241 résultats pour "lights"
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Light
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INTRODUCTION
Light, form of energy visible to the human eye that is radiated by moving charged particles.
simulates the action of a moving charge upon the electric field. It creates a wave that travels along the rope in a direction that is perpendicular to the initial up anddown movement. Because electromagnetic waves are transverse—that is, the vibration that creates them is perpendicular to the direction in which they travel, they are similar to waveson a rope or waves traveling on the surface of water. Unlike these waves, however, which require a rope or water, light does not need a medium, or su...
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Light - astronomy.
Each different frequency or wavelength of visible light causes our eye to see a slightly different color. The longest wavelength we can see is deep red at about 700 nm.The shortest wavelength humans can detect is deep blue or violet at about 400 nm. Most light sources do not radiate monochromatic light. What we call white light,such as light from the Sun, is a mixture of all the colors in the visible spectrum, with some represented more strongly than others. Human eyes respond best to greenlight...
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LIGHT, RADIATION AND TELESCOPES
As with all waves, light waves have a certain wavelength. This is the distance between the crests, or high points, of two successive waves; or between the troughs, or low points, of two successive waves. Alternatively, we can describe a wave by its frequency, the number of complete waves passing a certain point every second. A long wavelength means a low frequency, because fewer waves pass per second; and a short wavelength means a high frequency, because more waves pass every second. Light, h...
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Optics
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INTRODUCTION
Mirage
Mirages appear because differences in air temperature cause light rays from an object to take different paths to a viewer's
eye.
Refraction of Light by DiamondsThe brilliance of diamonds is due to their high refractive index, a measure of how strongly a transparent material bendslight rays. The skill of the gem-cutter lies in angling the facets of the stone so that each light ray entering it is reflectedmany times before it emerges again.Spencer Grant/Photo Researchers, Inc. The amount of light reflected depends on the ratio of the refractive indexes for the two media. The plane of incidence contains the incident ray and...
- Theia (Radiant) Greek A first-generation Titan goddess of sight and the shining light of the blue sky; daughter of Gaia and Uranus; mother, with Hyperion, of the gods who brought light to humans: Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon), and Eos (Dawn).
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Eye.
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INTRODUCTION
Eye, light-sensitive organ of vision in animals. The eyes of
Several structures, not parts of the eyeball, contribute to the protection of the eye. The most important of these are the eyelids, two folds of skin and tissue, upper andlower, that can be closed by means of muscles to form a protective covering over the eyeball against excessive light and mechanical injury. The eyelashes, a fringe ofshort hairs growing on the edge of either eyelid, act as a screen to keep dust particles and insects out of the eyes when the eyelids are partly closed. Inside the...
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Albert Einstein
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INTRODUCTION
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American physicist and Nobel laureate, best known as the creator of the special and general theories of relativity and for his
bold hypothesis concerning the particle nature of light.
On the basis of the general theory of relativity, Einstein accounted for the previously unexplained variations in the orbital motion of the planets and predicted thebending of starlight in the vicinity of a massive body such as the sun. The confirmation of this latter phenomenon during an eclipse of the sun in 1919 became a mediaevent, and Einstein’s fame spread worldwide. For the rest of his life Einstein devoted considerable time to generalizing his theory even more. His last effort, the unifi...
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Song of the Open Road
Leaves of Grass, 1900
Walt Whitman
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Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
I think you are latent with unseen existences — you are so dear to me. You flagg'd walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships! You rows of houses! you window-pierc'd façades! you roofs! You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards! You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much! You doors and ascending steps! you arches! You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden cros...
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- "The Charge of the Light Brigade" - anthology.
- The light of day
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Poetry
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INTRODUCTION
Phyllis McGinley
American poet and author Phyllis McGinley composed light, witty verse, much of which deals with family life.
repetition of certain lines and the rhyming of certain lines. The Provençal sestina features a set of six words that end lines (end-words), repeated in a dizzyingly complexpattern. The range of effects created by the poetic line varies tremendously depending on its length, its patterns of repetition, and whether the sentence stops at the end of theline (end-stopped) or carries over the end of the line (enjambed). Many of the earliest examples of Old English poetry feature an accentual line with...
- Lucina Roman An ancient Italian goddess of light and childbirth.
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Color
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INTRODUCTION
Color
© Microsoft Corporation.
