Water, the fundamental

prerequisite for life on our

planet, is always in motion.

But how does the water

cycle work?

The natural water cycle has

its beginning in the oceans

and the seas. First, a large

amount of water (about 90

percent of moisture in the

atmosphere) evaporates

from the surface of water

reservoirs under the influ-

ence of solar radiation. The

remaining 10 percent is

contributed by plant tran-

spiration.

Then, in the air, water va-

por cools down and

changes back into liquid,

forming clouds. This proc-

ess is called condensation.

Strong winds in the atmos-

phere move the clouds

around the world und thus

distribute the evaporated

water over the planet.

Next, the tiny water drop-

lets in the clouds build the

bigger drops, which are heavy

enough to fall out of the cloud

as precipitation. This means that

water comes back to the earth as

snow, rain or hail, for example.

On average, a drop of water

spends eight days in the atmos-

phere before falling back to the

earth.

After water has reached the

ground, it might accumulate as

ice caps and glaciers, which can

store frozen water for thousands

of years. Some precipitation

seeps into the ground and be-

comes groundwater, large fresh-

water resources under the

earth´s surface. Another big

portion of water falls into the

oceans as rain or flows back to

the oceans over the ground as

surface runoff.

In this way water returns to

the first station of its trip

around the world in order to

make the same journey over

and over again.

Tatjana Grytz

How the water cycle works

30th June 2011

J. W. Goethe - Universität

Goethe News

Who doesn’t know this situation? You are standing in front of a cash dispenser and you have forgotten

your PIN-number. Or you forget an important phone number or the birthday dates of friends or family

members. If you use the following method, you can change this.

I call it “Remembering numbers through symbols and stories”. The main point is that for every number (0

till 9) you create your own symbol which looks similar to the number. For example:

The following story could be:

A bank director reaches his golf club, puts on a hat,

which was lying on the table. After he leaves the house, he passes an old oak (tree) and sees a beautiful white swan.

It is important that you don’t change the words. Therefore, you shouldn’t write:

A bank director puts on a hat, which lies on the table and reaches his golf club. After he leaves the house, he passes

an old oak (tree) and sees a beautiful white swan.

With this sentence you have the number: 34912. The same numbers as the PIN-number, but in the wrong

order. You have to write the words in the right order, if you don’t want to make a mistake.

So, to put it briefly: If you have a number, you can remember it if you use this method. You create sym-

bols for monadic numbers and create a nice story out of them! The symbols used must have the right

order and the story should be funny, nice or interesting in some way so that you don’t forget this.

Annkatrin Göpfert

How to memorize special numbers

Seite 2 Goethe News

Number Symbol

0 egg, tyre or ring

1 tree, candle, finger

2 swan

3 heart, trident or hat

4 cloverleaf, table

5 hand

6 elephant

7 flag, gallows

8 hourglass

9 golf club

So when you have to remember a number, you have to

think of the symbols and create a nice story for yourself.

As an example:

You have the pin-number “93412” and think about the

symbols for the numbers. Nine is a golf club, three a hat,

four is a table, one is a tree und two is a swan.

Under different circumstances I would have written about one of

my hobbies, like graphic novels or shopping - last week I bought

a nice little red handbag on the internet, but up to now I haven't

had the chance to use it.

During the last few weeks, more precisely during the last six

months I have done nothing exciting, thrilling, special. All I have

done is getting up as early as possible, sitting at my desk as early

as possible and starting to work, normally around 8 am. and

then stopping work at about 8 or 9 pm. Every day, wanting to finish my thesis on time and especially be-

fore the 30th of June. All I could write about is noise. When you sit at your desk everyday, from Monday

till Sunday, you get used to a lot of noises. Some of them become familiar to you, others become the most

annoying thing in the world.

The most regular noises is the garbage collection. Because we live in a big city, the garbage collection

come five times a week. First come the men, who pull out the waste containers. Then the big trucks come,

sounding like some sort of tank, combined with a fire alarm.

