TECHNOLOGY &EDUCATION.
Technology: A Tool For Education More and more each day technology infiltrates deeper into our daily lives and routines. In fact, it has become such an integral part of society, that mass hysteria and panic would undoubtedly ensue should it suddenly be taken away. To allow technology to take control would surely lead to a disintegration of society. Today, most classrooms are connected to the Internet or at the very least contain computers to help educate the nation’s children. Technology, although useful, is only a tool and must be used wisely in regards to the education of today’s youths. Technology holds the promise of delivering vast amounts of information in a very short time. The Internet alone contains a plethora of information for anyone who has the desire and ability to use it. With just a click of a button a person can “surf” the web finding information ranging from aardvark to zygote. The speed in which information flashes across the screen can be dizzying. Although general information is readily accessible, obtaining specific data can be frustratingly difficult. Just the other day, I was on-line searching for information regarding to peritonitis. As is typical, I logged onto a search site and typed in the subject I wanted. The search found and displayed about a dozen sites related to peritonitis. However, it also displayed more than three or four dozen sites on topics ranging from colon cancer to feline leukemia. I can’t figure out just what relation feline leukemia has with peritonitis. As far as I can tell, they’re like apples to oranges. Too often these searches seem to take the user to sites that only contain links to other sites, with links to yet other sites, and so on. It took me nearly an hour to find specific information providing detailed signs and symptoms of peritonitis. I never could find anything regarding actual treatment procedures for the disease. Maybe I should have taken a five minute drive to the library and looked in an antiquated encyclopedia - it would have been faster and easier. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that technology is a bad thing, but there are negatives to every positive. Technology does offer an array of options, including those for educational purposes. Many college students are now able to take courses via television, cable, and the Internet - only attending classes on campus for taking exams. Although this form of education provides more scheduling flexibility, it deprives the student of being able to contact their professor readily. While in an on-campus class, if a student has a question on the material being studied, they can simply ask their instructor for clarification and receive an immediate response. Contrarily, by taking a television or Internet course, the student would have to e-mail the professor and wait up to several days to receive a reply. School is not just a forum to learn facts and theories. “One of the principal functions of school is to teach children how to behave in groups” (Postman). In other words, by attending school children learn how to interact with others in a positive and constructive way. By allowing technology to take over the education of our children we deny them the feeling of being included as a member of society. For without social interaction, society itself no longer exists. At one time, many years ago, dialing “0 on the telephone connected them to a living, breathing person on the other end. Several years later technology took over and one had to navigate through a myriad of computerized menus for information, bringing forth complaint after complaint from customers. Currently, various phone companies advertise how one can now dial “0 and get a living, breathing person on the other end. Although technology can provide a nearly endless supply of information, it cannot provide the tools necessary for understanding. A computer can simply display facts, insight can only be learned through interaction with others. If a child cannot comprehend a concept, a computer will not be able to re-explain things in a fashion the child understands; it can only repeat the data. Only through personal interaction with another person can information be modified into a context the child can understand and appreciate. “Knowledge, certainly in the humanities, is not a straightforward matter of access, of conquest via the ingestion of data” (Birkerts). Children today often know how to operate a computer better than their parents. Educational software, designed to captivate the short attention spans of children, do a good job of teaching children in information, but fall short of teaching any social values needed to co-exist peaceably with others. For a child to be able to function as a member of today’s society, both technological and social teaching need to be balanced. We must always keep in mind that although technology is capable of many things, it is only a device that helps deliver information, it cannot teach understanding needed to obtain true knowledge and social conscience.
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Friday, July 20, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2007
ROBINSON CRUSOE.
Robinson Crusoe was written by Daniel Defoe. The novel was first published in 1719. It tells the story of a young explorer who becomes marooned on a deserted island. His experiences of the island change his outlook on life. Daniel Defoe was a short story writer that came from an poor family. Defoe was poor for most of his life and made his living as a butcher and a writer. Defoe mostly wrote short stories and political essays. Robinson Crusoe was a combination of two short stories. Many believe Defoe used Robinson Crusoe to portray himself in a certain ways. The description was almost identical to his own and after his wife left him, he felt as if he was marooned on a deserted island. The story takes place in the 1700s on a deserted island somewhere off the coast of Brazil. The island is fairly large in size and has a small shore. The interior of the island has many trees, wild pigs and other small animals and a small cave in which Crusoe stores food. I walked about the shore lifting up my hands. Look around, I see nothing but water, a forest, and the remains of my ship. At first, I was afraid of wild animals but after some exploration of the land, the only animals I had seen were wild pigs, squirrels, and some small birds. The only possessions that Crusoe retrieved from the remains of his ship were a small knife, a box of tabacco, a pipe, and a small book that would later become his journal. Robinson Crusoe was a young and stubborn explorer. He was extremely tall and strong. His stay on the island changed him from a mean, stubborn man to an open-minded protestant. Standing at six feet, two inches and having my long, thick brown hair back in a ponytail, I felt as if I was eight feet tall. Without the permission of my parents, I was still sailing away from the misery. I held the cargo box is my strong arms, waiting to board my beautiful ship. Crusoe became a skilled craftsman and was an extremely religious man due to his stay on the island. Being the only man on the entire island, he established a faith in God. He also became more articulate from writing in a journal daily. Overall, his stay on the island changed Crusoe's life greatly. As the story begins, Robinson Crusoe defies his parents and sets out to sea. Crusoe encounters a series of violent storms at sea and ends up in Africa. He sets out on another voyage and is captured by the Sallee, a group of pirates. Luckily, he manages to escape and board a Portuguese ship and sail to Brazil. While in Brazil, Crusoe purchases a large sugar plantation. After leaving Brazil, he encounters another storm in which his ship is destroyed and he is marooned on an island as the only survivor. On the island, Crusoe gathers food and builds a small shelter. He writes in a journal to keep account of his stay. Crusoe becomes a skilled craftsman and begins to feel a spiritual connection with God. He also builds a small boat that he uses to sail around the island. After living on the island for fifteen years, Crusoe discovers that savages had landed on the island and that they perform human sacrifices. Crusoe helps a prisoner escape from these savages. He names the prisoner Friday and teaches him english. Together, they build a new boat and attempt to leave the island. However, Friday learns his father is a prisoner of the savages. Crusoe and Friday return and rescue his father and a Spaniard. The four men board a passing boat and gain control of it. Crusoe sails back to his native land to learn his sugar plantation has made him rich. He sells the plantation and marries. As the novel closes, Crusoe is persuaded to take a final voyage, back to the island. Robinson Crusoe is written using an English dialect. The narration of the novel is simple, informal and extremely easy to understand. However, Defoe uses verbose descriptions for characters. He was a comely, handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with strong limbs, not too large, tall and well-shaped, and I reckon he was about twenty years of age. The color of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not of an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives are; but of a bright kind of a dun olive color that had in it something agreeable, though not very easy to describe. This is a description of Friday. Defoe does an excellent job of introducing the character. This paragraph makes a clear picture of Friday to the reader. The theme of the novel is that nature can change the way a man thinks and his outlook on life. Crusoe was a nasty young man who hated his family and his life as the story began. After being stranded on an island for over fifteen years, nature changed his outlook on life. Crusoe became grateful for what he did have and wanted to make the best out of it. He developed a stronger will power and became more opened minded. He also thought more about the better aspects of his life and had faith in God.
Robinson Crusoe was written by Daniel Defoe. The novel was first published in 1719. It tells the story of a young explorer who becomes marooned on a deserted island. His experiences of the island change his outlook on life. Daniel Defoe was a short story writer that came from an poor family. Defoe was poor for most of his life and made his living as a butcher and a writer. Defoe mostly wrote short stories and political essays. Robinson Crusoe was a combination of two short stories. Many believe Defoe used Robinson Crusoe to portray himself in a certain ways. The description was almost identical to his own and after his wife left him, he felt as if he was marooned on a deserted island. The story takes place in the 1700s on a deserted island somewhere off the coast of Brazil. The island is fairly large in size and has a small shore. The interior of the island has many trees, wild pigs and other small animals and a small cave in which Crusoe stores food. I walked about the shore lifting up my hands. Look around, I see nothing but water, a forest, and the remains of my ship. At first, I was afraid of wild animals but after some exploration of the land, the only animals I had seen were wild pigs, squirrels, and some small birds. The only possessions that Crusoe retrieved from the remains of his ship were a small knife, a box of tabacco, a pipe, and a small book that would later become his journal. Robinson Crusoe was a young and stubborn explorer. He was extremely tall and strong. His stay on the island changed him from a mean, stubborn man to an open-minded protestant. Standing at six feet, two inches and having my long, thick brown hair back in a ponytail, I felt as if I was eight feet tall. Without the permission of my parents, I was still sailing away from the misery. I held the cargo box is my strong arms, waiting to board my beautiful ship. Crusoe became a skilled craftsman and was an extremely religious man due to his stay on the island. Being the only man on the entire island, he established a faith in God. He also became more articulate from writing in a journal daily. Overall, his stay on the island changed Crusoe's life greatly. As the story begins, Robinson Crusoe defies his parents and sets out to sea. Crusoe encounters a series of violent storms at sea and ends up in Africa. He sets out on another voyage and is captured by the Sallee, a group of pirates. Luckily, he manages to escape and board a Portuguese ship and sail to Brazil. While in Brazil, Crusoe purchases a large sugar plantation. After leaving Brazil, he encounters another storm in which his ship is destroyed and he is marooned on an island as the only survivor. On the island, Crusoe gathers food and builds a small shelter. He writes in a journal to keep account of his stay. Crusoe becomes a skilled craftsman and begins to feel a spiritual connection with God. He also builds a small boat that he uses to sail around the island. After living on the island for fifteen years, Crusoe discovers that savages had landed on the island and that they perform human sacrifices. Crusoe helps a prisoner escape from these savages. He names the prisoner Friday and teaches him english. Together, they build a new boat and attempt to leave the island. However, Friday learns his father is a prisoner of the savages. Crusoe and Friday return and rescue his father and a Spaniard. The four men board a passing boat and gain control of it. Crusoe sails back to his native land to learn his sugar plantation has made him rich. He sells the plantation and marries. As the novel closes, Crusoe is persuaded to take a final voyage, back to the island. Robinson Crusoe is written using an English dialect. The narration of the novel is simple, informal and extremely easy to understand. However, Defoe uses verbose descriptions for characters. He was a comely, handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with strong limbs, not too large, tall and well-shaped, and I reckon he was about twenty years of age. The color of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not of an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives are; but of a bright kind of a dun olive color that had in it something agreeable, though not very easy to describe. This is a description of Friday. Defoe does an excellent job of introducing the character. This paragraph makes a clear picture of Friday to the reader. The theme of the novel is that nature can change the way a man thinks and his outlook on life. Crusoe was a nasty young man who hated his family and his life as the story began. After being stranded on an island for over fifteen years, nature changed his outlook on life. Crusoe became grateful for what he did have and wanted to make the best out of it. He developed a stronger will power and became more opened minded. He also thought more about the better aspects of his life and had faith in God.
JURASIC PARK
Jurasic Park Richard Graczyk JURASSIC PARK Crichton, Michael Publisher: Ballantine Books City Where Published: New York Date of latest copy: 1990 Edition: First Ballantine Books Edition: December 1991. 399 Pages, Hardcover I. A Brief Summary of the Plot. A billionaire has created a technique to clone dinosaurs. From the left behind DNA that his crack team of scientists and experts extract he is able to grow the dinosaurs in labs and lock them up on an island behind electrified fences. He has created a sort of theme park on the island which is located off the west coast of Costa Rica. The island is called Isla Nublar. He plans to have the entire planet come and visit his wondrous marvels. He asks a group of scientists from several different fields to come and view the park, but something terribly goes wrong when a worker on the island turns traitor and shuts down the power. II. A Description of the Most Important Aspects of the Contents. The main characters in the book are: John Hammond who is a billionaire developer who has used his resources to create the dinosaur filled island known as Jurassic Park. He is an old grandfather, and he dies in the book by a dinosaur known as a Procompsognathus. Dr. Alan Grant who is a renowned paleontologist who agrees to visit Jurassic Park only to find out it is the home of several Dinosaurs. Unlike the movie Dr. Grant loves kids in the book. He also had a of a beard. Dr. Ellie Sattler is a Paleobotinist and Alan Grant who is among the first people to tour Jurassic Park. Tim who is the 11 year old grandson of John Hammond. He is kind of geeky, into computers and loves Dinosaurs. His 7 year older sister is Alexis. She has a kind of tomboy attitude and loves base-ball Ian Malcom is the Mathematician that uses Chaos Theory to predict disastrous results. he only wears black and gray. He is presumably dead in Jurassic Park the book, but miraculously is in the sequel, The Lost World. Finally there is Dennis Nedry. He was the computer genius who's greed and ambition bring chaos to Jurassic Park. There are many other characters that played a big part in the book, but I thought they were the best and the plot revolved around them. The characters show the greatest difference in the movie and the book. There were many opposites in the characters and even the roles and elements of Tim and Lex were reversed. The book starts off when some of the dinosaurs have escaped form the island. John Hammond invites a group of scientists to the park. He also invites his grandchildren. Denis Nedry took a bribe from a rival company to get samples of Dinosaur DNA. In order to make his escape, he turns the power off, even the electric fences. All hell breaks loose when the humans try to warn a boat that it's transporting Dinosaurs to the mainland, and run away from them at the same time. III. The Significance of the Book to the Student. This book had plenty of significance in it, even though a lot of the elements that were significant were hidden. First of all this book thought us a few basic things about DNA. How it's the building blocks of life, and stuff can be cloned. Like that sheep, Dolly. Also it taught us what some scientific practices were about when different scientists visited the island. Suchexamples are paleontologists, paleobotanists, and mathematicians. 1 other thing that this book teaches the student is that it is a prime example of the differences between the movie and the book. And yes, the book was better. IV. Evaluation of the Book. Personally, I thought this was a great book. When I saw the movie, it was a blast. I loved the movie, but when I read the book for the first time I was blown away. This has been the second time I've read it and I must say it hasn't lost his touch. When I read the book the first time I was rooting for the different characters and all, and the second time I read it, it still kept those same elements. It still had it's flavor. That's what I loved about this book. There is one thing I must recommend about this book though. Read it as something for fun, not for school. And go at your own pace, but read a lot, it's a big book. The experience of the book it much better then.
Jurasic Park Richard Graczyk JURASSIC PARK Crichton, Michael Publisher: Ballantine Books City Where Published: New York Date of latest copy: 1990 Edition: First Ballantine Books Edition: December 1991. 399 Pages, Hardcover I. A Brief Summary of the Plot. A billionaire has created a technique to clone dinosaurs. From the left behind DNA that his crack team of scientists and experts extract he is able to grow the dinosaurs in labs and lock them up on an island behind electrified fences. He has created a sort of theme park on the island which is located off the west coast of Costa Rica. The island is called Isla Nublar. He plans to have the entire planet come and visit his wondrous marvels. He asks a group of scientists from several different fields to come and view the park, but something terribly goes wrong when a worker on the island turns traitor and shuts down the power. II. A Description of the Most Important Aspects of the Contents. The main characters in the book are: John Hammond who is a billionaire developer who has used his resources to create the dinosaur filled island known as Jurassic Park. He is an old grandfather, and he dies in the book by a dinosaur known as a Procompsognathus. Dr. Alan Grant who is a renowned paleontologist who agrees to visit Jurassic Park only to find out it is the home of several Dinosaurs. Unlike the movie Dr. Grant loves kids in the book. He also had a of a beard. Dr. Ellie Sattler is a Paleobotinist and Alan Grant who is among the first people to tour Jurassic Park. Tim who is the 11 year old grandson of John Hammond. He is kind of geeky, into computers and loves Dinosaurs. His 7 year older sister is Alexis. She has a kind of tomboy attitude and loves base-ball Ian Malcom is the Mathematician that uses Chaos Theory to predict disastrous results. he only wears black and gray. He is presumably dead in Jurassic Park the book, but miraculously is in the sequel, The Lost World. Finally there is Dennis Nedry. He was the computer genius who's greed and ambition bring chaos to Jurassic Park. There are many other characters that played a big part in the book, but I thought they were the best and the plot revolved around them. The characters show the greatest difference in the movie and the book. There were many opposites in the characters and even the roles and elements of Tim and Lex were reversed. The book starts off when some of the dinosaurs have escaped form the island. John Hammond invites a group of scientists to the park. He also invites his grandchildren. Denis Nedry took a bribe from a rival company to get samples of Dinosaur DNA. In order to make his escape, he turns the power off, even the electric fences. All hell breaks loose when the humans try to warn a boat that it's transporting Dinosaurs to the mainland, and run away from them at the same time. III. The Significance of the Book to the Student. This book had plenty of significance in it, even though a lot of the elements that were significant were hidden. First of all this book thought us a few basic things about DNA. How it's the building blocks of life, and stuff can be cloned. Like that sheep, Dolly. Also it taught us what some scientific practices were about when different scientists visited the island. Suchexamples are paleontologists, paleobotanists, and mathematicians. 1 other thing that this book teaches the student is that it is a prime example of the differences between the movie and the book. And yes, the book was better. IV. Evaluation of the Book. Personally, I thought this was a great book. When I saw the movie, it was a blast. I loved the movie, but when I read the book for the first time I was blown away. This has been the second time I've read it and I must say it hasn't lost his touch. When I read the book the first time I was rooting for the different characters and all, and the second time I read it, it still kept those same elements. It still had it's flavor. That's what I loved about this book. There is one thing I must recommend about this book though. Read it as something for fun, not for school. And go at your own pace, but read a lot, it's a big book. The experience of the book it much better then.
JULIUS CAESAR.
In the book Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, Cassius and the conspirators depicted Caesar as being ambitious. He was also said to not be ambitious by Mark Antony. He was, however, ambitious. This is because he refused the crown three times, he did not listen to the warnings that people gave him throughout the book, and he did not end the punishment he placed upon Metellus Cimber’s brother, Publius Cimber. These were all acts of ambition. On the Lupercal, Mark Antony presented Caesar with a crown. Caesar then proceeded to turn down the crown three times. The reason he did this is because the crown was not the real one, but only a coronet. This is known when Casca tells Brutus and Caesar, “I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown (yet ‘twas not a crown neither; ‘twas one of those coronets), and as I told you, he put it by once; but for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it.” The reason that this was ambitious is because it shows that he wanted more than they offered him and that he wasn’t satisfied with just that. It also shows that he feels that he is too good for it. After he turned down the crown, the people watching yelled because they wanted him to take the crown. This shows he does not listen to others. Throughout the book, Caesar received many warnings about his death. All of these warnings he refused. The Soothsayer told him to “beware the Ides of March,” Calphurnia told him about her dreams, the owl was seen in the capitol during the daytime, the slaves hand caught on fire, and the sky spit fire. All of these were warnings that Caesar did not listen to. He pushed away the Soothsayer and said, “He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.” This shows that he will not accept advice from anyone. If he does this, then he will be a tyrant. When Calphurnia told him about her dream, he did not listen to her. Instead, he listened to flattery, which he said he disliked. These shows that he was also a hypocrite and that he would only listen to or do what sounded better for him. All of these things reveal that he has a huge ego. This is ambitious because a person with a big ego will only do things that will benefit him. Before Caesar is stabbed, Metellus Cimber and the conspirators approach him and ask him to let Publius Cimber back into the kingdom. “I could be well moved, if I were as you. If I could pray to move, prayers would move me. But I am as constant as the Northern Star,.” He did not back down because he felt that he was right in his decision to banish Publius. He was also very stubborn and did not listen to reason. This is ambitious because he would always feel that he was right and no one else was. This is what tyrants do, and he would have also. Caesar was ambitious because he refused a crown that he felt was not good enough for him, did not listen to warnings from people, and would not back down from his decision to banish Publius. Because he did all these things, it revealed the things that he would do if he were to become king. If Caesar had become king, he would have ruled the Romans like a tyrant.