The colors that absorb light of the additive primary colors are called subtractive primary colors. They are magenta (purplish-pink), which absorbs green; yellow, whichabsorbs blue; and cyan (light greenish-blue), which absorbs red. Thus, if a green light is thrown on a magenta pigment, the eye will perceive black. These subtractiveprimary colors are also called the pigment primaries. They can be mixed together in varying amounts to match almost any hue. If all three are mixed in about equalamoun...
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Laser.
their atoms into laser light. Consequently, they are the most powerful continuous wave (CW) lasers—that is, lasers that emit light continuously rather than in pulses. C Liquid Lasers The most common liquid laser media are inorganic dyes contained in glass vessels. They are pumped by intense flash lamps in a pulse mode or by a separate gas laserin the continuous wave mode. Some dye lasers are tunable, meaning that the color of the laser light they emit can be adjusted with the help of a prism lo...
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Interstellar Matter - astronomy.
silhouette of a cloud of dust. At other times, it blocks only a percentage of the light from behind it, a process known by astronomers as extinction . The long, narrow dark lanes in the Milky Way as seen from Earth are examples of extinction. The amount of extinction is different for different wavelengths of light. A2 Reddening Starlight that does not get completely absorbed by interstellar dust can still be changed by the dust’s effects. As light passes through less dense patches of interstel...
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al-Suhrawardi, Shihab al-Din Yahya
astronomy. The major portion of al-Suhrawardi's writings is devoted to this last stage of rational analysis andsystematization, although he sometimes relates his visions. His symbolic narratives in Persian are in some sense arecord of these, although in them al-Suhrawardi, the author, is never explicitly the first person. The narratives havea pedagogic function, and are guides to the kind of experiences to be encountered by the seeker and to theirinterpretation; indeed a central figur...
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Redshift - astronomy.
Astronomers can also use redshift to identify the oldest and most distant objects in the observable universe. Astronomers believe that quasars are the most distantobjects in the universe, because they have some of the largest redshifts. Quasars are objects in space that strongly emit radio waves. Astronomers originally namedthese objects quasars, which stands for quas i-stell ar (or starlike) radio source, because they appear as points of light, like stars, in photographs of the sky. When astro...
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Observatory - astronomy.
Ultraviolet radiation, X rays, and gamma rays have shorter wavelengths than visible light has. These types of radiation tell astronomers about the hottest and mostviolent phenomena in the universe. Earth’s atmosphere blocks most of this radiation, so astronomers must send their observatories above the atmosphere aboardballoons, rockets, or satellites. Ultraviolet telescopes are much like visible light telescopes, but X-ray telescopes must have special nested cylindrical mirrors to prevent Xrays...
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Extrasolar Planets - astronomy.
When a planet passes in a front of the star it orbits—an event called a transit—it causes a small dip in the brightness of the star. Measuring the slight change in thebrightness can be used not only to directly detect a planet, but to determine its size and orbit. However, the planet needs to orbit in a plane that lies in a telescope’sline of sight on the star. Despite long odds, Earth-based telescopes have detected and studied a few exoplanets using this method. The first space telescope design...
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Quantum Theory
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INTRODUCTION
Quantum Theory, in physics, description of the particles that make up matter and how they interact with each other and with energy.
electron in the same way a particle with momentum would: It bumps the electron and changes the electron’s path. The light is also affected by the collision as though itwere a particle, in that its energy and momentum changes. Momentum is a quantity that can be defined for all particles. For light particles, or photons, momentum depends on the frequency, or color, of the photon, which in turndepends on the photon’s energy. The energy of a photon is equal to a constant number, called Planck’s cons...
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Astronomy - astronomy.
Telescopes may use either lenses or mirrors to gather visible light, permitting direct observation or photographic recording of distant objects. Those that use lenses arecalled refracting telescopes, since they use the property of refraction, or bending, of light ( see Optics: Reflection and Refraction ). The largest refracting telescope is the 40-in (1-m) telescope at the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, founded in the late 19th century. Lenses bend different colors of light by d...
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Photosynthesis - biology.
P680 in Photosystem II is now electron deficient because it has donated electrons to P700 in Photosystem I. P680 electrons are replenished by the water that has beenabsorbed by the plant roots and transported to the chloroplasts in the leaves. The movement of electrons in Photosystems I and II and the action of an enzyme split thewater into oxygen, hydrogen ions, and electrons. The electrons from water flow to Photosystem II, replacing the electrons lost by P680. Some of the hydrogen ions maybe...
