Movements Around Us
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 1 Jan 2024
Dr. Ravi P. Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service
We live in a world where there is movement all around us. The movement can be on the ground or in air — the latter is called flying. In water, movement is generally known as swimming. Most movements are visible even to a child. In fact a child first sees his mother moving while she takes care of him at home or outside.
Movements are taken not only by a child’s mother, but by his father or uncle or aunt or siblings — brother, sister etc. A child of five or six years will observe his grandfather or grandmother moving around — sometimes by carrying the child in their arms or by pushing the carriage of three or four wheels.
When a child sits in a car or a tram s(he) feels happy by the movement that is taking place . When he is sitting in a child carriage usually called — crib, he perhaps feels more happy or excited because not only he is moving but also because someone— his mother, father or older brother or sister is talking to him. Movements by people or even children are of various types. These can be running or jumping or riding a bicycle etc.
Even creatures such as ants or frogs or mosquitoes move around. Their movement especially that of a mosquito is not pleasant — it can bite a person and cause irritation and pain.
Apart from movement of various objects — crib, cart, car on the road, there are entities or things that fly in the air. These are usually birds or aeroplanes or even a kite that many young persons know how to fly.
Then there is movement in water — fish that can swim in a pool or swim in a river or ocean . The child loves to see fish swimming and wonders if s/he can also swim in the waters of a pool or a river etc. When he is taken to a pool where people are swimming, he feels excited but when his parent or older brother tries to make him enter the pool he feels afraid that he will not be able to swim properly.
In addition to movement of people or fish that can move around on a road or in a pool or river, there are movements of other types. A child sitting in a plane or helicopter that is flying feels excited — sometimes even afraid that the helicopter may fall down and hurt him. When a child is flying a kite, he feels happy but he knows that the kite may fall down and spoil his fun.
Apart from movement of people or fish, there are animals — deer, oxen, horse lion etc which can move. There are other celestial movements that move around without any clear cause that makes them move. The first movement in nature that is visible is that of the sun or moon in the sky. The sun rises from the East and moves around and then sets below the horizon in the West. The movement of the sun is regular; earlier its movement was a means of knowing and measuring the element of time. Today of course we have many accurate means of measuring time.
Another object that moves in the sky is the Moon. As seen from the earth, it’s shape keeps on changing from a full moon (Poornima) to the shape of a new moon (Amavasya).
We also have stars in the sky whose shapes or sizes do not change but their position in the sky changes a little. This change of position is not generally visible to a naked eye but astronomically can be observed to a small extent.
There are some other astronomical movements that are now possible to study due to our advanced technology. We have been able to send rockets to the moon; some of these have carried a man or a woman to land on the moon and take pictures of the moon’s soil and also measure its temperature etc.
An attempt is being tried to send a rocket in the direction of the sun. The rocket cannot reach the sun because of its excessive heat but some experiments are being tried by the sun’s rocket. Similarly, efforts are being made to send rockets to some of the planets.
Technology is allowing scientists to carry out some solar and planetary experiments . The scope of these experiments is vast and not easy to carry out. However man’s thrust in these is continuing because man is a creature that questions different aspects of nature and designs various technologies to study nature.
Man is happy looking around himself and studying what is happening. He observes other men also and is delighted to guess what they are thinking about.
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Dr Ravi P Bhatia is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, an educationist, Gandhian scholar and peace researcher. Retired professor, Delhi University. His new book, A Garland of Ideas—Gandhian, Religious, Educational, Environmental was published recently in Delhi. ravipbhatia@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 1 Jan 2024.
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