Shouldn't october be the eighth month?

'Octo'pus has eight hands, 'oct'agenarian is an 80 year old, 'octa'gon is 8 sided. Extending this logic, shouldn't 'octo'ber be the 8th month? Why is it the tenth month? You waive it as, "Maybe it is an exception to the rule. I've seen exceptions before." Hey, but that's not the only anamoly. September with a 'sept' should have been the seventh month not the 9th. December with a 'dec' should've  been the 10th month not the twelfth. Are you guys curious now? Tap your index finger on ur chin ( like my toddler would when he wants me to know he's thinking ) and say,"This story needs further investigation".

The calendar we follow now is called the Gregorian calendar, which a long while ago was called the Julian calendar and which a very long while ago was the roman calendar. It all started with them, the Romans. In fact , Rome was founded by a great guy called Romulus. The roman calendar was named Romulus after him. This calendar had only 10 months, starting from March to December . March being the first month and December being the last and the tenth.  Which is why September, October, November and December stood for 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th month respectively!  The days between December and March were left ungrouped under any month.

As time went by, another king called numa pompilius, added those days under two months, January and February. He didn't bother to rename all the other months. January was derived from the God Janus, the God of doors, meaning beginnings. That made it the first month. Pushing the other months two positions down."Aaahanh, so that's the story" ( for a detailed version of the journey of the calendar from its roman version till the latest one, please refer Wikipedia )

Now as a give away, I give you two other tit bits of information regarding our calendar. July was named after Julius Caesar and August after Augustus ( another king ). And in the first roman calendar  those months were named quintilis and sextilis meaning 5th and 6th month respectively.  Maybe because the calendar had gone through many alterations already, the king called numa left the months September to December intact. Well, that's  a question we might never know the answer to!!

The physics I found in a submarine, scuba diving and my son's colouring book!

Submarine is that huge ship that goes into stealth mode by completely diving under the water. It can sink or float at will. Now how is that possible. How can the submarine change its density at will?

Submarines contain tanks called 'ballast tanks' which carry air in them when the submarine needs to float and the tanks get filled with water, when the submarine needs to sink or dive deep. That sounds wonderful isn't it? Being able to change the density to control float and sink.

Now think about this. The submarine was floating on the surface of the sea. It fills its tanks to be able to deep dive. The air in the ballast tanks are replaced by water. The density of the submarine increases. And it slowly starts sinking. Let's say now it's completely submerged and has reached an equilibrium. That is to say, the weight of the object is equal to the upthrust. From this scenario, what does the submarine need to do, to be able to dive deeper. Remember I used the word dive deeper, not sink till the ocean bed.

Will you agree with me if I say, further addition of water will get the submarine to sink? (Because, the upthrust is fixed now that the whole of the submarine is submerged under water) So how does it dive deeper ?

The submarine introduces more water into the ballast tanks slowly at first. The sub would be sinking now. Once they reached the desired depth, they pump the required amount of air into the tanks to be able to reach equilibrium at that point. And they 'hover' there. Hover or flink or achieve neutral buoyancy. All meaning the same!

Yet place where you need to know buoyancy basics to survive is the scuba diving front. By the way, do you know what is scuba? No no not the meaning , but did you know it is an acronym and it stood for Self Containing Underwater Breathing Apparatus. I didn't know that till quite some time back. (Thanks to the all-knowing-wikipedia)

Anyways, that was just an aside. Scuba divers dive into the deep sea. They need to maintain this neutral buoyancy too at a certain depth, to avoid paddling and struggling to maintain the depth. How do they do that? They have oxygen tanks to help them breathe. And some of them have BCD, Buoyancy Controlling Device. Something they wear as a belt apparently. And they either pump in air and increase in volume or expell air and reduce the volume of the diver, thereby altering his bouyancy and helping him maintain nuetral buoyancy.

Also, some of them carry weights with them when they dive in and discard them while surfacing I read somewhere. And did you know, a fat person tends to be in a better position to float than a person with a worked out, toned, muscly body!! Simply because, fat floats!! Alarming isn't it! This is a lovely page on scuba diving, read for more details on the same.

Lot of new stuff we've learn't today. I'm amazed at how much I'm learning from my son's books. You know even a drawing book has had my eyes open wide !! Listen to this interesting story..

Having a toddler, I've spent millions of hours trying to get him to hold a crayon and colour within the border of his colouring books. A very frequent drawing which recurs is a fish with bubbles out of its mouth. Like in the picture, here. And my son didn't agree with me when I told him those were bubbles coming out of its mouth. He said those were the tiny bits of fish food which his owner has generously dropped down for him to gobble up. Why? For the simple reason that he wasn't convinced why a fish needed to blow bubbles from his mouth. I just let it be. But guyz, do you know why?

Apparently, the goldfish has something called a swim bladder. An organ or a sac filled with air. Just like in the submarines. It helps them float. When they want to swim to the top of the fish tank, they take in more air to their swim bladder. And when they want to go down, they let some air out!  And that is the bubble !! AAhaaaa...

Also, you might have seen some fishies swimming upside down or with a tilted head. It seems, they've had a swim bladder disorder.

Oh.. the wonders of nature !! Never fail to amaze me. The next time you hear the name Archimedes, throw him a salute for having figured the underlying principle. And more importantly, the next time you see a colouring book with bubbles out of a fish, silently say 'aahaaa'. No need to correct your toddler yet. I say it's too soon to burst his bubble!!