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Relativity
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INTRODUCTION
Albert Einstein
In 1905 German-born American physicist Albert Einstein published his first paper outlining the theory of relativity.
in calculating very large distances or very large aggregations of matter. As the quantum theory applies to the very small, so the relativity theory applies to the verylarge. Until 1887 no flaw had appeared in the rapidly developing body of classical physics. In that year, the Michelson-Morley experiment, named after the American physicistAlbert Michelson and the American chemist Edward Williams Morley, was performed. It was an attempt to determine the rate of the motion of the earth through t...
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Electron
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INTRODUCTION
Models of the Atom
Once scientists discovered the electron, they set out to explain how electrons behave in atoms.
Electron Density and Orbital ShapesAtomic orbitals are mathematical descriptions of where the electrons in an atom (or molecule) are most likely to be found.These descriptions are obtained by solving an equation known as the Schrödinger equation, which expresses ourknowledge of the atomic world. As the angular momentum and energy of an electron increases, it tends to reside indifferently shaped orbitals. The orbitals corresponding to the three lowest energy states are s, p, and d, respectively....
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Cosmology - astronomy.
In 1917 American scientist Harlow Shapley measured the distance to several groups of stars known as globular clusters. He measured these distances by using amethod developed in 1912 by American astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. Leavitt’s method relates distance to variations in brightness of Cepheid variables, a class of starsthat vary periodically in brightness. Shapley’s distance measurements showed that the clusters were centered around a point far from the Sun. The arrangement of theclusters was...
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Telescope - astronomy.
Observatory). In some telescopes designed in the 1990s, the mirror’s weight has been dramatically reduced by sandwiching a honeycomb pattern of glass ribs between a thin, butrigid, concave mirror and a flat back plate. Engineers have even developed meniscus mirrors—mirrors that are too thin to support their own weight. An adjustableframework supports the meniscus mirror, and servomechanical actuators, controlled by computer, continually adjust the shape of the mirror as it tracks celestial tar...
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Central Processing Unit.
Development of the computer chip started in 1958 when Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments demonstrated that it was possible to integrate the various components of aCPU onto a single piece of silicon. These computer chips were called integrated circuits (ICs) because they combined multiple electronic circuits on the same chip.Subsequent design and manufacturing advances allowed transistor densities on integrated circuits to increase tremendously. The first ICs had only tens of transistorsper chip com...
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Star (astronomy) - astronomy.
absorbing the missing colors of light. For example, the set of dark lines made by hydrogen includes a dark red line, the set of dark lines made by sodium includes a pairof dark yellow lines, and the set of dark lines made by iron includes lines of nearly every color. Each element in the gaseous outer layer of a star produces its ownparticular pattern of dark spectrum lines, depending on the temperature and pressure of the gas. Astronomers have observed spectrum lines, or spectra, for hundredsof...
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Horse - biology.
Horses reach sexual maturity at about one and a half years. The estrous cycle in the mare—a mature female horse—typically lasts 21 days. During the first five days ofthe cycle, the mare is usually receptive to mating. The estrous cycle stops during winter and resumes in the spring, which is the start of the breeding season. Astallion—a mature male horse—approaching a mare in estrus engages in various courtship rituals. These include uttering nickering sounds and sniffing and licking themare’s ge...
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Electric Lighting.
successful arc lamp in 1878. Tungsten filaments were substituted for carbon filaments in incandescent lamps in 1907, and gas-filled incandescent lamps were developedin 1913. The fluorescent lamp was introduced in 1938. See also Lamp. For most of the 20th century the incandescent light bulb was widely used for lighting in homes. More energy-efficient and longer-lasting fluorescent lamps were adoptedfor industrial and office use. In 1979 a compact fluorescent bulb that screwed into ordinary lig...
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Perception (psychology).
A4 Closure According to the law of closure, we prefer complete forms to incomplete forms. Thus, in the drawing below, we mentally close the gaps and perceive a picture of a duck. This tendency allows us to perceive whole objects from incomplete and imperfect forms. A5 Common Fate The law of common fate leads us to group together objects that move in the same direction. In the following illustration, imagine that three of the balls are moving in one direction, and two of the balls are mo...
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Nuclear Weapons.
