Page 8 - My FlipBook

Tania explained the situation to Sonia. "I'll come too. I want to collect snow."
Sonia jumped out of bed and put on her warm clothes. The sisters took two
small buckets and mugs and went to collect snow. It was hard work, but it was
fun too.

The family made s grea team. The girls would collect snow in buckets and bring
them to Mama. She would empty it in to a large pot and heat the pot as the girls
collected another bucket of snow. Mama would put the hot water in to a large
bucket and wait for the girls to return with another bucket of snow. When Papa
returned with 5 litres of bottled water, he helped Tania and Sonia collect the
snow and speeded up the process. So Mama set two large pots on the two gas
burners to heat the snow. They all went on, until they had 3 large buckets, 2
small buckets, and 2 large pots, full of hot water.

Once everyone finished their baths with hot water from the melted snow, Mama
made oats porridge, and Papa toasted more bread on the fire and spread butter
and jam on them. Just then the power returned.

"Typical!" Papa sighed. "But I must say it was fun making toast over a fire,
instead of in a toaster for a change."

As they ate breakfast, Tania asked. "Why did the pipe burst? You said the cold
made the pipe burst. How did it happen?"

"It is because water behaves peculiarly when it is cold." Mama replied. "Did
you know, that things expand when they get hot and contract when they cool?"
She asked.

"No. What do you mean?" Tania asked.

"If you heat something, the tiny particles in it, get excited and bounce around a
lot more energetically, making the thing bigger. So if you heat a metal wire it
becomes longer and if you heat a liquid in a container, it rises. For example, in a
thermometer, the mercury column goes up with increasing temperature." Papa
joined the conversation.

"Oh that's why you look for how far the silver line reaches, when you take my
temperature. The silver line is the mercury column, right? The higher my
temperature, the longer the mercury column is. Is that right?"

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