In the book Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, Cassius and the conspirators depicted Caesar as being ambitious. He was also said to not be ambitious by Mark Antony. He was, however, ambitious. This is because he refused the crown three times, he did not listen to the warnings that people gave him throughout the book, and he did not end the punishment he placed upon Metellus Cimber’s brother, Publius Cimber. These were all acts of ambition. On the Lupercal, Mark Antony presented Caesar with a crown. Caesar then proceeded to turn down the crown three times. The reason he did this is because the crown was not the real one, but only a coronet. This is known when Casca tells Brutus and Caesar, “I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown (yet ‘twas not a crown neither; ‘twas one of those coronets), and as I told you, he put it by once; but for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it.” The reason that this was ambitious is because it shows that he wanted more than they offered him and that he wasn’t satisfied with just that. It also shows that he feels that he is too good for it. After he turned down the crown, the people watching yelled because they wanted him to take the crown. This shows he does not listen to others. Throughout the book, Caesar received many warnings about his death. All of these warnings he refused. The Soothsayer told him to “beware the Ides of March,” Calphurnia told him about her dreams, the owl was seen in the capitol during the daytime, the slaves hand caught on fire, and the sky spit fire. All of these were warnings that Caesar did not listen to. He pushed away the Soothsayer and said, “He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.” This shows that he will not accept advice from anyone. If he does this, then he will be a tyrant. When Calphurnia told him about her dream, he did not listen to her. Instead, he listened to flattery, which he said he disliked. These shows that he was also a hypocrite and that he would only listen to or do what sounded better for him. All of these things reveal that he has a huge ego. This is ambitious because a person with a big ego will only do things that will benefit him. Before Caesar is stabbed, Metellus Cimber and the conspirators approach him and ask him to let Publius Cimber back into the kingdom. “I could be well moved, if I were as you. If I could pray to move, prayers would move me. But I am as constant as the Northern Star,.” He did not back down because he felt that he was right in his decision to banish Publius. He was also very stubborn and did not listen to reason. This is ambitious because he would always feel that he was right and no one else was. This is what tyrants do, and he would have also. Caesar was ambitious because he refused a crown that he felt was not good enough for him, did not listen to warnings from people, and would not back down from his decision to banish Publius. Because he did all these things, it revealed the things that he would do if he were to become king. If Caesar had become king, he would have ruled the Romans like a tyrant.
GULLIVER's TRAVELS
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is without question the most famous literature to emerge from this 18th century Tory satiric tradition. It is the strongest, funniest, and yet in some ways most despairing cry for a halt to the trends initiated by seventeenth-century philosophy. In Book IV, we discover how Gulliver’s journey into a discovery of what man is becomes a journey into madness. We encounter, here, a cruel attack on man. This is an attack using two of the most striking literary metaphors for man: the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. The first are beings in every way like horses except for their possession of absolute reason; the second are creatures bearing an uncanny resemblance to man except for their animalistic brutality. Swift’s use of these creatures, Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, as an approach to the problem of the nature of man, has attracted more critical attention than has any other part of his work. Now, the first important question to ask of any satirist is how he or she achieves the necessary comic distortion, which transforms the familiar into the ridiculous. And Swift’s main technique for achieving this--and a wonderful technique for satire--is the basic plot of science fiction: the voyage by an average civilized human being into unknown territory and his return back home. This apparently simple plot immediately opens all sorts of satiric possibilities, because it enables the writer constantly to play off three different perspectives in order to give us the reader a comic sense of what is very familiar. It can do this in the following ways: If the strange new country is recognizably similar to our culture, then comic distortions in the New World enable the writer to satirize the familiar in a host of different ways, providing, in effect, a cartoon style view of our world. If the strange new country is some sort of utopia--a perfectly realized vision of the ideals often proclaimed but generally violated in our world--then the satirist can manipulate the discrepancy between the ideal New World of the fiction and the corrupt world we live in to illustrate repeatedly just how empty the pretensions to goodness really are in our world. However, the key to this technique is generally the use of the traveler, the figure who is, in effect, the reader’s contemporary and fellow countryman. How that figure reacts to the New World can be a constant source of amusement and pointed satiric comment, because, in effect, this figure represents the contact between the normal world and the strange New World of either caricatured ridiculousness or utopian perfection. We can see Swift moving back and forth between the first two techniques, and this can create some confusion. For example, in much of Book I, Lilliput is clearly a comic distortion of life in Europe. The sections on the public rewards of leaping and creeping or the endless disputes about whether one should eat one’s eggs by breaking them at the bigger or the smaller end or the absurdity of the royal proclamations are obvious and funny distortions of the court life, the pompous pretentiousness of officials, and the religious disputes familiar to Swift’s readers. At the same time, however, there are passages where he holds up the laws of Lilliput as some form of utopian ideal, in order to demonstrate just how much better they understand true reasonableness than do the Europeans. In book II, he does the same: for most of the time the people of Brobdingnag are again caricatured distorted Europeans, but clearly, the King of Brobdingnag is an ideal figure. This shift in perspective on the New World is at times confusing. Swift is, in effect, manipulating the fictional world to suit his immediate satirical purposes. It is easy enough to see what he is doing, but it does, in some sense, violate our built-up expectations. Just how are we supposed to take Lilliput and Brobdingna--as a distorted Europe or as a utopia or what? This lack of a consistent independent reality to the fictional world which he has created is one of the main reasons why Gulliver’s Travels is not considered one of the first novels (since one of the requirements of a novel, it is maintained, is a consistent attitude towards the fictional reality one has created: one cannot simply manipulate it at will to prove a moral point). We can see Gulliver slowly becoming accustomed to a new kind of life, the life of reason that he is forced to imitate from the model supplied by the horses. We can begin to see that Gulliver is impressed by the orderly and rational conduct of life he sees in the Houyhnhnms but, while the Houyhnhnms may provide Gulliver with a model manner of life, Swift is forcing the careful reader to judge whether the life of the horses is indeed a proper model for the life of man. It may be true that a man can subsist on a diet of oats and milk and even thrive on them; but, are oats the only alternative to asses’ flesh, the food of the Yahoos? In other words, Gulliver’s choice of diet is not really the point; rather, his choice of diet signifies his choice of a manner of living. Houyhnhnm life is much simpler than human life because these ideal horses are not possessed with the impulse towards evil that is powerfully present in many. Man’s life is a good deal more difficult; he can be good, but with great effort, while the Houyhnhnms are good without effort and are consequently not nearly so interesting as men are. Gulliver’s great mistake is his blindness to the poignant difficulty involved in man’s attempts to battle his basic instincts in order to lead the good life. Gulliver will be blinded by the glorious but inhuman example of the Houyhnhnms. In Book IV, Swift deals more consistently with this innuendo in the New World by dividing it into two groups; the satirized Europeans, the Yahoos, and the ideally reasonable creatures, the horses. So, here there is less of a sense of shifting purpose at work. That may help to account, in part, for the great power of the Fourth Voyage. For me Swift’s language, though strong, is still in control. The vision is harsh, the anger extreme, but that’s a sign of the intense moral anger Swift feels at the transformation of life around him in ways that are leading, he thinks, to moral disaster. The central Christian and Socratic emphasis on virtue is losing ground to something he sees as a facile illusion--that reason, wealth, money, and power could somehow do the job for us, which had been traditionally placed upon our moral characters. In the New World, faith, hope, and charity, Swift sees, are going to be irrelevant, because the rational organization of human experience and the application of the new reasoning to all aspects of human life is going to tempt human beings with a rich lure: the promise of happiness. Under the banner of the new rationality, the traditional notions of virtue will become irrelevant, as human beings substitute for excellence of character the development of the individual human life according to some telos, some spiritual goal--the idea that properly organized practical rules, structures of authority, rational inquiry into efficient causes, profitable commercial ventures, and laws will provide the sure guide, because, after all, human beings are rational creatures. In the first three books of the Travels, Swift has exposed satiric ridicule to the institutions, the customs, the beliefs, and the behavior of man. In Book IV, however, he turns his attention to human nature itself. He seeks to discover what might be called a definition of man; a definition that will account for the apparent mess man has managed to make of his life and his world. Swift therefore places Gulliver (an ordinary mortal) directly between the figures of impossible perfection, the Houyhnhnms, and the figures of impossible degradation, the Yahoos. Gulliver is shaken to the core of his being when he suddenly sees, in the Yahoos, the terrible sight of man as animal. The Yahoos are images of what man would become were he totally devoid of reason and completely removed from civilization: they are images of the animal potential in man. The fact is, however, that man is neither Yahoo nor Houyhnhnm; he is an imperfect creature who, nevertheless, has the power to live a decent life if only he will recognize how limited he is. Swift presents us with figures like Count Munodi and Captain Mendez who are decent, compassionate, wise and humble men who have become aware of their capabilities only by recognizing their limitations. Without pride, these figures live the kind of good life attainable by humanity. Gulliver, however, goes mad when he realizes that man is incapable of absolute perfection. Unable to come to terms with his limited capabilities, he thus commits the sin of pride as he is in the very process of condemning man for being proud. Ironically, Gulliver’s madness…his own pride…proves how imperfect a creature man is. The tragedy is that, in the name of perfection, Gulliver misses the opportunity to achieve whatever goodness is in his power to attain. Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels is the most famous and most powerful protest against this modern project. The severity of his anger is, I think, a symptom of the extent to which he realized the battle was already being lost. To us, however, over two hundred years later, Swift’s point is perhaps more vividly relevant than many of his contemporaries.
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is without question the most famous literature to emerge from this 18th century Tory satiric tradition. It is the strongest, funniest, and yet in some ways most despairing cry for a halt to the trends initiated by seventeenth-century philosophy. In Book IV, we discover how Gulliver’s journey into a discovery of what man is becomes a journey into madness. We encounter, here, a cruel attack on man. This is an attack using two of the most striking literary metaphors for man: the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. The first are beings in every way like horses except for their possession of absolute reason; the second are creatures bearing an uncanny resemblance to man except for their animalistic brutality. Swift’s use of these creatures, Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, as an approach to the problem of the nature of man, has attracted more critical attention than has any other part of his work. Now, the first important question to ask of any satirist is how he or she achieves the necessary comic distortion, which transforms the familiar into the ridiculous. And Swift’s main technique for achieving this--and a wonderful technique for satire--is the basic plot of science fiction: the voyage by an average civilized human being into unknown territory and his return back home. This apparently simple plot immediately opens all sorts of satiric possibilities, because it enables the writer constantly to play off three different perspectives in order to give us the reader a comic sense of what is very familiar. It can do this in the following ways: If the strange new country is recognizably similar to our culture, then comic distortions in the New World enable the writer to satirize the familiar in a host of different ways, providing, in effect, a cartoon style view of our world. If the strange new country is some sort of utopia--a perfectly realized vision of the ideals often proclaimed but generally violated in our world--then the satirist can manipulate the discrepancy between the ideal New World of the fiction and the corrupt world we live in to illustrate repeatedly just how empty the pretensions to goodness really are in our world. However, the key to this technique is generally the use of the traveler, the figure who is, in effect, the reader’s contemporary and fellow countryman. How that figure reacts to the New World can be a constant source of amusement and pointed satiric comment, because, in effect, this figure represents the contact between the normal world and the strange New World of either caricatured ridiculousness or utopian perfection. We can see Swift moving back and forth between the first two techniques, and this can create some confusion. For example, in much of Book I, Lilliput is clearly a comic distortion of life in Europe. The sections on the public rewards of leaping and creeping or the endless disputes about whether one should eat one’s eggs by breaking them at the bigger or the smaller end or the absurdity of the royal proclamations are obvious and funny distortions of the court life, the pompous pretentiousness of officials, and the religious disputes familiar to Swift’s readers. At the same time, however, there are passages where he holds up the laws of Lilliput as some form of utopian ideal, in order to demonstrate just how much better they understand true reasonableness than do the Europeans. In book II, he does the same: for most of the time the people of Brobdingnag are again caricatured distorted Europeans, but clearly, the King of Brobdingnag is an ideal figure. This shift in perspective on the New World is at times confusing. Swift is, in effect, manipulating the fictional world to suit his immediate satirical purposes. It is easy enough to see what he is doing, but it does, in some sense, violate our built-up expectations. Just how are we supposed to take Lilliput and Brobdingna--as a distorted Europe or as a utopia or what? This lack of a consistent independent reality to the fictional world which he has created is one of the main reasons why Gulliver’s Travels is not considered one of the first novels (since one of the requirements of a novel, it is maintained, is a consistent attitude towards the fictional reality one has created: one cannot simply manipulate it at will to prove a moral point). We can see Gulliver slowly becoming accustomed to a new kind of life, the life of reason that he is forced to imitate from the model supplied by the horses. We can begin to see that Gulliver is impressed by the orderly and rational conduct of life he sees in the Houyhnhnms but, while the Houyhnhnms may provide Gulliver with a model manner of life, Swift is forcing the careful reader to judge whether the life of the horses is indeed a proper model for the life of man. It may be true that a man can subsist on a diet of oats and milk and even thrive on them; but, are oats the only alternative to asses’ flesh, the food of the Yahoos? In other words, Gulliver’s choice of diet is not really the point; rather, his choice of diet signifies his choice of a manner of living. Houyhnhnm life is much simpler than human life because these ideal horses are not possessed with the impulse towards evil that is powerfully present in many. Man’s life is a good deal more difficult; he can be good, but with great effort, while the Houyhnhnms are good without effort and are consequently not nearly so interesting as men are. Gulliver’s great mistake is his blindness to the poignant difficulty involved in man’s attempts to battle his basic instincts in order to lead the good life. Gulliver will be blinded by the glorious but inhuman example of the Houyhnhnms. In Book IV, Swift deals more consistently with this innuendo in the New World by dividing it into two groups; the satirized Europeans, the Yahoos, and the ideally reasonable creatures, the horses. So, here there is less of a sense of shifting purpose at work. That may help to account, in part, for the great power of the Fourth Voyage. For me Swift’s language, though strong, is still in control. The vision is harsh, the anger extreme, but that’s a sign of the intense moral anger Swift feels at the transformation of life around him in ways that are leading, he thinks, to moral disaster. The central Christian and Socratic emphasis on virtue is losing ground to something he sees as a facile illusion--that reason, wealth, money, and power could somehow do the job for us, which had been traditionally placed upon our moral characters. In the New World, faith, hope, and charity, Swift sees, are going to be irrelevant, because the rational organization of human experience and the application of the new reasoning to all aspects of human life is going to tempt human beings with a rich lure: the promise of happiness. Under the banner of the new rationality, the traditional notions of virtue will become irrelevant, as human beings substitute for excellence of character the development of the individual human life according to some telos, some spiritual goal--the idea that properly organized practical rules, structures of authority, rational inquiry into efficient causes, profitable commercial ventures, and laws will provide the sure guide, because, after all, human beings are rational creatures. In the first three books of the Travels, Swift has exposed satiric ridicule to the institutions, the customs, the beliefs, and the behavior of man. In Book IV, however, he turns his attention to human nature itself. He seeks to discover what might be called a definition of man; a definition that will account for the apparent mess man has managed to make of his life and his world. Swift therefore places Gulliver (an ordinary mortal) directly between the figures of impossible perfection, the Houyhnhnms, and the figures of impossible degradation, the Yahoos. Gulliver is shaken to the core of his being when he suddenly sees, in the Yahoos, the terrible sight of man as animal. The Yahoos are images of what man would become were he totally devoid of reason and completely removed from civilization: they are images of the animal potential in man. The fact is, however, that man is neither Yahoo nor Houyhnhnm; he is an imperfect creature who, nevertheless, has the power to live a decent life if only he will recognize how limited he is. Swift presents us with figures like Count Munodi and Captain Mendez who are decent, compassionate, wise and humble men who have become aware of their capabilities only by recognizing their limitations. Without pride, these figures live the kind of good life attainable by humanity. Gulliver, however, goes mad when he realizes that man is incapable of absolute perfection. Unable to come to terms with his limited capabilities, he thus commits the sin of pride as he is in the very process of condemning man for being proud. Ironically, Gulliver’s madness…his own pride…proves how imperfect a creature man is. The tragedy is that, in the name of perfection, Gulliver misses the opportunity to achieve whatever goodness is in his power to attain. Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels is the most famous and most powerful protest against this modern project. The severity of his anger is, I think, a symptom of the extent to which he realized the battle was already being lost. To us, however, over two hundred years later, Swift’s point is perhaps more vividly relevant than many of his contemporaries.
FROM EARTH TO MOON
& AROUND THE MOON.
FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON AND AROUND THE MOON From the earth to the moon and around the moon by Jules Verne, a book about how he foresaw man reaching the moon. Through the infamous Gun Club which was nothing more than a group of disfigured and excitable old war veterans. Since there was no war, they needed to create some grand project as an outlet for their destructive energy. Illustrated in many of the attitudes of the Gun Club members was how they feared no obstacle and were confident that American resourcefulness would conquer all of their obstacles. One of the ways that they vented their destructive power was to build a projectile-vehicle to voyage around the moon and back. The members of the gun club were determined to build the vehicle that will bring them around the moon. They chose a crew of 3 to voyage on the projectile-vehicle, Michel Arden, President Barbicane, and Captain Nicholl. They all successfully made it around the moon but on the way back they had a little trouble and on re-entry to earth they didn’t land quite were they wanted to. They ended up in the Mid-Pacific Ocean. The other members used all the latest equipment that was used to put the transatlantic cable in the Atlantic Ocean to get them out. At the end of the book after it kind of leaves you with a little of Jules Verne’s food for thought, he asks if they would ever be able to colonize the moon, and move on colonizing planet after planet. Even then back 200 years we still have the dream of colonizing other planets and also our own moon. This book was exciting and captivating all at once. The book was exciting because you never knew what was going to happen. The book was captivating because you wanted to know what was going to happen. Both of them came from when they were at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and you weren’t sure if The Gun Club was going to have enough influence to get them out of the ocean alive because they were running out of air.
& AROUND THE MOON.
FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON AND AROUND THE MOON From the earth to the moon and around the moon by Jules Verne, a book about how he foresaw man reaching the moon. Through the infamous Gun Club which was nothing more than a group of disfigured and excitable old war veterans. Since there was no war, they needed to create some grand project as an outlet for their destructive energy. Illustrated in many of the attitudes of the Gun Club members was how they feared no obstacle and were confident that American resourcefulness would conquer all of their obstacles. One of the ways that they vented their destructive power was to build a projectile-vehicle to voyage around the moon and back. The members of the gun club were determined to build the vehicle that will bring them around the moon. They chose a crew of 3 to voyage on the projectile-vehicle, Michel Arden, President Barbicane, and Captain Nicholl. They all successfully made it around the moon but on the way back they had a little trouble and on re-entry to earth they didn’t land quite were they wanted to. They ended up in the Mid-Pacific Ocean. The other members used all the latest equipment that was used to put the transatlantic cable in the Atlantic Ocean to get them out. At the end of the book after it kind of leaves you with a little of Jules Verne’s food for thought, he asks if they would ever be able to colonize the moon, and move on colonizing planet after planet. Even then back 200 years we still have the dream of colonizing other planets and also our own moon. This book was exciting and captivating all at once. The book was exciting because you never knew what was going to happen. The book was captivating because you wanted to know what was going to happen. Both of them came from when they were at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and you weren’t sure if The Gun Club was going to have enough influence to get them out of the ocean alive because they were running out of air.
THE MOON.
The Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth: orbit: 384,400 km from Earth diameter: 3476 km mass: 7.35e22 kg Called Luna by the Romans, Selene and Artemis by the Greeks, and many other names in other mythologies. The Moon, of course, has been known since prehistoric times. It is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. As the Moon orbits around the Earth once per month, the angle between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun changes; we see this as the cycle of the Moon's phases. The time between successive new moons is 29.5 days (709 hours), slightly different from the Moon's orbital period (measured against the stars) since the Earth moves a significant distance in its orbit around the Sun in that time. Due to its size and composition, the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial planet along with Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The Moon was first visited by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 in 1959. It is the only extraterrestrial body to have been visited by humans. The first landing was on July 20, 1969 (do you remember where you were?); the last was in December 1972. The Moon is also the only body from which samples have been returned to Earth. In the summer of 1994, the Moon was very extensively mapped by the little spacecraft Clementine and again in 1999 by Lunar Prospector. The gravitational forces between the Earth and the Moon cause some interesting effects. The most obvious is the tides. The Moon's gravitational attraction is stronger on the side of the Earth nearest to the Moon and weaker on the opposite side. Since the Earth, and particularly the oceans, is not perfectly rigid it is stretched out along the line toward the Moon. From our perspective on the Earth's surface we see two small bulges, one in the direction of the Moon and one directly opposite. The effect is much stronger in the ocean water than in the solid crust so the water bulges are higher. And because the Earth rotates much faster than the Moon moves in its orbit, the bulges move around the Earth about once a day giving two high tides per day. But the Earth is not completely fluid, either. The Earth's rotation carries the Earth's bulges get slightly ahead of the point directly beneath the Moon. This means that the force between the Earth and the Moon is not exactly along the line between their centers producing a torque on the Earth and an accelerating force on the Moon. This causes a net transfer of rotational energy from the Earth to the Moon, slowing down the Earth's rotation by about 1.5 milliseconds/century and raising the Moon into a higher orbit by about 3.8 centimeters per year. (The opposite effect happens to satellites with unusual orbits such as Phobos and Triton). The asymmetric nature of this gravitational interaction is also responsible for the fact that the Moon rotates synchronously, i.e. it is locked in phase with its orbit so that the same side is always facing toward the Earth. Just as the Earth's rotation is now being slowed by the Moon's influence so in the distant past the Moon's rotation was slowed by the action of the Earth, but in that case the effect was much stronger. When the Moon's rotation rate was slowed to match its orbital period (such that the bulge always faced toward the Earth) there was no longer an off-center torque on the Moon and a stable situation was achieved. The same thing has happened to most of the other satellites in the solar system. Eventually, the Earth's rotation will be slowed to match the Moon's period, too, as is the case with Pluto and Charon. Actually, the Moon appears to wobble a bit (due to its slightly non-circular orbit) so that a few degrees of the far side can be seen from time to time, but the majority of the far side (left) was completely unknown until the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 photographed it in 1959. (Note: there is no dark side of the Moon; all parts of the Moon get sunlight half the time. Some uses of the term dark side in the past may have referred to the far side as dark in the sense of unknown (eg darkest Africa; but even that meaning is no longer valid today!) The Moon has no atmosphere. But evidence from Clementine suggested that there may be water ice in some deep craters near the Moon's south pole which are permanently shaded. This has now been confirmed by Lunar Prospector. There is apparently ice at the north pole as well. The cost of future lunar exploration just got a lot cheaper! The Moon's crust averages 68 km thick and varies from essentially 0 under Mare Crisium to 107 km north of the crater Korolev on the lunar far side. Below the crust is a mantle and probably a small core (roughly 340 km radius and 2% of the Moon's mass). Unlike the Earth's mantle, however, the Moon's is only partially molten. Curiously, the Moon's center of mass is offset from its geometric center by about 2 km in the direction toward the Earth. Also, the crust is thinner on the near side. There are two primary types of terrain on the Moon: the heavily cratered and very old highlands and the relatively smooth and younger maria. The maria (which comprise about 16% of the Moon's surface) are huge impact craters that were later flooded by molten lava. Most of the surface is covered with regolith, a mixture of fine dust and rocky debris produced by meteor impacts. For some unknown reason, the maria are concentrated on the near side. Most of the craters on the near side are named for famous figures in the history of science such as Tycho, Copernicus, and Ptolemaeus. Features on the far have more modern references such as Apollo, Gagarin and Korolev (with a distinctly Russian bias since the first images were obtained by Luna 3). In addition to the familiar features on the near side, the Moon also has the huge craters South Pole-Aitken on the far side which is 2250 km in diameter and 12 km deep making it the the largest impact basin in the solar system and Orientale on the western limb (as seen from Earth; in the center of the image at left) which is a splendid example of a multi-ring crater. A total of 382 kg of rock samples were returned to the Earth by the Apollo and Luna programs. These provide most of our detailed knowledge of the Moon. They are particularly valuable in that they can be dated. Even today, 20 years after the last Moon landing, scientists still study these precious samples. Most rocks on the surface of the Moon seem to be between 4.6 and 3 billion years old. This is a fortuitous match with the oldest terrestrial rocks which are rarely more than 3 billion years old. Thus the Moon provides evidence about the early history of the Solar System not available on the Earth. Prior to the study of the Apollo samples, there was no consensus about the origin of the Moon. There were three principal theories: co-accretion which asserted that the Moon and the Earth formed at the same time from the Solar Nebula; fission which asserted that the Moon split off of the Earth; and capture which held that the Moon formed elsewhere and was subsequently captured by the Earth. None of these work very well. But the new and detailed information from the Moon rocks led to the impact theory: that the Earth collided with a very large object (as big as Mars or more) and that the Moon formed from the ejected material. There are still details to be worked out, but the impact theory is now widely accepted. The Moon has no global magnetic field. But some of its surface rocks exhibit remanent magnetism indicating that there may have been a global magnetic field early in the Moon's history. With no atmosphere and no magnetic field, the Moon's surface is exposed directly to the solar wind. Over its 4 billion year lifetime many hydrogen ions from the solar wind have become embedded in the Moon's regolith. Thus samples of regolith returned by the Apollo missions proved valuable in studies of the solar wind. This lunar hydrogen may also be of use someday as rocket fuel.
The Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth: orbit: 384,400 km from Earth diameter: 3476 km mass: 7.35e22 kg Called Luna by the Romans, Selene and Artemis by the Greeks, and many other names in other mythologies. The Moon, of course, has been known since prehistoric times. It is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. As the Moon orbits around the Earth once per month, the angle between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun changes; we see this as the cycle of the Moon's phases. The time between successive new moons is 29.5 days (709 hours), slightly different from the Moon's orbital period (measured against the stars) since the Earth moves a significant distance in its orbit around the Sun in that time. Due to its size and composition, the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial planet along with Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The Moon was first visited by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 in 1959. It is the only extraterrestrial body to have been visited by humans. The first landing was on July 20, 1969 (do you remember where you were?); the last was in December 1972. The Moon is also the only body from which samples have been returned to Earth. In the summer of 1994, the Moon was very extensively mapped by the little spacecraft Clementine and again in 1999 by Lunar Prospector. The gravitational forces between the Earth and the Moon cause some interesting effects. The most obvious is the tides. The Moon's gravitational attraction is stronger on the side of the Earth nearest to the Moon and weaker on the opposite side. Since the Earth, and particularly the oceans, is not perfectly rigid it is stretched out along the line toward the Moon. From our perspective on the Earth's surface we see two small bulges, one in the direction of the Moon and one directly opposite. The effect is much stronger in the ocean water than in the solid crust so the water bulges are higher. And because the Earth rotates much faster than the Moon moves in its orbit, the bulges move around the Earth about once a day giving two high tides per day. But the Earth is not completely fluid, either. The Earth's rotation carries the Earth's bulges get slightly ahead of the point directly beneath the Moon. This means that the force between the Earth and the Moon is not exactly along the line between their centers producing a torque on the Earth and an accelerating force on the Moon. This causes a net transfer of rotational energy from the Earth to the Moon, slowing down the Earth's rotation by about 1.5 milliseconds/century and raising the Moon into a higher orbit by about 3.8 centimeters per year. (The opposite effect happens to satellites with unusual orbits such as Phobos and Triton). The asymmetric nature of this gravitational interaction is also responsible for the fact that the Moon rotates synchronously, i.e. it is locked in phase with its orbit so that the same side is always facing toward the Earth. Just as the Earth's rotation is now being slowed by the Moon's influence so in the distant past the Moon's rotation was slowed by the action of the Earth, but in that case the effect was much stronger. When the Moon's rotation rate was slowed to match its orbital period (such that the bulge always faced toward the Earth) there was no longer an off-center torque on the Moon and a stable situation was achieved. The same thing has happened to most of the other satellites in the solar system. Eventually, the Earth's rotation will be slowed to match the Moon's period, too, as is the case with Pluto and Charon. Actually, the Moon appears to wobble a bit (due to its slightly non-circular orbit) so that a few degrees of the far side can be seen from time to time, but the majority of the far side (left) was completely unknown until the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 photographed it in 1959. (Note: there is no dark side of the Moon; all parts of the Moon get sunlight half the time. Some uses of the term dark side in the past may have referred to the far side as dark in the sense of unknown (eg darkest Africa; but even that meaning is no longer valid today!) The Moon has no atmosphere. But evidence from Clementine suggested that there may be water ice in some deep craters near the Moon's south pole which are permanently shaded. This has now been confirmed by Lunar Prospector. There is apparently ice at the north pole as well. The cost of future lunar exploration just got a lot cheaper! The Moon's crust averages 68 km thick and varies from essentially 0 under Mare Crisium to 107 km north of the crater Korolev on the lunar far side. Below the crust is a mantle and probably a small core (roughly 340 km radius and 2% of the Moon's mass). Unlike the Earth's mantle, however, the Moon's is only partially molten. Curiously, the Moon's center of mass is offset from its geometric center by about 2 km in the direction toward the Earth. Also, the crust is thinner on the near side. There are two primary types of terrain on the Moon: the heavily cratered and very old highlands and the relatively smooth and younger maria. The maria (which comprise about 16% of the Moon's surface) are huge impact craters that were later flooded by molten lava. Most of the surface is covered with regolith, a mixture of fine dust and rocky debris produced by meteor impacts. For some unknown reason, the maria are concentrated on the near side. Most of the craters on the near side are named for famous figures in the history of science such as Tycho, Copernicus, and Ptolemaeus. Features on the far have more modern references such as Apollo, Gagarin and Korolev (with a distinctly Russian bias since the first images were obtained by Luna 3). In addition to the familiar features on the near side, the Moon also has the huge craters South Pole-Aitken on the far side which is 2250 km in diameter and 12 km deep making it the the largest impact basin in the solar system and Orientale on the western limb (as seen from Earth; in the center of the image at left) which is a splendid example of a multi-ring crater. A total of 382 kg of rock samples were returned to the Earth by the Apollo and Luna programs. These provide most of our detailed knowledge of the Moon. They are particularly valuable in that they can be dated. Even today, 20 years after the last Moon landing, scientists still study these precious samples. Most rocks on the surface of the Moon seem to be between 4.6 and 3 billion years old. This is a fortuitous match with the oldest terrestrial rocks which are rarely more than 3 billion years old. Thus the Moon provides evidence about the early history of the Solar System not available on the Earth. Prior to the study of the Apollo samples, there was no consensus about the origin of the Moon. There were three principal theories: co-accretion which asserted that the Moon and the Earth formed at the same time from the Solar Nebula; fission which asserted that the Moon split off of the Earth; and capture which held that the Moon formed elsewhere and was subsequently captured by the Earth. None of these work very well. But the new and detailed information from the Moon rocks led to the impact theory: that the Earth collided with a very large object (as big as Mars or more) and that the Moon formed from the ejected material. There are still details to be worked out, but the impact theory is now widely accepted. The Moon has no global magnetic field. But some of its surface rocks exhibit remanent magnetism indicating that there may have been a global magnetic field early in the Moon's history. With no atmosphere and no magnetic field, the Moon's surface is exposed directly to the solar wind. Over its 4 billion year lifetime many hydrogen ions from the solar wind have become embedded in the Moon's regolith. Thus samples of regolith returned by the Apollo missions proved valuable in studies of the solar wind. This lunar hydrogen may also be of use someday as rocket fuel.
ORIGIN OF SOLAR SYSTEM.
The Origin of the Solar System One of the most intriguing questions in astronomy today is the how our solar system formed. Not only does the answer add insight to other similarly forming systems, but also helps to satisfy our curiosity about the origin of our species. Although it is highly unlikely that astronomers will ever know with absolute scientific certainty how our system originated, they can construct similar theoretical models with the hopes gaining a better understanding. A basic understand of the current physical aspects of our solar system are helpful when trying to analyzing its origin. Our solar system is made of the Sun, nine major planets, at least sixty planetary satellite, thousands of asteroids and comets that all span an immense distance. Each planet has its own individual characteristics and seven of which have one or more satellites. There are thousands of asteroids, mainly congested in the area between Mars and Jupiter, as well as countless comets that all travel in a spherical orbit around our Sun. The Sun contains approximately 99 percent of the mass in the solar system, but only 2 percent of the system’s angular momentum. It lies in the center of our system while all planets, asteroids and alike rotate in elliptical orbits around it in the same plane. The smaller inner planets have solid surfaces, lack ring systems and have far fewer satellites then the outer planets. Atmospheres of most of the inner planets consist of large quantities of oxidized compounds such as carbon dioxide. While on the other hand, the outer planets are far more massive then the inner terrestrial planets, and have gigantic atmospheres composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. Asteroids and comets make up the smallest portion of the solar systems entities and are composed of the remnants left behind while planets were forming. For over 300 years, there has been a very long history of conjecture on the origin of the solar system. These many theories stem from two general categories. The first category called monistic, involves the evolution of the Sun and planets as an isolated system. The second group of theories called dualistic, suggested that the solar system formed as a result of the interaction between two individual stars. The dualistic formation theory has been almost entirely dropped and monistic formation has become the general consensus on the basic formation of our solar system. Most modern theories of the origin of the solar system hypothesize that all bodies in the solar system, including the sun accreted from the formation and evolution of a single primordial solar nebula. It is believed that our solar system began to form around 4.56 billion years ago from a dense interstellar cloud of gas. Because of the conservation of angular momentum, the cloud of gas formed a rotating flattened disk approximately the size of the planetary system. It was this flattened disk that is referred to as the primitive solar nebula and from which our current solar system evolved. Ordinarily, the internal pressures of the cloud are sufficient to prevent if form collapsing. However, from time to time local increases in pressure of the interstellar medium cause the additional compression of interstellar clouds. These compressions caused the clouds to reach their threshold of gravitational collapse. Once the gravitational attraction of matter is greater then any tendency to expand due to internal pressures the cloud begins to collapse inward. Theoretical models suggest that the presolar nebula continued to collapse until the center of the cloud became so dense that heat started to form. This heat increased the thermal pressure of the cloud until the collapse was eventually halted. The existence of our system of planets is entirely due to the angular momentum of the initial cloud. If there were no angular momentum, then the interstellar cloud would have collapsed to from a single star. While at the same time, if the collapse had occurred under a system with too much angular momentum then a binary star would have resulted from our system. Our system formed under intermediate conditions allowing the planets to evolve. The fact that the Sun contains 99 percent of the solar system’s mass but only 2 percent of its angular momentum raises questions about the distribution of masses during the early formation of the solar system. It is suggested that certain processes transported nebula mass inward to form the Sun, and angular momentum outward to the preplanetary region. Thus decreasing the total angular momentum of the Sun. Three separate hypothesizes have been suggested to explain the processes for such a transport. The main theories suggest that gravitational torques, viscous stress, and magnetic fields may have acted individually or in some combination to produce our present system. The first theory including gravitational torques arises from the gravitational forces between segments of asymmetric mass. One example of this case would be between inner and outer regions of the trailing spiral arms of the nebula. Assuming there is a source of asymmetry, then these torques can result in significant outward transportation of angular momentum. Viscous stresses are another possible source of the shift in angular momentum of the solar system during its evolution. Viscous stresses are caused by the friction between adjacent fluid parcels trying to move past each other with different speeds. These stresses result in the outward transport of angular momentum and are one more possible explanation to the outward spread of momentum. The third theory postulates that magnetic fields are the source of this momentum transfer. Magnetic fields may have been produced during the collapse of the initial cloud or even electrically generated between the proto-Sun and the solar nebula. This would eventually end in the same result of an outward spread of angular momentum. Therefore the evolution of the solar nebula involved both the transportation of mass into the central proto-Sun region and the increased angular momentum in the planetary regions. This meant that most of the primitive cloud’s mass fell in to the proto-Sun’s region while the remainder formed the planets. It is not only important to study the evolution of the solar nebula, but also the formation of the planets. There is a general consensus that once the solar nebula settled to rest that solid dust particles began to move toward the central plane of the nebula. It was at this stage that the planets began to form. There are two current theories that resulted in the development of the planets. The first theory suggests that the planets formed in a very basic process where dust particles accumulated into planetesimals which in turn grew to the present planets. The second theory proposes that planetesimals resulted from a gravitational instability in the gaseous portion of the solar nebula. The first theory states process of planet formation began with the settling of dust in into the central plane of the nebular disk. Soon after, the first dust particles began to coagulate into small solid bodies. These bodies then accumulated through a collective gravitational instability in of the dust disk. The thin dust disk became more massive through continual sedimentation and resulted in its breakup into a large number of planetesimals. Through a process of random collisions these planetesimal continued to grow and accumulate mass. There are two possible extremes that ended this process of accumulation. The first involved runaway accreting where one object grows extremely large through the collection of all smaller planetesimals within its area. The alternative extreme would involve the uniform growth of a number of masses resulting in a many equal mass planetesimals. It is currently believed that the formation of the planets resulted from a combination of these two processes. The equal mass accumulation is presumed to have dominated during the early stages of planet formation while the run away accumulation is suggested to have taken over during the latter stages. However, there is one substantial problem with this explanation of the planet's formation. The accumulation theory fails to take into account the rapid formation of the giant planets. By the slow process of coagulation, it would take much longer then the lifetime of the solar system to form the giant planets of Jupiter and Saturn. This incorrectness in the first theory led scientists to contrive the second theory. The second theory of planetary evolution involves a gravitational instability of the gaseous portion of the solar nebula. It is suggested that if the solar system were massive enough then the instability would lead to the fragmentation of the gaseous nebula and the formation of giant gaseous protoplanets. This theory allows plenty of time for the formation of the very large planets Jupiter and Saturn. The one flaw of this theory is its contingency on a very massive planetary nebula, one much larger than ours. Because of this problem many cosmogonists have begun to doubt that the gaseous disk instability led to planet formation in our solar system. Although many of the details on the theories of our solar system will most likely change in the near future, the fundamental concept of solar system formation appear to remain the same. The Sun and planets began forming approximately 4.56 billion years ago out of a solar nebula produced by the collapse of a rotating interstellar cloud of gas and dust. Following soon after, the terrestrial and Jovian planets eventually formed from the collision and accumulation of smaller planetesimals. While there is significant evidence supporting the formation of the Sun and planets in this way, it is not likely that scientist will know with complete certainty about the solar system’s origin for some time. It is highly likely that the details in the theory of the solar system will change. With continued improvements in technology and significant advances in astronomical fields of observation, further understanding of our solar system will undoubtedly come. In recent years, the idea that the Solar System formed from the evolution of a primodial solar nebula, has received significant conformation. The use of satellites such as the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) have detected disks of solid particles around several nearby stars, including Formalhaut, Beta Pictoris and Vega. The uses of satellites have provided scientists with most of the information they currently have on the system’s origin. Another source of information lies in our neighboring planets. Investigations of the other planets in the solar system by means of interplanetary spacecraft have provided a wealth of data pertaining to the origin and history of the solar system. Through the observation of solar-type stars in the Galaxy, we can learn critical information about the properties of the interstellar cloud that collapsed to form our own solar nebula. It is likely that future explorations and observations will help to solidify our understanding of the solar system.
