NCERT Solutions Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity

F R E E S T U D Y M AT E R I A L F O R E V E R Y S T U D E N T

CLASS 8 · ENGLISH

NCERT Solutions

Unit 5: Science and Curiosity

NCERT Textbook — Poorvi

BOOK PAGES SECTIONS QUESTIONS MEDIUM

205 – 248 25 153 English

Solutions, notes, sample papers & more at 117 pages

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CLASS 8 · ENGLISH · POORVI

NCERT Solutions — Unit 5: Science and Curiosity
Complete NCERT Solutions for Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity from the NCERT textbook Poorvi.
Every numbered item from all three pieces of the unit — Arthur C. Clarke's science-fiction story Feathered
Friend, Walter de la Mare's poem Magnifying Glass, and the biographical article Bibha Chowdhuri — The
Beam of Light that Lit the Path for Women in Indian Science — is answered here, including the crossword,
the acronym grid and all three Let us listen tasks worked from the transcripts on pages 249–252.

TEXTBOOK BOOK PAGES

Poorvi (Class 8) 205 – 248

SECTIONS QUESTIONS

25 153

MEDIUM

English

Let us do these activities before we read — Pages 205 & 206
Feathered Friend (story by Arthur C. Clarke)

BEFORE YOU READ

I1 Work in pairs and discuss the questions given below. Share your answers with your
classmates and teacher. 1. Who can a ‘feathered’ friend be?

A ‘feathered’ friend is a bird — any bird kept, fed or simply befriended by a person. The phrase
is an example of synecdoche: one striking feature, the feathers, is used to stand for the whole
creature.
It could be a pet budgerigar or canary in a cage, the sparrows and mynas that come to a
windowsill for grain, the crow that waits on the terrace wall, or a pigeon a family has raised. In
this unit the ‘feathered friend’ is Claribel, a small yellow canary living on a space station.

Tip: the title is doing quiet work before the story even begins. ‘Friend’ tells you the
bird will matter to the people, not just amuse them — and by the end she has saved
their lives.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

I2 2. Which ‘feathered’ friend do you like? Why?

This asks for your own choice, so answer with a bird you have actually watched and give a
reason drawn from watching it.

Sample answer: I like the house sparrow best. Two pairs nest in the ventilator of
our stairway, and they are the only birds that seem completely unafraid of people.
They dust-bathe in the flowerpot, quarrel loudly over one grain of rice, and feed
their chicks from morning to dusk without a pause. They have also become rare in
cities, so keeping a bowl of water and some millet on the sill feels like doing
something useful, not just watching.

What makes this a good answer: a named bird, a place you have seen it, one exact
detail (the dust bath, the quarrel over a grain), and a reason. ‘I like peacocks because
they are beautiful' answers nothing.

I3 3. If you have a choice between a ‘feathered’ and a ‘furry’ friend, who would you
choose? Why?

Either choice is correct if the reason is honest and thought through. Weigh the two before
deciding.

POINT FEATHERED FRIEND (BIRD) FURRY FRIEND (CAT, DOG,
RABBIT)

Space needed Very little; can share a balcony Needs room, and a dog needs walks

Company it Song, movement, some birds mimic speech Touch, play, strong attachment to a person
gives

Care Clean water, grain, an uncaged flight if Feeding, grooming, vaccination, exercise
possible

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Sample answer: I would choose a feathered friend — but not a caged one. I would
rather put out water and grain and let wild birds come and go freely. A dog gives
more affection, but it depends on us completely; a bird that visits by choice reminds
me every day that it is a wild creature doing me a favour by staying.

I4 4. Do you think a ‘feathered’ or a ‘furry’ friend can accompany astronauts to space?
If yes, why? If no, why not?

Yes — and a small bird is the more practical choice of the two, which is exactly the point the
story goes on to prove.

Mass: every kilogram sent into orbit costs a fortune in fuel. A canary “weighed practically
nothing”; a dog does not.
Supplies: her “food requirements were tiny”. A furry animal would need far more food, water
and waste handling on a station where every gram is counted.
Weightlessness: the canary “was not worried, as most animals would have been, by the
absence of gravity” — she already knew how to move through air, so free fall was a small
adjustment, not a terror.

The larger reason, though: animals have been flown deliberately — Laika the dog,
the Soviet dogs Belka and Strelka, monkeys, fruit flies, and mice on the ISS today —
because their bodies react to space before ours do. In the story this becomes a life-
saving accident: the bird registers bad air long before a human notices. Against this
stands the ethical objection — an animal cannot consent to the risk — which is why
serious space biology today uses insects and small rodents under strict rules, not
pets.

II 1 Complete the words given below by inserting vowels. Refer to their meanings given
alongside. 1. official rule that controls how something is done: R _ G _ L _ T _ _ N

REGULATION
The story opens with it: “there's never been a regulation that forbids one to keep pets in a
space station.”

Page 3 of 117

as e
Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
a g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
m.
Word family: regulate (verb) → regulation (noun) → regulatory (adjective). A

m as e
l
regulation is an official rule; a rule may be informal.

m .co a g
l a se
a g
II 2 2. to not allow something: F _ R B _ D

co m
e m . ag
l as

FORBID a g
“…a regulation that forbids one to keep pets in a space station.”

co m
em.
m
Forms: forbid – forbade – forbidden. The doctor forbade him to lift weights.
l as
m .co a g
l a se
a g
3. join or blend to form a single entity: F _ S _
s
II 3

m a
m .co agl
l a se
FUSE a g
Sven's job was “fusing the pieces together when they were precisely dovetailed into the

co m
intended pattern” — welding the girders so that the join becomes one solid piece of metal.
m .
o m l a se
m .c the same spelling is also a noun — the safety fuseagin an electric circuit,
Careful:

asewhich melts and breaks the circuit.
agl
se m
com g l a
m . a
ase
II 4 4. suddenly: _ B R _ P T L Y

agl

ABRUPTLY
. com
m from it by gravity”
The space workers could admire their work “without being abruptlyeparted
s
—.c
m
o they let go of fell away suddenly. gl a
em
nothing
a
as
agl c
.
Word family: abrupt (adjective) → abruptly (adverb) → abruptness (noun). ‘Abrupt'
also describes manner — an abrupt reply is one that is short to the point of rudeness.
s e m
m a
e m . co agl
g l as
a

com
m .
m ase
.co


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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

II 5 5. admit one’s mistake: C _ N F _ S S

CONFESS
Twice in the story: “I must admit” — and “Sven didn't confess to her ownership for several days.”

Shade of meaning: you confess something you were reluctant to reveal — a fault, a
secret, an ownership you were hiding. You simply state a neutral fact.

II 6 6. a person who advises what to eat to keep healthy: D_ _ T _ T _ _ N

DIETITIAN
Jock Duncan is called “our cook-doctor-dietitian” — one man doing three jobs, which itself tells
you how small the station's crew was.

Spelling: dietitian (also written dietician). Note the -ian ending, which regularly
names a person by their field: musician, physician, technician, historian.

Let us discuss — Page 209
Feathered Friend — Part I

COMPREHENSION

I1 Answer the following questions briefly. 1. Why did the narrator think Sven had
sneaked a bird aboard? What was Sven’s scientific reason?

The narrator does not claim to know Sven's motive — “Don't ask me why Sven wanted a pet, or
why he chose the one he did. I'm not a psychologist.” What he does say is that the choice was
“very sensible”: a canary “weighed practically nothing, her food requirements were tiny — and
she was not worried, as most animals would have been, by the absence of gravity.” On a station
where everything is rationed by mass, that made her the one pet that could be hidden and kept.
Sven's own stated reason was scientific curiosity. He had smuggled her up on the last ferry
from Earth after his leave, “partly, he claimed, out of sheer scientific curiosity. He wanted to see
just how a bird would operate when it had no weight but could still use its wings.”

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Read the word ‘claimed': the narrator says Sven claimed it was curiosity — a small,
dry word that quietly suggests the real reason was loneliness, and that the
experiment was the excuse. Clarke lets us see through the character without ever
saying so.

I2 2. How did Claribel adjust to the new surroundings?

She adjusted completely, and with less effort than any of the humans. When the narrator
first saw her she was “hanging in the air as motionless as a hummingbird — and with much less
effort, for her wings were quietly folded along her sides.” In free fall she did not need to beat
her wings to stay up at all.
She had also learnt to use weightlessness: she performed “a curious kind of backward loop I'm
sure no earthbound canary had ever managed, and departed with a few leisurely flicks.” The
narrator concludes that “she'd already learned how to operate in the absence of gravity, and did
not believe in doing unnecessary work.” Finally, she “thrived and grew fat”, which is the plainest
proof of all that she had settled in.

Notice the comparison: ‘motionless as a hummingbird' is a simile that works twice
over — a hummingbird hovers, but only by beating its wings furiously. Claribel gets
the same result with folded wings. The simile praises her by out-doing itself.

I3 3. What made the narrator mistake the musical whistle for a sound from the
intercom?

Three things together made the mistake natural:

Where he was: shut into “the little cubbyhole laughingly called my office”, checking lists of
technical stores — a place where the only sound he ever expected was an announcement.
Where the sound came from: “I heard the musical whistle beside my ear” — exactly where
a wall speaker would be.
What was possible: a canary on a space station is unthinkable, so his mind supplied the one
explanation the setting allowed. He “assumed that it had come over the station intercom,
and waited for an announcement to follow.”

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why Clarke writes it this way: he makes the reader share the narrator's wrong
guess, so that the bird's appearance surprises us at the same instant it surprises him
— and he pays for the surprise by cracking his head on the angle beam, which turns
the moment into comedy rather than wonder.

I4 4. Do you think the presence of the canary would lead the spacers into trouble? If
yes, why? If no, why not?

Both answers can be argued. The honest reply is: yes, she was a real risk — and that risk
turns out to be worth taking.
Why she could have led them into trouble: keeping her broke no written rule but was
certainly unauthorised — Sven “smuggled her up on the last ferry”. She was noisy: “Claribel got
rather noisy when she was upset, and we sometimes had to think fast to explain the curious
peeps and whistles that came from ventilating shafts and storage bulkheads.” The crew hid her
from visiting VIPs and there were “a couple of narrow escapes”. Discovery would have meant
trouble for Sven and for everyone who covered for him.
Why the risk was worth it: the same bird whose peeping nearly gave them away is the one
whose collapse warns them that the air is failing — “Without Claribel, we should soon have been
slightly dead.”

The story's argument: Clarke sets a small, undisciplined, sentimental act against
half a million dollars of “chemical and electronic engineering” — and the sentimental
act wins. The trouble the canary might have caused is the price of the trouble she
prevents.

Let us discuss — Pages 211 & 212
Feathered Friend — Parts I and II

TRUE OR FALSE

I1 Identify whether the following statements from parts I and II are true or false.
Share your answers with your classmates and teacher. 1. The alarm at the space
station failed to work properly because they were not connected.

