Look at the pictures given below and sort them into natural and man-made wonders. Picture What the photograph shows 1 A footbridge made of thick, intertwined living tree roots, spanning a shallow rocky stream in dense green forest. 2 A large ornate palace of pale stone with rows of arches, pillared

No. What the picture shows Natural / Man-made Reason 1 A bridge of living tree roots across a stream Natural It is a living tree. People guide the roots, but the bridge grows; this very chapter lists the living root bridges among India's natural phenomena . 2 A large ornate palace with domes and arches Man-made Designed, built and decorated by people 3 A green valley with pine forests and mountains Natural Landform, forest and river, none of them built 4 A tall white cone of ice with a doorway at its base Man-made An ice stupa — an artificial glacier built in Ladakh by piping winter water into the air so that it freezes into a cone and melts slowly in spring 5 A modern steel-and-glass footbridge with coloured flags Man-made Engineering: girders, cables and a walkway 6 A carved marble fountain in a garden pool Man-made Cut stone, a pump and a planned garden 7 Moonlit rocky peaks above the sea Natural Rock, sea and moonlight 8 Waterfalls tumbling over rocks Natural A river cutting through rock over long ages Natural: 1, 3, 7 and 8. Man-made: 2, 4, 5 and 6. The two interesting cases are 1 and 4, and they are interesting in opposite ways. The root bridge is made of living material shaped by people ; the ice stupa is made of natural material assembled by people . Wherever a wonder sits on that line, be ready to defend your choice — the reasoning is worth more than the label. The chapter itself calls the root bridges “incredible feats of engineering built by the indigenous p

NCERT Solutions for Class 8th English Chapter 3 Spectacular Wonders — Let us do these activities before we read

Book page 137 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.

Look at the pictures given below and sort them into natural and man-made wonders.

Picture	What the photograph shows
1	A footbridge made of thick, intertwined living tree roots, spanning a shallow rocky stream in dense green forest.
2	A large ornate palace of pale stone with rows of arches, pillared balconies and pink onion domes, standing behind clipped garden hedges.
3	A wide green meadow with a stream running through it, backed by thick deodar-pine forest and blue mountain ridges under a clear sky.
4	A tall white cone of ice standing on a bare brown hillside, with a small dark doorway cut into its base.
5	A modern steel footbridge over a river, its side railings hung with rows of coloured triangular flags.
6	A carved stone pavilion-fountain with a ribbed dome, standing in the middle of a still green garden pool, with trees behind it.
7	A full moon in a pale grey sky above a long line of reddish rocky peaks rising out of a dark sea.
8	A river rushing white and fast between low cliffs of pale layered rock at sunrise, with a cable-car pylon on the far bank.

The eight photographs on page 137 — described here; see the textbook for the photographs themselves.

Natural: ______, ______, ______, and ______
Man-made: ______, ______, ______, and ______

Answer

No.	What the picture shows	Natural / Man-made	Reason
1	A bridge of living tree roots across a stream	Natural	It is a living tree. People guide the roots, but the bridge grows; this very chapter lists the living root bridges among India's natural phenomena.
2	A large ornate palace with domes and arches	Man-made	Designed, built and decorated by people
3	A green valley with pine forests and mountains	Natural	Landform, forest and river, none of them built
4	A tall white cone of ice with a doorway at its base	Man-made	An ice stupa — an artificial glacier built in Ladakh by piping winter water into the air so that it freezes into a cone and melts slowly in spring
5	A modern steel-and-glass footbridge with coloured flags	Man-made	Engineering: girders, cables and a walkway
6	A carved marble fountain in a garden pool	Man-made	Cut stone, a pump and a planned garden
7	Moonlit rocky peaks above the sea	Natural	Rock, sea and moonlight
8	Waterfalls tumbling over rocks	Natural	A river cutting through rock over long ages

Natural: 1, 3, 7 and 8. Man-made: 2, 4, 5 and 6.

The two interesting cases are 1 and 4, and they are interesting in opposite ways. The root bridge is made of living material shaped by people; the ice stupa is made of natural material assembled by people. Wherever a wonder sits on that line, be ready to defend your choice — the reasoning is worth more than the label. The chapter itself calls the root bridges “incredible feats of engineering built by the indigenous people” and, in the same breath, “a naturally built ecosystem of local flora”.

