AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
It is the 12th most abundant of all elements. It is the 3rd most abundant among the elements that have odd atomic numbers. The only stable isotope of aluminium is aluminium-27. It is the 18th most abundant nucleus in the Universe. It is created after fusion of carbon in massive stars that will later become Type II supernovae: this fusion creates magnesium-26, which, when capturing free protons and neutrons becomes aluminium. Essentially all aluminium now in existence is aluminium-27; aluminium-26 was there in the early Solar System but is now extinct. The trace quantities of aluminium-26 that do exist are the most common gamma ray emitter in the interstellar gas.
Overall, the Earth is about 1.59% aluminium by mass. In the Earth's crust, aluminium is the most abundant metallic element by mass (8.23%). It is also the third most abundant of all elements in the Earth's crust. A lot of silicates in the Earth's crust contain aluminium. But, the Earth's mantle is only 2.38% aluminium by mass. Aluminium also occurs in seawater at a concentration of 2 μg/kg.
Feldspars, the most common group of minerals in the Earth's crust, are aluminosilicates. Aluminium also occurs in the minerals beryl, cryolite, garnet, spinel, and turquoise. Native aluminium has been reported in cold seeps in the northeastern continental slope of the South China Sea.
Aluminium forms chemical compounds in the +3 oxidation state. They are generally unreactive. Aluminium chloride and aluminium oxide examples. Very rarely are compounds in the +1 or +2 oxidation state.
Many things are made of aluminium. Much of it is used in overhead power lines. It is also widely used in window frames and aircraft bodies. It is found at home as kitchenware, soft drink cans, and cooking foil. Aluminium is also used to coat car headlamps and compact discs. It is used in electrical transmission lines because of its light weight. It can be deposited on the surface of glass to make mirrors, where a thin layer of aluminum oxide quickly forms that acts as a protective coating. Aluminum oxide is also used to make synthetic rubies and sapphires for lasers. Aluminum can now be produced from clay, but the process is not economically feasible at today.
Pure aluminium is very soft, so a harder metal is almost always added. The harder metal is usually copper. Copper/aluminium alloys are to make ships, because the aluminium prevents corrosion, and the copper prevents barnacles.
Aluminium compounds are used in deodorants, water processing plants, food additives, and antacids. Lithium aluminium hydride is a really strong reducing agent used in organic chemistry.
Aluminium sulfate is used in water treatment. It is also used as a mordant in dyeing, in pickling seeds, deodorizing of mineral oils, in leather tanning, and in production of other aluminium compounds.
Anhydrous aluminium chloride is used as a catalyst in chemical and petrochemical industries, the dyeing industry, and in synthesis of many inorganic and organic compounds.
Aluminium hydroxychlorides are used in purifying water, in the paper industry, and as ￼￼antiperspirants￼. Sodium aluminate is used in treating water and as an accelerator for drying of cement.
Aluminium acetate in solution is used as an astringent.
Aluminium phosphate is used to make glass, ceramic, pulp and paper products, cosmetics, paints, varnishes. Aluminium hydroxide is used as an antacid, and mordant. It is used also in water purification, the manufacture of glass and ceramics, and in the waterproofing of fabrics.
Aluminium is used in automobiles, trucks, railway cars, marine vessels, bicycles, spacecraft. Aluminium is used in making doors, siding, building wire, sheathing, roofing and other building materials.
Since aluminium needs to be made by electrolysis, it requires a very large amount of electrical power. Recycling aluminium would be much cheaper. That's why recycling plants were opened. The cost of recycling aluminium is much less than the cost of making it from bauxite.
Recycling involves melting the scrap. This is a process that only needs 5% of the energy used to produce aluminium from ore. But, 15% of the input material part is lost as dross (ash-like oxide). An aluminium stack melter makes a lot less dross, about 1%.
White dross from primary aluminium production and from secondary recycling processes still contains useful amounts of aluminium that can be extracted industrially. The process produces aluminium billets, together with a very complex waste. This waste is difficult to manage. It reacts with water, releasing a mixture of gases (including, hydrogen, acetylene, and ammonia), which ignites on contact with air. Even with these difficulties, the waste is used as a filler in asphalt and concrete.
