Win a valuable book

from Books.lk

“Reading maketh a full man,” it is said and the importance of reading need not be reiterated. And, it is with the objective of promoting the habit of reading among children that the Junior Observer in collaboration with Bookazone (Pvt.) Ltd; the innovators of the country’s first web portal (www.books.lk), launched a competition to coincide with the literary month - September.

We give a lucky reader an opportunity to win a valuable book priced at Rs 1000 from books.lk. All you have to do is answer a the question and mail it to the address given, on or before Friday of that week. The name of the winner will be published later.

Here is how Bookazone will help you enter the magical world of books, to not only entertain yourself but also enhance your knowledge.It allows you to purchase any title of book regardless of the author, publisher, or the country of origin. Although Bookazone web portal was limited to English users since 2009, the latest additions of Sinhala and Tamil is also accessible on www.poth.lk and www.puththagam.lk

Once you place an order at Bookazone and make your payment,the deliveries are made free of charge using the best secured mode to any part of the island. In case you don’t see the title listed in the Bookazone web portal a simple email can be sent to inquire the availability, price, and the number of days that it will take to source the book. So, keep improving your general knowledge to answer the question posed every week. And what better way to do so than by READING!

First week’s winner is :

Ashwini Tharaka Senevirathne,
363/4, Pannipitiya Road,
Thalawathugoda.

Second week’s winner is :

Fathima Rizna Raheem
60/1, 4th Lane, Soysakelle
Nawalapitiya.

Science and technology

1. Electricity flows from positive to negative in a circuit. True/false?
2. What kind of ball - rubber or steel would bounce higher?
3. What is meant by super conductivity?
4. Metals become super conducting only at very low temperatures close to absolute zero - 273 degrees Celsius or 460 degrees Fahrenheit. True/false?
5. What are infrared, ultraviolet, X and gamma?

Arts and history

1. Who was the first explorer to sail around the world?
2. Who discovered Africa’s Victoria Falls in 1855?
3. What were the former names of these African countries - Burkina Faso, Ehana and Malawi?
4. Who wrote silent music?
5. What is a tutu?

Natural world

1. What is a ringhals?
2. A hoverfly can fly backwards or forwards. True/false?
3. Name the large, flightless bird of Australia?
4. How did the butcher bird gets its name?
5. Do all spiders spin webs?

Answers

Science and technology

1. True.

2. If the balls are the same size and thrown with equal force on a pavement, then the steel ball would bounce higher. What determines the bounce of a ball is the speed with which it returns to its shape after it has been compressed on impact. This return to shape is what forces the ball to go up into the air. Rubber compresses very easily but is fairly slow in returning to its shape. Steel compresses quickly and returns to its shape very rapidly.

3. Super conductivity is the complete lack of electrical resistance. A wire of superconducting metal can carry an eclectic current without losing energy - which means that it can carry a strong current and not overheat.

4. True

5. They are kinds of invisible rays

Arts and history

1. Feidinand Magellon

2. David Livingston

3. Upper Volta, Gold Coast and Nyasaland

4. The American Composer, John Cage who was born in 1912. He had been experimenting with aleatoric music - that is music that owes its form and nature to chance. Believing that even the act of casting dice implied interference on the part of the composer, in 1952 Cage wrote a piece for piano which he simply called 4’33” - for the four minutes and 33 seconds of the title, the pianist sits at the piano with sheets of blank paper in front of him. By arm movements he indicates the three movements of which the work consists. The ‘music’ is the random sounds the audience hears within the hall and coming from outside.

5. The light short ballet skirt. The tutu was introduced by the ballerina, Marie Taglioni at the first performance of her father’s ballet, La Sylphide in 1832. Before then ballerinas wore full skirt; her skirt came to mid-calf. The very short, almost horizontal form of the tutu was introduced in the late 1800s. The tutu comes from the childish word for ‘bottom’ in French.

Natural world

1. It is a kind of cobra. It has the ability to spit its venom up to a distance of 2.4m or 8 feet. The ringhals’ other name is the spitting cobra.

2. True. It can fly sideways too.

3. The emu.

4. The butcher bird gets its name because of the manner in which it keeps its prey safe until it is ready to eat it. The bird’s proper name is shrike. It lives in habitats where gorse bushes and thorny shrubs are common. When the bird catches a meal such as a lizard or beetle, it sometimes stores its prey by impaling it on a thorn.

5. No, although we usually think they do. Many species of spiders build no web at all, but rely on other methods at catching prey. The crab spider, wolf spider, spitting spider and the trapdoor spider are some of them.