Category Archives: WHAT?
295.WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF TENNIS?
Some games are invented spontaneously, and some games develop over long periods of time. Tennis has an ancient history. The Greeks and Romans had ball games which later became a French game called jeu de paume; this was probably the ancestor of modern tennis.
The word tennis probably comes from the French word “Tennez!” which means, “Take it! Play!” Some experts believe the game had its beginnings in Egypt, in Persia and among the Arabs, before Charlemagne.
294.WHAT IS THE METRIC SYSTEM?
In deciding upon a unit of measurement, it is possible to pick anything. For example, the average height of a man could possibly have been a unit of measurement. In fact, some of the units used today in English speaking countries are based on such things as the distance from a man’s elbow to the tip of his middle finger, or the weight of a grain of wheat.
Because there have been so many differences in weights and measures used in different countries, an international system has been urged. If one system were to be adopted by all countries of the world, it would probably be the metric system.
293.WHAT IS SCIENCE?
Man has always looked for some way to explain life and what happened in the world about him. In primitive times, this was done by creating myths in which nature was controlled by spirits.
The first people who tried to think about the forces of nature not as the acts of spirits but simply as forces were the ancient Greeks. But they tried to discover truth by observation and reasoning alone, without making experiments. So they made many errors and accepted many theories that explained most of the facts, but not all.
