AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the legislature, the political assembly that makes laws and decides tax. The British people are represented by members of parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. MPs are chosen in elections. The MPs in the House of Commons decide who will be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The prime minister decides who will be in the British Government (Her Majesty's Government). The government is not controlled by the king or queen, but by Parliament. In Britain, Parliament is made up of the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Unlike the House of Commons, the people in the House of Lords are not elected. The people who sit in the House of Lords are called peers. Most peers are appointed by the government. There are some who are hereditary peers (who inherit their peerages from ancestors or other family members). Certain bishops in the established Church of England also attend the House of Lords. (The Church of England is the national church in England. The Church of Scotland does not have bishops, and neither Wales nor Northern Ireland have an established national church.) Together, the two houses make a bicameral legislature, in which the House of Commons has more power. In the past, the House of Lords had more power. Before the 20th century, the prime minister was often a member of the House of Lords. As the House of Lords lost its powers, as political reforms tried to improve democracy, the House of Commons became more powerful and the prime minister started always to be a member of the House of Commons.
After the English Civil War during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector, and the monarchy ended for a time. The British Isles were a republic, which Cromwell named the "Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland". Although the monarchy was restored after his death, the Crown slowly became the secondary power, and Parliament the first. Until the early twentieth century, only men who owned property could vote to choose MPs. In the nineteenth century, more people were given suffrage. In 1928, all men and women got the vote: this is called universal suffrage.
Almost all members of Parliament belong to political parties. The biggest parties are the Conservative Party, Labour Party, the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats. Members of the same party agree to work together. A party with more than half the seats (a majority) forms the government. The leader of the party becomes the prime minister, who then chooses the other ministers. Because the government has a majority in Parliament, it can normally control what laws are passed.
The British parliament is in Westminster, in London, but it has power over the whole of the United Kingdom. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own parliaments as well, and these have more limited powers. (England does not have a separate parliament.) Scotland has the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh. Wales has the Welsh Parliament in Cardiff. Northern Ireland has the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont in Belfast. There are also parliaments in the Isle of Man and in Jersey and Guernsey (the Channel Islands), which are all island states for which the UK has some responsibility in international law. Man, Jersey, and Guernsey are "crown dependencies". Some British Overseas Territories have their own legislatures.
The United Kingdom has one of the most advanced militaries in the world, alongside such countries such as the USA and France, and operates a large navy (Royal Navy), a sizable army, (British Army) and an air force (Royal Air Force).
From the 18th century to the early 20th century, the United Kingdom was one of the most powerful nations in the world, with a large and powerful navy (due to the fact it was surrounded by sea, so a large navy was the most practical option). This status has faded in recent times, but it remains a member of various military groups such as the UN Security Council and NATO. It is also still seen as a great military power.
The United Kingdom is a developed country with the sixth largest economy in the world. It was a superpower during the 18th, 19th and early 20th century and was considered since the early 1800s to be the most powerful and influential nation in the world, in politics, economics (For it was the wealthiest country at the time.) and in military strength.
Britain continued to be the biggest manufacturing economy in the world until 1908 and the largest economy until the 1920s. The economic cost of two world wars and the decline of the British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s reduced its leading role in global affairs. The United Kingdom has strong economic, cultural, military and political influence and is a nuclear power. The United Kingdom holds a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and is a member of the G8, NATO, World Trade Organization and the Commonwealth of Nations. The City of London, in the capital, is famous as being the largest centre of finance in the world.
William Shakespeare was an English playwright. He wrote plays in the late 16th century. Some of his plays were "Romeo and Juliet" and "Macbeth". In the 19th century, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens were novelists. Twentieth century writers include the science fiction novelist H. G. Wells and J. R. R. Tolkien. The children's fantasy "Harry Potter" series was written by J. K. Rowling. Aldous Huxley was also from the United Kingdom.
English language literature is written by authors from many countries. Eight people from the United Kingdom have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Seamus Heaney is a writer who was born in Northern Ireland.
Arthur Conan Doyle from Scotland wrote the Sherlock Holmes detective novels. He was from Edinburgh. The poet Dylan Thomas brought Welsh culture to international attention.
The nature of education is a devolved matter in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They, and England, have separate, but similar, systems of education. They all have laws that a broad education is required from ages five to eighteen, except for in Scotland where school departure is allowed from the age of sixteen. Pupils attend state funded schools (academy schools, faith schools, grammar schools, city technology colleges, studio schools) and other children attend independent schools (known as public schools).
There have been universities in Britain since the Middle Ages. The "ancient universities" started in this time and in the Renaissance. They are: the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the University of St Andrews, the University of Glasgow, the University of Aberdeen, and the University of Edinburgh. These are the oldest universities in the English-speaking world.
