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Show THINKING Professor James Kennell, Dean of New York University, says scientists take too much for granted that strange substance, water, which we understand "as little as we understood under-stood oxygen 150 years ago." He tells you: "If the active constituent of air were hydrogen instead of oxygen, fires would be extinguished . by sprinkling gasoline on them instead of water and fireproof buildings would be built of solid paraffine." A drop of water IS a mysterious thine. Magnify its diameter from an eighth of an inch to 100,000,000 miles in diameter, and the molecules of water would become visible, each made up of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, each atom a little solar system in itself, forever indestructible, and ekisting from all time, as far as we know. Because of vast distances inside that drop, you would need a telescope. tele-scope. With it you could see inside of the atom electrons revolving around a nucleus at the centre of each atom TRILLIONS OF TIMES A SECOND. Water is mysterious, and so is everything matter, force and consciousness. Things we do not know are more numerous than those we do know. It is not certain that we actually know anything. We are here and don't know how ge got here must leave and don't know where we are going. Nevertheless, we get along fairly well. A little knowledge is enough. |