True — with one precise detail worth adding.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The station had two alarm circuits “operating independently”, but the assistant admits, “Er —
the second alarm circuit isn't connected up yet.” That left only one alarm, and when the eclipse
froze part of the air purifier, “the single alarm in the circuit had failed to go off.”

Be exact: the first alarm was connected and still failed; the second was never wired
up. So the safety system failed because the duplicate did not exist — a single fault
was enough to defeat it. That is precisely why engineers build duplicate circuits, and
precisely why an unfinished one is worse than useless: it creates the belief that you
are protected.

I2 2. Claribel was brought to the space station for an official experiment on animal
behaviour in space.

False.
There was nothing official about it. Sven “had smuggled her up on the last ferry from Earth,
when he came back from leave”, and he “didn't confess to her ownership for several days”. The
curiosity he mentions was his own private curiosity, not a sanctioned experiment.

I3 3. The canary’s suffering helped the crew discover a problem with the air purifier.

True.
Claribel collapsed, revived on oxygen and “promptly keeled over again”. That second collapse
jogged the narrator's memory — “miners used to carry canaries down to warn them of gas” —
and sent Jim to check. He returned to report that “part of the air purifier had frozen up”.

The science behind it: a bird's respiratory system passes air through the lungs in
one direction and takes in oxygen on both the in-breath and the out-breath. It is far
more efficient than ours — which also means a bird absorbs a poison, or feels a
shortage of oxygen, much sooner than a human does. That is why canaries were
taken down coal mines.

Page 8 of 117

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
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co m
m.
4. The air purifier froze because there was a rare eclipse.
e
I4

m l as
m .co a g
a se

ag l
True.
“It was one of those accidents that couldn't possibly happen; we'd had one of our rare eclipses

co m
. ag
by Earth's shadow that night; part of the air purifier had frozen up.”

e m
g l as
a
Why an eclipse matters in orbit: the station lives “in permanent sunlight”, so
sunlight is also its source of heat. When Earth's shadow cut that off, the temperature

c o m
fell far enough for part of the purifier to freeze. Notice how Clarke chooses a cause
.
m believable
e
no one could have planned for — that is what makes the chain of failure
s
. com careless.
rather than
a gla
a s em
a gl
m
5. Claribel could fly gracefully in the space station, performing loops in the air.
a s
.co agl
I5

se m
g l a
a

True.
She hung “as motionless as a hummingbird”, and then “she did a curious kind of backward loop
co m
m .
e
I'm sure no earthbound canary had ever managed, and departed with a few leisurely flicks.”
m l as
m .co a g
l a se
a g I6 6. The space station crew was uninterested in Claribel and hardly noticed her
presence after she was discovered.
se m
com g l a
m . a
ase

False.
agl
The opposite is true. “By that time it no longer mattered, because Claribel was a general pet.”

. c om
The whole crew helped conceal her from visiting VIPs, she woke both Sven and the narrator

s e m distressed”.
each ‘morning', and when she was found lifeless the crew were “all equally

. com a gla
a sem
agl c
.
I7 7. Claribel had fainted and had to be revived with oxygen supply.

s e m
m a
e m . co agl
g l as
a
True.

co m
m .
m ase
.co


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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Someone suggested “a shot of oxygen”, and “Claribel was tucked snugly into a face mask that
was large enough to serve as a complete oxygen tent for her. To our delighted surprise, she
revived at once.”

Detail worth keeping: a human face mask makes a whole oxygen tent for a canary.
Clarke uses that comic mismatch of scale to remind us how tiny the creature is —
which makes it all the more striking that she is the one who saves them.

Let us think and reflect — Pages 212 & 213
Feathered Friend

EXTRACT-BASED

I 1 (i) Read the given extract and answer the questions that follow. “Sven was one of
our best construction men, and excelled at the tricky and specialised work of
collecting assorted girders as they floated around in free fall, making them do the
slow-motion, three-dimensional ballet that would get them into their right
positions, and fusing the pieces together when they were precisely dovetailed
into the intended pattern: it was a skilled and difficult job, for a space suit is not
the most convenient of garbs in which to work.” (i) What can be inferred about
Sven’s abilities from his job description? A. He is good at following instructions
but lacks creativity. B. He possesses a strong understanding of working in space.
C. He struggles with the complexities of construction in space. D. He prefers
working on simpler tasks rather than complex jobs.

B. He possesses a strong understanding of working in space.

Why: he “excelled at the tricky and specialised work”, handled girders that were
themselves “floating around in free fall”, and could place them “precisely”. All three
words point to mastery of the conditions — weightless mass that has no weight but
still has full inertia — not just skill with tools.

Why the others fail: A is ruled out by the word ‘ballet', which is a creative image, not
a mechanical one; C is contradicted by ‘excelled'; D by ‘one of our best construction
men'.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

I 1 (ii) (ii) How can we conclude that Sven was working in zero gravity?

The extract says the girders were “floating around in free fall” and had to be moved in a “slow-
motion, three-dimensional ballet”. On Earth a steel girder must be lifted against gravity, and it
moves in the two dimensions a crane allows. Here it drifts in any direction, up and down have no
meaning, and every push takes effect slowly — which is exactly how a mass behaves when
nothing is pulling it down.
The paragraph that follows makes it explicit: Sven's team “could step back and admire their
handiwork without being abruptly parted from it by gravity.”

The physics the image hides: in free fall the girder has no weight, but it keeps all its
mass. So it is effortless to start moving and just as hard to stop — hence ‘slow-
motion' and hence ‘tricky'. Clarke gets the science exactly right inside a single
dancing metaphor.

I 1 (iii) (iii) Select the option that is correct for both Assertion (A) and Reason (R). (A):
Sven’s job required him to make girders perform a ‘three-dimensional ballet’ in
space. (R): Working in zero gravity allows objects to float, making precise
positioning more challenging. A. Both (A) and (R) are true, and (R) is the correct
explanation of (A). B. Both (A) and (R) are true, but (R) is not the correct
explanation of (A). C. (A) is true, but (R) is false. D. (A) is false, but (R) is true.

A. Both (A) and (R) are true, and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).

Why: (A) is a direct restatement of the extract. (R) is true of free fall. And (R) explains
(A): because the girders float freely in three dimensions, guiding them into position
becomes a slow, careful, all-round manoeuvre — a ‘ballet' — instead of a straight lift.
Remove the zero gravity and the metaphor collapses.

I 1 (iv) (iv) Replace the underlined word with a word similar in meaning from the
extract. During the festival, people wore colourful outfits that represented their
culture.

During the festival, people wore colourful garbs that represented their culture.

Page 11 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The extract uses it in “a space suit is not the most convenient of garbs in which to work.” The
glossary defines garbs as “clothing of a special kind”.

Shade of meaning: garb is not any clothing — it is clothing that marks a role or an
occasion: a priest's garb, a soldier's garb, festival garb. That is why it fits a sentence
about culture, and why it makes a space suit sound faintly ceremonial and comic.

I 2 (i) Read the given extract and answer the questions that follow. “Jim!” There’s
something wrong with the air! That’s why Claribel’s passed out. I’ve just
remembered that miners used to carry canaries down to warn them of gas.” /
“Nonsense!” said Jim. “The alarms would have gone off. We’ve got duplicate
circuits, operating independently.” / “Er—the second alarm circuit isn’t connected
up yet,” his assistant reminded him. That shook Jim; he left without a word, while
we stood arguing and passing the oxygen bottle around like a pipe of peace. (i)
Fill in the blank by selecting the correct option from those given in the brackets.
The narrator references canaries and miners in order to __________. (highlight the
historical use of canaries as warning systems/explain the reason that caused
Claribel to faint suddenly)

The narrator references canaries and miners in order to highlight the historical use of
canaries as warning systems.

Why this and not the other option: he has already given the reason for the fainting
in the sentence before — “There's something wrong with the air! That's why
Claribel's passed out.” The miners come next as his evidence, the precedent that
turns a guess into an argument Jim must take seriously. In other words, the first
clause states the conclusion; the canary-and-miner reference supplies the proof.

I 2 (ii) (ii) Complete the following sentence with a suitable reason. Jim initially dismisses
the warning because __________.

Jim initially dismisses the warning because he trusts the station's engineering completely: he
believes the alarms would already have gone off, since the station has “duplicate circuits,
operating independently” — so in his mind a failure this serious could not pass unnoticed.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

What Clarke is showing: Jim's confidence is not stupidity — it is the reasonable
confidence of a duty engineer in a designed system. That is what makes his single
word “Nonsense!” so effective: the story then knocks it down not with a better
machine but with a canary. His silence afterwards — “he left without a word” — is the
whole of his apology.

I 2 (iii) (iii) What does the phrase ‘shook Jim’ mean in the context of the information in
the extract? Jim was _________. A. physically pushed by someone B. startled by
unexpected information C. cold and needed to warm up D. trying to shake off
sleepiness

B. startled by unexpected information

Why: nobody touches Jim. What reaches him is his own assistant's sentence — “the
second alarm circuit isn't connected up yet” — which destroys the very reason he
had just given for dismissing the warning. ‘Shook' is used figuratively for a jolt to
one's confidence, and the proof is what he does next: “he left without a word.”

The same verb, both ways: The blast shook the windows (literal) / The news shook her
(figurative). Context alone decides.

I 2 (iv) (iv) What does the crew’s action of passing the oxygen bottle around ‘like a pipe
of peace’ suggest about their response to the situation?

It suggests that the quarrel is over and the crew has closed ranks. A ‘pipe of peace' — the
calumet passed from hand to hand around a circle — is a ritual that ends a dispute and binds a
group together. Applied to an oxygen bottle, the image says three things at once:

The argument has been settled by the facts, so they are no longer taking sides.
They are sharing the one thing that matters — good air — instead of competing for it.
Fear has made them a group, not a crowd.
They are calm. Nobody panics or runs for a suit; they stand and talk, taking turns at the
bottle.

