CLASS 11 · HORNBILL · CHAPTER 5
Original, student-friendly answers for the comprehension, discussion, language, vocabulary, grammar, and research activities in The Adventure.
18 worked answers · short steps first, explanations when you need them
Textbook pages
Question Notice These Expressions
Use the story context to work out each phrase.
Restate the phrases in everyday words.
Detailed account; existing in practice; confidence lift; perceptive; moved to a lower role; falsified records; political skill; expressed strong feelings.
Question Understanding the Text I
Check each claim against the story.
Separate real historical background from the fictional adventure.
True: 2 and 5. The story centres on Panipat and links history with scientific ideas.
Question Understanding the Text II.1
Identify what was different in the world he visited.
Explain why Rajendra calls it another present.
He entered an alternate version of the present where history had taken a different path.
Question Understanding the Text II.2
Recall the story’s use of catastrophe theory.
Explain the word in its technical context.
“Catastrophic” refers to a sudden transition between possible stable outcomes, not just a terrible event.
Question Understanding the Text II.3
Use Gaitonde’s knowledge of history.
Explain how comparison helps him investigate.
As a historian, he uses what he knows to spot how the alternate world’s history differs.
Question Understanding the Text II.4
State the idea simply.
Distinguish the story’s imaginative use from proven travel between worlds.
Rajendra uses quantum uncertainty to suggest that several outcomes might be possible, as a fictional explanation for alternate worlds.
Question Understanding the Text II.5
Identify the possible trigger in the story.
Keep clear that this is Rajendra’s hypothesis.
He guesses that the collision and Gaitonde’s thoughts triggered his shift into an alternate present.
Textbook pages
Question Talking About the Text 1(i)
Give an example of a turning point.
Explain why context and later events also matter.
A turning point can redirect history, but its lasting effect depends on other conditions and later choices too.
Question Talking About the Text 1(ii)
Consider how senses can be limited.
Name other ways to check an experience.
Senses are useful but can mislead; memory, records, measurement, and shared evidence also help us judge reality.
Question Talking About the Text 1(iii)
Name a shared practice.
Give one method specific to each discipline.
They share questioning, evidence, reasoning, and revision, though the kinds of evidence and methods differ.
Question Talking About the Text 2(i)
Identify the danger in each text.
Compare how the characters respond.
Mention the difference between imagined and real events.
Both involve danger and uncertainty; Gaitonde investigates an alternate world, while the family survives a real storm through teamwork.
Textbook pages
Question Talking About the Text 2(ii)
Recall what happens when he tries to take the chair.
Connect that event with his final decision.
The humiliating meeting and his unusual experience make him lose interest in presiding again.
Question Thinking About Language
Use the characters’ setting and roles as clues.
Mark which answers are inferences.
Likely a shared Indian language with Khan Sahib, English with the receptionist, and Marathi for the chronicle.
Question Thinking About Language
Suggest likely community languages.
Explain how people could communicate across groups.
They may use Marathi, Persian or Urdu, and English within their communities, with shared languages or interpreters across groups.
Question Thinking About Language
Separate official use from home and community use.
Give a reason local languages may continue.
No. A ruler’s language may gain official use, while local languages continue and languages can mix.
Textbook pages
Question Working with Words
Match each idiom to its meaning.
Use the surrounding sentence to distinguish similar-looking words.
Meanings: disagree; express; become independent; stop operating; meet an equal. Visibly = clearly seen; visually = related to sight; alternately = taking turns; alternatively = another option; successfully = with success; successively = one after another; respectfully = politely; respectively = in listed order.
Question Noticing Form
Identify the if-clause and result clause.
Use the correct verb pattern for imagined present or past situations.
Hypothetical: “If I had more time, I would read.” Unreal past: “If we had left earlier, we would have arrived sooner.”
Question Things to Do
Choose one theory and consult a reliable educational source.
Record its main idea and one example.
Explain it in your own words and cite the source.
Quantum theory: very small-scale matter and probability. Relativity: space, time, motion, and gravity. Big Bang: expansion from a hot, dense early universe. Evolution: inherited changes in populations over generations.