Q2.

Which of these wonders—man-made or natural—are more appealing and why? Share your answers with your classmates and teacher.

Answer

Take a side and defend it; a fence-sitting answer scores least. Here is the case each way.

Natural wonders are more appealing because…	Man-made wonders are more appealing because…
Nobody designed them, so the pattern feels like a gift rather than a plan — a perfectly circular crater, a sea that walks away twice a day	They show what people can do against difficulty — a dam still working after eighteen centuries, pillars that give out musical notes
They are older than any human record, so standing before one puts your own life in scale	They carry a story you can follow — who built it, when, why, and what it cost
Many are still not fully explained, which keeps the wonder alive	They can be repeated and improved; a good idea in one place can rescue another
They cannot be rebuilt if lost, so they demand protection	They belong to a community and carry its skill, faith and taste

Sample answer: I find natural wonders more appealing, because nobody made them for me. A palace was built to be admired — it is already an argument for its builder. The Lonar crater was not built at all; a meteorite struck basalt thousands of years ago and left a circle of water that no one planned and no one can copy. Standing at its rim, you are looking at an accident older than every language on earth. Man-made wonders show me what people can do; natural wonders show me how much happened without us.

Notice the honest answer in the middle: the living root bridges are appealing precisely because they are both. Human patience working with a tree instead of against it produces something no engineer could build and no forest could grow alone.

Q3.

Work in pairs. Write down two wonders of nature that have amazed you. Discuss what makes them impressive. Share your answers with your classmates and teacher.

Answer

For each wonder give three things: what it is, where it is, and what exactly amazes you — the third is the part most students leave out.

Wonder	Where	What makes it impressive
A total solar eclipse	Anywhere in the path of totality	Day becomes dusk in ninety seconds; birds go to roost; the corona appears. A thing predicted to the second by mathematics still feels impossible when it happens.
The monsoon breaking	Kerala coast, around 1 June	Half a continent's farming, food prices and river levels turn on a wind that changes direction. Scale is what impresses — one weather system, a billion people.
Fireflies over a paddy field	Rural India, after the first rains	Cold light made inside a living body, flashing in rhythm. There is no fire and no heat.
The Himalayan snow line in summer	Uttarakhand, Himachal, Sikkim	A clean line where snow stops and flowers begin. The Valley of Flowers in this chapter lies just below it.

Sample answer: The two that have amazed me are the disappearing sea at Chandipur and a firefly field near my uncle's village. The Chandipur beach amazes me because the sea retreats two to five kilometres and comes back, every single day, and people simply walk out on to the seabed and return before the tide does. The fireflies amaze me for the opposite reason: they are tiny, and nothing about them is dangerous or grand. But a whole field of them switching on and off together, on a dark night with no moon, is a kind of light I have never seen come out of a machine.

Q4.

Work in groups of four. Complete the web chart given below with words that you associate with the phrase, ‘Nature’s Power’. Share your answers with your classmates and teacher.

The blank web chart on page 137: the phrase sits in the cloud at the centre, with eight empty branches radiating from it.

Answer

A web chart works best when your branches are categories, not a random scatter of words. Put ‘Nature's Power' in the centre and grow four or five branches, each with its own words.

Branch	Words to write on it
Force that destroys	earthquake, cyclone, flood, landslide, volcano, lightning, tsunami, erosion
Force that creates	crater, delta, canyon, cave, coral reef, mangrove, glacier, monsoon
Force that is slow	tides, weathering, growing roots, layers of minerals, sediment, seasons
What it makes us feel	awe, wonder, fear, respect, smallness, curiosity, humility
Words from this chapter	mystifying, colossal, spectacle, whopping, rugged, enigmatic, breath-taking, awe-inspiring

One idea worth adding to the discussion: nature's power is not only sudden. The chapter's own examples divide neatly into the fast and the slow — a colossal meteorite that struck in a moment and left the Lonar crater, and roots that take decades to grow into a bridge strong enough to walk on. Both are power; only one is violent.

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