The University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and London universities (University College London, the London School of Economics, King's College London and Imperial College London) collectively form the Golden Triangle of universities in the south east of England. A broader group of twenty universities form the Russell Group of research universities.
The BBC is an organisation in the United Kingdom. It broadcasts in the United Kingdom and other countries on television, radio and the Internet. The BBC also sells its programmes to other broadcasting companies around world. The organisation is run by a group of twelve governors who have been given the job by the Queen, on the advice of government ministers.
Road traffic in the United Kingdom drives on the left hand side of the road (unlike the Americas and most of Europe), and the driver steers from the right hand side of the vehicle. The road network on the island of Great Britain is extensive, with most local and rural roads having evolved from Roman and Medieval times. Major routes developed in the mid 20th Century were made to the needs of the motor car. The high speed motorway (freeway) network was mostly constructed in the 1960s and 1970s and links together major towns and cities.
The system of rail transport was invented in England and Wales, so the United Kingdom has the oldest railway network in the world. It was built mostly during the Victorian era. At the heart of the network are five long distance main lines which radiate from London to the major cities and secondary population centres with dense commuter networks within the regions. The newest part of the network connects London to the Channel Tunnel from St Pancras station. The British Rail network is part privatised, with privately owned train operating companies providing service along particular lines or regions, whilst the tracks, signals and stations are owned by a Government controlled company called Network Rail. In Northern Ireland the NI Railways is the national railway. The system of underground railways in London, known as the Tube, has been copied by many other cities.
Most domestic air travel in the United Kingdom is between London and the major cities in Scotland and the North of England and Belfast. London-Heathrow is the nation’s largest airport and is one of the most important international hubs in the world. Other major airports with principal international service include London-Gatwick, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow. An extensive system of ferry networks operates.
Major languages spoken in the United Kingdom other than English include Polish (500,000 approximate number of speakers in the United Kingdom), Eastern Panjabi or Punjabi (471,000), Bengali (400,000), Urdu (400,000), Cantonese (300,000), Greek (200,000), Southwestern Caribbean Creole English (170,000).
Native languages include:
The Universe is all of time and space and its contents. It is made of many millions of billions of stars and planets and enormous clouds of gas separated by a big space.
Astronomers can use telescopes to look at very distant galaxies. This is how they see what the Universe looked like a long time ago. This is because the light from distant parts of the Universe takes a very long time to reach us. From these observations, it seems the physical laws and constants of the Universe have not changed.
Physicists are currently unsure if anything existed before the Big Bang. They are also unsure whether the size of the Universe is infinite, meaning it’s size never ends as it has been expanding since the Big Bang.
People have long had ideas to explain the Universe. Most early models had the Earth at the centre of the Universe. Some ancient Greeks thought that the Universe has infinite space and has existed forever. They thought it had a set of celestial spheres which corresponded to the fixed stars, the Sun and various planets. The spheres circled about a round but unmoving Earth.
Over hundreds of years, better observations led to Copernicus's Sun-centred model. This was very controversial at the time, and was fought by religious authorities, most famously by the Christian church (see Giordano Bruno and Galileo).
The invention of the telescope in the Netherlands, 1608, was a very important moment in astronomy. By the middle of the 1800s, telescopes were good enough for other galaxies to be seen. The modern optical (uses visible light) telescope is still more advanced. Meanwhile, Isaac Newton improved the ideas of gravity and dynamics (equations) and showed how the Solar System worked.
In the 1900s, even better telescopes led astronomers to realize that the Solar System is in a galaxy made of billions of stars, which we call the Milky Way. They also realized that other galaxies exist outside it, as far as we can see. This started a new kind of astronomy called cosmology, in which astronomers study what these galaxies are made of and how they are spread out through so they can learn more about the history of the Universe and how it works. By measuring the redshift of galaxies, cosmologists soon discovered that the Universe is expanding (see: Hubble).
The most used scientific model of the Universe is known as the Big Bang theory, which says the Universe expanded from a single point that held all the matter and energy of the Universe. There are many kinds of scientific evidence that support the Big Bang idea. Astronomers think that the Big Bang happened about 13.73 billion years ago, making the Universe 13.73 billion years old. Since then, the universe has expanded to be at least 93 billion light years, or 8.80 metres, in diameter. It is still expanding right now, and the expansion is getting faster.