Regardless of the method used to attain a supercritical assembly, the chain reaction proceeds for about a millionth of a second, liberating vast amounts of heat energy.The extremely fast release of a very large amount of energy in a relatively small volume causes the temperature to rise to tens of millions of degrees. The resultingrapid expansion and vaporization of the bomb material causes a powerful explosion. VI PRODUCTION OF FISSILE MATERIAL Much experimentation was necessary to make the p...
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Sun - astronomy.
A The Sun’s Place in the Milky Way The Milky Way Galaxy contains about 400 billion stars. All of these stars, and the gas and dust between them, are rotating about a galactic center. Stars that arefarther away from the center move at slower speeds and take longer to go around it. The Sun is located in the outer part of the galaxy, at a distance of 2.6 × 10 17 km (1.6 × 10 17 mi) from the center. The Sun, which is moving around the center at a velocity of 220 km/s (140 mi/s), takes 250 million y...
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Television.
A charge-coupled device (CCD) can be much smaller than a camera tube and is much more durable. As a result, cameras with CCDs are more compact and portablethan those using a camera tube. The image they create is less vulnerable to distortion and is therefore clearer. In a CCD, the light from a scene strikes an array ofphotodiodes arranged on a silicon chip. Photodiodes are devices that conduct electricity when they are struck by light; they send this electricity to tiny capacitors. Thecapacitors...
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Big Bang Theory - astronomy.
hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen atoms can only absorb and emit specific colors, or wavelengths, of light. The formation of atoms allowed many other wavelengths of light,wavelengths that had been interfering with the free electrons prior to the cooling of the universe, to travel much farther than before. This change set free radiation thatwe can detect today. After billions of years of cooling, this cosmic background radiation is at about 3 K (-270°C/-454°F).The cosmic background radiation was first d...
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Gardening - biology.
of synthetic and organic fertilizers, see Organic Farming.) Fertilizers usually are sold in packages, on which the percentage by weight of the macronutrients nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) are listed on thelabel—always in the order N-P-K. For example, a fertilizer that is labeled 10-5-3 is 10 percent nitrogen, 5 percent phosphorus, and 3 percent potassium. V PLANTING AND TRANSPLANTING Before planting seeds, gardeners prepare, or till, the soil using a variety of methods. Some...
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Galaxy - astronomy.
Astronomers have obtained images of young galaxies using the Keck Telescope in Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope, which resides in an orbit high above Earth’satmosphere and thus avoids atmospheric interference. Photos from the HST show galaxies that are as far as 13 billion light-years away from Earth, which means theyformed soon after the universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago. The galaxies appear to be spherical in shape, and may be early precursors of elliptical and spiralgalaxies....
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Boxing.
C Offensive Techniques To be effective, boxers must have an assortment of punches that are coordinated with their footwork. Less powerful punches often serve the important role of settingup the fighter’s chief “weapons,” as boxing analysts sometimes call a boxer’s main offensive skills. C1 Feinting Moving the hands or head to confuse an opponent is called feinting. A smart boxer will first test the opponent by trying different feints, noting the reaction to each onebefore deciding which will b...
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Jupiter (planet) - astronomy.
Beneath the supercritical fluid zone, the pressure reaches 3 million Earth atmospheres. At this depth, the atoms collide so frequently and violently that the hydrogenatoms are ionized—that is, the negatively charged electrons are stripped away from the positively charged protons of the hydrogen nuclei. This ionization results in asea of electrically charged particles that resembles a liquid metal and gives rise to Jupiter’s magnetic field. This liquid metallic hydrogen zone is 30,000 to 40,000 k...
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Fish - biology.
pectoral fins provide fine movements, add forward thrust, or, together with the pelvic fins, serve as brakes. Typically, fins consist of a thin membrane stretched over afanlike series of thin rods called spines or rays. Most fish breathe underwater with the help of special respiratory organs called gills. Gills are made of a series of thin sheets or filaments through which blood circulates.As water moves into a fish’s mouth and passes over the gills, dissolved oxygen passes across the thin gill...
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Cat Family - biology.
cats have coats that are mainly brown, yellow, or gray, often with white underbellies. The cubs of many species of cats have spotted coats, which helps hide them ingrass and underbrush from predators. Adult cats that have mainly spotted patterns in their fur include cheetahs, leopards, clouded leopards, jaguars, ocelots, margays, Geoffroy’s cat, and servals. Singlecolor coats are found in lions, pumas, and jaguarundis. Some individuals among leopards and jaguars, and more rarely in other species...