The Origin of the Solar System One of the most intriguing questions in astronomy today is the how our solar system formed. Not only does the answer add insight to other similarly forming systems, but also helps to satisfy our curiosity about the origin of our species. Although it is highly unlikely that astronomers will ever know with absolute scientific certainty how our system originated, they can construct similar theoretical models with the hopes gaining a better understanding. A basic understand of the current physical aspects of our solar system are helpful when trying to analyzing its origin. Our solar system is made of the Sun, nine major planets, at least sixty planetary satellite, thousands of asteroids and comets that all span an immense distance. Each planet has its own individual characteristics and seven of which have one or more satellites. There are thousands of asteroids, mainly congested in the area between Mars and Jupiter, as well as countless comets that all travel in a spherical orbit around our Sun. The Sun contains approximately 99 percent of the mass in the solar system, but only 2 percent of the system’s angular momentum. It lies in the center of our system while all planets, asteroids and alike rotate in elliptical orbits around it in the same plane. The smaller inner planets have solid surfaces, lack ring systems and have far fewer satellites then the outer planets. Atmospheres of most of the inner planets consist of large quantities of oxidized compounds such as carbon dioxide. While on the other hand, the outer planets are far more massive then the inner terrestrial planets, and have gigantic atmospheres composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. Asteroids and comets make up the smallest portion of the solar systems entities and are composed of the remnants left behind while planets were forming. For over 300 years, there has been a very long history of conjecture on the origin of the solar system. These many theories stem from two general categories. The first category called monistic, involves the evolution of the Sun and planets as an isolated system. The second group of theories called dualistic, suggested that the solar system formed as a result of the interaction between two individual stars. The dualistic formation theory has been almost entirely dropped and monistic formation has become the general consensus on the basic formation of our solar system. Most modern theories of the origin of the solar system hypothesize that all bodies in the solar system, including the sun accreted from the formation and evolution of a single primordial solar nebula. It is believed that our solar system began to form around 4.56 billion years ago from a dense interstellar cloud of gas. Because of the conservation of angular momentum, the cloud of gas formed a rotating flattened disk approximately the size of the planetary system. It was this flattened disk that is referred to as the primitive solar nebula and from which our current solar system evolved. Ordinarily, the internal pressures of the cloud are sufficient to prevent if form collapsing. However, from time to time local increases in pressure of the interstellar medium cause the additional compression of interstellar clouds. These compressions caused the clouds to reach their threshold of gravitational collapse. Once the gravitational attraction of matter is greater then any tendency to expand due to internal pressures the cloud begins to collapse inward. Theoretical models suggest that the presolar nebula continued to collapse until the center of the cloud became so dense that heat started to form. This heat increased the thermal pressure of the cloud until the collapse was eventually halted. The existence of our system of planets is entirely due to the angular momentum of the initial cloud. If there were no angular momentum, then the interstellar cloud would have collapsed to from a single star. While at the same time, if the collapse had occurred under a system with too much angular momentum then a binary star would have resulted from our system. Our system formed under intermediate conditions allowing the planets to evolve. The fact that the Sun contains 99 percent of the solar system’s mass but only 2 percent of its angular momentum raises questions about the distribution of masses during the early formation of the solar system. It is suggested that certain processes transported nebula mass inward to form the Sun, and angular momentum outward to the preplanetary region. Thus decreasing the total angular momentum of the Sun. Three separate hypothesizes have been suggested to explain the processes for such a transport. The main theories suggest that gravitational torques, viscous stress, and magnetic fields may have acted individually or in some combination to produce our present system. The first theory including gravitational torques arises from the gravitational forces between segments of asymmetric mass. One example of this case would be between inner and outer regions of the trailing spiral arms of the nebula. Assuming there is a source of asymmetry, then these torques can result in significant outward transportation of angular momentum. Viscous stresses are another possible source of the shift in angular momentum of the solar system during its evolution. Viscous stresses are caused by the friction between adjacent fluid parcels trying to move past each other with different speeds. These stresses result in the outward transport of angular momentum and are one more possible explanation to the outward spread of momentum. The third theory postulates that magnetic fields are the source of this momentum transfer. Magnetic fields may have been produced during the collapse of the initial cloud or even electrically generated between the proto-Sun and the solar nebula. This would eventually end in the same result of an outward spread of angular momentum. Therefore the evolution of the solar nebula involved both the transportation of mass into the central proto-Sun region and the increased angular momentum in the planetary regions. This meant that most of the primitive cloud’s mass fell in to the proto-Sun’s region while the remainder formed the planets. It is not only important to study the evolution of the solar nebula, but also the formation of the planets. There is a general consensus that once the solar nebula settled to rest that solid dust particles began to move toward the central plane of the nebula. It was at this stage that the planets began to form. There are two current theories that resulted in the development of the planets. The first theory suggests that the planets formed in a very basic process where dust particles accumulated into planetesimals which in turn grew to the present planets. The second theory proposes that planetesimals resulted from a gravitational instability in the gaseous portion of the solar nebula. The first theory states process of planet formation began with the settling of dust in into the central plane of the nebular disk. Soon after, the first dust particles began to coagulate into small solid bodies. These bodies then accumulated through a collective gravitational instability in of the dust disk. The thin dust disk became more massive through continual sedimentation and resulted in its breakup into a large number of planetesimals. Through a process of random collisions these planetesimal continued to grow and accumulate mass. There are two possible extremes that ended this process of accumulation. The first involved runaway accreting where one object grows extremely large through the collection of all smaller planetesimals within its area. The alternative extreme would involve the uniform growth of a number of masses resulting in a many equal mass planetesimals. It is currently believed that the formation of the planets resulted from a combination of these two processes. The equal mass accumulation is presumed to have dominated during the early stages of planet formation while the run away accumulation is suggested to have taken over during the latter stages. However, there is one substantial problem with this explanation of the planet's formation. The accumulation theory fails to take into account the rapid formation of the giant planets. By the slow process of coagulation, it would take much longer then the lifetime of the solar system to form the giant planets of Jupiter and Saturn. This incorrectness in the first theory led scientists to contrive the second theory. The second theory of planetary evolution involves a gravitational instability of the gaseous portion of the solar nebula. It is suggested that if the solar system were massive enough then the instability would lead to the fragmentation of the gaseous nebula and the formation of giant gaseous protoplanets. This theory allows plenty of time for the formation of the very large planets Jupiter and Saturn. The one flaw of this theory is its contingency on a very massive planetary nebula, one much larger than ours. Because of this problem many cosmogonists have begun to doubt that the gaseous disk instability led to planet formation in our solar system. Although many of the details on the theories of our solar system will most likely change in the near future, the fundamental concept of solar system formation appear to remain the same. The Sun and planets began forming approximately 4.56 billion years ago out of a solar nebula produced by the collapse of a rotating interstellar cloud of gas and dust. Following soon after, the terrestrial and Jovian planets eventually formed from the collision and accumulation of smaller planetesimals. While there is significant evidence supporting the formation of the Sun and planets in this way, it is not likely that scientist will know with complete certainty about the solar system’s origin for some time. It is highly likely that the details in the theory of the solar system will change. With continued improvements in technology and significant advances in astronomical fields of observation, further understanding of our solar system will undoubtedly come. In recent years, the idea that the Solar System formed from the evolution of a primodial solar nebula, has received significant conformation. The use of satellites such as the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) have detected disks of solid particles around several nearby stars, including Formalhaut, Beta Pictoris and Vega. The uses of satellites have provided scientists with most of the information they currently have on the system’s origin. Another source of information lies in our neighboring planets. Investigations of the other planets in the solar system by means of interplanetary spacecraft have provided a wealth of data pertaining to the origin and history of the solar system. Through the observation of solar-type stars in the Galaxy, we can learn critical information about the properties of the interstellar cloud that collapsed to form our own solar nebula. It is likely that future explorations and observations will help to solidify our understanding of the solar system.
NICOLAS COPERNICUS.
Nicolas Copernicus 1473-1543 Physics February 8, 2000 Nicolas Copernicus Nicolas Copernicus 1473-1543 Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473, he started his education at Cracow University. There he studied mathematics and optics. From here he went to Italy, where he was appointed as a canon in the cathedral of Frauenburg, where he spent a comfortable academic life studding. Copernicus had some small hobbies while at the cathedral, he painted, and frequently translated Greek poetry into Latin. One other hobby that just wasn't small enough to be called a hobby to most of us was astronomy. He made investigations quietly and alone, without any help. He observed from a turret on a protective wall around a cathedral, he also looked with his naked eye rather than with a telescope. He was one of the founders of modern astronomy. Copernicus died in 1543 of a cerebral hemorrhage. In 1530 right before Copernicus died he managed to published his work, De Revolutionibus. Which said that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and traveled around the sun once yearly. This might no sound very controversial but at this time the church and its followers believed in the Ptolemiac theory, which stated that the universe was a closed space bounded by a spherical envelope beyond which there was nothing. (Landry 1999) Copernicus’s works went against the church, and most scientific beliefs. This may be one reason why Copernicus didn’t publish his work until his deathbed. Another reason may be that Copernicus was a huge perfectionist, and continuously redid his works over and over to get them right. (Field 1995) So you can see why Copernicus wasn’t in any big rush to have the world know about his theory. On one hand he would cause a Nicolas Copernicus tremendous stir in the church, and all the scientific community. He would’ve most likely have been fired from the comfortable church position he had for many years, and could‘ve given him a bad name. If it hadn’t been for George Rheticus, a 25-year-old German mathematics professor Copernicus’s might have never published his work. (Field 1995) Rheticus stayed with Copernicus for two years, and convinced him to release his work. “His work the Copernicus's heliostatic cosmology involved giving several distinct motions to the Earth. It was consequently considered implausible by the vast majority of his contemporaries, and by most astronomers and natural philosophers of succeeding generations before the middle of the seventeenth century. Its only defenders included Johannes Kepler (1571 -1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564- 1642). Strong theoretical underpinning for the Copernican theory was provided by Newton's theory of universal gravitation (1687).” (Field 1995) So Copernicus’s whole argument stated that the planets and the Earth were in orbit around the sun, and the moon was in orbit around the Earth. This is called the The Heliocentric System: Nicolas Copernicus In conclusion Copernicus said that the Sun was the center of the universe, and went against all known knowledge, religion, and teachings. He took all his observations with the naked eye and with no help. Many disregarded his book and his theory, which went against everything that the church believed in. However if it wasn’t for Copernicus, modern astronomy would have never made advances as far as it has to today. Copernicus’s hard work and strength is why he is one of the most important founders of modern astronomy.
Nicolas Copernicus 1473-1543 Physics February 8, 2000 Nicolas Copernicus Nicolas Copernicus 1473-1543 Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473, he started his education at Cracow University. There he studied mathematics and optics. From here he went to Italy, where he was appointed as a canon in the cathedral of Frauenburg, where he spent a comfortable academic life studding. Copernicus had some small hobbies while at the cathedral, he painted, and frequently translated Greek poetry into Latin. One other hobby that just wasn't small enough to be called a hobby to most of us was astronomy. He made investigations quietly and alone, without any help. He observed from a turret on a protective wall around a cathedral, he also looked with his naked eye rather than with a telescope. He was one of the founders of modern astronomy. Copernicus died in 1543 of a cerebral hemorrhage. In 1530 right before Copernicus died he managed to published his work, De Revolutionibus. Which said that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and traveled around the sun once yearly. This might no sound very controversial but at this time the church and its followers believed in the Ptolemiac theory, which stated that the universe was a closed space bounded by a spherical envelope beyond which there was nothing. (Landry 1999) Copernicus’s works went against the church, and most scientific beliefs. This may be one reason why Copernicus didn’t publish his work until his deathbed. Another reason may be that Copernicus was a huge perfectionist, and continuously redid his works over and over to get them right. (Field 1995) So you can see why Copernicus wasn’t in any big rush to have the world know about his theory. On one hand he would cause a Nicolas Copernicus tremendous stir in the church, and all the scientific community. He would’ve most likely have been fired from the comfortable church position he had for many years, and could‘ve given him a bad name. If it hadn’t been for George Rheticus, a 25-year-old German mathematics professor Copernicus’s might have never published his work. (Field 1995) Rheticus stayed with Copernicus for two years, and convinced him to release his work. “His work the Copernicus's heliostatic cosmology involved giving several distinct motions to the Earth. It was consequently considered implausible by the vast majority of his contemporaries, and by most astronomers and natural philosophers of succeeding generations before the middle of the seventeenth century. Its only defenders included Johannes Kepler (1571 -1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564- 1642). Strong theoretical underpinning for the Copernican theory was provided by Newton's theory of universal gravitation (1687).” (Field 1995) So Copernicus’s whole argument stated that the planets and the Earth were in orbit around the sun, and the moon was in orbit around the Earth. This is called the The Heliocentric System: Nicolas Copernicus In conclusion Copernicus said that the Sun was the center of the universe, and went against all known knowledge, religion, and teachings. He took all his observations with the naked eye and with no help. Many disregarded his book and his theory, which went against everything that the church believed in. However if it wasn’t for Copernicus, modern astronomy would have never made advances as far as it has to today. Copernicus’s hard work and strength is why he is one of the most important founders of modern astronomy.
EARTH POPULATION.
Our Earth has changed more dramatically in the 20th Century then in any other time period previous. During this time the health of our planet has also been both harmed and improved in dramatic ways. Two examples are that in this century, we have produced more air pollution then ever before, but our nature conservation efforts are working. Based on that type of logic, it is usually very easy for a scientist to tell if a particular change in our environment during the 20th Century, was good or bad for our planet. That is where population growth comes in and breaks this idea. Is population growth good or bad for our world? This is a question which scientists around the world have been debating about for decades. The purpose of this essay will address that question. It will also talk about the future growth rate of our world's population, what if any relationship can be drawn from over population and the GNP and literacy levels in a country, what types of population control measures the four largest countries use, and finally determine if there are any population problems and find solutions for them. Despite extensive population control measures, the country with the largest population is China. In fact China contains almost one-fourth of the world's people at around 1.2 billion. During the 1950's the population grew at a rate of 2% per year. The rate of growth slowed to 1.3% by 1990, in part due to population control measures. China's population control measures are based around a cruel policy allowing parents only one child. This policy has led to higher levels of abortion, sterilizations, and inficide than in any other country in the world. The dramatic declines in China's population growth rate have however taken place well before the one child policy went into effect in 1979. This further confuses experts who study population and try to determine why population rates fluctuate. Some of these experts suggest that aside from the one child policy China's growth rate might have decreased from 2.0 to 1.3 percent because of major improvements in infant mortality rates. Thus parents had more confidence that their children would live to maturity. Also, as China has moved to become a more industrialized country families have chosen to reduce family size. For example in our country 200 years ago families were large because the more kids a family had the more successful the farm would be. Those are a few reasons the population rate in China might be lower than in years previous and continue to slow down.