Living next to two schools, from Monday till Friday there are the schoolkids, screaming, singing, fighting,

throwing trash all around. This happens at 8 am. (school start), 9,15 am. (first break), 12.15 am. (5th lesson

is finished), 1p.m. (school's out), 3 pm. (afternoon classes finished). It always sounds like a stampede of a

horde of chimps (this shrill and strong shouting). But that’s not enough. There are a lot of extra and spe-

cial sounds around you, just when you have to concentrate very hard.

For instance the little girl on the house on the other side of our street. She is 12 or 13 and she wants to be a

singer. Most of the time, she wears headphones and hangs out of the window. She exercises everyday.

And, to be honest, she is a horrible singer. But nevertheless, she sings. Sometimes she rather screams more

than sings, especially in the difficult passages. For the last months, she practices heal the world by Michael

Jackson, it has a lot of difficult passages. And she practices the whole day: in the morning before school,

right after coming home from school and in the afternoon she sometimes have some friends around and

they sing together.

If I escape on the other side of our flat, I could be lucky and find something close to silence. But as a rule it

won't take more than 30 minutes and the child with the bobbycar will appear and will drive his mini plas-

ticcar on the paved area, which makes a scraping sound, boosted up by the surrounding buildings. But

two weeks ago the neighbors invented something more powerful: the electric stone saw. It ran for nearly a

week. Last week, they finished the work they did with that machine and a glimmer of hope came into

sight and I became a little more relaxed, hoping to finish my thesis in silence. On Wednesday the crafts-

men came to our house. They want to repair the bathroom in the ground floor, but it sounds as if they

want to demolish the whole house. They have still not finished. But next to my door, there dangles my

little red handbag, stuffed with some of those rocks the craftsmen disperse around their site. As soon as

any of them dares to cross my oath, I will make sure that during the last three days of my thesis-writing

no hammering, no drilling and no demolition sounds will be heard around our house.

Meike Pfefferkorn

The Big Bang City Noise

Seite 3

A teleporter is a person who is able to transport

human thoughts by using human oscillations.

The profession of teleportation requires a talent

not frequently found and cannot be conducted

by everyone. Teleporters are predominately

women due to their sensitive nature. By touch-

ing someone´s hand, they are able to read the

thoughts and send those thoughts to the ad-

dressee. A teleporter is only permitted to trans-

port positive thoughts, otherwise he or she can

be fined.

History

The first teleporters were officially deployed in

2005. Back then, it was a secret test drive organ-

ized by the CIA. One of the first official teleport-

ers was Martha Galin who lately stated that she

discovered her teleportation skills at the age of

sixteen when she felt her mom’s worries when

she touched her hand. In the beginning, she

says, the thoughts were not vivid at all but after

a while she learned how to sort them and how to

understand them. A few years later, she found

out that she was not only able to “read”

thoughts but also to “send” them to an ad-

dressed person. She confessed her ability to her

science teacher who, as a former CIA employee,

began to experiment together with her.

Description

There are various kinds of teleporters. Some are

able to send information to every place in the

world, others are only able to send it to local

destinations, not further away than five miles.

On average, the skill to teleport can be discov-

ered at the age of 17. The ability is inherited and

caused by a genetic defect that is not present in

every generation, but at least in every second

generation as the gene responsible is dominant.

Teleporters

Seite 4 Goethe News

Disadvantages

The major disadvantage of teleportation is the dan-

ger of abuse. The ability to teleport may be abused

by criminals to commit crimes, organized from thou-

sands of miles away. To solve this problem, super-

teleporters, who are able to control the world-wide

thought traffic, are appointed. They are able to detect

illegal thought transfer and can also stop it. If such

misuse is detected, the official teleportation commit-

tee decides how to penalize the teleporters. The pen-

alty may be an imprisonment up to 5 years or the

adhesion of a glove that cannot be removed by any-

one else but the committee. The “solotec-glove”

makes it impossible for teleporters to read any

thoughts. The penalty depends on the severity of the

crime. Due to the use of

super-teleporters, the

disadvantages of tele-

portation have almost

been eradicated.

