What did these people want to change and why? —One thing they objected to was the kind of lives many of the clergy led. They felt that the clergy were not concentrating enough on spiritual matters and were too concerned with material things.

The reformers also objected to the sale of indulgences. These were statements releasing people from punishment for their sins. Many of the people were jealous, too, of the huge possessions held by the monasteries, even though many of them were good landlords.

There were other forces at work at this time, too. Many people followed the reformers largely for political and economic reasons. Nationalism was rising, and with the feeling of nationalism, there came the desire for a national church.

Another factor was that the authority of the Pope was being questioned as far as it concerned non-church affairs. And there was a great division when two or more popes disputed the right of the others.

In 1517 the sale of indulgences by dishonest agents became so widespread that Martin Luther, a German scholar of the order of St. Augustine, protested. He was excommunicated and condemned as a heretic, but his doctrines spread.

In 1530 he drew up the Augsburg Confession, which contained twenty-one articles of the Protestant faith. This resulted in a complete break between the Lutherans and the Catholics. In time, the reformed doctrines, on which the Protestant churches are based, were accepted in various forms and in different countries.

But many people have often dreamed of living in a perfect place. What would it be like? No one would be poor. But nobody would be rich either. There would be no need to be rich—since everyone would have all their needs. Everyone would be happy all the time. There would be very little need for a government, because the people would be considerate of everyone else.

But no one ever really expects to find such a place. We know it’s “too good to be true.” Such a place therefore is “nowhere”—and that’s exactly what the word “utopia” means. It’s made up of two Greek words meaning “not a place”—or nowhere! But the way we use the word “utopia,” we mean a perfect place to live.

The word “utopia” was first used by Sir Thomas More, an English writer who lived in the sixteenth century. He published a book in 1516 called Utopia in which he described a perfect island. His book became very popular.

The idea of utopia, goes back long before this book. In fact, More got the idea for his book from the famous ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who wrote a book called “The Republic,” in which he described what would be a perfect state.

There were also many legends among such people as the Norse, the Celts, and the Arabs, about a perfect place that was supposed to exist somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. When the exploration of the Western world actually began, most of these legends were no longer believed. But’with More’s book, “Utopia,” it became common for writers to tell of an imaginary place that was perfect. It existed only in their fantasy.

Today, when people describe certain changes they want to make in government or society, these ideas are sometimes called “utopian.” This means they fail to recognise defects in human nature that make a perfect place to live practically impossible.

Forecasting when and where lightning will strike is not yet possible and most likely never will be. But by educating yourself about lightning and learning some basic safety rules, you, your family, and your friends can avoid needless exposure to the dangers of one of the most capricious and unpredictable forces of nature.

Charge Separation

Thunderstorms have very turbulent environments. Strong updrafts and downdrafts occur with regularity and within close proximity to each other. The updrafts transport small liquid water droplets from the lower regions of the storm to heights between 35,000 and 70,000 feet, miles above the freezing level.

Meanwhile, downdrafts transport hail and ice from the frozen upper regions of the storm. When these collide, the water droplets freeze and release heat. This heat in turn keeps the surface of the hail and ice slightly warmer than its surrounding environment, and a “soft hail”, or “graupel” forms.

When this graupel collides with additional water droplets and ice particles, a critical phenomenon occurs: Electrons are sheared off of the ascending particles and collect on the descending particles. Because electrons carry a negative charge, the result is a storm cloud with a negatively charged base and a positively charged top.

Field Generation

In the world of electricity, opposites attract and insulators inhibit. As positive and negative charges begin to separate within the cloud, an electric field is generated between its top and base. Further separation of these charges into pools of positive and negative regions results in a strengthening of the electric field.

However, the atmosphere is a very good insulator that inhibits electric flow, so a TREMENDOUS amount of charge has to build up before lightning can occur. When that charge threshold is reached, the strength of the electric field overpowers the atmosphere’s insulating properties, and lightning results.

The electric field within the storm is not the only one that develops. Below the negatively charged storm base, positive charge begins to pool within the surface of the earth (see image left). This positive charge will shadow the storm wherever it goes, and is responsible for cloud-to-ground lightning. However, the electric field within the storm is much stronger than the one between the storm base and the earth’s surface, so most lightning (~75-80%) occurs within the storm cloud itself.

How Lightning Develops Between The Cloud And The Ground

A moving thunderstorm gathers another pool of positively charged particles along the ground that travel with the storm (image 1). As the differences in charges continue to increase, positively charged particles rise up taller objects such as trees, houses, and telephone poles.

A channel of negative charge, called a “stepped leader” will descend from the bottom of the storm toward the ground (image 2). It is invisible to the human eye, and shoots to the ground in a series of rapid steps; each occurring in less time than it takes to blink your eye. As the negative leader approaches the ground, positive charge collects in the ground and in objects on the ground.

This positive charge “reaches” out to the approaching negative charge with its own channel, called a “streamer” (image 3). When these channels connect, the resulting electrical transfer is what we see as lightning. After the initial lightning stroke, if enough charge is leftover, additional lightning strokes will use the same channel and will give the bolt its flickering appearance.

What is flood? It is a condition that exists when a river overflows its banks and the water spreads out elsewhere.

What causes the flood? The accumulation of a great deal of water in a river that comes from heavy rains, or from other streams or reservoirs that feed into the river. A river usually drains a vast area, or “watershed,” and it is the heavy flow of water from anywhere in the watershed that makes a river rise and flood over its banks. Some floods are very helpful. The Nile, ever since man’s first written history, has been bringing a life-giving flood every year to farmlands, by carrying down soils from the highlands. On the other hand, the Yellow River in China has brought death and destruction periodically. In 1935, it made 40,00,000 people homeless by flooding over!

Can floods be prevented?
This is probably impossible to accomplish, since heavy rains will come whether man wants them or not. But many efforts are being made to control floods, and this will probably be done in time.

There are 3 ways to control floods. One is to have levees or dikes to protect farm lowlands and other areas where the river waters build up. A second way is to have emergency channels, such as spillways or floodways, to help carry away the excess water. A third way is to develop huge reservoirs to hold back floodwaters and feed them more gradually to the larger streams.

All these cannot be possible in India where politicians will not allow the projects to be implemented.

For example, they believed that the shadow or reflection of a human being was a part of the soul. So they considered that you would harm the soul if you broke anything on which the shadow or reflection appeared. Therefore, they considered it harmful or “unlucky” to break a mirror. Today, if someone considers it “unlucky” to break a mirror he is Superstitious, because today we no longer believe that a shadow or reflection is part of the soul. So Superstition is actually a belief or practice that people cling to after new knowledge or facts have appeared to disprove them. That is why it is impossible to say when Superstition began.

In ancient times man tried to explain events in the world as best he could with the knowledge at hand. So he made up explanations and followed certain practices. The old beliefs should have died out after being disproved by time. So the Disproved beliefs became Superstitions.