Page 13 of 117

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
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co m
m.
And it is funny. Clarke keeps setting an ancient, dignified image beside a piece of

m l a se
hardware — a ballet of girders, an oxygen tent for a canary, a peace pipe made of an
o g it comes from the
.c cylinder. The humour is never a joke told at the reader;
a
m
emergency
a e
sbetween
a g
gap
l the grand comparison and the ordinary object.

o m
Answer the following questions. 1.m
e
. c ag
s
What was the purpose of the alarm? What had
a
II 1

agl
caused its failure?

c o m
.
s em its job. On a
Purpose: the alarm existed to warn the crew the moment anything went wrong with the
m a
sealedm
gl a fault and never
.co this is not a convenience; it is the difference between anoticing
station's life support — here, to sound the instant the air purifier stopped doing

se from it.
station
l a
ag
waking
Cause of failure: a chain of three things, each harmless alone —

m a s
.co agl
1. a rare eclipse of the station by Earth's shadow cut off sunlight and heat that night;

a s em
2. “part of the air purifier had frozen up”;
l failed to go off” — and the second, duplicate circuit that
3. “the single alarm in the circuitghad
a
should have caught this “isn't connected up yet.”

c o m
.
m and electronic
s e
The point Clarke is making: “Half a million dollars' worth of chemical

. com had let us down completely.” Complex systems
engineering
a la not usually fail
gdo
m
ase
through one dramatic breakdown; they fail when several small, forgivable gaps line

agl up. The safeguard that actually worked cost nothing and was never designed at all.

se m
com g l a
m . a
ase
agl
II 2 2. How does the crew’s reaction to Claribel change over the course of the story?

co m

m .
e
It moves through four clear stages, and the movement is the story's real plot.
m l as
m .co a g
l a se
ag
.c
s e m
m a
e m . co agl
g l as
a

com
m .
m ase
.co


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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

STAGE HOW THE CREW TREAT TEXT
HER

Surprise A shock in an impossible “I forgot all about the angle beam just behind my head… We
place stared at each other for a minute”

Affection A shared secret, “Claribel was a general pet”; they concealed her from VIPs
everybody's pet

Distress Grief and helpless care “all equally distressed”; “we all waited in hushed silence”; the
oxygen tent

Gratitude and Recognised as a safety “Without Claribel, we should soon have been slightly dead”;
respect device — a life-saver birdsong now means “you're being doubly safeguarded”

What the change means: she begins as contraband, becomes a companion, and
ends as a piece of essential equipment — without ever ceasing to be a companion.
The story does not ask us to choose between sentiment and usefulness; it argues
that the sentimental decision was the useful one.

II 3 3. What does the last part of the story tell us about the significance of unusual
ways of problem solving?

It tells us that a solution's worth has nothing to do with how sophisticated it is, and that the
ability to reach outside your own field is itself a skill.
The station's answer to bad air was expensive and modern: sensors, duplicate circuits, alarms. It
failed. The answer that worked was a hundred years old and came from a coal mine — “miners
used to carry canaries down to warn them of gas.” Note who supplies it: not the duty engineer,
whose expertise made him certain the machines were fine, but the storekeeper, whose sluggish
mind kept “tugging” at an old scrap of knowledge until “understanding exploded in my brain.”

Page 15 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Three lessons the ending draws:

Redundancy should be unlike itself. Two identical electronic circuits can fail for
the same reason; a bird cannot fail the way a circuit does. That is why the closing
line calls birdsong being “doubly safeguarded, at practically no extra expense.”
Old knowledge is not obsolete knowledge. A method from a Victorian coal
mine works perfectly in orbit because the underlying biology has not changed.
Expertise can blind. Jim's “Nonsense!” came from knowing the system too well to
doubt it.

II 4 4. Justify the appropriateness of the title of the story.

The title ‘Feathered Friend' is exactly right, and it earns both of its words twice over.

‘Feathered' names Claribel by the one feature that makes her different from every other
thing on the station — everything else there is metal, plastic and glass. It also sets up the
story's central contrast: feathers against “half a million dollars' worth of chemical and
electronic engineering”.
‘Friend' is true in the ordinary sense — she was “a general pet”, she woke the men each
morning, and they grieved over her. But by the end it is true in a far stronger sense: a friend
is someone who saves you. “Without Claribel, we should soon have been slightly dead.”

Why a plainer title would be worse: ‘The Canary in the Space Station' would give
away the surprise and reduce her to a device. ‘Feathered Friend' keeps her a person
to the crew, so that when she turns out also to be a safety system, the reader feels
both things at once — which is the effect Clarke wants.

II 5 5. ‘Without Claribel, we should soon have been slightly dead.’ What does this line
suggest about uncertainty of life in space?

The line suggests that in space survival hangs on things too small and too dull to think
about — a frozen valve, an unconnected wire, one unusually long night in Earth's shadow.
Its force lies in the phrase “slightly dead”, which is deliberately absurd: you cannot be slightly
dead. The understatement does the work of a shout. It tells us that:

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

the margin between normal life and no life at all is very thin — thin enough that the crew
crossed most of it in their sleep, waking only with a “nagging headache” and “sluggish”
minds;
the danger gives no warning a human can feel. Oxygen shortage does not hurt; it makes
you slow and content, which is why the narrator nearly failed to think at all;
the crew live with this and joke about it, because that is how people carry a permanent risk.

The device is called litotes / understatement: saying far less than the situation
deserves so that the reader supplies the rest. “It was one of those accidents that
couldn't possibly happen” works the same way — the calm sentence is more
frightening than an alarmed one would be.

II 6 6. Explain how has the writer presented science fiction with a touch of humour.

Clarke keeps the science exact and lets the tone carry the comedy. The humour never breaks
the world; it comes out of it.

TECHNIQUE EXAMPLE FROM THE STORY EFFECT

Understatement “we should soon have been slightly Deadly danger delivered dryly, so the
dead”; “It was one of those accidents reader laughs and then feels the chill
that couldn't possibly happen”

Grand image, small Girders doing a “three-dimensional Comic mismatch of scale and dignity
object ballet”; an oxygen bottle passed “like a
pipe of peace”

Self-mockery “the little cubbyhole laughingly called A narrator who refuses to sound
my office”; “when the stars had ceased heroic, so we trust him
to explode before my eyes”

Comic job titles Jock Duncan, “our cook-doctor- Shows how improvised and small this
dietitian”, who admits “I've never frontier really is
listened to a canary's heart”

Ordinary detail in an The 150-pound bonus and the “reducing Makes space feel like a workplace,
extraordinary place diet”; the crew inventing excuses for which is funnier and more convincing
peeps from the ventilating shafts than making it feel like an adventure

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why the humour matters: it is what makes the ending land. Because the story has
been light-footed throughout, the reader never braces for tragedy — and the
discovery that they were minutes from dying arrives with real force. Comedy here is
not decoration; it is the setting for the shock.

II 7 7. How would Sven reflect on his experience of almost losing Claribel and for saving
the lives of the entire crew?

The story does not give us Sven's thoughts, so this asks you to infer them from what he does
say and do — the mournful “I don't know. I just found her like this”, the beaming relief when she
revives, the lament “What's wrong with her? She's never done this before.” From those, a
defensible reconstruction:

Sample answer (in Sven's voice): I have thought about it every shift since. I brought
her up in my kit like a boy smuggling sweets into school, and I told the others it was
for science — that I wanted to see how a bird would fly with no weight. That was half
true. The other half was that I wanted something on this station that was alive and
did not need to be repaired.

When I opened my hand that morning and saw those two claws sticking up, I was
ashamed as much as grieved. I had taken her from a house with air and windows
and put her in a tin can, and it had killed her — that is what I thought. I could not
even tell them what had happened. Jock held her to his ear and said he had never
listened to a canary's heart, and I remember thinking that nobody in this whole
expensive place knew anything worth knowing.

Then she came out of the mask and gave her “Come to the cookhouse, boys” — and
keeled over again. And it turned out she had not been dying of my carelessness at
all. She had been telling us, twice over, that the air we were all breathing was going
bad, and none of our alarms had the sense to agree with her.

So I stopped feeling guilty, and I have not quite stopped feeling frightened. Half a
million dollars of engineering let us sleep towards our deaths, and a bird that weighs
less than my glove woke us. I keep her cage door open now. She goes where she
likes.

Page 18 of 117

as e
Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
a g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
m.
What makes this a good answer: it is grounded in the text (the smuggling, the

m l a se
‘scientific curiosity' excuse, Jock's admission, the second collapse, the cost of the
o
.c it holds two feelings at once — guilt turning into awe
a g — and it stays in
m
engineering),
se self-mocking register the story uses. Your own version may differ, but it must
theadry,
l
g built from evidence, not invented feeling.
abe

com
m . ag
se
gla
Let us learn — Pages 214 to 217
a
Feathered Friend — Adjectives, Merged Words and Future Time

co m
m.
VOCABULARY GRAMMAR

o m l a se
.c the appropriate adjectives from the box given below a g to match with the
I m
se words 1–8 that follow. (Box: nagging, vague, delighted, narrow, sluggish, hushed,
Choose

g l a
a inexplicable, sheepish) 1. ________ path 2. ________ worry 3. ________ plan 4. ________ look 5.

m
________ reason 6. ________ traffic 7. ________ voices 8. ________ expression
a s
m .co agl
l a se
g

a
Each adjective goes with the noun whose meaning it already carries inside it:

com
m .
m as e
.co a g l
se m
g l a
a
se m
com g l a
m . a
ase
agl

co m
m .
m as e
.co a g l
se m
g l a
a c
m .
m a s e
e m . co agl
g l as
a

co m
m .
m ase
.co


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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

NO. ADJECTIVE PHRASE WHY IT FITS

1. narrow narrow path ‘Narrow' is about width — only a path, road or escape can be
narrow.

2. nagging nagging worry A nagging thing keeps returning and will not be shaken off
— exactly what a worry does.

3. vague vague plan ‘Vague' means unclear in outline; a plan that is not worked
out is vague.

4. delighted delighted look Only a feeling word can describe a look, and ‘delighted' is the
pleasure one.

5. inexplicable inexplicable ‘In- + explic- + -able' = cannot be explained; reasons are what
reason get explained.

6. sluggish sluggish traffic ‘Sluggish' means moving slowly, like a slug — the natural
word for crawling traffic.

7. hushed hushed voices ‘Hushed' means quietened deliberately; it belongs with
voices, tones, silence.

8. sheepish sheepish ‘Sheepish' means embarrassed at having been caught out —
expression it shows on the face.

What you are really practising: collocation — the habit English has of pairing
certain words. All eight adjectives roughly mean ‘a quality', but you cannot say a
hushed path or a sluggish worry. Learning adjectives with the nouns they normally
keep company with is faster than learning them alone.

I (underline) Now, underline the sentences that use these adjectives in the text.

Here are the sentences from the story, in the order in which the adjectives appear in the box:

Page 20 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

ADJECTIVE SENTENCE IN THE TEXT

nagging, “I had a nagging headache, and vague memories of fitful, disturbed dreams.”
vague

delighted “To our delighted surprise, she revived at once.”

narrow “There were a couple of narrow escapes—but then who would dream of looking for a canary in a
space station?”

sluggish “My mind seemed to be very sluggish that morning, as if I was still unable to cast off the burden
of sleep.”

hushed “We all waited in hushed silence while he held Claribel against his ear in an attempt to detect
any heartbeat.”

inexplicable “…don't be surprised if you hear an inexplicable snatch of birdsong.”

sheepish “He came back ten minutes later with a sheepish expression.”

Notice the pairings change: the exercise gives you ‘narrow path' and ‘nagging
worry'; the story has ‘narrow escapes' and a ‘nagging headache'. Adjectives keep
several sets of company — but never all nouns.