Future

There are numerous op-

portunities for the use of teleporters in the future. In

everyday life, teleporters will continue acting as me-

diators between very shy people who are not able to

speak to the object of their love, or between very

young children (who cannot yet speak) and their

parents. Besides these basic applications, teleporters

will perform another key function in our society by

transporting thoughts of disabled people or people

in a deep coma. This application area of teleporting

is being continually explored through various Medi-

Care Association programs. Crime prevention and

assistance in serious crime investigation represent f

further important area for teleporters´ work.

Patricia Eckart, Tatjana Grytz,

Rabia Kalender Ilhan

A long, long time ago on a nice Sunday evening,

three girls, called Franzi, Mandy and Anna,

walked through their little village. After a few

minutes they passed a park besides which a river

flowed with trees on the side.

In one of the trees hung a lonely, beautiful and

white balloon and on its string a little white card

was fixed. “Oh.. Look at that”, said Franzi and

pointed with her finger at it, “A white balloon, it

looks very nice. Do you think we can catch it?”

“Of course, we have to catch this balloon!!! On its

string is card with writing on it! We must read

that! It must be a balloon from the wedding this

morning with wishes for the bridal couple!”,

thought Anna. “Ok!” said Mandy, “But how we

can get it?”

The three girls stood in front of the tree and con-

trived a plan. A few minutes later, they decided

that Franzi, the tallest of them at 1.8 m, should

try to get the balloon with her hand. Franzi tried

it out and jumped up high, but she couldn’t get

it. After a few tries Mandy got a long stick, which

lay next to Mandy. Franzi tried it again. She

stretched herself and jumped up high, but noth-

ing happened.

Anna had studied the situation and suggested

that Mandy, the smallest of them at 1.50 m,

should climb on Franzi’s shoulders so she would

be taller than Franzi and could perhaps reach the

balloon. So the girls tried this out. First Mandy

tried to catch the balloon with her hands, then

Franzi jumped a little bit and after that Mandy

took the stick and hit the tree. But nothing hap-

pened. A few minutes after Mandy climbed

down from Franzi’s shoulders and suggested

tossing a heavy object at the balloon and the

branches in which it was caught.

Her thought was that this could loosen the string

so that it hung down and could be more easily

caught. “Oh wow, yes this is a great idea”, said

Anna and Mandy together, “But which thing

should we toss???” “Take my keys”, suggested

Franzi.”With all my decorating stuff it is heavy

enough!” The others liked this plan and so Franzi

chose a place and tossed her keys at the tree. The

first time it fell down and nothing happend, the

second time the key fell down and nothing hap-

pened. The third time!!! No noise, no keys on the

ground. “Oh no now the keys are hanging in the

tree!!!! We must get them back!!”, screamed

Franzi. The balloon was forgotten, the new goal

was to get the KEY from the tree.

The same procedure as before started. First

Franzi tried to get her keys back by jumping up

high and tried to catch the balloon with her hand.

It didn’t work. After that she took the stick, but

nothing happened. After that Mandy climbed up

onto her shoulders and tried to reach the keys

with her hand and with the stick. They tried eve-

rything, nothing happened.

“We have to think about another way to get the

keys back!!”, said Anna. “What do you think

about taking my bag? With its long strap, you

can hold it and hit it against the branches. Wait, I

will remove all my stuff in it and then we can try

this out!” Mandy and Franzi were very happy

about this idea, and after a few minutes, Franzi

held the bag in her hand. With her first hit, the

keys didn’t fall down. At the second try nothing

happened either. But the third time, she had so

much energy in her hit that she couldn’t hold the

bag in her hand. The bag flew through the air,

landed in the tree and the keys fell down. Franzi

was very happy about that, but now Anna was

very sad! Her BAG now hung in the tree!!!

