb on each hand? In fact, why is virtually every cartoon animal's hand beset with one missing digit? Conversations with many cartoonists, animators and Disney employees confirm what we were at first sceptical about. Mickey Mouse has four fingers because it is convenient for the artists and animators who have drawn him.  In the early cartoons, each frame was hand-drawn by an animator painstaking and tedious work. No part of the human anatomy is harder to draw than a hand , and it is particularly difficult to draw distinct fingers without making the whole hand look disproportionately large . The artists who drew Mickey were more than happy to go along with any conceit that saved them some work. So in Disney and most other cartoons, the animals sport a thumb and three fingers, while humans, such as Snow White and Cinderella, are spared the amputation. And before you ask - no, we don't know f...

WHY DOES YOUR VOICE SOUND HIGHER AND FUNNY WHEN YOU INGEST HELIUM?

Many imponderables readers want to know the answer to this question. Perhaps the most complete explanation came from George B Kauffman. Sound is the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other mediums. Low-frequency sound is heard as low pitch and higher frequencies as correspondingly higher pitch. The frequency (pitch) of sound depends on the density of the medium through which the vibrations are transmitted; the less dense the medium, the greater the rate (frequency) of vibration, and hence the higher the pitch of the sound. The densities of gases are directly proportional to their molecular weights. Because the density of helium (mol. wt. 4) is much less than that of air, a mixture of about 78 percent nitrogen (mol. wt. 28) and about 20 percent oxygen (mol. wt. 32). The vocal cords vibrate much faster (at a higher frequency) in helium than in air, and therefore the voice is perceived as havi...

WHAT ARE DIMPLES? AND WHY DO ONLY SOME PEOPLE HAVE THEM?

Dimples are a generic name for indentations of the skin. They are produced when muscle fibres are attached to the deep surface of the skin, such as in the cheek or chin , or where the skin is attached to bones by fibrous bands, such as the elbow, shoulder and back. Dimples are most likely to appear where the skin is most tightly attached to the underlying bone . Dr William Jollie, Professor and Chairman of Anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia, says ' dimples probably are due to some developmental fault in the connective tissue that binds skin to bone '. So those dimples we've long envied are actually an anatomical flaw! And the tendency towards dimples seems to be hereditary.

WHAT KEEPS US HEALTHY?

A lot of things can keep us healthy: A right amount of sleep, Exercise, Fresh air,  Having friends,  and Healthy food.  Eating healthy food means not eating too much and not eating the same thing  always. Our food is composed of three components: Fats, Carbohydrates, and Proteins. Carbohydrates like sugar and starch, are present in potatoes. We also need vitamins and minerals, such as salt or calcium, to stay healthy. * We need to brush our teeth often and keep ourselves clean to keep away the bacteria and remain healthy.