How to overcome hurdles?

There was a boy named Rahul. He along with his friends planned to make a science project model for display in his school. He and his friends planned to make an irrigation dam model and met at his home. They made the model using thermocole blocks, sealed the edges and corners with putty and tested it with water prior to painting. Upsetting them all, they found water leaking through thermocole block pores. Everybody started thinking that all their efforts were wasted as the model was leaking badly. There was panic in them.

Rahul kept his cool and started working on the model. He along with his friends applied putty on all the blocks again and corrected the defects of the model. Once again they tested the model upon drying and still found some leaks from the model, typically from the water storage area. This time the panic was a little less and all of them thought of a better putty to stop those leakages.

They came up with the idea of water cement putty, covered entire water basin with it and successfully stopped water leakages. Finally all the boys felt happy as their model turned out good and operated successfully.

Moral: We should not feel panic or sob when we do something wrong, instead we should keep our mind cool and try to solve it.

-N.T.Ganatma

Fiber Glass and its uses

The Venetians in the 15th century knew how to draw glass into very thin rods that could be bent slightly, but it was not until the 1890’s that glass fibers as we know them today become a possibility.

Various manufacturing methods were developed mainly in Germany- where fiber glass helped to overcome asbestos shortage in the World War I (1914-1918) and in United States. In 1938 a United States company introduced a method of drawing out the glass filaments (threads) by blasting them with steam as they immerge from the holes in the bottom of the melting unit. The same company introduced a method of winding the fibers on to spools which enabled glass fiber textiles to be produced at faster rate. These are the methods on which modern production is largely based and they made possible the rapid growth of the glass fiber industry since the end of World War II in 1945.

A glass fiber is stronger than any other textile fiber of the same weight at present available. They have been used in the form of textile for decorative materials such as curtains and chairs, in protective clothing, in the filtration of gases and liquids, as structural parts of boats, supersonic aircrafts and missiles.

Glass wool is also used widely for many insulating purposes in industry as well as in domestic roofs and attics. Pure glass can be made into fibers to transmit electricity over long distances. These fibers are called optical fibers.

-Ganatma