THE GIDDY GLOBE

Men of Science, who delight in applying harsh terms to things that cannot talk back, have called this Giddy Globe an Oblate Spheroid.

Francis Bacon called it a Bubble; Shakespeare, an Oyster; Rossetti, a Midge; and W. S. Gilbert addresses it familiarly as a Ball—

Roll on, thou ball, roll on!
Through pathless realms of Space
Roll on!
What though I’m in a sorry case?
What though I cannot meet my bills?
What though I suffer toothache’s ills?
What though I swallow countless pills?
Never you mind
Roll on!
(It rolls on.)

But these people belong to a privileged class that is encouraged (even paid) to distort the language, and they must not be taken too literally.

The Giddy Globe is really quite large, not to say obese.

Her waist measurement is no less than twenty-five thousand miles. In the hope of reducing it, the earth takes unceasing and violent exercise, but though she spins round on one toe at the rate of a thousand miles an hour every day, and round the sun once a year, she does not succeed in taking off a single mile or keeping even comfortably warm all over.

No wonder the globe is giddy!

QUESTIONS

Explain the Nebular Hypothesis.

State briefly the electromagnetical constituents of the Aurora Borealis, and explain their relation to the Hertzian Waves.

Define the difference between the Hertzian Wave and the Marcel Wave.