Lizard ancestors

•  Evidence shows that snakes evolved from lizards around 100 million years ago. Remains from hind legs or hip bones, from their former life, are seen in snakes like boas and pythons.

•  There are 12 snake families: 1. Colubrids or rat snakes, 2. Blind snakes, 3. Primitive blind snakes,
4. Thread snakes, 5. Boids: large snakes like

with long, rotatable fangs in front upper jaw, including pit vipers like rattlesnakes and true vipers without pit organs like Gaboon viper, 9. Shield-tailed snakes, 10. Pipe snakes, 11. Sunbeam snakes with sparkling scales and 12. Elephant trunk snakes: bearing wrinkled skin.
For more details, read issue 10 of volume 12

Marking time

The basic principle of all clocks is keeping time with the aid of a regularly recurring action, whether they are the sundials of yore or atomic clocks of modern times.

Devices to measure the time elapsed:

Hourglass

The device is also referred to as sand glass or sand clock. Basically, it has two glass globes connected by a narrow opening. These globes are called phials or ampules. Sand granules of almost the same size trickle from the upper to the lower globe.

On the right path

Mahatma Gandhi was a man of firm principles and he learned them the hard way. When he was young, he was influenced by a friend into smoking. But since he did not have enough money, he often stole from the house. Once he fell into debt, so to get out of it, he stole a piece of gold from one of the bracelets his brother sold. He sold it to pay off his debts but the act filled him with guilt and remorse. He decided to make a confession of his crimes. But he was too timid to talk to his father, Karamchand Gandhi. So, he wrote everything down in a letter and handed it to his father, who lay in a sickbed, asking to be given a punishment befitting his crime. As his father read the letter tears rolled down his cheeks. The sight struck

the young Gandhi and then he was astounded as his father tore up the letter with a sigh. This act of endless forgiveness greatly influenced Gandhi, making him firm in his principles. His devotion towards his father grew.

Cubism

Form: The artist transformed and broke down what was visible and understood in the natural world into abstract forms. These forms were geometrical in nature, often rendered as a series of planes. Colours tended to lean towards similar shades while depiction was along right angle and straight-line construction.

Interpretation: This was a radical attempt at changing the way things were perceived by viewing them from all sides through the mind, instead of limiting it to the eyes. Thus they recreated the effect of three-dimensional form in a flat, two-dimensional way. Through this method Cubists also attempted to narrow down to the basic structure of objects and their arrangement as inspired by African and Egyptian cultures.

Artists: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, etc.