Aluminium is not used in the human body, although it is very common. People debate whether its use in deodorants and water treatment is healthy. Aluminium ions slow down plant growth in acidic soils. Aluminium may be a factor in Alzheimer's disease (a disease when the brain stops working and the patient is confused). But the Alzheimer's Society says overwhelming medical and scientific opinion is that studies have not convincingly demonstrated a causal relationship between aluminium and Alzheimer's disease.
In most people, aluminium is not as toxic as heavy metals. Aluminium is classified as a non-carcinogen by United States Department of Health and Human Services. There is little proof that normal exposure to aluminium is a risk to healthy adult. There is proof of no toxicity if it is taken in amounts not greater than 40 mg/day per kg of body mass. Most aluminium taken will leave the body in feces. Most of the small part that enters the blood, will be excreted via urine.
Aluminium rarely causes vitamin D-resistant osteomalacia, erythropoietin-resistant microcytic anemia, and central nervous system changes. People with kidney insufficiency are at a risk the most. Chronic ingestion of hydrated aluminium silicates may result in aluminium binding to the things in the intestines. It also increases the removal of other metals, like iron or zinc. Really high doses (>50 g/day) can cause anemia.
A small percentage of people have contact allergies to aluminium and experience itchy red rashes, headache, muscle pain, joint pain, poor memory, insomnia, depression, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, or other symptoms when touching products containing aluminium.
Exposure to powdered aluminium or aluminium welding fumes can cause pulmonary fibrosis. Fine aluminium powder can also explode.
Food is the main source of aluminium. Drinking water has more aluminium than solid foods. Aluminium in food may be absorbed more than aluminium from water. Major sources of human exposure by mouth to aluminium include food (because of its use in food additives, food and beverage packaging, and cooking utensils), drinking water (because of its use in water treatment), and medicines that have aluminium in it. Very high exposure of aluminium are mostly limited to miners, aluminium production workers, and dialysis patients.
Taking of antacids, antiperspirants, vaccines, and cosmetics give possible ways of exposure. Eating acidic foods or liquids with aluminium increases aluminium absorption. Maltol has been shown to increase the build up of aluminium in nerve and bone tissues.
In case of suspected sudden consumption of a large amount of aluminium, the only treatment is deferoxamine mesylate. It may be given to help remove aluminium from the body by chelation. But, this should be applied with caution as it not only reduce aluminium in the body, but can also reduce those of other metals such as copper or iron.
High levels of aluminium occur near mining sites. Small amounts of aluminium are released to the environment at the coal-fired power plants or incinerators. Aluminium in the air is washed out by the rain or normally settles down. But, small particles of aluminium remain in the air for a long time.
Acid rain is the main natural factor to move aluminium from natural sources. It is also the main reason for the effects of aluminium on the environment. The main factor for the presence of aluminium in salt and freshwater are the industrial processes that also release aluminium into air.
In water, aluminium acts as a toxiс agent on animals that with gills like fish by causing loss of plasma- and hemolymph ions leading to osmoregulatory failure.
Aluminium is one of the primary factors that reduce the growth of plants on acidic soils. In acid soils the concentration of toxic Al cations increases and disturbs the growth and function of the root. It is generally harmless to plant growth in pH-neutral soils. Wheat has developed a tolerance to aluminium. It releases organic compounds that bind to harmful aluminium cations. Sorghum is thought to have the same method of tolerating aluminium.
Aluminium production has its own problems to the environment on each step of the production process. The major problem is the greenhouse gas. These gases are caused by the electrical consumption of the smelters and the byproducts of processing. The strongest of these gases are perfluorocarbons from the smelting process.
A Spanish scientific report from 2001 claimed that the fungus "Geotrichum candidum" eats the aluminium in compact discs. The better studied bacterium "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" and the fungus "Cladosporium resinae" are commonly found in aircraft fuel tanks that use kerosene-based fuels, and laboratory cultures can decompose aluminium. However, these types of bacteria do not eat the aluminium; but rather, the metal is corroded by microbe waste products.
Drawing is a way of making a picture. Drawings are created by making lines on a surface. Long lines make up the shapes and small lines make the textures. Drawings can be images of real-life or abstract images showing ideas that cannot be seen in the real world.
A drawing is the art created this way. Examples of things used to mark with are pencils, chalk, charcoal, crayons, pastels, markers, wax colored pencils, pen and ink.
Artists have been drawing for many centuries. They draw on paper or on other surfaces on which the marks show up.
Drawing techniques include sketching, shading, cubism and many more.