Our Earth has changed more dramatically in the 20th Century then in any other time period previous. During this time the health of our planet has also been both harmed and improved in dramatic ways. Two examples are that in this century, we have produced more air pollution then ever before, but our nature conservation efforts are working. Based on that type of logic, it is usually very easy for a scientist to tell if a particular change in our environment during the 20th Century, was good or bad for our planet. That is where population growth comes in and breaks this idea. Is population growth good or bad for our world? This is a question which scientists around the world have been debating about for decades. The purpose of this essay will address that question. It will also talk about the future growth rate of our world's population, what if any relationship can be drawn from over population and the GNP and literacy levels in a country, what types of population control measures the four largest countries use, and finally determine if there are any population problems and find solutions for them. Despite extensive population control measures, the country with the largest population is China. In fact China contains almost one-fourth of the world's people at around 1.2 billion. During the 1950's the population grew at a rate of 2% per year. The rate of growth slowed to 1.3% by 1990, in part due to population control measures. China's population control measures are based around a cruel policy allowing parents only one child. This policy has led to higher levels of abortion, sterilizations, and inficide than in any other country in the world. The dramatic declines in China's population growth rate have however taken place well before the one child policy went into effect in 1979. This further confuses experts who study population and try to determine why population rates fluctuate. Some of these experts suggest that aside from the one child policy China's growth rate might have decreased from 2.0 to 1.3 percent because of major improvements in infant mortality rates. Thus parents had more confidence that their children would live to maturity. Also, as China has moved to become a more industrialized country families have chosen to reduce family size. For example in our country 200 years ago families were large because the more kids a family had the more successful the farm would be. Those are a few reasons the population rate in China might be lower than in years previous and continue to slow down.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
WILLIAMS SHAKESPEARE
William Shakespeare was a great English playwright, dramatist and poet who lived during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest playwright of all time. No other writer's plays have been produced so many times or read so widely in so many countries as his. Shakespeare was born to middle class parents. His father, John, was a Stratford businessman. He was a glove maker who owned a leather shop. John Shakespeare was a well-known and respected man in the town. He held several important local governmental positions. William Shakespeare's mother was Mary Arden. Though she was the daughter of a local farmer, she was related to a wealthy family. Mary Arden and John Shakespeare were married in 1557. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564. He was one of eight children. The Shakespeare's were well-respected prominent people. When William Shakespeare was about seven years old, he probably began attending the Stratford Grammar School with other boys of his social class. Students went to school year round attending school for nine hours a day. The teachers were strict disciplinarians. Though Shakespeare spent long hours at school, his boyhood was probably fascinating. Stratford was a lively town and during holidays, it was known to put on pageants and many popular shows. It also held several large fairs during the year. Stratford was an exciting place to live. Stratford also had fields and woods surrounding it giving William the opportunity to hunt and trap small game. The River Avon, which ran through the town, allowed him to fish also. Shakespeare's' poems and plays show his love of nature and rural life which reflects his childhood. On November 28, 1582, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway of the neighboring village of Shottery. She was twenty-six, and he was only eighteen at the time. They had three children. Susana was their first and then they had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet, Shakespeare's son, died in 1596. In 1607, his daughter Susana got married. Shakespeare's other daughter, Judith, got married in 1616. In London, Shakespeare's career took off. It is believed that he may have become well known in London theatrical life by 1592. By that time, he had joined one of the city's repertory theater companies. These companies were made up of a permanent cast of actors who presented different plays week after week. The companies were commercial organizations that depended on admission from their audience. Scholars know that Shakespeare belonged to one of the most popular acting companies in London called The Lord Chamberlain's Men. Shakespeare was a leading member of the group from 1594 for the rest of his career. 1594 had produced at least six of Shakespeare's plays. During Shakespeare's life, there were two monarchs who ruled England. They were Henry the eighth and Elizabeth the first. Both were impressed with Shakespeare which made his name known. There is evidence that he was a member of a traveling theater group, and a schoolmaster. In 1594, he became an actor and playwright for Lord Chamberlain's Men. In 1599, he became a part owner of the prosperous Globe Theater. He also was a part owner of the Blackfriars Theater as of 1609. Shakespeare retired to Stratford in 1613 where he wrote many of his excellent plays. There are many reasons as to why William Shakespeare is so famous. He is generally considered to be both the greatest dramatist the world has ever known as well as the finest poet who has written in the English language. Many reasons can be given for Shakespeare's enormous appeal. His fame basically is from his great understanding of human nature. He was able to find universal human qualities and put them in a dramatic situation creating characters that are timeless. Yet he had the ability to create characters that are highly individual human beings. Their struggles in life are universal. Sometimes they are successful and sometimes their lives are full of pain, suffering, and failure. In addition to his realistic view of human nature, Shakespeare had a vast knowledge of a variety of subjects. These subjects include music, law, Bible, stage, art, politics, history, hunting, and sports. Shakespeare had a tremendous influence on culture and literature throughout the world. He contributed greatly to the development of the English language. Many words and phrases from Shakespeare's plays and poems have become part of our speech. Shakespeare's plays and poems have become a required part of education in the United States. Therefore, his ideas on subjects such as romantic love, heroism, comedy, and tragedy have helped shape the attitudes of millions of people. His portrayals of historical figures and events have influenced our thinking more than what has been written in history books. The world has admired and respected many great writers, but only Shakespeare has generated such enormous continuing interest. Shakespeare's plays are usually divided into three major categories. These are comedy, tragedy, and history. Three plays which are in the category of comedy are The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verone. Three plays which are in the category of tragedy are Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, and Julius Caesar. In the category of history, three plays are Henry V, Richard II, and Richard III.
William Shakespeare was a great English playwright, dramatist and poet who lived during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Shakespeare is considered to be the greatest playwright of all time. No other writer's plays have been produced so many times or read so widely in so many countries as his. Shakespeare was born to middle class parents. His father, John, was a Stratford businessman. He was a glove maker who owned a leather shop. John Shakespeare was a well-known and respected man in the town. He held several important local governmental positions. William Shakespeare's mother was Mary Arden. Though she was the daughter of a local farmer, she was related to a wealthy family. Mary Arden and John Shakespeare were married in 1557. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564. He was one of eight children. The Shakespeare's were well-respected prominent people. When William Shakespeare was about seven years old, he probably began attending the Stratford Grammar School with other boys of his social class. Students went to school year round attending school for nine hours a day. The teachers were strict disciplinarians. Though Shakespeare spent long hours at school, his boyhood was probably fascinating. Stratford was a lively town and during holidays, it was known to put on pageants and many popular shows. It also held several large fairs during the year. Stratford was an exciting place to live. Stratford also had fields and woods surrounding it giving William the opportunity to hunt and trap small game. The River Avon, which ran through the town, allowed him to fish also. Shakespeare's' poems and plays show his love of nature and rural life which reflects his childhood. On November 28, 1582, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway of the neighboring village of Shottery. She was twenty-six, and he was only eighteen at the time. They had three children. Susana was their first and then they had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet, Shakespeare's son, died in 1596. In 1607, his daughter Susana got married. Shakespeare's other daughter, Judith, got married in 1616. In London, Shakespeare's career took off. It is believed that he may have become well known in London theatrical life by 1592. By that time, he had joined one of the city's repertory theater companies. These companies were made up of a permanent cast of actors who presented different plays week after week. The companies were commercial organizations that depended on admission from their audience. Scholars know that Shakespeare belonged to one of the most popular acting companies in London called The Lord Chamberlain's Men. Shakespeare was a leading member of the group from 1594 for the rest of his career. 1594 had produced at least six of Shakespeare's plays. During Shakespeare's life, there were two monarchs who ruled England. They were Henry the eighth and Elizabeth the first. Both were impressed with Shakespeare which made his name known. There is evidence that he was a member of a traveling theater group, and a schoolmaster. In 1594, he became an actor and playwright for Lord Chamberlain's Men. In 1599, he became a part owner of the prosperous Globe Theater. He also was a part owner of the Blackfriars Theater as of 1609. Shakespeare retired to Stratford in 1613 where he wrote many of his excellent plays. There are many reasons as to why William Shakespeare is so famous. He is generally considered to be both the greatest dramatist the world has ever known as well as the finest poet who has written in the English language. Many reasons can be given for Shakespeare's enormous appeal. His fame basically is from his great understanding of human nature. He was able to find universal human qualities and put them in a dramatic situation creating characters that are timeless. Yet he had the ability to create characters that are highly individual human beings. Their struggles in life are universal. Sometimes they are successful and sometimes their lives are full of pain, suffering, and failure. In addition to his realistic view of human nature, Shakespeare had a vast knowledge of a variety of subjects. These subjects include music, law, Bible, stage, art, politics, history, hunting, and sports. Shakespeare had a tremendous influence on culture and literature throughout the world. He contributed greatly to the development of the English language. Many words and phrases from Shakespeare's plays and poems have become part of our speech. Shakespeare's plays and poems have become a required part of education in the United States. Therefore, his ideas on subjects such as romantic love, heroism, comedy, and tragedy have helped shape the attitudes of millions of people. His portrayals of historical figures and events have influenced our thinking more than what has been written in history books. The world has admired and respected many great writers, but only Shakespeare has generated such enormous continuing interest. Shakespeare's plays are usually divided into three major categories. These are comedy, tragedy, and history. Three plays which are in the category of comedy are The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verone. Three plays which are in the category of tragedy are Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, and Julius Caesar. In the category of history, three plays are Henry V, Richard II, and Richard III.
BIOGRAPHY OF ALBERT EINSTEIN.
ALBERT EINSTEIN The German-American physicist Albert EinsteiN, contributed more than any other scientist to the 20th-century . Born in the town of Ulm, Germany, Mar. 14, 1879, HE then later died in Princeton, N.J., Apr. 18, 1955. In the wake of World War I, Einstein's theories, especially his theory of relativity, seemed to many people to point to a pure quality of human thought, one far removed from the war and its aftermath. Seldom has a scientist received such public attention for having the ability for learning thet he had. in 1905, Einstein examined the phenomenon discovered by Max Planck, according to which electromagnetic energy seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in quantities that were ultimately discrete. The energy of these emitted quantities--the so-called light-quanta--was directly proportional to the frequency of the radiation. This circumstance was perplexing because classical electromagnetic theory, based on Maxwell's equations and the laws of thermodynamics, had assumed that electromagnetic energy consisted of waves propagating in a hypothetical, all-pervasive medium called the luminiferous ether, and that the waves could contain any amount of energy no matter how small. Einstein used Planck's quantum hypothesis to describe visible electromagnetic radiation, or light. According to Einstein's heuristic viewpoint, light could be imagined to consist of discrete bundles of radiation. Einstein used this interpretation to explain the photoelectric effect, by which certain metals emit electrons when illuminated by light with a given frequency. Einstein's theory, and his subsequent elaboration of it, formed the basis for much of quantum mechanics. Another of Einsteins theories concerned statistical mechanics, a field of study that had been elaborated by, among others, Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Unaware of Gibbs' contributions, Einstein extended Boltzmann's work and calculated the average trajectory of a microscopic particle buffeted by random collisions with molecules in a fluid or in a gas. Einstein observed that his calculations could account for Brownian motion, the apparently erratic movement of pollen in fluids, which had been noted by the British botanist Robert Brown. Einstein's paper provided convincing evidence for the physical existence of atom-sized molecules, which had already received much theoretical discussion. His results were independently discovered by the Polish physicist Marian von Smoluchowski and later elaborated by the French physicist Jean Perrin. Albert has contributed more theories that help us during everyday life then anyone ever has. He has explaned what was expaned before him in an incorrect way. If he was never born, we would think of the world in a completly different manner. In my opinion, he has benifitted the world more then anyone has ever did.
ALBERT EINSTEIN The German-American physicist Albert EinsteiN, contributed more than any other scientist to the 20th-century . Born in the town of Ulm, Germany, Mar. 14, 1879, HE then later died in Princeton, N.J., Apr. 18, 1955. In the wake of World War I, Einstein's theories, especially his theory of relativity, seemed to many people to point to a pure quality of human thought, one far removed from the war and its aftermath. Seldom has a scientist received such public attention for having the ability for learning thet he had. in 1905, Einstein examined the phenomenon discovered by Max Planck, according to which electromagnetic energy seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in quantities that were ultimately discrete. The energy of these emitted quantities--the so-called light-quanta--was directly proportional to the frequency of the radiation. This circumstance was perplexing because classical electromagnetic theory, based on Maxwell's equations and the laws of thermodynamics, had assumed that electromagnetic energy consisted of waves propagating in a hypothetical, all-pervasive medium called the luminiferous ether, and that the waves could contain any amount of energy no matter how small. Einstein used Planck's quantum hypothesis to describe visible electromagnetic radiation, or light. According to Einstein's heuristic viewpoint, light could be imagined to consist of discrete bundles of radiation. Einstein used this interpretation to explain the photoelectric effect, by which certain metals emit electrons when illuminated by light with a given frequency. Einstein's theory, and his subsequent elaboration of it, formed the basis for much of quantum mechanics. Another of Einsteins theories concerned statistical mechanics, a field of study that had been elaborated by, among others, Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Unaware of Gibbs' contributions, Einstein extended Boltzmann's work and calculated the average trajectory of a microscopic particle buffeted by random collisions with molecules in a fluid or in a gas. Einstein observed that his calculations could account for Brownian motion, the apparently erratic movement of pollen in fluids, which had been noted by the British botanist Robert Brown. Einstein's paper provided convincing evidence for the physical existence of atom-sized molecules, which had already received much theoretical discussion. His results were independently discovered by the Polish physicist Marian von Smoluchowski and later elaborated by the French physicist Jean Perrin. Albert has contributed more theories that help us during everyday life then anyone ever has. He has explaned what was expaned before him in an incorrect way. If he was never born, we would think of the world in a completly different manner. In my opinion, he has benifitted the world more then anyone has ever did.
BOEING-700.
The Boeing 700’s are very capable of handling duties in the commercial and military world. The Boeing 700’s are capable of handling many tasks in the commercial and military world. With the introduction of the 707 in the late fifties to the most recent 777 in the early nineties the, 700’s have dominated the commercial world for five decades. They are a line of aircraft that are capable of handling many roles from basic civilian transport to various military needs. They are the people movers of the 20th century. Each with a large carrying capacity combined with the range of a jet aircraft they have moved more people longer distances than what was once thought possible. Boeing has truly produced some of the greatest aircraft in history. The various duties that the 700’s perform are quite extraordinary. It all started in the fifties. There was a growing demand for a commercial airliner that could move a greater number of people farther and faster. The age of the jet engine still had not reached to civilian transportation. There was still a fear of the jet because of lack of reliability, but with the advancement of technology the jet engine now had become more even reliable than the piston engine. The need for a jet engine powered plane was growing. Airlines still were looking for a plane that could cross the Atlantic Ocean without a refueling stop. The Lockheed Super Connies, a piston powered plane, were able to cross the Atlantic Ocean with out stopping on the eastbound leg, but they had to stop in Gander, Newfoundland to refuel on the westbound leg. The airlines desired a plane that could easily travel the Atlantic with out a stop. The piston engine just wasn’t going to do it, the jet engine was the answer to the question. Boeing realized this and moved to look for a design for a jet powered plane. At first Boeing was looking to modify existing aircraft with jet engines to perform the tasks. They quickly realized that they needed a whole new aircraft. The Boeing 707 was born. The first Boeing 707 was delivered to Pan America airlines in May of 1958 (Bauer, 218). Sales started out slow in fact the 707 almost died many times in it’s first couple years of existence. It wasn’t until Boeing modified the 707 by increasing the overall length, the wing span, and adding more powerful engines did the 707 confirm its place in as a commercial transporter. With the new modifications the 707 became a very capable aircraft, crossing the Atlantic Ocean became a routine affair. With the introduction of the 707 transatlantic travel doubled in two years (Bauer, 195). Airlines’ profitability soared due to the new capabilities of the 707 presented. The 707 began a new era and improved the way people are flown. The 707 being the first major jet airliner saw many applications and variations in it’s lifetime. There were thirteen variations of the 707, they varied in capacity, range, and speed (Wright,49). Each variation was designed to meet a specific needs of an individual airline. Some 707’s could carry a larger capacity of passengers over a shorter distance, were as another variant could carry fewer passengers over a longer distance. With all of these variations the 707 left little room for the Douglas DC-8 which was once though to be a major treat to Boeing. The 707 could meet any need of an airline; this is one reason that made the 707 such a versatile aircraft and why it dominated the market. The 707 also saw plenty of action in uniform. It’s most useful application came in the way of the KC-135 Stratotanker. It was modified to perform in-flight refueling task for the United States Air Force. The 707 saw a healthy lifespan as the KC-135, of the 735 units build in the early sixties 550 still remain in service today (www.Boeing.com). The 707 also had the very privileged role of presidential transport. As Air Force One it started its career in 1962 and served seven Presidents. It was only to be replace by one of it’s bigger brothers the Boeing 747. Another of one of it’s more interesting applications was that of the “Vomet Come” a modified KC-135 to make large in-flight arcs to provide a weightless environment to train NASA astronauts. Altogether the 707 and its derivatives saw many varied and interesting applications. With the 707 fulfilling the needs for a long range jetliner there was a demand by the airline industry for a short to medium range jet. A jet that was designed for short-range use would provide savings over a long-range jet and faster travel times that were presently completed by prop driven planes. Boeing went to the drawing boards and came out with the 727. When the 727 finally came to production it came out with better performance that what was originally planned. “As throughout Boeing’s history, its strong, patient, intense engineering efforts had once more been the key” (Bauer, 226). The 727 filled the duty of short to medium range better than any other aircraft. It showed in the sales and the 727 became at the time the most selling Boeing aircraft, but that title would not remain very long. The Boeing 737 became the most selling commercial jetliner in the world. To date it has sold 3,158 units and there are still more on order (www.Boeing.com). Its primary role is short to medium range passenger transport. The 737 were to be a gradual replacement to the 727 and did so quite well, it became known as the “Little Giant.” The 737 also proved to be a very rugged aircraft, with a kit add-on to the landing gears it made it possible for the 737 to land on unimproved runways like a grass field or a gravel runway. The 737 also were far superior in its ability to take off from high altitude, short runways. These abilities made the 737 very versatile it could link many areas that were unable maintain a modern airport that would have a paved runway (Bauer, 250). One key feature to the 737, which made it the success it was, was the decision to make the plane six seats abreast. Douglas was the main competition in the beginning has a plane that was five seats abreast. Even with Douglas’s advantage in speed and range it could never match the seat per-mile cost the 737 gave. The single decision, which meant about a 17inch increase of diameter over the DOUGLAS DC-9, meant the success of the 737 and the failure of the DC-9. Above: Comparison between the DC-9 and 737 cross-sections. With the ruggedness of the 737 it sees several applications for the Military. Its most widely used application is as a training aid for both pilots and navigators. Pilots use the USAF designated T-43 737s as a flight trainer for large cargo and transport aircraft. The 737 is a large aircraft but not too large aircraft, it provides the perfect stepping stone for pilots into the huge birds that are present in today’s Air Force. It also provides navigational training. Its wider design offers plenty of room for the trainees and their instructors. One T-43 has about 19 stations for its students (Minton, 31). The T-43 provides a very accommodating learning environment for the flight students. The largest and most infamous member of the family is the Boeing 747, the “Jumbo Jet”.” This is an aircraft that has changed commercial airliners forever. With its sheer size it put itself in a class of it’s own. The 747 offer a lower seat per-mile cost and a more efficient way for transportation than any other aircraft. It can move more people and cargo farther and faster. “The 707 brought jet transportation to people. The 747 brought jet transportation to the everyday people” (Norris and Wagner, 26). 747s have become the backbone of many airlines, in that they handle more people and cargo than any of their other planes. 747 not only provides a highly efficient people mover it has also been a great improvement of cargo transportation. Some modified 747 have a large upward swinging door at the nose of the plane. This door allows for great ease in loading large cargo items. Boeing also offered the option of a side panel door for loading. This was mainly used in the “Combi” 747; they were 747 they would transport people and cargo at the same time. The 747 also serve several roles in the Military. Most notably is in the application of presidential transportation as Air Force One. The 747 replace the 707 as Air Force One with great pride. With the increase in room and luxury the President hasn’t had a better ride since. The 747 also found itself the solution to a rather large problem that is of the transportation of the Space Shuttle. There really is no other way to transport the large orbiter than strapping it onto the top of a 747. NASA bought an ex-American Airlines 747 in 1977 and has been using it ever since (Gilchrist, 61). By the late seventies the 727 and 737 were showing their age. Boeing was unable to sell newly modified versions of the two aircraft and they soon realized that a whole new aircraft was in need. The new aircraft did not come in the form of a single plane but in two completely different airplanes that would pick up the slack in the short to medium range jet planes. These planes would be the 757 and the 767. They would prove to be very qualified successors to the 727 and the 737 proving themselves in both the commercial and military world. In fact the 767 came out of production with great performance than what was original planned. “Getting it into service, getting it under our original cost estimates and one day early-I don’t know how you can improve on that. And that’s due to the great team at Boeing” (Bauer, 320). The short to medium range jet had been modernized with increases in performance of its capacity, speed, and fuel consumption. The Military had their eye on the 767. It was as wide-bodied aircraft similar in dimensions to the 737 and the wider body is what the Military saw most appealing. One of the primary functions the 767 serves is in the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) program. It is a 767 modified with a large circular disc on the top. The disc is composed of radars and antennas, it purpose is to target and track targets from a long range, this information is then communicated to fighters on stand by. The body of the plane has a crew and a large amount of computer equipment used in the process of determining targets. Boeing has some more plans for the 767, Boeing see it a very capable candidate for a tanker/transport variant that would provide in flight refueling and transportation duties (www.Boeing.com). The last in the family is the 777, which were introduced, in the early nineties. It is a complete new generation of aircraft with the complete integration of computers. The 777 has two main variants presently they are the 777-200 and the 777-300. Their main difference is length and capacity, the 300 is about 33 feet longer and can hold about 70 more passengers than the 200. Both will work to satisfy the different needs of an airline. A newer version is in the works too. It is the 777-400 planned to have even greater capacity that what is now present. The 777 should gradually replace the 747 as the large capacity long-range jet (www.Boeing.com). The 777 are the plane of the future and will have many service roles in the commercial world. The line of the Boeing 700 aircraft is undeniably a very versatile line of aircraft. From the beginning they have dominated in commercial jet sales and for good reason. Boeing has always made their aircraft with the utmost quality and attention to detail. Boeing will test and test again until they get it right and that shows in their products. The 700’s serve any commercial and military need placed on them. They have made long distant travel a comfort and a pleasure to many. It is hard to imagine what is would be like without Boeing. It is very safe to say that commercial airline travel would simply not be at the same caliber we find it today.