II The word ‘intercom’ is used in the text. It is called a merged word as it is made by
combining the parts of two words—‘internal’ and ‘communication’. Merged words
are made by combining two words. Combine the words in Column 1 with the words
in Column 2 to make merged words. Write the merged word and its meaning. One
example has been done for you. (breakfast + lunch = (i) brunch — meal eaten
between breakfast and lunch hours; motor + hotel; smoke + fog; situation +
comedy; video + log; spoon + fork; web + seminar)

Take the front of the first word and the back of the second (or the other way round) so that the
two overlap into one:

Page 21 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

COLUMN COLUMN MERGED MEANING
1 2 WORD

breakfast lunch (i) brunch Meal eaten between breakfast and lunch hours
(example)

motor hotel (ii) motel A roadside hotel with parking for travellers who arrive
by car

smoke fog (iii) smog Fog made thick and dirty by smoke and vehicle fumes
— as in Delhi in winter

situation comedy (iv) sitcom A comedy serial in which the same characters return
to the same situation each episode

video log (v) vlog A diary or blog kept in the form of videos

spoon fork (vi) spork An eating implement shaped like a spoon but with
short fork prongs at the tip

web seminar (vii) webinar A seminar or lecture conducted live over the internet

What is happening in the language: these are called blends or portmanteau
words. They differ from compounds like blackboard, where both words survive
whole. In a blend at least one word is cut — smo(ke) + (f)og — so the new word is
shorter than either parent. English makes them fastest for new technology:
emoticon, netizen, podcast, malware, brunch, motel.

Try this: work out the parents of Bollywood, infotainment, camcorder and telecast.

III Read the following sentence from the text and fill in the blank. It will mean that
you’re being doubly safeguarded. In the given sentence, ‘will’ denotes __________
(past/present/future) time.

In the given sentence, ‘will' denotes future time.

Page 22 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Read the whole sentence to see why: “So now, if you visit any space station, don't
be surprised if you hear an inexplicable snatch of birdsong… It will mean that you're
being doubly safeguarded.” The visit has not happened yet; the narrator is
predicting what the birdsong will signify when it does. That is ‘will' in its commonest
job — giving information about a future event.

Remember: English has no future tense ending the way it has the -ed past. Future
time is shown by other means — ‘will', ‘going to', the simple present, the present
progressive. The table on pages 215–216 sets out seven of them.

IV 1 Fill in the blanks with the correct form (Simple Present, Present Progressive, ‘will’,
or ‘going to’) to indicate future time. 1. Our flight __________ (leave) at 10.00 a.m.
tomorrow.

Our flight leaves at 10.00 a.m. tomorrow.

Why the simple present: a flight time is a published timetable, not anybody's
decision. Row 2 of the book's table covers exactly this — the simple present is used
for the future “only in situations that are a part of a regular schedule”, as in “My
school reopens on 03 January.” Trains, buses, flights, film shows and school terms all
take it.

IV 2 2. They __________ (finish) the project by the end of this week.

They will finish the project by the end of this week.

Why ‘will': this is information about a future event with a hint of promise or
certainty — row 1 of the table. It is not a fixed timetable, and it is not a personal
arrangement already made.

Page 23 of 117

ase
Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
a g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
m.
Also correct, and more precise: They will have finished the project by the end of this

m l a se
week. ‘By' + a future time is the natural home of the future perfect, because it means
o g to four forms,
.c before that moment'. The exercise, however, restrictsayou
m
‘completed
so a
l se finish' is the expected answer.
ag
‘will

o m
e
. c
m (rain) later today. ag
s
3. The weather forecast says it __________
a
IV 3

agl

co m
m.
The weather forecast says it will rain later today.

o m l a se
gis the ordinary way of
.c a forecast is a prediction about the future, and ‘will'
a
m
Why ‘will':

l a se
reporting one. Notice the reporting verb ‘says' — you are passing on somebody
a g else's statement about what is to come.

a s
. com agl
e m
Fine distinction worth knowing: if you look up at black clouds and speak from

g l as English prefers it's going to rain — ‘going to' is
what you can see at that moment,
used when present evidencea points to the future. Here the evidence is a forecast, not
m
the sky, so ‘will' is better.
. co
e m
m l as
.co a g
a s em4 4. We __________ (move) into our new house next month.
gl
IV

a
se m
m a

. comonth. a g l
em
We are moving into our new house next

a s
agl row 3 of the table — “for future actions and events
Why the present progressive:

m
mostly for personal arrangements and fixed plans.” Moving house is arranged in

. co
advance: the date is set, the van is booked. The form looks present but the time
em
m l as
.co
word (‘next month') makes the reference future.
a g
se m
g l a
a c
m .
e
5. I __________ (start) my new hobby class next Monday.
s
IV 5

m a
m . co agl
l a se
ag class next Monday.
I am starting my new hobby

co m
m .
m as e
.co


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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why: you have already enrolled, so it is a fixed personal arrangement — present
progressive, like item 4.

Also acceptable: I start my new hobby class next Monday. If you are thinking of the
class as an item on a timetable rather than as your own plan, the simple present
works too. Both are natural English; be ready to justify whichever you write.

IV 6 6. She __________ (go) to the mall this afternoon.

She is going to the mall this afternoon.

Why: ‘this afternoon' is very close at hand and the trip is her own plan — a personal
arrangement, so present progressive. With the verb go, English avoids the clumsy ‘is
going to go' and simply uses is going, which already carries the ‘going to' meaning of
a settled intention.

IV 7 7. The team __________ (have) a meeting at 3.00 p.m. tomorrow.

The team is having a meeting at 3.00 p.m. tomorrow.

Why: a meeting with a fixed hour is an arrangement people have made with one
another — the classic use of the present progressive for the future.

Also acceptable: The team has a meeting at 3.00 p.m. tomorrow, if you are reading it
off a diary or timetable. And note the subject: ‘team' is a collective noun taken as one
unit here, so the verb is singular — is having / has, not are having.

IV 8 8. I __________ (help) you with your homework after dinner.

I will help you with your homework after dinner.

Page 25 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why ‘will': the book's note beside row 1 says ‘will' is “also common in offers,
promises, and orders expressing willingness”. This sentence is an offer made at the
moment of speaking. ‘I am helping you after dinner' would sound like a fixed
appointment; ‘I will help you' sounds like a kindness being offered now — which is
what the sentence means.

V Fill in the blanks with the suitable forms of verbs given in brackets to express
future time reference. By 2040, artificial intelligence 1. ________ (revolutionise)
medical treatments. Researchers 2. ________ (develop) AI-powered diagnostic tools
that 3. ________ (transform) healthcare by the end of this decade. Next week, the
International Science Congress 4. _______ (open) to showcase advancements in AI and
robotics. In the coming years, robots 5. _______ (assist) surgeons in performing
complex operations. Years ago, experts had predicted that AI would reshape our
world, and now, as we approach the future, this 6. _______ (be) our new reality.

The paragraph is built so that each blank tests a different row of the table on pages 215–216.
Read the time expression before each blank — that is the clue.

NO. ANSWER TIME CLUE FORM USED

1. will have By 2040 Future Perfect — finished before a point in the
revolutionised future

2. are developing (work already under Present Progressive with future reference
way)

3. will have by the end of this Future Perfect — again ‘by' + future time
transformed decade

4. opens Next week Simple Present — a scheduled event

5. will be assisting In the coming years Future Progressive — in progress over a future
stretch of time

6. is going to be now, as we approach the ‘Going to' — present evidence pointing to the
future near future

The finished paragraph: By 2040, artificial intelligence will have revolutionised medical
treatments. Researchers are developing AI-powered diagnostic tools that will have
transformed healthcare by the end of this decade. Next week, the International Science
Congress opens to showcase advancements in AI and robotics. In the coming years, robots will

Page 26 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

be assisting surgeons in performing complex operations. Years ago, experts had predicted that
AI would reshape our world, and now, as we approach the future, this is going to be our new
reality.

The rule under all six: ‘by + future time' calls for the future perfect; a stretch of
future time calls for the future progressive; a fixed calendar event calls for the simple
present; visible present evidence calls for ‘going to'. Also notice the last sentence:
“experts had predicted that AI would reshape our world” — that is future in the past
(row 7), the future as it looked from a point already gone.

Also acceptable: will develop at 5 in blank 2 and will assist at blank 5. They are not
wrong; they are simply less exact.

Let us listen — Pages 217 & 218 (transcript on page 249)
Feathered Friend — Monika and Toby the Martian

LISTENING

I1 You will listen to a conversation between Monika and Toby. Toby is a Martian and is
stranded on Earth. He has become Monika’s friend. As you listen, put a tick mark
against the correct statements and a cross against the wrong ones. 1. Toby misses
his school.

✗ (cross)
Asked whether he misses his planet, Toby says: “Very much, Monika! I miss my people and
home.” School is never mentioned.

Listening tip: this is a classic distractor. The idea of ‘missing' is right; only the object
is wrong. Hold on to the exact noun you hear, not the general feeling.

I2 2. Monika accepts Toby as her friend.

✓ (tick)
“Oh! I wish I could do something about it! But I am happy to have you as my friend.” Toby
answers, “Thank you, Monika!”

Page 27 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Notice the ‘But': she cannot send him home, so she offers the one thing she can —
friendship. The small word turns an apology into an acceptance, which is what the
statement is testing.

I3 3. Monika asks Toby about one of his facial features.

✓ (tick)
“Okay, tell me one thing. How are you able to see with only one eye? I see only one big eye in
the centre of your face.”

‘Facial feature' is the phrase to decode: the statement never uses the word ‘eye',
so you must match the general term in the question to the particular thing in the
conversation. Eyes, nose, mouth, chin and ears are all facial features.

I4 4. Toby tells Monika that she had a banana for breakfast.

✗ (cross)
He says: “And yes! That apple you just had for breakfast is going round-and-round in your
stomach right now!”

Listening tip: another single-word swap. When a statement names a specific object,
a colour or a number, that detail is almost always what is being tested.

I5 5. Toby shares that he can see much clearer with a closed eye.

✗ (cross)
What Toby actually says is: “we Martians need only one eye to see clearly. In fact, I can see even
with my eye closed.” He claims he can still see when the eye is shut — he never says he sees
better or much clearer that way.

Page 28 of 117

as e
Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
a g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
m.
Why the difference matters: the statement adds a comparison (“much clearer”)

m l a se
that the speaker did not make. In a listening test, an added comparative is a change
o
m .c so the statement must be marked wrong. If you hadagticked it because
of meaning,
youas e ‘clearly' and ‘eye closed' in the same breath, this is the habit to correct:
l
g what is being compared with what.
heard
acheck

com
e m . ag
g l as
a
II 1 Listen to the conversation again and fill in the blanks with the exact words you
hear. 1. Toby: I miss my _________________ and home.

co m
em.
m l as
.co a g
Toby: I miss my people and home.

a s em
a gl Why ‘people' and not ‘planet': Monika's question was “Do you miss your planet?” —
so ‘planet' is the word already on the page and cannot be the answer. Toby replies by

om a s
c agl
naming what a planet actually means to him. That is worth noticing: what anyone
.
m itself.
s e
misses about a place is never the place
a
agl

co m
II 2 2. Toby: Well, we _________________ don’t need to eat anything. We get our
m .
m
_________________ from the Sun.
as e
.co a g l
a s em
gl

a Toby: Well, we Martians don't need to eat anything. We get our energy from the Sun.

se m
om
Did you know? Toby is describing.csomething g l a
m
real in biology — living directly off
a
l a
sunlight. Green plants do it by sephotosynthesis. No animal manages it fully, though
ag steals chloroplasts from algae and keeps them working
the sea slug Elysia chlorotica
inside its own body.

co m
m .
m as e
.co a g l
a s emII 3 3. Monika: Oh! Don’t you ever feel like having ice-creams and _________________!

agl
.c
s e m
m a
. co
Monika: Oh! Don't you ever feel like having ice creams and chocolates! I can't think of life
e m agl
l as
without them!

a g

co m
m .
m ase
.co


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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Listening tip: the blank comes after ‘and', so you are listening for the second item in
a pair. Pairs — ‘ice creams and chocolates', ‘mountains and clouds' — are a favourite
place for a gap, because the first item tells you exactly when the answer is coming.