Art used to be an Olympic event
Texas (, ), officially the State of Texas, is a state in the South Central Region of the United States. It is the second largest US state by total area (after Alaska) with 268,596 sq mi (695,662 km) and population (after California) with nearly 29 million people as of 2019. Its largest cities are Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, El Paso, and Austin, the capital city.
Texas became the 28th state in the United States in 1845. Texas has been controlled by Spain, France, the Confederate States of America, and Mexico. It declared its independence from Mexico in 1836. It was its own country, the Republic of Texas, for 9 years (1836–1845). It is called the "Lone Star State" and its flag has one star.
There are many tourist attractions in Texas. Fort Worth is known for its stockyards. Amarillo is known for the cattle business and stockyards. In Dallas, industrial technology companies including Texas Instruments and EDS have their home offices. San Antonio has The Alamo. Houston has the Johnson Space Center. Austin has the University of Texas at Austin. Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Baylor University in Waco and the University of North Texas in Denton are other important universities in the state.
The state's name derives from táyshay, a word in the Caddoan language of the Hasinai (a Native American tribe), which means "allies" or "friends."
Texas was first explored in 1528 by Spanish explorers on accident (they were shipwrecked on the coast). It did not become a colony until 1685, when France claimed it. In response, Spain started a rival colony in 1691 by setting up a religious outpost in the eastern part of Texas. Spain did not come back to Texas until 1716 to protect its colonies in the west from French forces. Two years later, San Antonio was founded.
The pressure between the Spaniards and Native Americans in East Texas stopped many settlers from coming to Texas. To stop the violence and the increasing Native American raids, Spain called a truce between many tribes in 1745 and 1789.
Tensions rose in Texas after the United States bought a large amount of nearby land from France in 1803. This was the Louisiana Purchase. People began wondering whether Spain or the United States could claim Texas.
Mexico won the Mexican War of Independence in 1821. Mexico, including Texas, was free from the Spanish Empire. Americans and other settlers came into Texas when Mexico allowed non-Spanish settlers to settle here. After many settlers came to Texas, Mexico started taxing non-citizens. This outraged many settlers. Many were already angry because Mexico banned slavery.
Politics in Mexico became violent and several Mexican States declared independence. On March 2, 1836, Texas declared independence from Mexico and soon they were at war. Texas won, but Mexico refused to recognize Texas as an independent sovereign Republic. Texas soon requested entry to the United States. Years later, in 1845, the US added Texas as a state, and Mexico broke off diplomatic relations. Mexico resisted offers by the U.S. to buy land extending from Texas to the Pacific Ocean. In 1846, a dispute over the border between Texas and Mexico resulted in armed conflict, and the Mexican-American War began. The United States won the war, and by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, in 1848 won lands that later formed the states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and southwestern Wyoming. Mexico received 15 million dollars and gave up its claims to Texas.
After Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, Texas joined the newly formed Confederate States of America in 1861 and fought in the American Civil War in an attempt to become independent from the United States. The Confederates lost to the Union (the United States) in 1865. Texas was restored to full representation in Congress on March 30, 1870.
On January 10, 1901, oil was found in Texas, leading to the founding of a richer economy. During a time when the economy was poor, many people left Texas. Texas did not regain the population it had lost until the 1950s and 60s. In recent years, Texas has become a hub for technology and computers.
Texas is the second biggest state in the Union (after Alaska) and is bigger than every European country except Russia. It has mountains, forests, deserts, plains, and coasts. The largest river in Texas is the Rio Grande, which forms the border between Mexico and the United States throughout south Texas. The highest mountain in Texas is Guadalupe Peak.
Most of Texas is in Central Time, but El Paso in Western Texas is in Mountain Time.
Texas has the second largest economy in the United States after the economy of California. It had a gross state product of US$1.887 trillion in 2019. Texas was home to six of the top 50 companies on the Fortune 500 list in 2015 (third most after New York and California). In 2017, Texas grossed more than US$264.5 billion a year in exports—more than the exports of California (US$172 billion) and New York (US$77.9 billion) combined. As a sovereign country, in 2016, Texas would be the 10th largest economy in the world by gross domestic product (GDP), ahead of South Korea and Canada and behind Brazil.