The Boeing 700’s are very capable of handling duties in the commercial and military world. The Boeing 700’s are capable of handling many tasks in the commercial and military world. With the introduction of the 707 in the late fifties to the most recent 777 in the early nineties the, 700’s have dominated the commercial world for five decades. They are a line of aircraft that are capable of handling many roles from basic civilian transport to various military needs. They are the people movers of the 20th century. Each with a large carrying capacity combined with the range of a jet aircraft they have moved more people longer distances than what was once thought possible. Boeing has truly produced some of the greatest aircraft in history. The various duties that the 700’s perform are quite extraordinary. It all started in the fifties. There was a growing demand for a commercial airliner that could move a greater number of people farther and faster. The age of the jet engine still had not reached to civilian transportation. There was still a fear of the jet because of lack of reliability, but with the advancement of technology the jet engine now had become more even reliable than the piston engine. The need for a jet engine powered plane was growing. Airlines still were looking for a plane that could cross the Atlantic Ocean without a refueling stop. The Lockheed Super Connies, a piston powered plane, were able to cross the Atlantic Ocean with out stopping on the eastbound leg, but they had to stop in Gander, Newfoundland to refuel on the westbound leg. The airlines desired a plane that could easily travel the Atlantic with out a stop. The piston engine just wasn’t going to do it, the jet engine was the answer to the question. Boeing realized this and moved to look for a design for a jet powered plane. At first Boeing was looking to modify existing aircraft with jet engines to perform the tasks. They quickly realized that they needed a whole new aircraft. The Boeing 707 was born. The first Boeing 707 was delivered to Pan America airlines in May of 1958 (Bauer, 218). Sales started out slow in fact the 707 almost died many times in it’s first couple years of existence. It wasn’t until Boeing modified the 707 by increasing the overall length, the wing span, and adding more powerful engines did the 707 confirm its place in as a commercial transporter. With the new modifications the 707 became a very capable aircraft, crossing the Atlantic Ocean became a routine affair. With the introduction of the 707 transatlantic travel doubled in two years (Bauer, 195). Airlines’ profitability soared due to the new capabilities of the 707 presented. The 707 began a new era and improved the way people are flown. The 707 being the first major jet airliner saw many applications and variations in it’s lifetime. There were thirteen variations of the 707, they varied in capacity, range, and speed (Wright,49). Each variation was designed to meet a specific needs of an individual airline. Some 707’s could carry a larger capacity of passengers over a shorter distance, were as another variant could carry fewer passengers over a longer distance. With all of these variations the 707 left little room for the Douglas DC-8 which was once though to be a major treat to Boeing. The 707 could meet any need of an airline; this is one reason that made the 707 such a versatile aircraft and why it dominated the market. The 707 also saw plenty of action in uniform. It’s most useful application came in the way of the KC-135 Stratotanker. It was modified to perform in-flight refueling task for the United States Air Force. The 707 saw a healthy lifespan as the KC-135, of the 735 units build in the early sixties 550 still remain in service today (www.Boeing.com). The 707 also had the very privileged role of presidential transport. As Air Force One it started its career in 1962 and served seven Presidents. It was only to be replace by one of it’s bigger brothers the Boeing 747. Another of one of it’s more interesting applications was that of the “Vomet Come” a modified KC-135 to make large in-flight arcs to provide a weightless environment to train NASA astronauts. Altogether the 707 and its derivatives saw many varied and interesting applications. With the 707 fulfilling the needs for a long range jetliner there was a demand by the airline industry for a short to medium range jet. A jet that was designed for short-range use would provide savings over a long-range jet and faster travel times that were presently completed by prop driven planes. Boeing went to the drawing boards and came out with the 727. When the 727 finally came to production it came out with better performance that what was originally planned. “As throughout Boeing’s history, its strong, patient, intense engineering efforts had once more been the key” (Bauer, 226). The 727 filled the duty of short to medium range better than any other aircraft. It showed in the sales and the 727 became at the time the most selling Boeing aircraft, but that title would not remain very long. The Boeing 737 became the most selling commercial jetliner in the world. To date it has sold 3,158 units and there are still more on order (www.Boeing.com). Its primary role is short to medium range passenger transport. The 737 were to be a gradual replacement to the 727 and did so quite well, it became known as the “Little Giant.” The 737 also proved to be a very rugged aircraft, with a kit add-on to the landing gears it made it possible for the 737 to land on unimproved runways like a grass field or a gravel runway. The 737 also were far superior in its ability to take off from high altitude, short runways. These abilities made the 737 very versatile it could link many areas that were unable maintain a modern airport that would have a paved runway (Bauer, 250). One key feature to the 737, which made it the success it was, was the decision to make the plane six seats abreast. Douglas was the main competition in the beginning has a plane that was five seats abreast. Even with Douglas’s advantage in speed and range it could never match the seat per-mile cost the 737 gave. The single decision, which meant about a 17inch increase of diameter over the DOUGLAS DC-9, meant the success of the 737 and the failure of the DC-9. Above: Comparison between the DC-9 and 737 cross-sections. With the ruggedness of the 737 it sees several applications for the Military. Its most widely used application is as a training aid for both pilots and navigators. Pilots use the USAF designated T-43 737s as a flight trainer for large cargo and transport aircraft. The 737 is a large aircraft but not too large aircraft, it provides the perfect stepping stone for pilots into the huge birds that are present in today’s Air Force. It also provides navigational training. Its wider design offers plenty of room for the trainees and their instructors. One T-43 has about 19 stations for its students (Minton, 31). The T-43 provides a very accommodating learning environment for the flight students. The largest and most infamous member of the family is the Boeing 747, the “Jumbo Jet”.” This is an aircraft that has changed commercial airliners forever. With its sheer size it put itself in a class of it’s own. The 747 offer a lower seat per-mile cost and a more efficient way for transportation than any other aircraft. It can move more people and cargo farther and faster. “The 707 brought jet transportation to people. The 747 brought jet transportation to the everyday people” (Norris and Wagner, 26). 747s have become the backbone of many airlines, in that they handle more people and cargo than any of their other planes. 747 not only provides a highly efficient people mover it has also been a great improvement of cargo transportation. Some modified 747 have a large upward swinging door at the nose of the plane. This door allows for great ease in loading large cargo items. Boeing also offered the option of a side panel door for loading. This was mainly used in the “Combi” 747; they were 747 they would transport people and cargo at the same time. The 747 also serve several roles in the Military. Most notably is in the application of presidential transportation as Air Force One. The 747 replace the 707 as Air Force One with great pride. With the increase in room and luxury the President hasn’t had a better ride since. The 747 also found itself the solution to a rather large problem that is of the transportation of the Space Shuttle. There really is no other way to transport the large orbiter than strapping it onto the top of a 747. NASA bought an ex-American Airlines 747 in 1977 and has been using it ever since (Gilchrist, 61). By the late seventies the 727 and 737 were showing their age. Boeing was unable to sell newly modified versions of the two aircraft and they soon realized that a whole new aircraft was in need. The new aircraft did not come in the form of a single plane but in two completely different airplanes that would pick up the slack in the short to medium range jet planes. These planes would be the 757 and the 767. They would prove to be very qualified successors to the 727 and the 737 proving themselves in both the commercial and military world. In fact the 767 came out of production with great performance than what was original planned. “Getting it into service, getting it under our original cost estimates and one day early-I don’t know how you can improve on that. And that’s due to the great team at Boeing” (Bauer, 320). The short to medium range jet had been modernized with increases in performance of its capacity, speed, and fuel consumption. The Military had their eye on the 767. It was as wide-bodied aircraft similar in dimensions to the 737 and the wider body is what the Military saw most appealing. One of the primary functions the 767 serves is in the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) program. It is a 767 modified with a large circular disc on the top. The disc is composed of radars and antennas, it purpose is to target and track targets from a long range, this information is then communicated to fighters on stand by. The body of the plane has a crew and a large amount of computer equipment used in the process of determining targets. Boeing has some more plans for the 767, Boeing see it a very capable candidate for a tanker/transport variant that would provide in flight refueling and transportation duties (www.Boeing.com). The last in the family is the 777, which were introduced, in the early nineties. It is a complete new generation of aircraft with the complete integration of computers. The 777 has two main variants presently they are the 777-200 and the 777-300. Their main difference is length and capacity, the 300 is about 33 feet longer and can hold about 70 more passengers than the 200. Both will work to satisfy the different needs of an airline. A newer version is in the works too. It is the 777-400 planned to have even greater capacity that what is now present. The 777 should gradually replace the 747 as the large capacity long-range jet (www.Boeing.com). The 777 are the plane of the future and will have many service roles in the commercial world. The line of the Boeing 700 aircraft is undeniably a very versatile line of aircraft. From the beginning they have dominated in commercial jet sales and for good reason. Boeing has always made their aircraft with the utmost quality and attention to detail. Boeing will test and test again until they get it right and that shows in their products. The 700’s serve any commercial and military need placed on them. They have made long distant travel a comfort and a pleasure to many. It is hard to imagine what is would be like without Boeing. It is very safe to say that commercial airline travel would simply not be at the same caliber we find it today.
ROMAN-ARCHITECTURE.
Architecture of the ancient Roman Empire is considered one of the most impressive of all time. The city of Rome once was home to more than one million residents in the early centuries AD1. The Romans had a fine selection of building monuments in the city of Rome including the forums for civic services, temples of worship, and amphitheaters for recreation and play. The Romans made great use and pioneered great architecture mechanisms including arches, columns, and even mechanical elements in pulleys and early elevators. However, when one tends to think of great buildings, one building stands out in Rome. This building is the Flavian Amphitheatre, or better known as the Colosseum. When discussing such a great monument such as the Colosseum, it is very important to realize the time, place, and culture in wish it stood to fully understand both its form and function. In the beginnings, Rome was both influenced by the Etruscans of the North and Greeks of Italy and South but had its basic roots from a long time of Samnite domination2. The Etruscans were that of an interesting type as described by Peter Quennell: The Etruscans...combined a passionate devotion to the ordinary pleasures of life with a haunting fear of death. They were cruel, too, and deeply superstitious...their victims were ordered to fight among themselves until the last had fallen. The Etruscans would have a strong impression in Roman lifestyles and philosophies. For example, the purple robe worn by leaders would be later adopted by the Romans. They also were the influence which brought gladiatorial battles of sacrifice into the Roman culture. This was a time of blood thirsty humans who loved the site of battle. Even an early christian named Alypius proclaimed that he took away with him a mad passion which prodded him not only to return (to gladatior events) with those by whom he had first been forced in, but even ahead of them and dragging in others.3 This was a time of paganism, which meant sacrifice and death. Early christians were persecuted for their beliefs in the first few centuries. Clearly in Rome, the focus was not only on religion or the emporer, but we have a focus on leisure and activities. It is said that of a three-hundred and sixty-five day year that one-hundred and fifty days were celebrated as regular holidays, with over ninety days given up to games4. This type of lifestyle would dominate the cities and architecture of the Romans for some time to come. The people of Rome enjoyed theatres, battles, races, baths, comical events, and of course the game of death. There were many forums, temples, and many amphitheaters in the history of Rome, however only a few stand out even today. The Colosseum is the greatest standing building of Rome, and one of the most recognized worldwide architectural achievements to this day. The amphitheater is a type of architecture that was without Greek precedents. This makes sense since its primary purpose was to hold gladitiator fights and brutal shows which were banned in Athens at the time. Such events held in Roman amphitheaters were horseracing, gymnastics, mock cavalry battles, footraces, prizefighting, wrestling, fights between animals, between men, animals and men, and even naumachiae, or mock sea battles5. One of the first amphitheaters was the Pompeian amphitheater of Pompeii of 30 BC. Like the Colosseum, it was oval in plan. It was supported on great masses of solid earth pierced by a broad corridor at each end. Stone seats were added at one time but most spectators sat on the earth or wooden chairs. Although this amphitheater was a great innovation, it would be eclipsed by the Flavian Amphitheater, better known as the Colosseum. The great building although fitting and plain in design to its surroundings of Rome still stood out due to its sheer monstrosity and oval shape. Although the site viewed today is still a marvel, back in the days of its prime it was a spectacular site that would be difficult to apprehend with only words[TVK1]. [TVK2] The city which held the great structure was full of great examples of the use of arches, columns from every order, and of course sheer size. When traveling the city to the Colosseum the whole area had been paved and railed off. The approach was taken by cobbled slabs of lava, and then one entered an area paved with travertine more than five thousand feet wide and surrounded by huge boundary stones6. To a spectator at the time the Colosseum from the outside is described by the romantic poet Johann Wolggang von Goethe: When one looks at it all else seems little; the edifice is so vast, that one cannot hold the image of it in one's soul- in memory we think it smaller, and then return to it again to find it every time greater than before. As one looked at it from the city, there were many sights to behold, but the Colosseum stood out 19 centuries ago, and still does to this date. At the end of the Emperor Nero and the triumph of the Flavians every effort was made to forget the times of the Julio-Claudians (of which Julius Caesar's family) and move to newer times. The focus of arhictecture and buildings shifted from the emperor's creations to the public's buildings. The next prominent emperor was Vespasian. His first contribution to the public was an enormous forum with a temple of Peace in it.7 His greatest feat was the beginning of the construction of the Colosseum for games purposes around 72 AD. Titus succeeded the ever-joking Vespasian and completed his fathers dream around 79-80 AD. The dedication of the Colesseum was a lavish gladiator show that lasted for exactly one-hundred days in which over nine thousand animals were killed.8 A typical day at the Colesseum show usually started with a bloodless comic relief battle, often times with dwarfs, women, or cripples battling with wooden objects. A tuba would sound and the main events would begin. The gladiator fights were the most popular and prominent fights. These featured two highly trained men battling for courage, strength, and dignity. They would often rather take a blow and stand strong than wimper and run in defense. The people were in love with gladiators much like today's sport heroes. It is written that famous women would even leave their husbands for famous gladiators which were known to be very scarred and ugly by Roman standards.9 The gladiator fight was a ruthless blood-ridden spectacle which usually ended in death by the loser who begged for mercy and was chosen to die by the present emperor or crowd cheers of 45,000 hysterical fans. Even more appalling than the gladiator fights may have been the famous wild beast hunts. Some beast slayers fought lions, tigers, bears, and bulls which brought many animals to near extinction in the surrounding areas. However, even worse than the wild beast hunts was the killings of rather harmless animals such as ostriches, giraffes, deer, elephants, and even hippopotami all for the delight of the crowd. The Colosseum utilized machinery to even raise animals to the battle floor from beneath where the catacombs and passages lay. The Colosseum would be decorated with trees, hillocks, and other elements to simulate natural surroundings.10 One such fighter was the deranged emperor Commodus who had such a passion for unequal combat he visited the Colesseum more than a thousand times slaughtering at one time one hundred bears, killed ostriches, and even innocent fans if they laughed. It was clear to many that he was insane, and he was assinated by a famous athlete. Perhaps the most interesting of all events held was the mock sea battles. The Romans were famous for running water in their architecture, and this allowed them to flood the battle field and hold mock sea battles. Of course with all of this bloodshed, it was very controversal starting in the third to fourth centuries. The paganism of Rome had rooted from the Etruscans and was evident at the Colosseum. Christianity was also spreading around, but most Roman emperors would not accept Christians. As Peter Quennell puts it in his writings: The Christians, like the Jews with whom they were sometimes confused, were reported to worship an ass-headed god and were also said to practice incest, cannabalism, and other equally atrocious crimes. The Christians were inflamed, said their pagan adversaries, by an odium generis humani, a downright loathing of the human race, and as public enemies they at once received the blame for any calamity that might befall the empire. As one can tell from the above descriptions, many Christians were persecuted by the Roman emperors. If one did not choose to pledge their loyalty to the emperor by a sacrificial ceremony and to deny their own religion, they were executed. Some executions were in the Colosseum where the Christians were defenseless and killed by wild lions. Others were burned alive at the stake, shot with arrows, or stoned. The major changes of attitude towards Christians came with the Constantine the Great. He last exchanged the purple pagan robes for the white robes of Christian faith. However paganism continued until 392, when Theodosius I and Valentinian II prohibited any form of pagan sacrifice. However it was Honorius who abolished the games of the Colosseum, but criminals were still persecuted there for more than one-hundred years. 