II 4 4. Monika: Okay, tell me one thing. How are you able to see only with _________________
eye?

Monika: Okay, tell me one thing. How are you able to see only with one eye?

In the transcript the line runs “How are you able to see with only one eye?” — the
word order in your book is slightly different, but the missing word is the same: one.

II 5 5. Toby: I can see beyond mountains and _________________, woods and even ____________.

Toby: I can see beyond mountains and clouds, woods and even metals.

Notice the ladder: mountains → clouds → wood → metals. Each item is harder to
see through than the last, so the list itself builds the boast. The next sentence proves
it — he names the blue toy aeroplane in her pocket, and then the apple inside her.

Let us speak — Page 218

Page 30 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Feathered Friend

SPEAKING

I Read the following words from the text aloud and circle the letters that are not
pronounced (silent letters). ballet (ba-lay) [ba pronounced as in bat]; whistle (wi-sl);
alarm (uh-laam); psychologist (sai-ko-luh-juhst). Now, read some more words with
silent letters. As you read, circle the letters that are not pronounced: receipt, debris,
pneumonia, almond, foreign, island, wreck, aisle, campaign, fasten.

The four words from the text first — the book's own pronunciation guide tells you which letters
have vanished:

WORD SAID AS SILENT LETTER(S)

ballet ba-lay final t (the word came from French, which drops it)

whistle wi-sl h and t

alarm uh-laam r (silent in British English before a consonant)

psychologist sai-ko-luh-juhst initial p

And the ten practice words:

WORD SAID AS SILENT LETTER(S)

receipt ri-seet p

debris deb-ree s

pneumonia nyoo-moh-nee-uh p

almond aa-mund l

foreign for-in g

island eye-lund s

wreck rek w

aisle eye-l s (and the final e)

campaign kam-payn g

fasten faa-sn t

Page 31 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why English is full of these: spelling was fixed by printers around 500 years ago
and has barely moved since, while pronunciation kept changing. Some letters were
even added by scholars to show a word's Latin origin — the s in island was inserted
because of Latin insula, though the English word never had one. Useful patterns: ps-,
pn- (psychology, pneumonia) and kn-, wr-, gn- (knee, wreck, gnaw) are silent at the
start; -stle, -sten lose the t (castle, listen, fasten); -gn loses the g (foreign, campaign,
design).

II Work in pairs. Use the given situations to ask for and give suggestions. • You need
to make a model of the solar system for the Science Exhibition but don’t know what
materials to use. Ask your friend for suggestions. • You need to prepare for the
inter-class quiz on the topic Chandrayaan-3. Ask your friend for advice on how to
prepare. You may use the prompts given below. (Asking for Advice: What should I
do…? / How can I…? / What are the best ways…? / How can I make sure…? / What
should I…? — Giving Advice: I feel you should… / You should ensure… / It’s good to
prepare yourself… / If you have an issue…, try… / It is best to use…)

Use one prompt from each column per turn, and make sure the advice is specific — that is what
separates real advice from encouragement.
Situation 1 — the solar system model

SPEAKER WHAT IS SAID

A What should I do about the planets? I don't know what to make them from.

B It is best to use thermocol balls of different sizes, painted with poster colours. Keep Jupiter clearly
the biggest and Mercury the smallest — the sizes carry half the marks.

A How can I make sure the orbits stay in place?

B You should ensure the rings are stiff. Cut them from an old cardboard carton and hang each planet
on nylon thread. If you have an issue with them drooping, try running thin wire inside the
cardboard.

A What are the best ways to show it is not just a toy?

B I feel you should add a small card beside each planet with one fact — the length of its year, say —
and put an LED inside the Sun so the light falls outward correctly.

Situation 2 — the Chandrayaan-3 quiz

Page 32 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

SPEAKER WHAT IS SAID

A How can I prepare for the Chandrayaan-3 quiz? There is so much material.

B It's good to prepare yourself with the fixed facts first — the launch date, the launch vehicle, the
names of the lander and the rover, and where it landed. Those are what quizmasters ask.

A What should I do after that?

B I feel you should read the ISRO website itself rather than random posts, and make one page of
notes you can revise on the morning of the quiz.

A How can I make sure I don't freeze on stage?

B You should ensure you have practised out loud. If you have an issue with nerves, try answering ten
questions a day with a partner holding the timer.

Speaking tip: in English, advice is usually softened. ‘You must paint it blue' sounds
like an order; ‘I feel you should paint it blue' sounds like help. The softening words —
I feel, perhaps, it's good to, you could — are what make the same information polite.

Let us explore — Page 219
Feathered Friend

PROJECT

I ‘A canary in the coal mine’ is a popular phrase to describe early signs of potential
danger. I Coal miners in places like Arunachal Pradesh used canary birds to detect
the presence of carbon monoxide. Such gases are a potential risk to the life of the
miners. These little birds are particularly sensitive to carbon monoxide and can
prevent mining accidents.

This is the real practice behind the story's turning point. Here is what to find out and
understand.
Why a canary and not a dog or a lamp? A bird's lungs are far more efficient than a mammal's.
Air flows through them in one direction, through air sacs, so a bird takes in oxygen on the in-
breath and the out-breath both. Its small body also has a very high metabolic rate. The result: a
canary absorbs carbon monoxide several times faster than a man of the same weight, and it
shows distress — swaying, then falling off the perch — long before a miner feels anything worse
than a headache. That warning time is what saved lives.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
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Why carbon monoxide is so dangerous. It is colourless, odourless and slightly lighter than air,
co m
se
so no sense of ours detects it. It binds to haemoglobin roughly 200 times more readily than
m.
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g the ability to notice
.c confusion is the worst symptom of all, because it removes
oxygen does, so the blood fills with a gas it cannot use. The victim grows slow, drowsy and

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se is wrong. That is exactly the state Clarke's narrator is in: “My mind seemed to be
confused — and
a
that lanything
ag sluggish that morning.”
very

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The Indian link. Coal in Arunachal Pradesh, and in the older fields of Jharkhand, West Bengal

m .
and Meghalaya, was mined in shafts where 'afterdamp' (mainly carbon monoxide and nitrogen)
ag
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collected after a fire or blast. Caged canaries were carried down as living detectors. The practice
ag detectors — in Britain formally in 1986 — and India's
was retired in favour of electronic gas
mines today use portable multi-gas monitors and continuous methane detectors under the

co m
m.
Directorate General of Mines Safety.

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.co
What the phrase means now: ‘a canary in the coal mine' has become an idiom for
a g l
a s emearly, sensitive warning of a danger others cannot yet see. Ecologists call
gl frogs a canary in the coal mine for wetland pollution, because their permeable skin
any
a
s
registers contamination first; lichens are used the same way for air quality; coral
m a
.co agl
bleaching is treated as an early signal of ocean warming.

se m
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a
Find out and discuss: (i) what a modern miner actually carries — a self-rescuer

m
breathing device and a multi-gas detector; (ii) whether the canary was killed or
revived — miners used a small cage with a door and an oxygen cylinder to bring the
. co
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bird round, exactly as Sven's crew do with a face mask; (iii) one animal that acts as an
g
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early-warning system where you live.

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Let us write — Pages 219 to 221 om
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Feathered Friend

WRITING

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se help of the social media
I Complete the social media web given below with the uses of the internet. Now,

o m l a
.c web. Points to remember: Heading/Title, Name of the ag writer; Paragraph 1: Give a
write an article titled ‘The Importance of Internet’ with the

se m
g l a general introduction to the topic. Paragraph 2: Explain the uses of the internet and
a c
.
why it is important. Give examples to support your view. Paragraph 3: End with a

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comment and leave the reader with a thoughtful idea or quote.

m . co agl
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agicons printed around the globe in your book stand for the everyday
Completing the web. The
uses of the internet. Label them like this:

co m
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m ase
.co


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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

ICON IN THE WEB USE OF THE INTERNET

Music note Entertainment — streaming music, films and games

Camera (Instagram) Sharing photographs and short videos

Facebook Staying in touch with family and friends; community groups

X News, opinion and public announcements in real time

Envelope Email — formal and official communication

Profile / person Online identity, and services that need one: banking, DigiLocker, admissions

Location pin Maps, navigation and finding local services

Globe with laptop The centre — learning, research and work from anywhere

Page 35 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Sample answer — the article
THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERNET
by Meera Nambiar, Class VIII-B
Thirty years ago, a student who needed to know the boiling point of mercury walked
to a library and hoped the right book was on the shelf. Today the answer arrives in
two seconds, on a phone, in a village with no library at all. That change is the
internet, and it has quietly rearranged how we learn, earn, buy, travel and keep in
touch.
Its uses reach into every ordinary hour of the day. It teaches: NCERT's own
textbooks, DIKSHA lessons and thousands of recorded classes are free to anyone
with a data pack, so a child in Ziro can attend a lecture given in Delhi. It connects:
email carries an office's work, while messaging and social platforms carry a
grandmother's voice across three time zones. It informs: a cyclone warning now
reaches a fishing village faster than the storm does. It serves: UPI moves money
between a vegetable cart and a bank without either party touching a note, and
portals for scholarships, tickets and identity documents have replaced whole days of
queuing. And it entertains — music, films and games that once needed a shop now
need only a screen. Behind all of these sits the same simple fact: the internet
removes distance as a cost.
But a tool this powerful magnifies the hand that holds it. The same network that
carries a physics lesson carries a rumour that can start a riot; the same speed that
delivers a warning delivers a scam. The internet does not make us wiser — it makes
us faster, and the direction is still ours to choose. Perhaps that is the thing to
remember every time we unlock a screen: information is not knowledge until
someone has thought about it.

How the article was built: paragraph 1 opens with a concrete contrast instead of a
definition; paragraph 2 turns each icon of the web into one clause with one Indian
example; paragraph 3 raises an objection and closes on an idea rather than a
summary. Follow that shape and change the examples to your own.

