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NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 8 Thread — Activity 3

Book page 135 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.
• Take a ball of cotton and gently pull it out to make a strand. • Now, try twisting the strand slowly with your fingers. Notice how it becomes stronger as you pull it in a spin. • Take a pencil. Now, wind your cotton strand onto your pencil, by twisting and adding more cotton to your ball.
Answer

What you will notice: the loose cotton pulls out into a weak, fluffy strand that breaks at the smallest tug. But as you twist it between your fingers, it becomes thinner, tighter and much stronger. Soon you can hang the ball of cotton from it without it snapping. You have made thread.

How to do it:

  1. Take a small ball of clean cotton wool. Loosen it by pulling it apart gently.
  2. Hold the ball in your left hand. With your right hand, pinch a few fibres and pull slowly. A soft, thin strand comes away — do not tug, or it will break.
  3. Now roll that strand between your thumb and finger, always in the same direction. This is the twist.
  4. Keep pulling a little and twisting a little, again and again. The strand gets longer and stronger.
  5. Tie the free end to a pencil. Turn the pencil so the twist keeps going, and let the thread wind onto it.
  6. Whenever the thread grows thin, pull a few more fibres out of the ball and twist them in. The new fibres join the old ones.
StageWhat it looks likeHow strong it is
The ball of cottonA soft white cloudFalls apart at a touch
Pulled out, not twistedA fat, fluffy strandBreaks with the smallest pull
Twisted a littleThinner, a bit shinyHolds together, but still breaks
Twisted wellThin, tight and evenStrong — it can carry the weight of the ball
Why twisting makes it strong: Each cotton fibre is very short and very thin, so on its own it can hold nothing. When you twist, the fibres wrap round one another and grip. Now a pull is not carried by one fibre — it is shared by all of them together, and they hold each other in place. The book gives this a name: this process of twisting cotton fibres together to make thread or yarn is called spinning. Your pencil is doing exactly the job a charkha does.

The whole journey — from a cotton plant to your shirt:

1. Cotton boll the white fluff on the cotton plant 2. Fibres thin, hair-like threads — short, weak 3. Spinning twist the fibres with fingers or a charkha 4. Yarn (thread) long, strong and ready to be woven 5. Weaving on a loom — threads cross over and under 6. Cloth the tailor stitches it into our clothes Fibre → thread → cloth → clothes. Every shirt you own has been through all six steps.
The journey of cotton, from the plant to the clothes we wear.
Did you know? India was the first country in the world to grow cotton and make cloth from it. Gandhi ji spun thread on a charkha himself, every day. Cloth spun and woven by hand like this is called khadi, and it became a symbol of the freedom struggle and of becoming atmanirbhar — able to provide for ourselves.
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