11 After that it was generally used up until the end of the sixth century for concerts, sermons, and bullfights. The structure itself of the Colloseum can be summarized as the symbol of Rome and it's respect across the world: mammouth. The overall plan is a huge elliptical structure measuring about 617 by 512 feet: the measure of the actual arena are 280 by 180.12 Estimates of capacity range from 45,000 to 50,000 spectators. It is believed to be made of two half circles in order for the accoustics to be amplified. The building incorporates many Roman influences with some Greek past, and some of its own technologies that are some of the most wonderous creations of man. The most important of aspects of this monument are in its arches, columns, vaulting, technological advances, and in its mere magnitude. The arches and barrel-vaulting are typical of Roman buildings and architecture, but should be given more thought. The Colosseum is built as four stories which was unprecedented in its day. The arch was a great Roman architecture innovation which allowed for great amounts of weight to be carried over long spans. The arches allowed for the great load bearing required to support a monument such as the Colosseum. Arches are built by a series of stones or bricks placed side by side in such a manner that they can support one another and weight while bridging a wide space. A barrel-vault is a half cylinder created from the continuation of the arches. The outermost walls of the structure sat on eighty piers connected by stone barrel-vaults. The four stories symbolized the basic Roman orders: Tuscan (variation of Doric), Ionic, Corinthian, and tall Corinthian pilasters on the fourth story. The outer walls on the bottom were faced in Doric columns faced with travertine with an Ionic entablature which ran all around the building. Inside the building the columns on the bottom were Doric and contained two parallel corridors barrel-vaulted in concrete which surrounded the building. The second level and third level were similar to the first, except the outer walls were separated by lined up columns of the Ionic order, and the third level outer wall was Corinthian. The fourth level is different than the first three and this had much to do with the covering of the Colosseum which will be discussed later. It consisted of a flatter surface with Corinthian pilistars and in alternating sections contained windows. The roof of the upper corridor seems to have formed a flat wooden platform below the top of the outer wall. The sailors who operated the roof used this platform. The seating was sat at a 37 degree angle13, and had a stairway system to enter the three levels as shown by the cutouts of the four levels below. The building was not made all of travistine, but was made of lighter and porous pumice stone and also of brick and concrete. The seating on the bottom was covered in marble and brass, and higher levels were made of wood. Some of the technology employed at the time of this building is very similar to today's buildings of similar uses for games. For instance there were 76 entrance gates of the 80 piers. The latter four were used for emperors and gladiators (one of which was used to drag the bodies to an unmarked grave). The entrance gates were numbered and corresponded to numbers stamped on the fan's tickets much like todays sporting events. With 80 gates one could easily maneuver to their correct gate. In the ground floor contained an intricate labyrinth of cells which housed the gladiators, animals, and workers. There were splendid uses of machinery in which to lift the gladiator or animal to the surface of the battle arena. But the most amazing construction at the Colosseum had nothing to do with the show. It was designed purely for the benefit of the audience, to keep them calm and content as the violent spectacle unfolded below. It was a roof. The roof of the Colleseum was one that was retractable and much like a sailor. So much in fact, sailors who lived in a nearby town managed the velarium, or colored awning. This was a remarkable feat considering that most stadiums now days are still not fully enclosed (such as the Cowboy's stadium). The use of the corbels on the uppermost deck and the use of a pulley system brought about this feat of ingenious. Some archeologists thought that the roof was non-existent or was a web of ropes, but it is now believed to be made from masts and pulleys. The masts would hold horizontal masts on which to pull the awning over. It is believed that it did not cover the whole structure, but at least the most important seatings of the emperor for the whole day.14 Hebrew prisoners and slaves of the time employed the building of the Colesseum. All the details of the actual construction are unknown, but it is based upon a barrel-vaulted scheme that circles around. The builders used tavertine blocks to construct a framework of piers, arches, and linked walls and vaults. The cement posts go deep into the ground to support the great weight. The lower level vaults were constructed of tufa or pumice. On the upper floors the walls were built with brick and concrete (utilizing volcanic sand to dry). Travertine was used to surround the outside and was held in place by iron clamps. 15 The experience of being outside the Colosseum was plain except for the added statues. The outside of the building was paved with boundaries and roads. One could make out the hundreds of semicircles and arches. The arches increased upwards from Truscan, Doric, and Corinthian columns to the Corinthian Pillars and wall of the fourth deck. The outside was a brilliant travertine that must have been a spectacular sight. Next to the building one would feel he is nothing but a little gnat compared to the great building. To get inside one must enter their gate, and proceed up the stairway to the designated level much like a modern stadium. Since there were 80 entrances, many people could occupy the great Amphitheater. Inside the Coloseum the arena floor was wooden and covered with sand to soak the blood. There was a great podium made of marble on the sidelines housed the dignitaries. Above that were marble seats for distinguished private citizens. The second held the middle class, the third held slaves and foreigners, and the fourth levels were for women and the poor who sat on wooden seats.16 The great velarium was multicolored and must have been a specticle on the inside of the Colosseum when raised. This would also shadow and protect the fans from nature. The arches allowed for great ventilation, stability, and passageways to keep the crowd comfortable all day. On a whole the Colosseum is symbolized by its size which represents the greatness of Rome. The name may be attributed to its size, or some believe to the colossal statue of Nero nicknamed the crowned colossus that was nearby. With all of the circular motifs used by the arches, and of the building itself, some believe it symbolizes the sun. This also makes sense considering part of the Colosseum was built from the Golden House of Nero, also known as the solar statue, or sun statue. Many symbols used in the Colosseum were of Pagan descendent. This included the sacrifices, purple robes, battle-axes, and hammers of the Etruscan Pagans. The cross was erected to commemorate the early Christians who are believed to have died here (although there is no evidence to support this belief). The great arch beside the Coliseum was erected in the third century in honor of Constantine, although much of its decoration was pilfered from monuments to other emperors. Since one of the symbols was of the sun, the arches created natural and splendid light and shadows as shown in the picture. Much poetry has been written of the light, shadows, and even smoke from the arches of the Colosseum. When it was not noon the light would create long shadows and yet have bright instances which accentuate the arches and columns in the bright light. It shows an alternating natural pattern of shadows. One of the first natural changes of the Colosseum came in 320 when lightning struck and damaged the building. In 422 it was damaged by an earthquake. However Theodosius II and Valentitian III repaired it only to be again damaged by an earthquake in 508. After the sixth century the city of Rome and the Coleseum went downhill because of some devastating disasters. Towards the end of the sixth century grass was starting to grow rampant at the Colosseum, .
Architecture of the ancient Roman Empire is considered one of the most impressive of all time. The city of Rome once was home to more than one million residents in the early centuries AD1. The Romans had a fine selection of building monuments in the city of Rome including the forums for civic services, temples of worship, and amphitheaters for recreation and play. The Romans made great use and pioneered great architecture mechanisms including arches, columns, and even mechanical elements in pulleys and early elevators. However, when one tends to think of great buildings, one building stands out in Rome. This building is the Flavian Amphitheatre, or better known as the Colosseum. When discussing such a great monument such as the Colosseum, it is very important to realize the time, place, and culture in wish it stood to fully understand both its form and function. In the beginnings, Rome was both influenced by the Etruscans of the North and Greeks of Italy and South but had its basic roots from a long time of Samnite domination2. The Etruscans were that of an interesting type as described by Peter Quennell: The Etruscans...combined a passionate devotion to the ordinary pleasures of life with a haunting fear of death. They were cruel, too, and deeply superstitious...their victims were ordered to fight among themselves until the last had fallen. The Etruscans would have a strong impression in Roman lifestyles and philosophies. For example, the purple robe worn by leaders would be later adopted by the Romans. They also were the influence which brought gladiatorial battles of sacrifice into the Roman culture. This was a time of blood thirsty humans who loved the site of battle. Even an early christian named Alypius proclaimed that he took away with him a mad passion which prodded him not only to return (to gladatior events) with those by whom he had first been forced in, but even ahead of them and dragging in others.3 This was a time of paganism, which meant sacrifice and death. Early christians were persecuted for their beliefs in the first few centuries. Clearly in Rome, the focus was not only on religion or the emporer, but we have a focus on leisure and activities. It is said that of a three-hundred and sixty-five day year that one-hundred and fifty days were celebrated as regular holidays, with over ninety days given up to games4. This type of lifestyle would dominate the cities and architecture of the Romans for some time to come. The people of Rome enjoyed theatres, battles, races, baths, comical events, and of course the game of death. There were many forums, temples, and many amphitheaters in the history of Rome, however only a few stand out even today. The Colosseum is the greatest standing building of Rome, and one of the most recognized worldwide architectural achievements to this day. The amphitheater is a type of architecture that was without Greek precedents. This makes sense since its primary purpose was to hold gladitiator fights and brutal shows which were banned in Athens at the time. Such events held in Roman amphitheaters were horseracing, gymnastics, mock cavalry battles, footraces, prizefighting, wrestling, fights between animals, between men, animals and men, and even naumachiae, or mock sea battles5. One of the first amphitheaters was the Pompeian amphitheater of Pompeii of 30 BC. Like the Colosseum, it was oval in plan. It was supported on great masses of solid earth pierced by a broad corridor at each end. Stone seats were added at one time but most spectators sat on the earth or wooden chairs. Although this amphitheater was a great innovation, it would be eclipsed by the Flavian Amphitheater, better known as the Colosseum. The great building although fitting and plain in design to its surroundings of Rome still stood out due to its sheer monstrosity and oval shape. Although the site viewed today is still a marvel, back in the days of its prime it was a spectacular site that would be difficult to apprehend with only words[TVK1]. [TVK2] The city which held the great structure was full of great examples of the use of arches, columns from every order, and of course sheer size. When traveling the city to the Colosseum the whole area had been paved and railed off. The approach was taken by cobbled slabs of lava, and then one entered an area paved with travertine more than five thousand feet wide and surrounded by huge boundary stones6. To a spectator at the time the Colosseum from the outside is described by the romantic poet Johann Wolggang von Goethe: When one looks at it all else seems little; the edifice is so vast, that one cannot hold the image of it in one's soul- in memory we think it smaller, and then return to it again to find it every time greater than before. As one looked at it from the city, there were many sights to behold, but the Colosseum stood out 19 centuries ago, and still does to this date. At the end of the Emperor Nero and the triumph of the Flavians every effort was made to forget the times of the Julio-Claudians (of which Julius Caesar's family) and move to newer times. The focus of arhictecture and buildings shifted from the emperor's creations to the public's buildings. The next prominent emperor was Vespasian. His first contribution to the public was an enormous forum with a temple of Peace in it.7 His greatest feat was the beginning of the construction of the Colosseum for games purposes around 72 AD. Titus succeeded the ever-joking Vespasian and completed his fathers dream around 79-80 AD. The dedication of the Colesseum was a lavish gladiator show that lasted for exactly one-hundred days in which over nine thousand animals were killed.8 A typical day at the Colesseum show usually started with a bloodless comic relief battle, often times with dwarfs, women, or cripples battling with wooden objects. A tuba would sound and the main events would begin. The gladiator fights were the most popular and prominent fights. These featured two highly trained men battling for courage, strength, and dignity. They would often rather take a blow and stand strong than wimper and run in defense. The people were in love with gladiators much like today's sport heroes. It is written that famous women would even leave their husbands for famous gladiators which were known to be very scarred and ugly by Roman standards.9 The gladiator fight was a ruthless blood-ridden spectacle which usually ended in death by the loser who begged for mercy and was chosen to die by the present emperor or crowd cheers of 45,000 hysterical fans. Even more appalling than the gladiator fights may have been the famous wild beast hunts. Some beast slayers fought lions, tigers, bears, and bulls which brought many animals to near extinction in the surrounding areas. However, even worse than the wild beast hunts was the killings of rather harmless animals such as ostriches, giraffes, deer, elephants, and even hippopotami all for the delight of the crowd. The Colosseum utilized machinery to even raise animals to the battle floor from beneath where the catacombs and passages lay. The Colosseum would be decorated with trees, hillocks, and other elements to simulate natural surroundings.10 One such fighter was the deranged emperor Commodus who had such a passion for unequal combat he visited the Colesseum more than a thousand times slaughtering at one time one hundred bears, killed ostriches, and even innocent fans if they laughed. It was clear to many that he was insane, and he was assinated by a famous athlete. Perhaps the most interesting of all events held was the mock sea battles. The Romans were famous for running water in their architecture, and this allowed them to flood the battle field and hold mock sea battles. Of course with all of this bloodshed, it was very controversal starting in the third to fourth centuries. The paganism of Rome had rooted from the Etruscans and was evident at the Colosseum. Christianity was also spreading around, but most Roman emperors would not accept Christians. As Peter Quennell puts it in his writings: The Christians, like the Jews with whom they were sometimes confused, were reported to worship an ass-headed god and were also said to practice incest, cannabalism, and other equally atrocious crimes. The Christians were inflamed, said their pagan adversaries, by an odium generis humani, a downright loathing of the human race, and as public enemies they at once received the blame for any calamity that might befall the empire. As one can tell from the above descriptions, many Christians were persecuted by the Roman emperors. If one did not choose to pledge their loyalty to the emperor by a sacrificial ceremony and to deny their own religion, they were executed. Some executions were in the Colosseum where the Christians were defenseless and killed by wild lions. Others were burned alive at the stake, shot with arrows, or stoned. The major changes of attitude towards Christians came with the Constantine the Great. He last exchanged the purple pagan robes for the white robes of Christian faith. However paganism continued until 392, when Theodosius I and Valentinian II prohibited any form of pagan sacrifice. However it was Honorius who abolished the games of the Colosseum, but criminals were still persecuted there for more than one-hundred years. 11 After that it was generally used up until the end of the sixth century for concerts, sermons, and bullfights. The structure itself of the Colloseum can be summarized as the symbol of Rome and it's respect across the world: mammouth. The overall plan is a huge elliptical structure measuring about 617 by 512 feet: the measure of the actual arena are 280 by 180.12 Estimates of capacity range from 45,000 to 50,000 spectators. It is believed to be made of two half circles in order for the accoustics to be amplified. The building incorporates many Roman influences with some Greek past, and some of its own technologies that are some of the most wonderous creations of man. The most important of aspects of this monument are in its arches, columns, vaulting, technological advances, and in its mere magnitude. The arches and barrel-vaulting are typical of Roman buildings and architecture, but should be given more thought. The Colosseum is built as four stories which was unprecedented in its day. The arch was a great Roman architecture innovation which allowed for great amounts of weight to be carried over long spans. The arches allowed for the great load bearing required to support a monument such as the Colosseum. Arches are built by a series of stones or bricks placed side by side in such a manner that they can support one another and weight while bridging a wide space. A barrel-vault is a half cylinder created from the continuation of the arches. The outermost walls of the structure sat on eighty piers connected by stone barrel-vaults. The four stories symbolized the basic Roman orders: Tuscan (variation of Doric), Ionic, Corinthian, and tall Corinthian pilasters on the fourth story. The outer walls on the bottom were faced in Doric columns faced with travertine with an Ionic entablature which ran all around the building. Inside the building the columns on the bottom were Doric and contained two parallel corridors barrel-vaulted in concrete which surrounded the building. The second level and third level were similar to the first, except the outer walls were separated by lined up columns of the Ionic order, and the third level outer wall was Corinthian. The fourth level is different than the first three and this had much to do with the covering of the Colosseum which will be discussed later. It consisted of a flatter surface with Corinthian pilistars and in alternating sections contained windows. The roof of the upper corridor seems to have formed a flat wooden platform below the top of the outer wall. The sailors who operated the roof used this platform. The seating was sat at a 37 degree angle13, and had a stairway system to enter the three levels as shown by the cutouts of the four levels below. The building was not made all of travistine, but was made of lighter and porous pumice stone and also of brick and concrete. The seating on the bottom was covered in marble and brass, and higher levels were made of wood. Some of the technology employed at the time of this building is very similar to today's buildings of similar uses for games. For instance there were 76 entrance gates of the 80 piers. The latter four were used for emperors and gladiators (one of which was used to drag the bodies to an unmarked grave). The entrance gates were numbered and corresponded to numbers stamped on the fan's tickets much like todays sporting events. With 80 gates one could easily maneuver to their correct gate. In the ground floor contained an intricate labyrinth of cells which housed the gladiators, animals, and workers. There were splendid uses of machinery in which to lift the gladiator or animal to the surface of the battle arena. But the most amazing construction at the Colosseum had nothing to do with the show. It was designed purely for the benefit of the audience, to keep them calm and content as the violent spectacle unfolded below. It was a roof. The roof of the Colleseum was one that was retractable and much like a sailor. So much in fact, sailors who lived in a nearby town managed the velarium, or colored awning. This was a remarkable feat considering that most stadiums now days are still not fully enclosed (such as the Cowboy's stadium). The use of the corbels on the uppermost deck and the use of a pulley system brought about this feat of ingenious. Some archeologists thought that the roof was non-existent or was a web of ropes, but it is now believed to be made from masts and pulleys. The masts would hold horizontal masts on which to pull the awning over. It is believed that it did not cover the whole structure, but at least the most important seatings of the emperor for the whole day.14 Hebrew prisoners and slaves of the time employed the building of the Colesseum. All the details of the actual construction are unknown, but it is based upon a barrel-vaulted scheme that circles around. The builders used tavertine blocks to construct a framework of piers, arches, and linked walls and vaults. The cement posts go deep into the ground to support the great weight. The lower level vaults were constructed of tufa or pumice. On the upper floors the walls were built with brick and concrete (utilizing volcanic sand to dry). Travertine was used to surround the outside and was held in place by iron clamps. 15 The experience of being outside the Colosseum was plain except for the added statues. The outside of the building was paved with boundaries and roads. One could make out the hundreds of semicircles and arches. The arches increased upwards from Truscan, Doric, and Corinthian columns to the Corinthian Pillars and wall of the fourth deck. The outside was a brilliant travertine that must have been a spectacular sight. Next to the building one would feel he is nothing but a little gnat compared to the great building. To get inside one must enter their gate, and proceed up the stairway to the designated level much like a modern stadium. Since there were 80 entrances, many people could occupy the great Amphitheater. Inside the Coloseum the arena floor was wooden and covered with sand to soak the blood. There was a great podium made of marble on the sidelines housed the dignitaries. Above that were marble seats for distinguished private citizens. The second held the middle class, the third held slaves and foreigners, and the fourth levels were for women and the poor who sat on wooden seats.16 The great velarium was multicolored and must have been a specticle on the inside of the Colosseum when raised. This would also shadow and protect the fans from nature. The arches allowed for great ventilation, stability, and passageways to keep the crowd comfortable all day. On a whole the Colosseum is symbolized by its size which represents the greatness of Rome. The name may be attributed to its size, or some believe to the colossal statue of Nero nicknamed the crowned colossus that was nearby. With all of the circular motifs used by the arches, and of the building itself, some believe it symbolizes the sun. This also makes sense considering part of the Colosseum was built from the Golden House of Nero, also known as the solar statue, or sun statue. Many symbols used in the Colosseum were of Pagan descendent. This included the sacrifices, purple robes, battle-axes, and hammers of the Etruscan Pagans. The cross was erected to commemorate the early Christians who are believed to have died here (although there is no evidence to support this belief). The great arch beside the Coliseum was erected in the third century in honor of Constantine, although much of its decoration was pilfered from monuments to other emperors. Since one of the symbols was of the sun, the arches created natural and splendid light and shadows as shown in the picture. Much poetry has been written of the light, shadows, and even smoke from the arches of the Colosseum. When it was not noon the light would create long shadows and yet have bright instances which accentuate the arches and columns in the bright light. It shows an alternating natural pattern of shadows. One of the first natural changes of the Colosseum came in 320 when lightning struck and damaged the building. In 422 it was damaged by an earthquake. However Theodosius II and Valentitian III repaired it only to be again damaged by an earthquake in 508. After the sixth century the city of Rome and the Coleseum went downhill because of some devastating disasters. Towards the end of the sixth century grass was starting to grow rampant at the Colosseum, .