However, astronomers are still not sure what is causing the universe to expand. Because of this, astronomers call the mysterious energy causing the expansion dark energy. By studying the expansion of the Universe, astronomers have also realized most of the matter in the Universe may be in a form which cannot be observed by any scientific equipment we have. This matter has been named dark matter. Just to be clear, dark matter and energy have not been observed directly (that is why they are called 'dark'). However, many astronomers think they must exist, because many astronomical observations would be hard to explain if they didn't.
Some parts of the universe are expanding even faster than the speed of light. This means the light will never be able to reach us here on Earth, so we will never be able to see these parts of the universe. We call the part of the universe we can see the observable universe.
The word "Universe" comes from the Old French word "Univers", which comes from the Latin word "universum". The Latin word was used by Cicero and later Latin authors in many of the same senses as the modern English word is used.
A different interpretation (way to interpret) of "unvorsum" is "everything rotated as one" or "everything rotated by one". This refers to an early Greek model of the Universe. In that model, all matter was in rotating spheres centered on the Earth; according to Aristotle, the rotation of the outermost sphere was responsible for the motion and change of everything within. It was natural for the Greeks to assume that the Earth was stationary and that the heavens rotated about the Earth, because careful astronomical and physical measurements (such as the Foucault pendulum) are required to prove otherwise.
The most common term for "Universe" among the ancient Greek philosophers from Pythagoras onwards was "το παν" (The All), defined as all matter ("το ολον") and all space ("το κενον").
The broadest word meaning of the Universe is found in "De divisione naturae" by the medieval philosopher Johannes Scotus Eriugena, who defined it as simply everything: everything that exists and everything that does not exist.
Time is not considered in Eriugena's definition; thus, his definition includes everything that exists, has existed and will exist, as well as everything that does not exist, has never existed and will never exist. This all-embracing definition was not adopted by most later philosophers, but something similar is in quantum physics.
Usually the Universe is thought to be everything that exists, has existed, and will exist. This definition says that the Universe is made of two elements: space and time, together known as space-time or the vacuum; and matter and different forms of energy and momentum occupying space-time. The two kinds of elements behave according to physical laws, in which we describe how the elements interact.
A similar definition of the term "universe" is everything that exists at a single moment of time, such as the present or the beginning of time, as in the sentence "The Universe was of size 0".
In Aristotle's book "The Physics", Aristotle divided το "παν" (everything) into three roughly analogous elements: "matter" (the stuff of which the Universe is made), "form" (the arrangement of that matter in space) and "change" (how matter is created, destroyed or altered in its properties, and similarly, how form is altered). Physical laws were the rules governing the properties of matter, form and their changes. Later philosophers such as Lucretius, Averroes, Avicenna and Baruch Spinoza altered or refined these divisions. For example, Averroes and Spinoza have "active" principles governing the Universe which act on "passive" elements.
It is possible to form space-times, each existing but not able to touch, move, or change (interact with each other. An easy way to think of this is a group of separate soap bubbles, in which people living on one soap bubble cannot interact with those on other soap bubbles. According to one common terminology, each "soap bubble" of space-time is denoted as a universe, whereas our particular space-time is denoted as "the Universe", just as we call our moon "the Moon". The entire collection of these separate space-times is denoted as the multiverse. In principle, the other unconnected universes may have different dimensionalities and topologies of space-time, different forms of matter and energy, and different physical laws and physical constants, although such possibilities are speculations.
According to a still-more-restrictive definition, the Universe is everything within our connected space-time that could have a chance to interact with us and vice versa.
According to the general idea of relativity, some regions of space may never interact with ours even in the lifetime of the Universe, due to the finite speed of light and the ongoing expansion of space. For example, radio messages sent from Earth may never reach some regions of space, even if the Universe would exist forever; space may expand faster than light can traverse it.
It is worth emphasizing that those distant regions of space are taken to exist and be part of reality as much as we are; yet we can never interact with them, even in principle. The spatial region within which we can affect and be affected is denoted as the "observable universe".
Strictly speaking, the observable Universe depends on the location of the observer. By travelling, an observer can come into contact with a greater region of space-time than an observer who remains still, so that the observable Universe for the former is larger than for the latter. Nevertheless, even the most rapid traveler may not be able to interact with all of space. Typically, the 'observable Universe' means the Universe seen from our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Universe is huge and possibly infinite in volume. The matter which can be seen is spread over a space at least 93 billion light years across. For comparison, the diameter of a typical galaxy is only 30,000 light-years, and the typical distance between two neighboring galaxies is only 3 million light-years. As an example, our Milky Way Galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter, and our nearest sister galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is located roughly 2.5 million light years away. The observable Universe contains more than 2 trillion (10) galaxies and, overall, as many as an estimated stars (more stars than all the grains of sand on planet Earth).