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Thomas Edison.
While Edison was working on the electric light, he made a scientific discovery that would become important to future generations. Edison noticed that particles of carbonfrom the filament blackened the insides of his light bulbs. This effect was caused by the emission of electrons from the filament, although Edison made the discoverybefore he and other scientists knew the electron existed. Not until 1897 did British physicist J. J. Thomson prove that the blackening observed by Edison was caused b...
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Thomas Edison - USA History.
While Edison was working on the electric light, he made a scientific discovery that would become important to future generations. Edison noticed that particles of carbonfrom the filament blackened the insides of his light bulbs. This effect was caused by the emission of electrons from the filament, although Edison made the discoverybefore he and other scientists knew the electron existed. Not until 1897 did British physicist J. J. Thomson prove that the blackening observed by Edison was caused b...
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Fire - chemistry.
were usually natural caves. Eventually people learned to dip branches in pitch to form torches. They created crude lamps by filling a hollowed out piece of stone withmoss soaked in oil or tallow (a substance derived from animal fat). By cooking with fire, prehistoric people made the meat of the animals they killed more palatable and digestible. They learned to preserve meat by smoking it over a fire,vastly decreasing the danger of periodic starvation. Cooking also enabled them to add some for...
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Learning.
B1 Acquisition The acquisition phase is the initial learning of the conditioned response—for example, the dog learning to salivate at the sound of the bell. Several factors can affect the speed of conditioning during the acquisition phase. The most important factors are the order and timing of the stimuli. Conditioning occurs most quickly when theconditioned stimulus (the bell) precedes the unconditioned stimulus (the food) by about half a second. Conditioning takes longer and the response is...
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Theater
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INTRODUCTION
The Art of Theater
BBC Worldwide Americas, Inc.
Theater at EpidaurusAncient Greek dramas were performed in open-air theaters like this one in Epidaurus, Greece, which was designed byPolyclitus the Younger in 350 bc. A festival of ancient Greek drama is still held in the summer in this 14,000-seat theater.Roger Wood/Corbis Fundamental to the theater experience is the act of seeing and being seen; in fact, the word theater comes from the Greek word theatron , meaning 'seeing place.' Throughout the history of world cultures, actors have used...
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Nuclear Energy
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INTRODUCTION
Gundremmingen Nuclear Power Plant, Germany
The first of three boiling-water nuclear reactors at Germany's Gundremmingen plant began operating in 1966 but was
permanently shut down after being decommissioned in 1983.
such as ¯U is induced by the absorption of a neutron as in producing cesium-140, rubidium-93, three neutrons, and 200 MeV, or 3.2 × 10 -11 J (7.7 × 10 -12 cal). A nuclear fission reaction releases 10 million times as much energy as is released in a typical chemical reaction. See Nuclear Chemistry. III NUCLEAR ENERGY FROM FISSION The two key characteristics of nuclear fission important for the practical release of nuclear energy are both evident in equation (2). First, the energy per fiss...
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Pablo Picasso.
Color juxtapositions—between blue and orange, for instance—are intentionally strident and unharmonious. The representation of space is fragmented and discontinuous. While the left side of the canvas is largely Iberian-influenced, the right side is inspired by African masks, especially in its striped patterns and oval forms. Suchborrowings, which led to great simplification, distortion, and visual incongruities, were considered extremely daring in 1907. The head of the figure at the bottom right,...
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Excerpt from Romeo and Juliet - anthology.
Take all myself. ROMEO. I take thee at thy word.Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized.Henceforth I never will be Romeo. JULIET. What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night,So stumblest on my counsel? ROMEO. By a nameI know not how to tell thee who I am.My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,Because it is an enemy to thee.Had I it written, I would tear the word. JULIET. My ears have yet not drunk a hundred wordsOf thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound.Art thou not Romeo, and a...
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Optoelectric
Table of Contents I) Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..page 3 II) Photometry……………………………………………………………………page 4 to 6 III) Gratings equations………………………………………………………page 7 to 9 IV) Method and material………………………………………………….page 10 to 11 V) Experimental procedure………………………………………………page 12 to 16 VI) Light source spectrum…………………………………………………page 17 to 18 VII) Analysis, results and explanation of laser, led, tungsten operation a) Laser diode……………………………………………………………..page 19 to 22 b) LED (...