Page 36 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

II Astronauts living in space stations have to do things differently. Read how they
manage the routine tasks in the absence of gravity. You may find out more
information about it from the internet. 1. Write: Astronauts use a special Space Pen
which has a cartridge with ink combined with resin. The ink remains solid until
friction with the ball at the point of the pen liquefies it. It works in all positions, in
extreme heat and cold, and in atmospheres ranging from pure oxygen to vacuum. 2.
Exercise: Astronauts use resistance exercise equipment. Weight training is done by
applying a load using vacuum cylinders. Running on the treadmill is made possible
with the bodies held down using rubber straps. 3. Eat: Astronauts eat preserved
foods which is dried, canned, vacuum-packed, and frozen. These can be prepared by
adding cold or hot water, and some can be heated in an oven. They also eat ready-
to-eat items, such as nuts, breads, and fruits. 4. Sleep: Astronauts can sleep on a
floor, wall, or ceiling as there’s no distinction between up and down but they may
gradually float away while sleeping. Therefore, they need to restrain their bodies in
small sleeping compartments or sleeping bags.

Read the four passages together and you will see that every one of them solves the same
problem in a different way. Without gravity, nothing stays where you put it, nothing flows
downwards, and nothing presses on anything else. Here is the pattern:

TASK WHAT GRAVITY NORMALLY HOW ASTRONAUTS REPLACE IT
DOES FOR US

Write Pulls ink down to the ball of the pen A sealed cartridge pushes thixotropic ink forward under
pressure; the ink stays solid until the rolling ball's friction
liquefies it

Exercise Gives your body a load to work Vacuum cylinders supply an artificial load; rubber straps
against, keeping bone and muscle hold the runner down on the treadmill
strong

Eat Keeps food on the plate and liquids Food is dried, canned, vacuum-packed or frozen, then
in the glass rehydrated; drinks are sucked from sealed pouches

Sleep Holds you on the bed Sleeping bags are strapped to a wall — floor, wall and
ceiling are all the same thing

Page 37 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The one that matters most is exercise. In free fall the skeleton stops being loaded,
so astronauts lose roughly 1–1.5% of bone mass per month and their leg muscles
weaken quickly. That is why exercise on the ISS is not recreation but a scheduled
two-hour daily duty on the ARED resistance machine, the treadmill and the cycle. It
also explains a line in your story — Sven's team could “step back and admire their
handiwork without being abruptly parted from it by gravity”: the same absence of
weight that makes construction easy makes the human body deteriorate.

Find out more: why fizzy drinks are not carried (the gas will not separate from the
liquid without gravity, so the bubbles stay in the stomach); why astronauts often lose
their appetite in the first days (fluid shifts upward and blocks the sinuses, dulling
taste, which is why hot sauce is popular on the ISS); and how Indian astronaut-
designate crews training for Gaganyaan are being prepared for these same
routines.

III Did you know that animals can save humans from natural calamities? Animals can
sense natural calamities. Read the following examples and decide if this is true. • In
2004, before a tsunami could hit the coastline of Indonesia, some animals made
efforts to flee—elephants ran for higher ground, flamingos abandoned low-lying
nesting areas, and dogs refused to go outdoors. • Minutes before the Naples quake
of 1805, oxen, sheep, dogs, and geese started making alarm calls in unison. •
Migratory birds crossing the Pacific are able to dodge storms and other hazards. • In
the Gulf of Mexico, sharks sense the drop in barometric pressure that precedes
hurricanes and tend to swim to deeper waters as a result. Dolphins have also been
observed swimming away from storm-prone areas. Scientists have studied this
behaviour and found that when severe stresses arise in deep rock before the
earthquake, ultra-low frequency electromagnetic waves are generated that animals
can sense.

Yes — but with an important limit, and stating that limit is what makes this a good
answer rather than a repeated story.
What is well established. Animals do detect physical signals we cannot.

Pressure. Sharks and many fish have organs sensitive to pressure change, so a falling
barometer before a hurricane is a real, measurable cue. Birds detect it too, which is why they
leave ahead of storms.
Infrasound. Sound below about 20 Hz is inaudible to us but travels enormous distances.
Elephants hear and produce it; so do pigeons. A tsunami and a distant storm both generate
infrasound long before the water or wind arrives — a plausible explanation for the 2004

Page 38 of 117

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
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accounts.
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Ground vibration. The fast, weak P-wave of an earthquake arrives seconds to a minute
m.
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.c though of an earthquake that has already begun. ag
before the destructive S-wave. Animals close to the ground feel it and react; this is genuine

se m
early detection,
l a
ag is still uncertain. The claim in the last line — that stressed rock releases ultra-low-
What
frequency electromagnetic waves which animals sense days in advance — is a hypothesis, not

co m
ag
settled science. Seismologists point out that the evidence is almost entirely anecdotal and

m .
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collected after the disaster, when people remember the dog that barked and forget the hundred

a g l
that did not. There is at present no method that predicts an earthquake reliably from animal
behaviour.

co m
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How to judge a claim like this: ask three questions. Is there a mechanism (a sense

o m l a se
organ that could detect the signal)? Was the observation made before the event or

m .c afterwards? Have the failures been counted as well aasgthe successes?
se
recalled

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Pressure and infrasound pass all three tests; earthquake prediction passes only the
a first.

om a s
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m this principle used deliberately. She does agl
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Link back to the unit: Claribel is exactly

a gla — she simply has a body that registers a real
not predict anything mysterious
physical change sooner than a human body does. That is the honest, scientific
version of ‘animals can save humans'.
com
m .
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a s eIVm Salim Ali, the ‘Birdman of India’, was an Indian ornithologist (a person who studies
agl birds). He was the first Indian to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and
wrote several books on birds. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1958 and the
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Padma Vibhushan in 1976.
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Sálim Ali (1896–1987) is the natural person to meet at the end of a story about a bird that saves

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lives, because he spent sixty years arguing that birds are worth paying attention to.

em
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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

FACT DETAIL

Why ‘Birdman of He carried out the first systematic, region-by-region bird surveys of India, turning bird-
India' watching from a hobby into fieldwork with method and records.

Best-known book The Book of Indian Birds (1941) — still the book most Indian birdwatchers begin with; and
the ten-volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan with S. Dillon Ripley.

Autobiography The Fall of a Sparrow — named after the yellow-throated sparrow he shot as a boy, whose
identification sent him to the Bombay Natural History Society and changed his life.

Conservation work His campaigning helped save Bharatpur (Keoladeo) and helped stop the Silent Valley hydro-
electric project in Kerala.

Honours Padma Bhushan 1958, Padma Vibhushan 1976; the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and
Natural History (SACON), Coimbatore, is named for him.

The idea worth taking away: Sálim Ali's argument was that birds are indicators —
the health of a wetland, a forest or a city can be read from which birds still live there.
That is the canary-in-the-coal-mine principle applied to a whole country, and it is why
the disappearance of house sparrows and vultures from Indian cities was treated as
a warning about us, not only about them.

Do this: keep a bird diary for one week — date, time, place, bird, what it was doing.
That is exactly how Sálim Ali began, and it is how the Great Backyard Bird Count still
works today.

Page 40 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

V We need to conserve our ‘feathered’ friends. Work in groups of four. Look at the
pictures and make a bird feeder with cardboard, chart paper, etc.

1. 2.

3. 4.

The four bird feeders shown on page 221, redrawn: 1 — a milk carton hung on a tree
trunk, cut into a face with a feeding tray below; 2 — a tall pink carton house with a
slanting roof, hung among leaves; 3 — a carton fixed to a wall with two seed trays and
pencils pushed through as perches; 4 — a diamond of card hung by a string, with a hole,
a stick perch and a small basket of seed.

The four pictures in your book show four workable designs. Read them as four different
solutions to the same three problems: hold the grain, keep out the rain, give the bird
somewhere to stand.

Page 41 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

PICTURE DESIGN WHAT TO NOTICE

1. A milk carton cut into an owl's face and tied The folded flap below the opening is a ledge
to a tree trunk — birds will not feed where they cannot
perch.

2. A tall painted carton ‘house' hung among The overhanging roof keeps rain off the
leaves grain. Leaves give the bird cover from cats
and crows.

3. A carton feeder fixed to a wall, with pencils Two pencils through opposite walls make a
pushed through as perches and a tray of strong perch and also brace the box.
seed

4. A diamond of stiff card with a round hole, a Hanging free means squirrels and cats
mesh cup of seed and pencil perches, hung cannot reach it; the mesh lets water drain
on string out.

How to make design 4 (the easiest and the most successful):

1. Cut a 20 cm square of thick cardboard and stand it on a corner so it becomes a diamond.
Cover both faces with chart paper and let it dry flat.
2. Cut a round hole about 8 cm across in the centre. Push two pencils or thin sticks through the
card below the hole so they stick out on both sides — these are the perches.
3. Tie a small steel or plastic mesh cup (a used tea strainer works) inside the hole so it hangs
level. Mesh matters: it lets rainwater drain and stops the grain from rotting.
4. Punch a hole at the top corner, thread strong string through it, and hang the feeder from a
branch or a grille, at least 2 m above the ground and away from any wall a cat can jump
from.
5. Fill with whole grain — bajra, jowar, broken rice or unsalted sunflower seeds. Set a shallow
earthen dish of water nearby; in an Indian summer, water saves more birds than food does.

Rules that decide whether birds actually come: never put out salted, fried or
spiced food, or bread — none of it is bird food. Clean the feeder every week with
plain water so droppings do not spread disease. Refill on the same days: birds learn
a schedule and abandon a feeder that keeps failing them. And be patient — a new
feeder is usually ignored for a week or more before the first sparrow risks it.

Let us do these activities before we read — Page 222

Page 42 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Magnifying Glass (poem by Walter de la Mare)

BEFORE YOU READ

I1 Work in pairs. Answer the questions that follow the pictures given below. Share
your answers with your classmates and teacher.

A palm being read Footprints on a path An insect on a leaf
through a lens being examined being studied

The picture strip on page 222, redrawn: three different people out of doors, each
bending close to something with a magnifying glass.

1. What is common in all these pictures?

In every picture somebody is looking at something small through a magnifying glass.
The four scenes are otherwise completely unlike one another:

two elderly men seated on a mat, one holding a lens over a paper the other is showing him;
a man in a shirt and waistcoat bending low over a line of footprints on a path, lens in hand —
the classic detective;
a man examining an ant on the leaf of a plant;
a girl in a pink kurta crouching in the grass to look closely at mushrooms and flowers.

The point of the set: old and young, indoors and outdoors, work and play, evidence
and wonder — the one thing they share is the act of looking closely. That is precisely
the poem's subject, so the pictures are teaching you the theme before you read a
line of it.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
a g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
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I2

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A palm being read
a Footprints on a path An insect on a leaf

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The picture strip on page 222, redrawn: three different people out

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Choose the ones that match something

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Sample answer: I am most familiar with the third and fourth pictures. My

m a s em print of the
grandfather keeps a magnifying glass on his table to read the small

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newspaper and the numbers on medicine strips, so the picture

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using a lens over a paper is an everyday sight at home. The girl looking at
a
in the corner of our school ground and we crouch over them exactly like that,
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though without a lens. The detective picture I know only from books and films.
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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

I3

A palm being read Footprints on a path An insect on a leaf
through a lens being examined being studied

The picture strip on page 222, redrawn: three different people out of doors, each
bending close to something with a magnifying glass.