Typical galaxies range from dwarf galaxies with as few as ten million (10) stars up to giants with one trillion (10) stars, all orbiting the galaxy's center of mass. Thus, a very rough estimate from these numbers would suggest there are around one sextillion (10) stars in the observable Universe; though a 2003 study by Australian National University astronomers resulted in a figure of 70 sextillion (7 x 10).
The matter that can be seen is spread throughout the Universe when averaged over distances longer than 300 million light-years. However, on smaller length-scales, matter is observed to form 'clumps', many atoms are condensed into stars, most stars into galaxies, most galaxies into galaxy groups and clusters and, lastly, the largest-scale structures such as the Great Wall of galaxies.
The present overall density of the Universe is very low, roughly 9.9 × 10 grams per cubic centimetre. This mass-energy appears to consist of 73% dark energy, 23% cold dark matter and 4% ordinary matter. The density of atoms is about a single hydrogen atom for every four cubic meters of volume. The properties of dark energy and dark matter are not known. Dark matter slows the expansion of the Universe. Dark energy makes its expansion faster.
The Universe is old, and changing. The best good guess of the Universe's age is 13.798±0.037 billion years old, based on what was seen of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Independent estimates (based on measurements such as radioactive dating) agree, although they are less precise, ranging from 11–20 billion years.
to 13–15 billion years.
The Universe has not been the same at all times in its history. This getting bigger accounts for how Earth-bound people can see the light from a galaxy 30 billion light-years away, even if that light has traveled for only 13 billion years; the very space between them has expanded. This expansion is consistent with the observation that the light from distant galaxies has been redshifted; the photons emitted have been stretched to longer wavelengths and lower frequency during their journey. The rate of this spatial expansion is accelerating, based on studies of Type Ia supernovae and other data.
The relative amounts of different chemical elements — especially the lightest atoms such as hydrogen, deuterium and helium — seem to be identical in all of the Universe and throughout all of the history of it that we know of. The Universe seems to have much more matter than antimatter. The Universe appears to have no net electric charge. Gravity is the dominant interaction at cosmological distances. The Universe also seems to have no net momentum or angular momentum. The absence of net charge and momentum is expected if the Universe is finite.
The Universe appears to have a smooth space-time continuum made of three spatial dimensions and one temporal (time) dimension. On the average, space is very nearly flat (close to zero curvature), meaning that Euclidean geometry is experimentally true with high accuracy throughout most of the Universe. However, the Universe may have more dimensions, and its spacetime may have a multiply connected global topology.
The Universe has the same physical laws and physical constants throughout. According to the prevailing Standard Model of physics, all matter is composed of three generations of leptons and quarks, both of which are fermions. These elementary particles interact via at most three fundamental interactions: the electroweak interaction which includes electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force; the strong nuclear force described by quantum chromodynamics; and gravity, which is best described at present by general relativity.
Special relativity holds in all the Universe in local space and time. Otherwise, general relativity holds. There is no explanation for the particular values that physical constants appear to have throughout our Universe, such as Planck's constant "h" or the gravitational constant "G". Several conservation laws have been identified, such as the conservation of charge, conservation of momentum, conservation of angular momentum and conservation of energy.
Accurate predictions of the Universe's past and future require an accurate theory of gravitation. The best theory available is Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which has passed all experimental tests so far. However, since rigorous experiments have not been carried out on "cosmological" length scales, general relativity could conceivably be inaccurate. Nevertheless, its predictions appear to be consistent with observations, so there is no reason to adopt another theory.
General relativity provides of a set of ten nonlinear partial differential equations for the spacetime metric (Einstein's field equations) that must be solved from the distribution of mass-energy and momentum throughout the Universe. Since these are unknown in exact detail, cosmological models have been based on the cosmological principle, which states that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic. In effect, this principle asserts that the gravitational effects of the various galaxies making up the Universe are equivalent to those of a fine dust distributed uniformly throughout the Universe with the same average density. The assumption of a uniform dust makes it easy to solve Einstein's field equations and predict the past and future of the Universe on cosmological time scales.
Einstein's field equations include a cosmological constant (Lamda: "Λ"), that is related to an energy density of empty space. Depending on its sign, the cosmological constant can either slow (negative "Λ") or accelerate (positive "Λ") the expansion of the Universe. Although many scientists, including Einstein, had speculated that "Λ" was zero, recent astronomical observations of type Ia supernovae have detected a large amount of dark energy that is accelerating the Universe's expansion. Preliminary studies suggest that this dark energy is related to a positive "Λ", although alternative theories cannot be ruled out as yet.