Prussia
Prussia (; , , Old Prussian: "Prūsa" or "Prūsija") was a series of countries. Originally it was a historically prominent German state that originated in 1525. Mostly, the name is used for the Kingdom of Prussia, which was in northern Europe. It was part of Germany for a while, and it included land in Poland, France, and Lithuania. The name "Prussian" has had a lot of different meanings in the past and now:
In 1934, Germany stopped using the name Prussia for that area, and in 1947 the Allies abolished the state of Prussia and divided its territory among themselves and the new States of Germany. Today, the name is only for historical, geographical, or cultural use.
The name Prussia comes from the Borussi or Prussi people who lived in the Baltic region and spoke the Old Prussian language. Ducal Prussia was a fiefdom of the Kingdom of Poland until 1660, and Royal Prussia was part of Poland until 1772. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most German-speaking Prussians started thinking of themselves as part of the German nation. They thought the Prussian way of life was very important:
From the late 18th century, Prussia had a lot of power in northern Germany and throughout central Europe; it was the strongest in politics and economics, and it had the most people. After Chancellor Otto von Bismarck dissolved the German Confederation, Prussia annexed almost all of northern Germany. In 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War, von Bismarck created the German Empire, and Prussia was the center of the empire, with the Kings of Prussia being the Emperors of Germany.
Prussia's borders have changed over time. It has not always been the exact same place. Mostly, Prussia was a small part of what is today northern Poland. After a small number of Prussian people moved there to live, Germans came to live there too. In 1934, Prussia's borders were with France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Lithuania. Some parts of Prussia are in eastern Poland. Before 1918, a lot of western Poland was also in Prussia. Between 1795 and 1807, Prussia also controlled Warsaw and most of central Poland.
Before 1934, these regions were also in Prussia:
However, some regions were never part of Prussia, such as Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, and the Hanse city-states.
Northeast Germany was Protestant, so Prussians were mostly Protestant. But there were a lot of Catholic people in the Rhineland, East Prussia, Posen, Silesia, West Prussia, and Ermland. The states of south Germany (especially Austria and Bavaria) were Catholic, so they did not want Prussians to rule them. Prussia was mostly German, but in the late 18th century, the new Polish areas had a lot of Polish people too. In 1918, these Polish areas were given to Poland, and in 1945, Pomerania and East Prussia were given to Poland. Northern East Prussia, specifically Kaliningrad, was given to Russia.
In 1226, Polish Prince Conrad of Mazovia (Mazovia is a place in Northern Poland) asked the Teutonic Knights from Transylvania to come to Mazovia. He wanted them to fight the Prussian tribes on his borders. They fought for more than 100 years. Then they created a new state. After some time, this state controlled most of today's Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and parts of northern Poland. In 1466, the Knights were under the King of Poland and Lithuania. In 1525, the leader of the Knights became a Protestant. He made part of the Knights' land into the Duchy of Prussia, which was then part of the Kingdom of Poland.
At that time, the Duchy of Prussia was only the area east of the place where the Vistula River enters the sea. In 1618, the new Duke of Prussia was the Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg. He was also Margrave of Brandenburg. Brandenburg was ruled by the Hohenzollern family. The Duchy of Prussia was important to the Hohenzollern family because it was not part of the Holy Roman Empire. The name for the new state was "Brandenburg-Prussia". In the middle of the state was Polish land, but Brandenburg-Prussia was moving away from Poland. Under Frederick William, who was called "the Great Elector," Prussia took some new land in Magdeburg and areas west of the Rhine.
In 1701, the Holy Roman Emperor and Polish King allowed Brandenburg-Prussia to call itself "Kingdom of Prussia" with Frederick I ("the Great") as its king. Under Frederick II, Prussia waged war against Austria and took Silesia. The wars ended in 1763; Prussia was then the most powerful state in eastern Germany. Other parts of Germany, including Pomerania, went to Prussia because of marriage or death.
During this time, the Prussian army got bigger, and so did the administration system. Until 1945, these were at the most important parts of the German state. Between 1772 and 1795, Prussia, Russia and Austria divided Poland into parts (the Partitions of Poland). Prussia controlled land in the far east, including the city of Warsaw.
Frederick William II had Prussia join the war with France in 1792. He lost at Valmy and gave his western land to France. Frederick William III started a new war, but lost at Jena. He gave more land to France at the Treaty of Tilsit.
In 1813, Prussia again started war with Napoleonic France. In 1815, Prussia won back the land it lost in earlier wars and also all the Rhineland and Westphalia and some other land. This land in the west was very important, especially the Ruhr valley. It was the new center of Germany's industrialization and the home of the weapons industry. After the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia was the strongest power in Germany and more powerful than Austria.