LEADERSHIP-QUALITIES.
The most meaningful and challenging experiences in my life have been through sports and the 4-H club. They have instilled the values of perseverance, confidence, and teamwork within me. I feel that my peers and others could learn valuable life lessons through participating in these organizations. They are not just clubs, but a guiding light for life. For example in sports I have had the opportunity to play on both losing and winning teams. This has given me a different perspective of looking at things. I now realize that even if you fail or lose that is no reason to give up, you still have to get right back up. Just realize your mistakes and errors. Then come back the next time, mentally and physically, ready to meet the challenge. To often in life youth and adults alike fail at something and automatically think that they cannot do it, and give up. Instead of just pushing themselves to run another lap, lift another set, study for another hour, or learn another theorem. Imagine a world if the early American settlers had given in to the British, if the North had given in to the South after the first loss of the civil war, or if Michael Jordan had given up after being cut from the team in high school. People just need to learn to have perseverance and believe in themselves. 4-H has been a series of stepping stones for me. When I first started out at age four I was shy and afraid to do things that I had not done before, but now I have blossomed into a confident and outgoing young man. I no longer fear getting up in front of large groups and speaking because of the experiences I've had in public speaking events. In addition, 4-H has given me the chance to develop myself as a leader. Over the years I have held various leadership positions on the club, county, and district levels. Also, 4-H has given me the chance to go into the community and help people by leading youth in workshops, assisting the handicap and elderly, and also learn from what others have to teach. In both of these organizations I learned the need for teamwork. For example last year my football team went 0-11 and the main reason because of that was we were not a team. Everyone had there own agendas and goals that they wanted to accomplish. In addition, if we were down everyone would try to put the blame on someone else instead of trying to lift one another up. It took us a while, but we finally learned that we must ban together as one. This year we are playing as a team and winning games.To often in life people tend to act like this, pulling someone down to make themselves look good for their own personal gratification. People could learn from this mistake that my team made last year and start helping one another. So fellow students I say to you, when you are in a jam and breaking into a cold sweat and your first desire is to give up or quit, rethink the problem. Then be up and about the task at hand. When you try and reach out to give others a helping hand you not only help them, but you will be giving yourself a boost too.
The most meaningful and challenging experiences in my life have been through sports and the 4-H club. They have instilled the values of perseverance, confidence, and teamwork within me. I feel that my peers and others could learn valuable life lessons through participating in these organizations. They are not just clubs, but a guiding light for life. For example in sports I have had the opportunity to play on both losing and winning teams. This has given me a different perspective of looking at things. I now realize that even if you fail or lose that is no reason to give up, you still have to get right back up. Just realize your mistakes and errors. Then come back the next time, mentally and physically, ready to meet the challenge. To often in life youth and adults alike fail at something and automatically think that they cannot do it, and give up. Instead of just pushing themselves to run another lap, lift another set, study for another hour, or learn another theorem. Imagine a world if the early American settlers had given in to the British, if the North had given in to the South after the first loss of the civil war, or if Michael Jordan had given up after being cut from the team in high school. People just need to learn to have perseverance and believe in themselves. 4-H has been a series of stepping stones for me. When I first started out at age four I was shy and afraid to do things that I had not done before, but now I have blossomed into a confident and outgoing young man. I no longer fear getting up in front of large groups and speaking because of the experiences I've had in public speaking events. In addition, 4-H has given me the chance to develop myself as a leader. Over the years I have held various leadership positions on the club, county, and district levels. Also, 4-H has given me the chance to go into the community and help people by leading youth in workshops, assisting the handicap and elderly, and also learn from what others have to teach. In both of these organizations I learned the need for teamwork. For example last year my football team went 0-11 and the main reason because of that was we were not a team. Everyone had there own agendas and goals that they wanted to accomplish. In addition, if we were down everyone would try to put the blame on someone else instead of trying to lift one another up. It took us a while, but we finally learned that we must ban together as one. This year we are playing as a team and winning games.To often in life people tend to act like this, pulling someone down to make themselves look good for their own personal gratification. People could learn from this mistake that my team made last year and start helping one another. So fellow students I say to you, when you are in a jam and breaking into a cold sweat and your first desire is to give up or quit, rethink the problem. Then be up and about the task at hand. When you try and reach out to give others a helping hand you not only help them, but you will be giving yourself a boost too.
UNIVERSE.
UNIVERSE.
Not so much a theory of the universe as a simple picture of the planet we call home, the flat-earth model proposed that Earth’s surface was level. Although everyday experience makes this seem a reasonable assumption, direct observation of nature shows the real world isn’t that simple. For instance, when a sailing ship heads into port, the first part that becomes visible is the crow’s-nest, followed by the sails, and then the bow of the ship. If the Earth were flat, the entire ship would come into view at once as soon as it came close enough to shore. The Greek philosopher Aristotle provided two more reasons why the Earth was round. First, he noted that Earth’s shadow always took a circular bite out of the moon during a lunar eclipse, which would only be possible with a spherical Earth. (If the Earth were a disk, its shadow would appear as an elongated ellipse at least during part of the eclipse.) Second, Aristotle knew that people who journeyed north saw the North Star ascend higher in the sky, while those heading south saw the North Star sink. On a flat Earth, the positions of the stars wouldn’t vary with a person’s location. Despite these arguments, which won over most of the world’s educated citizens, belief in a flat Earth persisted among many others. Not until explorers first circumnavigated the globe in the 16th century did those beliefs begin to die out. Ptolemy, the last of the great Greek astronomers of antiquity, developed an effective system for mapping the universe. Basing much of his theory on the work of his predecessor, Hipparchus, Ptolemy designed a geocentric, or Earth-centered, model that held sway for 1400 years. That Ptolemy could place Earth at the center of the universe and still predict the planets’ positions adequately was a testament to his ability as a mathematician. That he could do so while maintaining the Greek belief that the heavens were perfect—and thus that each planet moved along a circular orbit at a constant speed—is nothing short of remarkable. Copernicus made a great leap forward by realizing that the motions of the planets could be explained by placing the Sun at the center of the universe instead of Earth. In his view, Earth was simply one of many planets orbiting the Sun, and the daily motion of the stars and planets were just a reflection of Earth spinning on its axis. Although the Greek astronomer Aristarchus developed the same hypothesis more than 1500 years earlier, Copernicus was the first person to argue its merits in modern times. Despite the basic truth of his model, Copernicus did not prove that Earth moved around the Sun. That was left for later astronomers. The first direct evidence came from Newton’s laws of motion, which say that when objects orbit one another, the lighter object moves more than the heavier one. Because the Sun has about 330,000 times more mass than Earth, our planet must be doing almost all the moving. A direct observation of Earth’s motion came in 1838 when the German astronomer Friedrich Bessel measured the tiny displacement, or parallax, of a nearby star relative to the more distant stars. This minuscule displacement reflects our planet’s changing vantage point as we orbit the Sun during the year. How did the universe really begin? Most astronomers would say that the debate is now over: The universe started with a giant explosion, called the Big Bang. The big-bang theory got its start with the observations by Edwin Hubble that showed the universe to be expanding. If you imagine the history of the universe as a long-running movie, what happens when you show the movie in reverse? All the galaxies would move closer and closer together, until eventually they all get crushed together into one massive yet tiny sphere. It was just this sort of thinking that led to the concept of the Big Bang. The Big Bang marks the instant at which the universe began, when space and time came into existence and all the matter in the cosmos started to expand. Amazingly, theorists have deduced the history of the universe dating back to just 1043 second (10 million trillion trillion trillionths of a second) after the Big Bang. Before this time all four fundamental forces—gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces—were unified, but physicists have yet to develop a workable theory that can describe these conditions. During the first second or so of the universe, protons, neutrons, and electrons—the building blocks of atoms—formed when photons collided and converted their energy into mass, and the four forces split into their separate identities. The temperature of the universe also cooled during this time, from about 1032 (100 million trillion trillion) degrees to 10 billion degrees. Approximately three minutes after the Big Bang, when the temperature fell to a cool one billion degrees, protons and neutrons combined to form the nuclei of a few heavier elements, most notably helium. The next major step didn’t take place until roughly 300,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe had cooled to a not-quite comfortable 3000 degrees. At this temperature, electrons could combine with atomic nuclei to form neutral atoms. With no free electrons left to scatter photons of light, the universe became transparent to radiation. (It is this light that we see today as the cosmic background radiation.) Stars and galaxies began to form about one billion years following the Big Bang, and since then the universe has simply continued to grow larger and cooler, creating conditions conducive to life. Three excellent reasons exist for believing in the big-bang theory. First, and most obvious, the universe is expanding. Second, the theory predicts that 25 percent of the total mass of the universe should be the helium that formed during the first few minutes, an amount that agrees with observations. Finally, and most convincing, is the presence of the cosmic background radiation. The big-bang theory predicted this remnant radiation, which now glows at a temperature just 3 degrees above absolute zero, well before radio astronomers chanced upon it. Friedmann made two simple assumptions about the universe: that when viewed at large enough scales, it appears the same both in every direction and from every location. From these assumptions (called the cosmological principle) and Einstein’s equations, he developed the first model of a universe in motion. The Friedmann universe begins with a Big Bang and continues expanding for untold billions of years—that’s the stage we’re in now. But after a long enough period of time, the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter slows the expansion to a stop. The universe then starts to fall in on itself, replaying the expansion in reverse. Eventually all the matter collapses back into a singularity, in what physicist John Wheeler likes to call the “Big Crunch.” Gravitational attraction is a fundamental property of matter that exists throughout the known universe. Physicists identify gravity as one of the four types of forces in the universe. The others are the strong and weak nuclear forces and the electromagnetic force. More than 300 years ago, the great English scientist Sir Isaac Newton published the important generalization that mathematically describes this universal force of gravity. Newton was the first to realize that gravity extends well beyond the boundaries of Earth. Newton's realization was based on the first of three laws he had formulated to describe the motion of objects. Part of Newton's first law, the Law of Inertia, states that objects in motion travel in a straight line at a constant velocity unless they are acted upon by a net force. According to this law, the planets in space should travel in straight lines. However, as early as the time of Aristotle, the planets were known to travel on curved paths. Newton reasoned that the circular motions of the planets are the result of a net force acting upon each of them. That force, he concluded, is the same force that causes an apple to fall to the ground--gravity. Newton's experimental research into the force of gravity resulted in his elegant mathematical statement that is known today as the Law of Universal Gravitation. According to Newton, every mass in the universe attracts every other mass. The attractive force between any two objects is directly proportional to the product of the two masses being measured and inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating them. If we let F represent this force, r the distance between the centers of the masses, and m1 and m2 the magnitude of the two masses, the relationship stated can be written symbolically as: is defined mathematically to mean is proportional to.) From this relationship, we can see that the greater the masses of the attracting objects, the greater the force of attraction between them. We can also see that the farther apart the objects are from each other, the less the attraction. It is important to note the inverse square relationship with respect to distance. In other words, if the distance between the objects is doubled, the attraction between them is diminished by a factor of four, and if the distance is tripled, the attraction is only one-ninth as much. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation was later quantified by eighteenth-century English physicist Henry Cavendish who actually measured the gravitational force between two one-kilogram masses separated by a distance of one meter. This attraction was an extremely weak force, but its determination permitted the proportional relationship of Newton's law to be converted into an equation. This measurement yielded the universal gravitational constant or G.
Not so much a theory of the universe as a simple picture of the planet we call home, the flat-earth model proposed that Earth’s surface was level. Although everyday experience makes this seem a reasonable assumption, direct observation of nature shows the real world isn’t that simple. For instance, when a sailing ship heads into port, the first part that becomes visible is the crow’s-nest, followed by the sails, and then the bow of the ship. If the Earth were flat, the entire ship would come into view at once as soon as it came close enough to shore. The Greek philosopher Aristotle provided two more reasons why the Earth was round. First, he noted that Earth’s shadow always took a circular bite out of the moon during a lunar eclipse, which would only be possible with a spherical Earth. (If the Earth were a disk, its shadow would appear as an elongated ellipse at least during part of the eclipse.) Second, Aristotle knew that people who journeyed north saw the North Star ascend higher in the sky, while those heading south saw the North Star sink. On a flat Earth, the positions of the stars wouldn’t vary with a person’s location. Despite these arguments, which won over most of the world’s educated citizens, belief in a flat Earth persisted among many others. Not until explorers first circumnavigated the globe in the 16th century did those beliefs begin to die out. Ptolemy, the last of the great Greek astronomers of antiquity, developed an effective system for mapping the universe. Basing much of his theory on the work of his predecessor, Hipparchus, Ptolemy designed a geocentric, or Earth-centered, model that held sway for 1400 years. That Ptolemy could place Earth at the center of the universe and still predict the planets’ positions adequately was a testament to his ability as a mathematician. That he could do so while maintaining the Greek belief that the heavens were perfect—and thus that each planet moved along a circular orbit at a constant speed—is nothing short of remarkable. Copernicus made a great leap forward by realizing that the motions of the planets could be explained by placing the Sun at the center of the universe instead of Earth. In his view, Earth was simply one of many planets orbiting the Sun, and the daily motion of the stars and planets were just a reflection of Earth spinning on its axis. Although the Greek astronomer Aristarchus developed the same hypothesis more than 1500 years earlier, Copernicus was the first person to argue its merits in modern times. Despite the basic truth of his model, Copernicus did not prove that Earth moved around the Sun. That was left for later astronomers. The first direct evidence came from Newton’s laws of motion, which say that when objects orbit one another, the lighter object moves more than the heavier one. Because the Sun has about 330,000 times more mass than Earth, our planet must be doing almost all the moving. A direct observation of Earth’s motion came in 1838 when the German astronomer Friedrich Bessel measured the tiny displacement, or parallax, of a nearby star relative to the more distant stars. This minuscule displacement reflects our planet’s changing vantage point as we orbit the Sun during the year. How did the universe really begin? Most astronomers would say that the debate is now over: The universe started with a giant explosion, called the Big Bang. The big-bang theory got its start with the observations by Edwin Hubble that showed the universe to be expanding. If you imagine the history of the universe as a long-running movie, what happens when you show the movie in reverse? All the galaxies would move closer and closer together, until eventually they all get crushed together into one massive yet tiny sphere. It was just this sort of thinking that led to the concept of the Big Bang. The Big Bang marks the instant at which the universe began, when space and time came into existence and all the matter in the cosmos started to expand. Amazingly, theorists have deduced the history of the universe dating back to just 1043 second (10 million trillion trillion trillionths of a second) after the Big Bang. Before this time all four fundamental forces—gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces—were unified, but physicists have yet to develop a workable theory that can describe these conditions. During the first second or so of the universe, protons, neutrons, and electrons—the building blocks of atoms—formed when photons collided and converted their energy into mass, and the four forces split into their separate identities. The temperature of the universe also cooled during this time, from about 1032 (100 million trillion trillion) degrees to 10 billion degrees. Approximately three minutes after the Big Bang, when the temperature fell to a cool one billion degrees, protons and neutrons combined to form the nuclei of a few heavier elements, most notably helium. The next major step didn’t take place until roughly 300,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe had cooled to a not-quite comfortable 3000 degrees. At this temperature, electrons could combine with atomic nuclei to form neutral atoms. With no free electrons left to scatter photons of light, the universe became transparent to radiation. (It is this light that we see today as the cosmic background radiation.) Stars and galaxies began to form about one billion years following the Big Bang, and since then the universe has simply continued to grow larger and cooler, creating conditions conducive to life. Three excellent reasons exist for believing in the big-bang theory. First, and most obvious, the universe is expanding. Second, the theory predicts that 25 percent of the total mass of the universe should be the helium that formed during the first few minutes, an amount that agrees with observations. Finally, and most convincing, is the presence of the cosmic background radiation. The big-bang theory predicted this remnant radiation, which now glows at a temperature just 3 degrees above absolute zero, well before radio astronomers chanced upon it. Friedmann made two simple assumptions about the universe: that when viewed at large enough scales, it appears the same both in every direction and from every location. From these assumptions (called the cosmological principle) and Einstein’s equations, he developed the first model of a universe in motion. The Friedmann universe begins with a Big Bang and continues expanding for untold billions of years—that’s the stage we’re in now. But after a long enough period of time, the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter slows the expansion to a stop. The universe then starts to fall in on itself, replaying the expansion in reverse. Eventually all the matter collapses back into a singularity, in what physicist John Wheeler likes to call the “Big Crunch.” Gravitational attraction is a fundamental property of matter that exists throughout the known universe. Physicists identify gravity as one of the four types of forces in the universe. The others are the strong and weak nuclear forces and the electromagnetic force. More than 300 years ago, the great English scientist Sir Isaac Newton published the important generalization that mathematically describes this universal force of gravity. Newton was the first to realize that gravity extends well beyond the boundaries of Earth. Newton's realization was based on the first of three laws he had formulated to describe the motion of objects. Part of Newton's first law, the Law of Inertia, states that objects in motion travel in a straight line at a constant velocity unless they are acted upon by a net force. According to this law, the planets in space should travel in straight lines. However, as early as the time of Aristotle, the planets were known to travel on curved paths. Newton reasoned that the circular motions of the planets are the result of a net force acting upon each of them. That force, he concluded, is the same force that causes an apple to fall to the ground--gravity. Newton's experimental research into the force of gravity resulted in his elegant mathematical statement that is known today as the Law of Universal Gravitation. According to Newton, every mass in the universe attracts every other mass. The attractive force between any two objects is directly proportional to the product of the two masses being measured and inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating them. If we let F represent this force, r the distance between the centers of the masses, and m1 and m2 the magnitude of the two masses, the relationship stated can be written symbolically as: is defined mathematically to mean is proportional to.) From this relationship, we can see that the greater the masses of the attracting objects, the greater the force of attraction between them. We can also see that the farther apart the objects are from each other, the less the attraction. It is important to note the inverse square relationship with respect to distance. In other words, if the distance between the objects is doubled, the attraction between them is diminished by a factor of four, and if the distance is tripled, the attraction is only one-ninth as much. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation was later quantified by eighteenth-century English physicist Henry Cavendish who actually measured the gravitational force between two one-kilogram masses separated by a distance of one meter. This attraction was an extremely weak force, but its determination permitted the proportional relationship of Newton's law to be converted into an equation. This measurement yielded the universal gravitational constant or G.
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