The prevailing Big Bang model accounts for many of the experimental observations described above, such as the correlation of distance and redshift of galaxies, the universal ratio of hydrogen:helium atoms, and the ubiquitous, isotropic microwave radiation background. As noted above, the redshift arises from the metric expansion of space; as the space itself expands, the wavelength of a photon traveling through space likewise increases, decreasing its energy. The longer a photon has been traveling, the more expansion it has undergone; hence, older photons from more distant galaxies are the most red-shifted. Determining the correlation between distance and redshift is an important problem in experimental physical cosmology.
Other experimental observations can be explained by combining the overall expansion of space with nuclear physics and atomic physics. As the Universe expands, the energy density of the electromagnetic radiation decreases more quickly than does that of matter, since the energy of a photon decreases with its wavelength. Thus, although the energy density of the Universe is now dominated by matter, it was once dominated by radiation; poetically speaking, all was light. As the Universe expanded, its energy density decreased and it became cooler; as it did so, the elementary particles of matter could associate stably into ever larger combinations. Thus, in the early part of the matter-dominated era, stable protons and neutrons formed, which then associated into atomic nuclei. At this stage, the matter in the Universe was mainly a hot, dense plasma of negative electrons, neutral neutrinos and positive nuclei. Nuclear reactions among the nuclei led to the present abundances of the lighter nuclei, particularly hydrogen, deuterium, and helium. Eventually, the electrons and nuclei combined to form stable atoms, which are transparent to most wavelengths of radiation; at this point, the radiation decoupled from the matter, forming the ubiquitous, isotropic background of microwave radiation observed today.
Other observations are not clearly answered by known physics. According to the prevailing theory, a slight imbalance of matter over antimatter was present in the Universe's creation, or developed very shortly thereafter. Although the matter and antimatter mostly annihilated one another, producing photons, a small residue of matter survived, giving the present matter-dominated Universe.
Several lines of evidence also suggest that a rapid cosmic inflation of the Universe occurred very early in its history (roughly 10 seconds after its creation). Recent observations also suggest that the cosmological constant ("Λ") is not zero, and that the net mass-energy content of the Universe is dominated by a dark energy and dark matter that have not been characterized scientifically. They differ in their gravitational effects. Dark matter gravitates as ordinary matter does, and thus slows the expansion of the Universe; by contrast, dark energy serves to accelerate the Universe's expansion.
Some people think that there is more than one universe. They think that there is a set of universes called the multiverse. By definition, there is no way for anything in one universe to affect something in another.
The multiverse is not yet a scientific idea because there is no way to test it. An idea that cannot be tested or is not based on logic is not science. So it is not known if the multiverse is a scientific idea.
The future of the Universe is a mystery. However, there has a couple of theories based on the possible shapes of the Universe:
Unit of measurement
Units of measurement give "standards" so that the numbers from our measurements refer to the same thing. Measurement is a process that uses numbers to describe a physical quantity. We can measure how big things are, how warm they are, how heavy they are, and many other features.
For example, the metre is a standard unit to measure length. Before 1982, one meter was defined as the distance between two markers on a special metal rod. During that time, saying that something had a length of two meters meant that it was exactly twice as long as the rod used to define the meter. Now scientists define the meter by using the speed of light.
In the past, different units were used in different countries. Today, most units of measure fall into one of three systems:
The older two, the British imperial system and the closely related US customary system use the foot as a measure of length, the pound as a measure for weight, and the second as a measure for time. They use other units as well. The number of smaller units that make the bigger units in these two systems varies: For example, there are 12 inches in a foot and 16 ounces in a pound.
The newest and most used of the three systems is the metric system or SI system which use 10, 100 or 1000 of a smaller unit to make a bigger one. For instance, there are 100 centimetres in one metre or 1000 grams in one kilogram. This system uses the metre for length and kilogram for mass.
The common, non-metric measurement of time does not follow this pattern. The second is the basis for time measurement, and it is based on the sexagesimal system: 60 seconds make one minute, and 60 minutes make one hour.
The property of the thing being measured is given as a number of units of measure. The number only has sense when the unit of measurement is also given. By that number it represents a measurement of something.
For example, The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France is tall. That is, the distance from the top to the bottom of the Eiffel Tower is 300 metres. The property of the Eiffel Tower being measured is a distance. The number measured is 300. 300 of what? The unit of measurement is the metre.
Standards are usually special objects used to make measurements. A metre stick is an example of a standard. When you measure something with a metre stick, you can compare that measurement to anything else that is also measured with a metre stick. This makes measurement easier and comparisons between measurements easier.
Science, medicine and engineering use smaller units of measurement to measure small things with less error. It is easy to measure large things using larger units of measurement. Astronomical measurements like the width of a galaxy use light years and parsecs.