In the early 19th century, there were two political groups in Germany. The liberals wanted a democratic system with one strong central government. The conservatives wanted Germany to be made of a group of independent, weak states . In 1848, revolution came to Europe. Frederick William IV was worried. He allowed a National Assembly and a constitution. The new Frankfurt Parliament wanted to give Frederick William the crown of all Germany, but he did not want it. He said that revolutionaries could not name kings. Now Prussia had a semi-democratic constitution, but really the nobility with land (the Junkers) had the power, especially in the east.
In 1862, Prussian King Wilhelm I appointed Otto von Bismarck as the prime minister of Prussia. Bismarck wanted the liberals and the conservatives to lose. He wanted to create a strong, united Germany, but he wanted to do so under the Junker, not under the western German liberals. So, he started three wars:
This was Prussia's high moment. The economic and political future looked good. But after 99 days, in 1888, the state had a new leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II. He fired Bismarck, who lost his job in 1890, and Wilhelm II started a new foreign policy. He made the army bigger, and the navy much bigger, and he took risks. This is part of why Germany entered World War I. When the Germans and their allies lost that war, the Prussian Junkers lost power. The Prussian king and the other German kings had to leave. Germany became the Weimar Republic. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles re-created the Polish state, and Prussia had to give up much of its land. The Polish Corridor was split between East Prussia and Germany.
At the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles separated West Prussia from the rest of Germany to make the Free City of Danzig and Polish Corridor, so Poland would have access to the ocean instead of being landlocked. Some people also wanted to break Prussia into smaller states, but this did not happen. Prussia became the "Prussian Free State" "(Freistaat Preußen)," the largest state in the Weimar Republic. The Prussian Free State made up more than 60% of all the land in the Weimar Republic. The Prussian Free State contained the industrial Ruhr area the city of Berlin, so many people with left-leaning political ideas lived there. The Social Democrats and the Catholic Centre had power for most of the 1920s.
In 1932, Germany's conservative Chancellor Franz von Papen took control of Prussia, ending the state's democratic constitution. It was the end of German democracy too. In 1933, Hermann Göring became Interior Minister of Prussia; he was now very strong. In 1934, the Nazis took the German states' power.
In 1945, the Soviet Union's army captured all of eastern and central Germany (and Berlin). Poland took everything east of the Oder-Neisse line, e.g. Silesia, Pomerania, eastern Brandenburg, and East Prussia. The Soviet Union took the northern third of East Prussia, including Königsberg, now Kaliningrad. About ten million Germans had to run away from these areas. Polish and Russian people moved in in their place. Because of this, and because the Communists took control of land in the GDR, also called East Germany, the Junker and Prussia were finished.
In 1947, the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union formally agreed the end of Prussia. In the Soviet Zone (which was called the GDR starting in 1949), which included Prussian lands, were now the states of Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt. The Prussian parts of Pomerania went to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In 1952, the GDR government stopped using states and used districts instead. In 1990, the end of the GDR, the states returned. In the West, (called the Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany starting in 1949), the Prussian lands went to North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Schleswig-Holstein. Baden-Württemberg took the Hohenzollern land.
The idea of Prussia is not completely dead in Germany. Some people want to put together the states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Berlin and call them Prussia. But German politicians are not interested in the idea. The constitution of Berlin allows for Berlin and Brandenburg to become one state, but the people of Berlin voted against doing this on May 5, 1996.
The Apocrypha are religious texts that are in some versions of the Catholic Bible. Other versions omit them. The word comes from Ancient Greek "" (apokrypha). Apocrypha means "those that were hidden". Generally, the term is applied to writings that were not part of the canon. There are several reasons why these texts were not included in the canon. The texts might only have been known to few people, or they might have been left out because their content does not fit well into that of the other books of the Bible. Some of the apocrypha were written at a later date, and were therefore not included.
The Authorized King James Version called these books ‘Apocrypha’. It separated them, because the Bible said so in 2 Esdras 14:46, "But keep the seventy last, that thou mayest deliver them only to such as be wise among the people: For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the stream of knowledge."
Roman Catholic Bibles have these books in the Old Testament. They do not call them Apocrypha. They call them deuterocanonical, which means that they belong to the second canon. Canon just means an official list of literary works accepted as representing a field. The first list is of books first written in Hebrew. This second list is of books first written in Greek.
