NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 4 Water in the shade and water in the Sun — Activity 5

Book page 66 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.

Take two glasses of water. Measure the temperature using a thermometer under the guidance of your teacher. Record your readings.

Answer

Both glasses must start at the same temperature. That is the whole point of this first step — if they do not start equal, the comparison later means nothing.

How to do it

Take two glasses of the same size and the same colour.
Fill both from the same tap, at the same moment, to the same level.
Ask your teacher to help you use the thermometer. Hold it by the top, put the bulb into the water without touching the bottom of the glass, and wait half a minute for the reading to stop moving.
Read it at eye level and write it down. Then measure the second glass.

Glass	Temperature at the start (sample)
Glass 1 (to go under the tree)	28 °C
Glass 2 (to go in the Sun)	28 °C

Why they must be the same: This is a fair test. Only one thing is allowed to be different between the two glasses — where they are kept. Everything else must be identical: same water, same glass, same amount, same starting temperature, same one hour. Then whatever difference appears at the end must have been caused by the shade and the Sun, and by nothing else.

Handle with care: A thermometer is glass and it breaks easily. Never shake it, never wash it in hot water, and always keep it flat on a cloth when it is not in use. Do this step with your teacher.

Q2.

Keep one glass under a tree and the other under the Sun. After one hour, measure the temperature again. Record your readings.

Water/Temperature	At Start	One Hour Later
Under the tree
Under the Sun

The table printed in the book. Write your own readings in the empty boxes.

Answer

After one hour the glass in the Sun is clearly warmer. The glass under the tree has hardly changed.

How to do it

Put Glass 1 in the shade under a tree, on the ground, where no patch of sunlight will reach it as the Sun moves.
Put Glass 2 in the open, in full Sun.
Note the clock time. Leave them alone for exactly one hour.
Measure both again with the same thermometer, the shaded one first.

The completed table (sample readings from a sunny March afternoon)

Water / Temperature	At Start	One Hour Later	Rise
Under the tree	28 °C	30 °C	2 °C
Under the Sun	28 °C	38 °C	10 °C

Write your own readings in your book. The exact numbers depend on the month, the time of day and how thick the shade is. What will always be true is that the glass in the Sun warms up much more.

Same water, same hour. The shade of one tree made a 10-degree difference.

Why the tree keeps it cool: Three things happen at once. The leaves block the Sun's rays, so the heat never reaches the glass. The tree also gives out water vapour from its leaves, and that cools the air around it — the same way sweat cools you. And the shaded ground below stays cool instead of heating up and warming the air above it.

Q3.

What do these readings tell us?

Answer

They tell us that shade keeps things cool — and that a tree is a natural cooler that needs no electricity.

Reading the table carefully, four things follow.

The Sun heats things a lot. The water in the open rose by about 10 °C in a single hour.
Shade keeps things almost unchanged. The water under the tree rose by only about 2 °C in the same hour.
So the difference is made by the tree, not by the water. The two glasses were identical at the start. Only their place was different.
A tree is therefore a cooling machine. It runs on sunlight, costs nothing, makes no noise, and gives out oxygen instead of hot air.

What this means for our school: If a glass of water in the shade stays 8 degrees cooler, then so does a classroom, a corridor, a playground and a bicycle stand. It also means the opposite: a bare cemented courtyard with no tree will be the hottest place in the school, every day. Which is exactly what the Electricity Savers team found when they walked round at one o'clock.

Where to plant, then: on the side of the building that gets the afternoon Sun; over the walking path from the gate; and beside the drinking-water point and the bicycle stand, where children stand and wait.

Q4.

With the help of your teacher, try to find out the names of the trees and plants that attract birds, and butterflies. Try to create a butterfly garden in your school.

Answer

Butterflies need two kinds of plant, not one — plants to drink from, and plants to lay eggs on. Most people plant only the first kind and then wonder why the butterflies do not stay.

Kind of plant	What it is for	What to plant
Nectar plants	Grown-up butterflies drink sweet nectar from the flowers	Marigold (genda), ixora (rugmini), lantana, zinnia, pentas, periwinkle (sadabahar), tulsi, hibiscus
Host plants	The butterfly lays eggs on them; the caterpillars eat the leaves	Lemon and curry leaf (for the lime butterfly), milkweed / aak (for the tiger butterflies), fennel and dill, cassia
Plants for birds	Fruit and seeds, and safe places to nest	Guava, jamun, mulberry (shahtoot), banyan, peepal, papaya, sunflower
Plants for sunbirds and bees	Tube-shaped flowers full of nectar	Hibiscus, ixora, banana flower, drumstick (sahjan)

How to make the butterfly garden — 8 steps

Choose a sunny corner. Butterflies need warmth; they will not come to a dark, damp patch.
Pick a spot away from the playing area, so the plants are not trampled.
Dig the soil, mix in compost from your own pit, and level it.
Plant the nectar plants in groups — three or four marigolds together are seen from far away; one alone is not.
Plant the host plants at the back — a lemon plant and a curry leaf plant are enough to start.
Put a shallow dish of water on the ground with a few stones in it. Butterflies land on the wet stone to drink; they can drown in an open bowl.
Use no insect spray at all. Even a little kills the caterpillars, and no caterpillars means no butterflies.
Put up a small board: “Butterfly Garden — please do not pluck”, and make a class roster for watering.

Why the caterpillars must be allowed to eat the leaves: This is the part everyone gets wrong. A chewed lemon leaf is not damage — it is the garden working. Every butterfly you see was a caterpillar that ate leaves. If you protect the leaves, you lose the butterflies.

Keep a record: hang a chart beside the garden and let anyone add a line — date, which butterfly, on which plant. In three months your class will have a real record of the living things in your own school. Look out for the lime butterfly, the common crow, the plain tiger, the grass yellow and the common Mormon.

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