NCERT Solutions for Class 8th English Chapter 5 Science And Curiosity

About this chapter

Feathered Friend by Arthur C. Clarke is told by an unnamed narrator on an early space station. Sven Olsen , a wiry construction man, smuggles a canary called Claribel up on a ferry from Earth. She weighs almost nothing, eats almost nothing and is untroubled by the absence of gravity, so she becomes the crew's secret pet. One 'morning' Claribel is found collapsed. Oxygen revives her, then she keels over again. The narrator remembers that miners once carried canaries down to warn them of gas and realises the station air is bad. An eclipse by Earth's shadow had frozen part of the air purifier ; the one connected alarm failed and the duplicate circuit had never been wired up. A bird saves the crew that half a million dollars of engineering could not. Magnifying Glass by Walter de la Mare is a

• Feathered Friend (story by Arthur C. Clarke)
• Feathered Friend
• Magnifying Glass (poem by Walter de la Mare)
• Magnifying Glass
• Bibha Chowdhuri