These books were kept in Catholic Bibles because it is believed that the Bible which Jesus read was a Bible that included the books of the "Apocrypha," the deuterocanonical books. It is known that the most popular Bible at the time of Jesus was the Greek Septuagint version - which includes these extra books. That is why early Church fathers quoted from Bibles including these books.
Christians disagree about the ‘Apocrypha’. Others point out that the ‘Apocrypha’ was in every Christian Bible until 1828.
In 1828 these books were taken out of some Bibles. The translators of the King James Bible said that these books were written to prepare the people for Jesus, in the same way as John the Baptist did. They said that the apostles used these books. And modern day members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (sometimes referred to as Mormons) also have hints in the Book of Mormon.
There is no question that these books have always been part of the Bible in Oriental Orthodox Churches, so they were definitely not added in the 1500s. Around the year 80 AD, the Jewish Council (Sanhedrin) decided to cut the books from the Hebrew Bible, but they stayed in the Christian Bible. Then soon after Christianity became the only religion of Roman Empire in the 4th century, the Romans decided to cut out all of the same books that the Sanhedrin had cut out, and they moved some of them to the "apocrypha".
Books of the Apocrypha (they may not be in order):
Note: Other candidates for Apocryphal scriptures include supposedly lost portions of Esther and Sirach.
There are also Apocrypha candidates for the New Testament:
Sodium (symbol Na, from the Latin name "natrium") is the chemical element number 11 in the periodic table of elements. It follows that its nucleus includes 11 protons, and 11 electrons orbit around it (according to the simplified model known as "Niels Bohr atom"). Even if many isotopes can be artificially made, all decay in a short time. As a result, all sodium found in nature (mainly in sea water) has the composition Na, meaning that the nucleus includes 12 neutrons. The atomic mass of sodium is 22.9898; if it is rounded, it would be 23.
Sodium is a light, silver-coloured metal. Sodium is so soft that it can be easily cut with a knife. When it is cut, the surface will become white over time. This is because it reacts with air to form sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate. Sodium is a little lighter than water; when it reacts with water it floats. This reaction is very fast. Hydrogen and sodium hydroxide are produced. The hydrogen may ignite. Since sodium melts at a low temperature, it melts when it reacts with water. It has one valence electron which is removed easily, making it highly reactive.
Compared with other alkali metals (metals in the first column of the periodic table), sodium is usually less reactive than potassium and more reactive than lithium.
These are chemical compounds that contain sodium ions. Sodium only exists in 1 oxidation state: +1.
Sodium was discovered by Sir Humphrey Davy, an English scientist, back in 1807. He made it by the electrolysis of sodium hydroxide. It is named after soda, a name for sodium hydroxide or sodium carbonate.
It is used in the preparation of organic compounds. It is also used in the street lights that are orange, and ultra violet lights.
Sodium compounds are used in soaps, toothpaste, baking and antiacids.
Sodium does not exist as an element in nature; its easily removed valence electron is too reactive. It exists as an ion in chemical compounds. Sodium ions are found in the ocean. It is also found as sodium chloride in the earth's crust, where it is mined.
Sodium is normally made by electrolysis of very hot sodium chloride that was melted.
Sodium ion in the form of sodium chloride is needed in the human body, but large amounts of it cause problems, which is why one should not eat too much salt and other food items with huge sodium amount (such as biscuits with baking soda). Many organisms in the ocean depend on the proper concentration of ions in sea water to live.
Dice are objects used in games when something random needs to be done, such as moving a game piece a random number of places on a board. Most dice are cubes that have the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on the faces. Dice are sometimes made in other polyhedral shapes than cubes, but the six-sided die ("die" is the singular of "dice") is the most common. A die is usually rolled by the player’s hand. When adding together opposite sides of typical cubical dice, the sum is always 7.
Some games are played with two or more dice and some use only one. Some games that use dice are Monopoly, Yahtzee, Risk, and many more. Dice with different numbers of sides, like those used in Dungeons & Dragons, are called polyhedral dice.
Weights can be put inside a die to make it only land on a certain number once it is rolled.
Matrix (mathematics)
In mathematics, a matrix (plural: matrices) is a rectangle of numbers, arranged in rows and columns. The rows are each left-to-right (horizontal) lines, and the columns go top-to-bottom (vertical). The top-left cell is at row 1, column 1 "(see diagram at right)".