3. Why do you think the people in the pictures need to use a magnifying glass?

Because the human eye has a limit, and each of them has run into it for a different reason.

PICTURE REASON FOR THE LENS

Elderly men with a Age. As we grow older the eye's lens stiffens and cannot focus on near objects (presbyopia),
paper so small print must be enlarged.

Man examining Evidence. Details that decide a case — the depth of a print, a torn thread — are too fine to
footprints be trusted to the naked eye.

Man and the ant on a Study. To identify an insect you must see its legs, antennae and wings, which are
leaf millimetres long.

Girl and the Curiosity. She simply wants to see how the gills and stalk are made.
mushrooms

How the lens does it: a magnifying glass is a convex lens. Held closer to the object
than its focal length, it produces a virtual, upright, enlarged image. It does not add
any detail to the object — it makes the image on your retina bigger, so detail your
eye was already receiving becomes usable.

Page 45 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

I4 4. What other instruments magnify objects?

INSTRUMENT WHAT IT MAGNIFIES ROUGHLY HOW MUCH

Reading / hand lens Print, stamps, insects 2× to 10×

Spectacles for long sight Near objects, for the wearer Small but constant

Binoculars Distant objects — birds, a match, hills 7× to 12×

Compound microscope Cells, onion peel, pond water 40× to 1000×

Electron microscope Viruses, crystal structure up to a million ×

Optical telescope The Moon, planets, stars Depends on the eyepiece

Projector / camera zoom An image thrown on a screen or sensor Varies

Two different jobs: a microscope brings out detail in something tiny and close; a
telescope brings out detail in something large and far. Both do it with lenses (or
mirrors) — which is exactly the leap the poem makes in its last stanza, from a scrap
of chalk to the moon.

II If you have a magnifying glass, what would you like to use it for and why? Share
your answers with your classmates and teacher.

Name a specific object, say what you expect to see, and say why it interests you. Vagueness is
the only wrong answer here.

Sample answer: I would use it on a butterfly's wing that I found on the veranda.
From arm's length the wing is just orange and black, but I have read that the colour
is not paint at all — it is thousands of tiny overlapping scales, and some of them are
not coloured but shaped so that they bend light. I would like to see whether I can
make out the rows of scales, and whether the black parts and the orange parts look
different up close. After that I would look at a pinch of sand, because every grain in it
is supposed to be a different rock.

Page 46 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why this is the right kind of answer: it names the object, states a prediction
(‘scales, not paint'), and gives a reason for wanting to check. That is what the poem's
speaker does too — he does not merely admire, he watches and reports.

Let us discuss — Pages 223 & 224
Magnifying Glass

POETRY

I Complete the summary of the poem given below with suitable words from the
poem. The poem describes the magic of seeing the world through a 1. __________. It
reveals how tiny things like 2. __________ and 3. __________ can appear vast and complex.
Even a 4. __________ of water can seem like a hive of 5. __________. The poet is impressed
at how the spider spins its 6. __________ from its 7. __________. The poem ends with the
idea that, through lenses, the 8. __________ could seem within reach.

BLANK WORD LINE IN THE POEM

1. glass (‘round glass') “With this round glass / I can make Magic talk—”

2. shells “A myriad shells show / In a scrap of chalk;”

3. moss “Of but an inch of moss / A forest—flowers and trees;”

4. drop “A drop of water / Like hive of bees.”

5. bees “Like hive of bees.”

6. web-silk “The woven web-silk / From his spinnerets;”

7. spinnerets “From his spinnerets;”

8. moon “Eyeing the moon, / 'Twould seem you'd walk there / In an afternoon!”

Note on 2 and 3: they may be written in either order — the poem gives shells first,
then moss. Blank 6 may be answered ‘web-silk' or simply ‘web'; ‘web-silk' is the
poem's own word.

Page 47 of 117

Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

II 1 Fill in the blanks by choosing the correct answer from the brackets. 1. The main
idea of the poem is the transformative power of __________ (wonders in nature/close
observation) through the magnifying glass.

The main idea of the poem is the transformative power of close observation through the
magnifying glass.

Why not ‘wonders in nature': the wonders were in the chalk, the moss and the
spider all along — nothing about them changes. What changes is the looking. The
poem's grammar says so: every sentence has an active watcher in it — “I can make”,
“I lie in wait and watch”. The lens does not create marvels; it lets a patient eye find
them.

II 2 2. The tone of the poem is __________. (wonder and curiosity/peaceful and emotional)

The tone of the poem is wonder and curiosity.

The evidence is in the punctuation and the verbs: three exclamation marks (“The
tigerish claws he has!”, “With all those eyes!”, “In an afternoon!”), the interjection
“And oh!”, the eager “Yes, and…” that opens the last stanza, and watching verbs —
show, lie in wait, watch, eyeing. A peaceful poem would be still and slow; this one
keeps catching its breath.

II 3 3. The poem has __________ stanzas with __________ lines in each stanza. Hence, it is a
quatrain. (four; six/six; four)

The poem has six stanzas with four lines in each stanza. Hence, it is a quatrain.

Count them: (1) “With this round glass… In a scrap of chalk;” (2) “Of but an inch of
moss… Like hive of bees.” (3) “I lie in wait and watch… From his spinnerets;” (4) “The
tigerish claws he has!… With all those eyes!” (5) “Not even the tiniest thing… And
itself surpass.” (6) “Yes, and with lenses like it… In an afternoon!” — six groups, four
lines each.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
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co m
m.
Term: a quatrain is a four-line stanza. It is the commonest stanza in English poetry,

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and it suits this poem because each quatrain can hold one complete small discovery.

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II 4 4. The rhyme scheme of the poem is __________. (ABCD; ABCB)

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The rhyme scheme of the poem is a g
ABCB.

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STANZA 1 END WORD RHYME LABEL

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With this round glass glass A
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I can make Magic talk— talk B
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In a scrap of chalk;
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The pattern repeats: trees / beesain
glass / surpass in stanza 5, moon / afternoon in stanza 6 — always lines 2 and 4.

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What the scheme does: only one rhyme falls per stanza, and it e
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coquatrain feels like a small door clicking shut — a discovery
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each

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a poem conversational while still giving each stanza a snap at the close.

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aspoem for the following poetic devices. 1. Simile
III 1
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Pick examples from the
a
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“A drop of water / Like hive of bees.”
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em“with lenses like it”.
A single drop of water is compared to a beehive using the word like. Also, in the last stanza:

a s
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Why this comparison is so exact: put a drop of pond water under a lens and it is
s e m
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not empty — it is crowded with tiny creatures moving in every direction. That is
a gla
m gives: a small enclosed space swarming with restless
precisely the impression a ehive
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a
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life. The simile carriesgmovement and number at once, not just appearance.

co m
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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

III 2 2. Alliteration

“The woven web-silk” — the w sound repeated in woven and web.
Other clear examples:

“A myriad shells show / In a scrap of chalk” — the hissing s of shells, show, scrap;
“And oh! the silly flies / The stumble into his net”;
“I can make Magic” — make, Magic;
“A forest—flowers and trees”.

What it achieves here: ‘woven web-silk' makes your mouth repeat the same
movement three times in three syllables — the sound imitates the spider's repeated
action of laying thread after thread. Alliteration in this poem is not decoration; it
slows the line down so the eye can stay on the small thing being described.

III 3 3. Metaphor

“Of but an inch of moss / A forest—flowers and trees” — the moss is not said to be like a
forest; through the lens it simply is a forest, with its own flowers and trees.
A second one opens the poem: “I can make Magic talk” — the glass's revelations are called
Magic, and Magic is given a voice.

Simile or metaphor — how to tell: a simile keeps the two things separate and joins
them with like or as (“a drop of water like hive of bees”). A metaphor drops the
joining word and lets one thing be spoken of as the other (“an inch of moss — a
forest”). That is why the metaphor feels stronger: it does not compare the moss to a
forest, it insists that this is what you are looking at.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

IV 1 The poem is rich in visual imagery, painting vivid pictures of small, everyday things
magnified into something grand. 1. In the line, ‘A myriad shells show in a scrap of
chalk’, the magnifying glass reveals ______________________.

…the magnifying glass reveals that a plain white scrap of chalk is not plain at all — it is
packed with countless tiny shells, so that a piece of classroom chalk turns out to be made
of the remains of sea creatures.

The poet is being literally accurate. Natural chalk is a soft white limestone formed
on ancient sea floors from the shells of microscopic organisms called
coccolithophores. So ‘a myriad shells' is not a fancy; it is what is actually there. The
word myriad (countless) set against a scrap (the smallest possible piece) is the
whole poem in four words: the smallest thing holds the largest number.

IV 2 2. In the line, ‘A forest—flowers and trees’ the poet uses the imagery of nature to
emphasise ______________________.

…the poet uses the imagery of nature to emphasise that size is only a matter of where you
stand — an inch of moss contains stems, blossoms and canopies of its own, so it is a complete
forest to anything small enough to live in it.

How the line is built: the dash after ‘forest' works like the lens itself. First you are
given the whole — “A forest” — and then, as the focus sharpens, the parts arrive:
“flowers and trees”. The reader's eye zooms in exactly as the speaker's does. This is
imagery doing structural work, not just providing a picture.

V1 Complete the following sentences with a reason. 1. The poet uses exclamation
marks in lines, ‘The tigerish claws he has!’, ‘With all those eyes!’ and ‘In an
afternoon!’ because it ______________________.

…because it lets us hear the speaker's astonishment at the moment it strikes him, instead
of telling us about it afterwards. Each mark comes at the end of a discovery he did not expect:
that a spider is armed like a tiger, that a fly is covered in eyes, that the moon could be a walk
away.

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What is gained: without them the same lines would be flat statements of fact. The
exclamation converts the poem from a description into a live reaction, so the reader
is standing beside the lens rather than reading a report. It also breaks the calm of
the quatrains three times, at exactly the three points where the poem is most
surprised by itself.

V2 2. In the phrase, ‘Magic talk’ the poet uses personification to describe the
magnifying glass because it ______________________.

…because it treats the magic worked by the glass as a living being with a voice — the lens
does not merely show the speaker things, it tells him the secrets that ordinary objects
have been keeping.

Why the choice of ‘talk' matters: the poet could have written ‘I can see magic'.
‘Talk' makes the exchange two-way — the world answers back when you look at it
properly. It also makes the capital ‘M' meaningful: Magic becomes a character in the
poem, summoned by the glass. And ‘talk' is a plain, everyday word, which keeps the
wonder domestic rather than solemn.

V3 3. Each stanza follows a repetitive pattern of introducing a small or ordinary object
and then describing the extraordinary details revealed through magnification. This
is because it supports the theme of __________ as the speaker reveals ____________.

This is because it supports the theme of the transforming power of close observation — the
idea that wonder is hidden inside ordinary things as the speaker reveals the extraordinary
detail packed into a scrap of chalk, an inch of moss, a drop of water, a spider's spinnerets
and a fly's eyes.