Three girls and a balloon

Seite 5 Goethe News

The balloon was forgotten and the bag was now the new goal! The girls tried the same procedure

again! Franzi alone, Franzi with a stick. Mandy on Franzi and Mandy with a stick on Franzi. None

of these actions got the bag back!

The girls laughed so much, but at the end they had to call Anna’s dad. They asked him to drive in

from the village with a ladder or something which would be long enough to get the bag from the

tree.

He came after 20 minutes, very confused but with a big smile, carrying a big broom. And got the

bag down from the tree.

While the balloon was left alone in its tree, it was also happy to hear the birds for many, many more

years.

Annkatrin Göpfert

Seite 6

Title: Dogs of Riga

Author: Henning Mankell

Book Review

men were criminals and have

been the victims of a gangland

hit. Now, the Latvian Inspector

Liepa, who came for this case

from Riga, will return, and the

Sweden Inspector Kurt Wal-

lander can finally get a bit more

time to get his own private prob-

lems under control.

The day after his return home,

the Latvian inspector is dead.

Now Wallander is requested to

travel across the Baltic Sea to

Riga to help the Latvian police

with the investigation. It is win-

ter, 1991. Latvia is a country on

the move to its independence

from the Soviet Union. In Riga,

Wallander finds himself in a

completely different, alien

world, full of social contrasts,

scarcely veiled threats and lies.

He will solve the case, but this

mission will require much more

than just all his experience as a

Swedish policemen.

I really liked this book because

of the thrilling and realistic at-

mosphere Mankell has suc-

ceeded in creating, and because

of the main character – inspector

Kurt Wallander, an ingenious

investigator with a very sensitive

soul.

If you like mystery novels, you

will love this book!

Tatjana Grytz

Two dead men in a red life raft

have drifted ashore of Sweden.

Nobody seems to know who

they are or how got in this life

raft, since there is no information

about any shipping accident

near the Swedish coast. The only

obvious fact is that they are

dead.

Later on, the autopsy report

shows that they had been tor-

tured before they died.

The forensic analysis of the bod-

ies and the life raft allows the

assumption that the dead men

might be Latvian citizens. The

cooperation with the Latvian po-

lice provides new evidence, and

a couple of days later the case is

successfully solved: the dead

If you walk through the streets from

the beginning of May until the end

of July you often hear loud screams

above you. Then looking towards

heaven you often see rather small

birds (wings 40-44 cm) which are

flying fast (upto 180 km/h) and often

doing acrobatic stunts in the air.

These birds are called Common

Swifts. They seem to have a lot of

fun while flying and even if it is

windy they don’t seem to have diffi-

culties. This is no surprise if you

know that they spend nearly their

whole life in the air. Once they have

left their nests, they don’t come back

to solid land for 2 years when they

are of reproductive age, to take care

of the young swifts. Apart from this

period they do everything in the air,

feeding, drinking, even sleeping.

The bird without feet

Seite 9 Goethe News

Their scientific name is Apus apus, which

means “without feet”. And really if you see

them from a distance they don’t seem to

have feet, because the feet are very short and

only useful for clinging to vertical surfaces.

But who needs strong feet, to stand or to

walk if he spends almost his entire life in the

air? There is only one problem. If a Common

Swift crashes it can’t leave the ground even

if it isn’t hurt. Only if someone puts it up

into the air, so that the wind comes under its

wings, can it go back into its living space,

where the Common Swift can again show its

great acrobatics.

Stefanie Rudolph

Literature:

Hessisches Ministerium für Umwelt, Energie, Landwirtschaft und

Verbraucherschutz (2009): Natura 2000 praktisch in Hessen, Artenschutz

in Dorf und Stadt, Wiesbaden

http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinara_apuso

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Swift