Matrices are often represented by capital roman letters such as formula_1, formula_2 and formula_3, and there are rules for adding, subtracting and "multiplying" matrices together, but the rules are different than for numbers. As an example, the product formula_4 does not always give the same result as formula_5, which is the case for the multiplication of ordinary numbers. A matrix can have more than 2 dimensions, such as a 3D matrix. Also, a matrix can be one-dimensional, as a single row or a single column.
Many natural sciences use matrices quite a lot. In many universities, courses about matrices (usually called linear algebra) are taught very early, sometimes even in the first year of studies. Matrices are also very common in computer science, engineering, physics, economics, and statistics.
The horizontal lines in a matrix are called rows and the vertical lines are called columns. A matrix with "m" rows and "n" columns is called an "m"-by-"n" matrix (or "m"×"n" matrix) and "m" and "n" are called its dimensions.
The places in the matrix where the numbers are is called "entries". The entry of a matrix "A" that lies in the row number "i" and column number "j" is called the "i,j" entry of "A". This is written as "A"["i,j"] or "a".
We write formula_6 to define an "m" × "n" matrix "A", with each entry in the matrix called "a" for all 1 ≤ "i" ≤ "m" and 1 ≤ "j" ≤ "n".
is a 4×3 matrix. This matrix has m=4 rows, and n=3 columns.
The element "A"[2,3] or "a" is 7.
The sum of two matrices is the matrix, which ("i","j")-th entry is equal to the sum of the ("i","j")-th entries of two matrices:
The two matrices have the same dimensions. Here, formula_9 is true (and is true in general for matrices of equal dimensions).
The multiplication of two matrices is a bit more complicated:
So with numbers:
There are some matrices that are special.
A square matrix has the same number of rows as columns, so m=n.
An example of a square matrix is
This matrix has 3 rows and 3 columns: m=n=3.
Every square dimension set of a matrix has a special counterpart called the "identity matrix", represented by the symbol formula_15. The identity matrix has nothing but zeroes except on the main diagonal, where there are all ones. For example:
is an identity matrix. There is exactly one identity matrix for each square dimension set. An identity matrix is special because when multiplying any matrix by the identity matrix, the result is always the original matrix with no change.
An inverse matrix is a matrix that, when multiplied by another matrix, equals the identity matrix. For example:
formula_18 is the inverse of
The formula for the inverse of a 2x2 matrix, formula_20 is:
Where formula_22 is the determinant of the matrix. In a 2x2 matrix, the determinant is equal to:
A matrix, that has many rows, but only one column, is called a column vector.
The determinant takes a square matrix and calculates a simple number, a scalar. To understand what this number means, take each column of the matrix and draw it as a vector. The parallelogram drawn by those vectors has an area, which is the determinant. For all 2x2 matrices, the formula is very simple:
For 3x3 matrices the formula is more complicated:
There are no simple formulas for the determinants of larger matrices, and many computer programmers study how to get computers to quickly find large determinants.
There are three rules that all determinants follow. These are:
Hawaiian
Hawaiian can be:
British Isles
The British Isles are an archipelago (a group of islands) in north-western Europe. They have a long geographical and geological history. The first people were in Britain by 800,000 years ago (Happisburgh footprints).
The biggest islands are called Great Britain and Ireland, followed by the Isle of Man. Great Britain, the biggest island, is home to three countries. These are England, Wales and Scotland. The island of Ireland is divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Great Britain is the biggest island of Europe and Ireland is the third biggest.
England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland join together to make the United Kingdom.
Some people include the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Sark in the term "British Isles", but they are a lot closer to France than to Great Britain. In politics, they are British islands but in geology they are French islands.
The term tends not to be used in the Republic of Ireland because many people feel it implies that Ireland is politically British.
The writings of the Roman cartographer Ptolemy used the name "Great Britain" for the larger island in the 2nd century AD. He used the name "Megale Britannia" or "Great Britain" () to show the difference between this island and Ireland. For Ireland, Ptolemy used the name "Mikra Britannia" or "Little Britain" ().
Mandarin Chinese or simply Mandarin (; ) is the language of government and education of the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, with the notable exceptions of Hong Kong and Macau where a local dialect of Chinese called Cantonese is more often used.