How the repetition itself argues the case: the pattern is small thing → vast thing,
five times over, and only then, in the sixth stanza, does it reverse to vast thing →
within reach. Because the reader has been trained by five stanzas to expect the small
to open out, the final leap to the moon feels earned rather than fanciful. Form and
meaning are doing the same work.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

V4 4. In the final stanza the poet shifts from small, everyday objects being magnified
to a celestial body like moon because __________.

…because he wants to show that there is no limit to what patient looking can bring close.
The same curved piece of glass that turns a scrap of chalk into a shore of shells becomes, in a
telescope, the thing that brings the moon near enough to seem a walk away — “'Twould seem
you'd walk there / In an afternoon!”

Three things the shift does:

It completes the argument. Stanzas 1–5 make the tiny large; stanza 6 makes the
distant near. Together they say the lens defeats both kinds of distance.
It moves from observing to imagining. Everything before this is true — chalk
really does hold shells. Walking to the moon in an afternoon is not true, and the
poet knows it: he writes “'Twould seem”. Curiosity has crossed from what the lens
shows into what the mind now dares to want.
It ends the poem outward. A poem that closed on the spider would be a poem
about small things. Closing on the moon makes it a poem about human reach.

Did you know? Walter de la Mare died in 1956 — thirteen years before Apollo 11.
The walk he calls an impossible seeming had been made by the time most readers of
this poem were born.

Let us think and reflect — Pages 224 & 225
Magnifying Glass

EXTRACT-BASED

I 1 (i) Read the given extract and answer the questions that follow. “With this round
glass / I can make Magic talk— / A myriad shells show / In a scrap of chalk; / Of
but an inch of moss / A forest—flowers and trees;” (i) Identify whether the
following statement is true or false. The poet uses his magical powers to make
the round glass powerful.

False.

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as e
Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
a g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The poet claims no powers at all. The power is in the instrument and in the act of looking: “With
co m
this round glass / I can make Magic talk”. Remove the glass and he can make nothing talk. The
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om g l as
possesses. .c
word ‘Magic' is his name for what the lens uncovers in ordinary things — it is not something he

em a
a s
aglRead the preposition: the whole meaning of the poem turns on ‘With this round

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glass'. A magician would say ‘By my art'. The speaker is an observer with a tool, and

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the marvels he reports — shells in chalk, a forest in moss — were there before he ag
arrived.
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(ii) Select the line from the extract that expresses the presencem
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agANSWER
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“A myriad shells show / In a scrap of chalk;”
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‘Chalk' is as ordinary as an object can be, and ‘a scrap' is the least of it — yet the lens finds
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myriad (countless) shells inside, each one a shaped, patterned thing.

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Also defensible: “Of but an inch of moss / A forest—flowers and trees” shows the

co m
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same idea. But the shells-in-chalk line is the better answer because shells are literally
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patterns, while the forest is a matter of scale.
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(iii) What does the comparison of ‘an inch of moss’ to a ‘forest’ suggest about the
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I 1 (iii)

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speaker’s view of the world through the magnifying glass?
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It suggests that he sees the world as containing whole worlds inside itself — that nothing is

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properties of things.

o m l a se
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An inch of moss looks to us like green fuzz. Under the lens it has stems standing like trunks,

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spore-cases held up like flowers, shade and depth between them
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scale we normally step over. The speaker's view, then, is that the ordinary world is not thin; it
is deep, and our eyes have simply been skating across the top of it.
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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Notice the tiny word ‘but': “Of but an inch of moss” means ‘of no more than an
inch'. It is placed there to make the smallness insistent, so that the word ‘forest' in
the next line lands with maximum force. One three-letter word does the work of a
whole sentence.

I 1 (iv) (iv) How does the poet feel about the ability of the magnifying glass to reveal
hidden wonders? A. Satisfied B. Fascinated C. Grateful D. Determined

B. Fascinated

Why: he is not calmly pleased (satisfied), not thanking anyone (grateful), and not
pursuing a goal (determined). He is held — he keeps looking, keeps finding more,
and breaks into exclamations when he does. ‘Magic', the piling up of one discovery
on another, and the leap to the moon at the end are all signs of fascination, which is
wonder that will not let go.

Exam tip: in a tone question, test each option against the poem's verbs and
punctuation, not its subject. Here, ‘I lie in wait and watch' shows sustained
absorption; ‘Satisfied' would have produced a poem that stopped after one stanza.

II 1 Answer the following questions. 1. What is the significance of the spider in the
poem?

The spider is the poem's centrepiece, and it changes what the poem is about.
Up to that point the discoveries are still: shells sitting in chalk, moss standing like a forest, a
drop of water. With the spider the lens catches something at work — “How the deft spider jets /
The woven web-silk / From his spinnerets”. The speaker sees not just a creature but a process,
and even names the organ, spinnerets, which is a real anatomical term. He also has to be
patient for it: “I lie in wait and watch.”
Then, in the very next stanza, the mood turns: “The tigerish claws he has! / And oh! the silly flies
/ The stumble into his net— / With all those eyes!” The lens has shown him beauty and craft, and
in the same instant a hunter and its prey.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why that matters: the spider stops the poem from being merely pretty. Close
observation, the poem admits, does not only reveal wonders — it reveals what
nature actually is: skilful, armed and indifferent. The word tigerish puts a jungle
predator inside a creature the size of a fingernail, and the flies' many eyes make
their blundering worse, not better. It is the one place where the poem's delight has
an edge to it.

II 2 2. How might the speaker’s view of the natural world change if there was no use of
a magnifying glass?

It would shrink to the surface of things. Without the lens:

chalk would be a white stick for writing, not the resting place of countless shells;
moss would be a green stain on a wall, not a forest with flowers and trees;
a drop of water would be wetness, not a hive;
the spider would be a small dark shape, and its silk merely a thread — the jetting spinnerets,
the deftness and the tigerish claws would all be invisible;
and the last stanza could not exist at all, because the leap to the moon is built on trust in
what lenses can do.

He would still find nature pleasant. What he would lose is the knowledge that it is intricate —
and with it the particular emotion this poem is made of, which is not admiration but
astonishment.

The deeper claim: the poem suggests that our sense of how rich the world is
depends on the instruments we use to look at it. Every new lens in history —
microscope, telescope, X-ray, electron microscope — has enlarged not just our sight
but our idea of what exists.

II 3 3. Why does the poem end with the idea of the moon being within reach?

Because it is the largest possible proof of the poem's one idea: looking closely abolishes
distance.
Five stanzas have made small things vast. The sixth reverses the direction and makes a vast,
unreachable thing feel near — “with lenses like it, / Eyeing the moon, / 'Twould seem you'd walk
there / In an afternoon!” The same optical principle serves both journeys, so the ending is not a

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

change of subject but the argument's final step.

Three further reasons the ending works:

It ends on exhilaration. “Yes, and…” opens the stanza like someone who has just
thought of something better, and the exclamation mark closes the poem on that
rise.
It admits it is imagining. “'Twould seem” is careful and honest. The lens brings
the moon close to the eye; the walk is what the mind then wants. Curiosity is
being shown turning into ambition.
It sets no limit. Ending with the spider would have closed the poem inside the
garden. The moon leaves the door open — and history has since walked through
it.

II 4 4. What is the speaker’s attitude towards nature and the act of observation?

His attitude is one of active, patient, unsentimental wonder.

Active, not passive. He does not wait to be shown things — “I lie in wait and watch”,
“Eyeing the moon”. Observation, for him, is something you do, and it takes time.
Reverent about small things. “Not even the tiniest thing / But this my glass / Will make
more marvellous / And itself surpass” — a double negative meaning there is nothing so small
that the glass cannot make it marvellous. Nothing in nature is beneath attention.
Honest about what he finds. He records the tigerish claws and the doomed flies as readily
as the flowers. He does not tidy nature into prettiness.
Never finished. Each stanza turns to something new, and the last turns to the sky. Curiosity,
in this poem, has no natural stopping place.

The line to quote if you quote only one: “Not even the tiniest thing / But this my
glass / Will make more marvellous / And itself surpass.” It says that the object seen
through the lens outdoes even itself — the marvel was inside the thing, waiting for
an eye good enough to find it.

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

II 5 5. Which is your favourite part of the poem? Why?

Choose a specific line or stanza — not ‘the whole poem' — and give a reason that comes from
the words themselves.

Sample answer: My favourite part is “A drop of water / Like hive of bees.” I like it
because it is the shortest comparison in the poem and it does the most work. A hive
is not just crowded; it is busy, full of movement you cannot follow. So in four words
the poet tells me that a drop of water is not still and clear at all but alive and
swarming. Last year we looked at pond water under the school microscope, and that
is exactly what it was like — I could not count anything because nothing stayed still.
The line described something I had already seen but had no words for.

What makes a good answer here: a quoted line, a statement of what the line does,
and a personal reason that is genuinely connected to it. Avoid ‘I liked it because it is
beautiful' — that could be said of any line and therefore says nothing about this one.

Let us learn — Pages 225 & 226

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Class 8 English Unit 5 Science and Curiosity
a g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Magnifying Glass — Vocabulary, Collective Nouns and Idioms
co m
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VOCABULARY

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a s em
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Fill in the blanks in the sentences with the words given in the box below. (woven,
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myriad, deft, stumble, surpass, marvellous) With his 1. ____________ description, the
author has written the story beautifully 2. ____________ with fascinating details. When

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you read the story, you will surely enjoy the 3. ____________ storytelling technique that
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attracts all kinds of readers. What
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makes the story interesting is the superb way of
describing the 4. ____________ g l
aemotions and feelings of the characters. The reader will
5. ____________ upon the unexpected twists and turns that 6. ____________ all our
understanding and make us wonder at the narrative power of the author.
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NO. WORD WHY IT FITS

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1. deft An adjective before ‘description'; deft = skilful and light-handed. In the poem: “the

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deft spider”.

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2. woven ‘Beautifully woven with details' — the story is pictured as cloth or a web. In the
poem: “The woven web-silk”.

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3. marvellous An adjective before ‘storytelling technique'; marvellous = causing wonder.

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4. myriad An adjective of number before ‘emotions'; myriad = countless.

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stumble A verb after ‘will'; ‘stumble upon' = come across unexpectedly — which is what

a twists in a story are.

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A verb agreeing with the plural ‘twists and turns'; surpass = go beyond, exceed.
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6. surpass

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The finished paragraph: With his deft description, the author has written the story beautifully
woven with fascinating details. When you read the story, you will surely enjoy the marvellous
storytelling technique that attracts all kinds of readers. What makes the story interesting is the

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superb way of describing the myriad emotions and feelings of the characters. The reader will

s e m
stumble upon the unexpected twists and turns that surpass all our understanding and make us

. com at the narrative power of the author.
wonder
a gla
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agl Strategy for a cloze passage: decide the part of speech of each blank before you
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look at the box. Blanks 1, 3 and 4 sit before nouns, so only adjectives can go there —

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that leaves three candidates for three slots. Blanks 5 and 6 follow ‘will' and a plural

e m narrows the field before meaning has to decide a
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subject, so only verbs fit. Grammar
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anything.

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