Small measurements like the mass of an atom use special units of measurement.
There are many different standards and units used all over the world. Some became less used during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The metric system is a system of measurement used in most of the world. It is also called the International System of Units, or SI.
Units of measure in the metric system include:
Imperial units were defined in the United Kingdom in 1824. These units were based on similar units that were in use before 1824. Imperial units were used in countries that were part of the British Empire. While many of these countries, including the United Kingdom, have officially adopted SI, the older system of units are still used.
US customary units are the official units used in the US. These are similar to the British imperial units and also based on the units used in the United Kingdom from before American Independence. Some of the units are different to the British ones. For example, there are 20 imperial fluid ounces in an imperial pint, but 16 US fluid ounces in a US pint. Additionally, the US fluid ounce is slightly bigger than the imperial fluid ounce. The result is that US pints and gallons are smaller than imperial pints and gallons. In the United States, the metric system has been legal for trade since 1866 but other measurements such as the gallon, inch, and the pound are still widely used.
Imperial and US units of measurement include:
The ounces for weight and volume are different. Even when measuring water, the number of ounces of weight is not the same as the number of fluid ounces.
The unit of time is the second. The minute (60 seconds) and hour (60 minutes or 3600 seconds) are larger units. A day is defined as 24 hours, but the Earth’s rotation has slowed. The difference is corrected at the end of some years with what is called a leap second. A week (7 days) and month are also standard units.
A unit of measurement that applies to money is called a unit of account. This is normally a currency issued by a country. For instance, the United States use dollars. Each dollar is 100 cents. The United Kingdom uses pounds. Each pound is 100 pennies or pence. The European Union uses the Euro. There are 100 cents in the Euro.
The units for electricity, magnetism and radiation were mostly invented in the 19th century when scientists learned how to measure them. Most were originally given imperial systems, but it is usual to use metric systems for them today.
United States customary units
U.S. customary units is the system of units of measurement used to measure things in the United States. The system of Imperial units is similar and in some parts identical.
Length or distance units include the inch, foot, yard and mile.
Land units include square miles (2589998.47032 square meter) and acres (4046.8726 square meter).
Common volume units are the teaspoon, tablespoon (3 teaspoons), fluid ounce (two tablespoons), cup (8 ounces), pint (2 cups, or 16 fluid ounces), quart (2 pints, or 32 fluid ounces), US gallon (16 cups, 128 fluid ounces, or 3.8 liters).
A barrel is the unit to measure oil.
Temperature is measured in degrees Fahrenheit (°F). Here is a formula to convert from °C to °F: formula_1
Units of weight and mass include the pound (453.6 grams), which contains 16 ounces. This should not be confused with the British pound which is a type of money. The different uses of the word "pound" can cause confusion. Different sizes of ounce are also in use.
Some people have been trying to replace these units with the metric system since the 1820s. Much infrastructure in the United States and British Empire was built in past centuries using the old measures. During the 20th century some sectors such as science, medicine and the military of the United States converted to metric but Americans still use the old units for daily purposes. On the other hand, world trade is conducted using the metric system and except for the US, the world uses the metric system for almost all purposes.
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun in the Solar System. It is an ice giant. It is the third largest planet in the solar system.
The planet is made of ice, gases and liquid metal. Its atmosphere contains hydrogen (H), helium (He) and methane. The temperature on Uranus is near the top of its atmosphere, but its small solid core (about 55% the mass of Earth) is probably about .
The planet is tilted on its axis so much that it is sideways. It has five big moons, many small ones, and a small system of 13 planetary rings.
The distance between Uranus and the Sun is about 2.8 billion km. Uranus completes its orbit around the Sun in 84 earth years. It completes a spin around itself in 17 hours and 14 minutes. This means there are about 43,000 Uranian days in one Uranian year.
Uranus was discovered in 1781. This planet can be seen with the naked eye under perfect conditions. John Flamsteed saw it decades earlier but mistook it for a star (34 Tauri).
Uranus is named after Uranus, the Greek name of the Sumerian god Anu, who was a god of the sky.
Uranus has 27 known moons. They are named for characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. The five biggest moons are Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. Many moons have yet to be discovered.
In 1986, NASA's "Voyager 2" visited Uranus. This is the only space probe that tried to investigate the planet from a short distance.
Uranus is covered in blue clouds. The top clouds, made of methane, are difficult to see. Lower clouds are thought to be frozen water. There are also violent storms. Wind speeds can reach . Scientists are studying the clouds to try to understand the storms on the planet.
