Unseen Passage for Class 4 - Passage 19

Peter's father was a fisherman. One day, when Peter's father was fishing, Peter heard a loud wailing siren, a warning signal meaning a tsunami was approaching. Although he had never witnessed one, he knew what it was. Peter had learnt in school that a tsunami, a very dangerous large wave, had once wrecked many houses on his island. The last one that hit his island was over seven metres high!

When Peter heard the siren, he quickly ran to the top of the high cliff that overlooked the ocean. He knew that he was safe on the cliff. However, he did not know if his father would be safe.

Peter's mother tried to console him by telling him not to be worried because a tsunami would be more dangerous for islands than it would be for boats in the ocean. She told him that the tsunami would be very small out in the deeper part of the ocean, and his father would probably not even know that a tsunami was passing right under his boat. She was right. Peter's father came home safely that night.

Marie Curie was deep in thought about an experiment she had just conducted as she walked silently towards home. It was the 1900s and Marie Curie was just a young Polish scientist studying at a university. No one at that time would have imagined that she would be one of the greatest contributors to medical science one day.

In her early days as a student, Marie was working on a rock that gave off mysterious rays of energy. Marie decided that there must be an element in the rock which no one knew about that gave off the energy. Convinced by her theory, both she and her husband, Pierre, set about attempting to find out. They conducted many experiments over an extended period of time. The Curies encountered many failures along the way but they were never discouraged.

After a lot of work, they finally found the element that gave off the energy. They named it radium. Today, radium is used in the treatment of some diseases and cancer is one of them.