Your Planets

Perhaps I should say infiltrated. Several of your great scientists and artists were actually Betelgeuse ants holoprojected onto your planet. ... 

If you have time, work as a class to create a web site based on this Course Challenge. Create a virtual tour of your planet s resources, projected living spaces, and scientific adaptations. Share your findings with other grade eleven classes in your province over the Internet. 

Be creative. Write a poem or song or story or joke. Parody the style of someone you ve heard or read. Become an inanimate object and complain to the humans around you (for example, what would a soft-drink machine like to say to those folks constantly beating on its stomach ). Become a little green creature from Mars and convince a human to accompany you back to your planet as a specimen of Earthlings (or be the invited guest and explain to the creature why you are definitely not the person to go). The possibilities are endless, so go wild. 

Without an accurate birth time, you can never know what your Ascendant is (see Chapter 11 for more about Ascendants). You won t have trustworthy house placements for your planets. You may not even know your Moon sign because it changes signs every two or three days. Without an accurate birth time, interpreting your chart correctly will be challenging. And predicting the future will be close to impossible. 

Locating your planets Guestimating your Ascendant Discovering your houses Putting it all together to get your birth chart... 

To figure out your planets, turn to the tables in the Appendix. For each planet, flip to the year of your birth and jot down its position, beginning with the luminaries ... 

To figure out what those placements mean, list your planets by sign and by house and then look them up in this chapter (for the personal planets), Chapter 10 (for the outer planets), and Chapter 12 (for the house placements). 

A quick glance at your horoscope provides an easy entry into interpretation — and all you have to do is count. First locate the horizon line in your chart — the line running from the Ascendant to the Descendant, as shown in Figure 14-1. (Turn to Chapter 11 for more on your Ascendant and Descendant.) If a large majority of your planets — seven or more — are above the horizon, you re an extrovert who looks to the external world for recognition and endorsement. 

If most of your planets populate the area below the line, you re an introvert who needs privacy, seeks personal fulfillment, and may be uncomfortable in public life. 

Now divide your chart in half vertically or along the meridian, which runs from your Midheaven, or M.C., at the twelve o clock spot on your chart to your I.C. at the six o clock spot (see Figure 14-1). That line splits the horoscope into two sectors the eastern hemisphere on the left and the western hemisphere on the right. If most of your planets lie on the eastern or left side of the horoscope, you have the enviable ability to make things happen, to create your own opportunities. You re highly independent, but you may also be intolerant of people who can t seem to call the shots the way you can. 

However, the price of all these benefits has been high. The rapid growth of industry and agriculture, for instance, has stressed the Earth and damaged our inheritance. There is now widespread concern about the preservation of our extraordinary planet. It will be up to you and your contemporaries to draw on chemistry—in whatever career you choose—to build on what has already been achieved. Perhaps you will help to start a new phase of civilization based on new materials, just as semiconductors transformed society in the twentieth century. Perhaps you will help to reduce the harshness of the impact of progress on our environment. To do that, you will need chemistry. 

C20-0113. On Earth, two posttransition metals, A1 and Pb, are used when low- and high-density metals are desired. Suppose you are transported to a planet elsewhere in our galaxy, where all transition metals are readily available but posttransition metals are rare. Where among the transition metals would you seek a replacement for A1 for low-density uses, and where would you seek a replacement for Pb for high-density uses Explain your reasoning. 

Do you think any other planets are in dynamic equilibrium Do nutrient cycles occur on other planets Explain your hypotheses. Then research the answers to these questions. 

You won t find this happening in your fireplace, though. It doesn t have enough heat or high enough pressure. The cores of stars have supercritical fluids, and the planet Jupiter has some gaseous layers that are supercritical and denser than water. Most decaffeinated coffee has its caffeine removed using supercritical carbon dioxide. 

These successful people are examples of the many great men and women that walk this planet that you can use to "model" your life. You sure don t have to free an entire country, topple a government or rocket into space to make a difference. You do have to find a compelling purpose that will drive you and allow you to satisfy all of your basic human needs. One of those needs is the need to make a difference and/or contribute to others. I will discuss the other five... 

Preservation of a habitable planet demands that we minimize waste production and responsibly dispose of waste that is generated (Box 2-1). Recycling of chemicals is practiced in industry for economic as well as ethical reasons it should be an important component of pollution control in your lab. 

You are made of water, born into a world of water, and then forevermore dependent on water. You can survive for more than a month without food, but without fresh water you would perish in a matter of days. Little wonder when you consider that water makes up about 60 percent of your body mass. It s the ideal solvent for transporting nutrients through your body and for supporting the countless biochemical reactions that keep you alive. All living organisms we know of depend on water. It is the medium of life on our planet and arguably our most vital natural resource. 

Water is the commonest compound on this planet. More than 70% of the Earth s surface is covered with sea, and the land masses are dotted with rivers and lakes (Figure 11.26a). It is vital to our existence and survival because it is one of the main constituents in all living organisms. For example, your bones contain 72% water, your kidneys are about 82% water and your blood is about 90% water (Figure 11.26b). 

How is it possible that plants and humans use such similar chemicals for normal, everyday functions Plants produce chemicals that are capable of affecting our brain because they share an evolutionary history with us on this planet. Even primitive one-celled organisms produce many of the same chemicals that are in our brains. Therefore, whether you choose to eat a bunch of broccoli or a large pile of amoeba, the chemicals they contain may alter how your neurons function and, therefore, how you feel or think. 

Bah Your master claims to be able to read the future, too. The past is usually a lot easier. Pietro Moro glared at me, his mouth moving as if he wanted to grind his teeth. He heaved himself to his feet, and paused. I won t accept any babbling about planets, but if my old friend Bertucci really was murdered, just tell me who did it and I will see his head roll across the Piazzetta, understand I don t care... 

He glanced at Wargaard and his aide, both of them watching and listening in very apparent bewilderment. What I am offering - all I am offering, the Doctor pressed on, is a lift to another planet. In your present time. It s possible the rules that bind you to this time won t rule out a spatial hop in... 

A child on the planet Uranus would ask the question, Why is the sky green A child on Jupiter would ask the question, Why is the sky reddish brown How would you answer these questions Relate your answer to the chemical composition of the atmospheres of these planets. 

---