The planet Uranus has a system made of 13 rings which is far fewer than the rings of Saturn but more than those around Jupiter and Neptune. The rings of Uranus were discovered in 1977. More than 200 years ago, William Herschel also reported observing rings, but modern astronomers do not believe that he saw them, because they are very dark and faint. Two additional rings were discovered in 1986 in images taken by Voyager 2, and two outer rings were found in 2003–2005 by the Hubble Space Telescope. The rings are probably mainly composed of frozen water.
The rings of Uranus are thought to be relatively young, not more than 600 million years old. The Uranian ring system probably began from the collisional fragmentation of moons that once existed around the planet. After colliding, the moons probably broke up into many particles, which survived as narrow, optically dense rings only in zones of maximum stability.
The ring system of Uranus has thirteen distinct rings. In order of increasing distance from the planet they are: 1986U2R/ζ, 6, 5, 4, α, β, η, γ, δ, λ, ε, ν, μ rings. They can be divided into three groups: nine narrow main rings (6, 5, 4, α, β, η, γ, δ, ε), two dusty rings (1986U2R/ζ, λ) and two outer rings (μ, ν). The rings of Uranus consist mainly of macroscopic particles and little dust, although dust is known to be present in 1986U2R/ζ, η, δ, λ, ν and μ rings.
In addition to these well-known rings, there may be numerous optically thin dust bands and faint rings between them. These faint rings and dust bands may exist only temporarily. Some of them became visible during a series of ring plane-crossing events in 2007. A number of dust bands between the rings were observed in forward-scattering geometry by "Voyager 2". All rings of Uranus show azimuthal brightness variations.
The rings are made of an extremely dark material. The rings are slightly red in the ultraviolet and visible parts of the spectrum and grey in near-infrared. They show no identifiable spectral features. The chemical composition of the ring particles is not known. However, they cannot be made of pure water ice like the rings of Saturn because they are too dark, darker than the inner moons of Uranus. This shows that they are probably a mixture of the ice and a dark material. The nature of this material is not clear, but it may be organic compounds considerably darkened by the charged particle irradiation from the Uranian magnetosphere. The rings' particles may consist of a heavily processed material which was initially similar to that of the inner moons.
As a whole, the ring system of Uranus is unlike either the faint dusty rings of Jupiter or the broad and complex rings of Saturn, some of which are composed of very bright material—water ice. However, there are similarities with some parts of the latter ring system; the Saturnian F ring and the ε ring are both narrow, relatively dark and are shepherded by a pair of moons. The newly discovered outer rings of Uranus are similar to the outer G and E rings of Saturn. Narrow ringlets existing in the broad Saturnian rings also resemble the narrow rings of Uranus. In addition, dust bands observed between the main rings of Uranus may be similar to the rings of Jupiter. In contrast, the Neptunian ring system is quite similar to that of Uranus, although it is less complex, darker and contains more dust. The Neptunian rings are also positioned further from the planet.
Uranus revolves around the Sun once every 84 Earth years. Its average distance from the Sun is roughly 3 billion km (about 20 AU). The intensity of sunlight on Uranus is about 1/400 that on Earth. Its orbital elements were first calculated in 1783 by Pierre-Simon Laplace. With time, discrepancies began to appear between the predicted and observed orbits, and in 1841, John Couch Adams first proposed that the differences might be due to the gravitational tug of an unseen planet. In 1845, Urbain Le Verrier began his own independent research into Uranus's orbit. On September 23, 1846, Johann Gottfried Galle found a new planet, later called Neptune, at nearly the position predicted by Le Verrier.
The rotational period of the interior of Uranus is 17 hours, 14 minutes, clockwise (retrograde). As on all giant planets, its upper atmosphere experiences very strong winds in the direction of rotation. At some latitudes, such as about two-thirds of the way from the equator to the south pole, visible features of the atmosphere move much faster, making a full rotation in as little as 14 hours.
A university is a higher learning institution. The word "university" comes from the Latin "universitas magistrorum et scholarium", roughly meaning "community of teachers and scholars". Students can go to university to get an academic degree. Unlike the schooling they have done before, the courses at university are specialised. A person studying biology at university has many courses about biology and fewer courses in other fields such as languages or history. To get a higher degree, people must do some research.
Not all subjects are offered at universities. Mainly, universities offer courses which are about knowledge. They usually do not offer courses in practical trades. In some cases such as law, where there are both knowledge and practical issues, the university does mainly the theoretical side of the subject. Practical qualifications are dome elsewhere.
The universities were born in Europe during the Middle Ages. The first institution of this type was the University of Bologna, which later became a model for other centres of education.
