Things you must know about SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY and the FUTURE PART 2

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8. WHITE SAND: is not made up of small bits of rock. It is the skeletons of ancient plants and animals. Some of those organisms used calcium, either as part of their own skeletons or as shelter. Others were literally made of glass and absorbed silica, the main ingredient in glass, from sea water and ocean floor clay. Over the centuries, water and other organisms ground these plants and animals down into tiny particles of sand that form our beaches. Now, the grayish sand usually found elsewhere did come from the erosion of rocks. 9. SALT: in the oceans come from several sources:minerals from eroded rocks that are carried into the ocean by rivers, volcanic rock and basalt that erupts up from below the ocean floor. About 3.5 percent of the sea is salt and this has been for about 1.5 billion years now. 10. THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT: A square mile of sunlight weighs about three pounds. Sunlight has weight because it exerts pressure on anything it encounters. If all the sunlight reaching earth could be weighed, it would be more than 87,000 tons. Big Science, Big Technology: 11. FIBER OPTICS: are glass threads smaller than human hair, capable of carrying a thousand times more messages than a traditional coppercable telephone wire. Over the next few decades, as phone companies replace copper wire with fiber-optic cable, they will be able to offer film libraries and interactive information services. Fiber-optic technologies are revolutionazing medicine. Fiber-optic instruments, for instance, allow physicians to view and treat the body internally without surgery.