At first, the universities had formed themselves according to the model of the professional groups and like almost everything in the Middle Ages, they remained tied to the Catholic Church. At the beginning, they had worked to teach the so-called "seven liberal arts" (the "trivium" and the "quadrivium"):
That earliest division caused the present divisions between literary and scientific fields. From one point of view, the world's oldest university is Qarawiyyin university. However, teaching religion is not the definition used by most people. A university should in theory teach every subject.
The university is generally regarded as a formal institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian tradition. European higher education took place for hundreds of years in cathedral schools or monastic schools ("scholae monasticae"). There, monks and nuns taught classes: evidence of these dates back to the 6th century.
The Universities of Paris and Oxford were founded by members of the church. Later universities were founded by kings.
In the early medieval period, most new universities were founded from pre-existing schools, usually when these schools became mainly sites of higher education. Pope Gregory VII promoted the concept of modern university as his 1079 Papal Decree. He ordered the establishment of cathedral schools, which eventually turned into the first European universities.
A university can include several campuses or different places where classes are taught by professors. In each campus there are several faculties and university schools (mainly for teaching), and also laboratories, departments and institutes of research. Many campuses also have housing for students in buildings called dormitories and structures like libraries, study rooms and gymnasiums for students that live there. Each school offers many courses that students take to earn a degree. The person with the highest right to control and to command in a university is the rector, who governs the university with the help of the party of vice-rectors and of other organs such as the social council and the governing body.
There is a group of famous universities called the Ivy League. They are:
Some other famous universities are:
Value is how much something is worth. Often the best way to find the value of something is to use the price that it can be sold for. However Oscar Wilde wrote that 'people know the price of everything but the value of nothing'- in other words true value does not depend on money alone.
In math, a value is a number which is concrete, something everyone can agree upon. However people may disagree on the value of water, depending if you live in a desert or next to a river. Disagreements on the value of things can create fights between nations, political parties, religions, etc.
Volapük is a constructed language created in 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer. Schleyer was a Catholic priest from Germany. He felt that God had told him in a dream to make an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884, 1887, and 1889. The aim was to help people from different cultures speak to each other.
Volapük became less popular after 1887 when Esperanto was published. Part of the reason was that Esperanto is easier to learn with a simpler grammar. There are believed to only be 20-30 Volapük speakers in the world today.
The vocabulary of Volapük is mostly English, with some words from German and French.
"Vol" and "pük" come from the English words "world" and "speech". The grammar is based on Indo-European languages.
An example of Volapük is the translation of the "Lord's prayer":
<poem>
</poem>
A vocabulary is a list of words.
The vocabulary a person uses is all the words that person knows and uses. In general, a person who is five knows about 4,000 to 5,000 words. Adults who go to college may know 20,000 words. A hearing vocabulary and reading vocabulary are bigger than a speaking vocabulary or writing vocabulary, as people understand some words that they do not use.
The number of words in a language is more than the words listed in one dictionary. One dictionary may have a list of 500,000 (half a million) words. Another dictionary may have some other words that the other dictionary does not have. When you add all the words in those dictionaries, there are about 750,000 words in English. There may be more words than that.
You may think to yourself, ""If there are 750,000 words, how can we talk with only 3000 words?"" Because, we do not need to know all the words. You can say most things with around 3,000 words.
The most used words are short words. That is true in all languages. The 50 most common words in English have fewer than seven letters. Half of these words have fewer than four letters.
The vocabulary of a language is always changing. New words are made or words change their meaning. Words about computers, like "download" are new to the English language. The new word "bling" came from hip hop. Words like "cool" have developed new meanings.
Vegetable oils are triglyceride oils made from plants. They are used in food and for cooking. In past centuries they were much used as fuel in oil lamps. Some kinds of plant oils that people use are palm oil, maize, olive, peanut, rapeseed, soy, and sunflower.
Margarine is an artificial butter made from vegetable oil.
A verb is a kind of word (part of speech) that tells about an action or a state. It is the main part of a sentence: every sentence has a verb. In English, verbs are the only kind of word that changes to show past or present tense.
Every language in the world has verbs, but they are not always used in the same ways. They also can have different properties in different languages. In some other languages (Chinese & Indonesian, for example) verbs do not change for past and present tense. This means the definition above only works well for English verbs.
There are sixteen verbs used in . They are: "be, , , , go, see, , , , , , , , , , ."
The word "verb" originally comes from "*were-", a Proto-Indo-European word meaning "a word". It comes to English through the Latin "verbum" and the Old French "verbe".
In simple sentences, the verb may be one word: "The cat "sat" on the mat". However, the verb may be a phrase: "The cat "will sit" on the mat".