Mandarin is one of five major regional languages of China. It spreads wider than any other regional variety, from the whole northern part of China to Yunnan Province in the southwest corner of China. In that big area there are many regional differences in vocabulary, so somebody who moves from Beijing to Yunnan could not understand people there who were speaking their own dialect, Yunnanhua. The problem is bigger than for a person in Great Britain or the United States to go to Australia. Therefore, starting in the 1920s, the Chinese government set up a national language based on the Beijing dialect and on the most widely understood words and pronunciations.
Mandarin is a standard language. It is nobody's native language, but a good average between various language forms and a common language everyone can understand and communicate with. Although it is based on the Beijing dialect, it is not the same as Beijing dialect.
Schools use a dialect called Standard Mandarin, "Putonghua" (普通话/普通話) meaning "common (spoken) language" or "Hanyu" (汉语/漢語) meaning "language of the Han". In places such as Malaysia, it is known as "Huayu" (华语/華語). In Taiwan, it is known as "Guoyu" (国语/國語) meaning "national language." There are some minor differences in these standards.
Mandarin is spoken by over 800 million people around the world, more than any other language. Most people emigrating from the Greater China region now speak Mandarin, while in past centuries most spoke Cantonese or Taishanese, another local Chinese dialect.
Standard Mandarin is one of the six official languages at the United Nations. The others are English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic.
Mandarin is written with Chinese characters called "Hànzì" (漢字 or 汉字) which literally means "Han characters". Each "Hànzì" has its own pronunciation and meaning. An ordinary dictionary will contain about 10,000 characters. Spoken Mandarin uses very many compound words, words that combine meanings the way English does in such terms as "machine gun," "fire truck," "playground," etc.
The Hanzi are ideograms: one character means one "idea". The various concepts are derived from the ideograms by combining them. Mandarin can be also written phonetically (that is: written as it is spoken) with the Latin alphabet as you really cannot see the spelling from Hanzi characters. That is called transliteration. The most popular transliteration system is called Pinyin.
Some Chinese characters were originally fairly concrete pictures of the things they represent. As time went on, people chose to write simpler versions that are easier to write but do not look so much like the real thing, just as people sometimes draw stick men rather than drawing people with real-looking bodies, arms, legs, etc. Here are some examples:
Most characters, however, are made by combining pictures, using one to give a general meaning, and the other to represent a sound. For instance, "媽 mā" (mom) is made by adding 女 (nǚ, human female) to 馬 (mǎ, horse). The "ma" part is only there to represent the sound.
In most dialects of ancient Chinese, one character was generally enough for one word, but modern spoken Mandarin uses mostly compounds like "媽媽 māma," which is just "mama,"
Other examples show different ways of combining components:
Just as the English used in Great Britain favors "petrol" but the English used in the United States almost always uses "gasoline," different regional languages in China may use different compound words to name the same thing.
In Spoken Mandarin, most words are character compounds because over time Mandarin lost many sounds that existed in earlier forms of Chinese. Due to the loss of sounds, many Chinese words ended up becoming homophones, thus more characters were added to words to tell them apart. For example, the Chinese title of the poem "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" 施氏食狮史 is pronounced ""Shī Shì Shí Shī Shǐ"", and every character in the poem is pronounced with the same syllable, but with different tones. In older forms of Chinese, one could have been to tell apart the different characters making up the title, as they could have sounded noticeably different from each other.
Thus, one-character words in Classical Chinese like
became the Mandarin compound words
to clearly distinguish such words from their homophones, otherwise the already mentioned characters could be mistaken for similar sounding characters like
thus making spoken language difficult to understand without the compound words.
Mandarin is defined and designed based on Beijing accent. In China, there are over 600,000 dialects and more accents although they all use Chinese language and characters, but their pronunciation and some expressions are totally different. China must find a standard pronunciation to allow all people to understand each other and communicate. Beijing has been the capital city of China for more than 1,000 years, so China defined Beijing Accent as standard Mandarin.
Beijing also has some local dialects that are not included by Mandarin or standard Chinese language yet. But with Beijing being the capital city as well as the political, economic, cultural and education center of China, more and more new Beijing dialects have been or will be accepted as Mandarin or standard Chinese language. The other dialects, such as Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakka etc., have few opportunities to be included into Mandarin or standard Chinese language or be accepted by the whole of China.
The following samples are some Beijing dialects which are not yet accepted as standard Mandarin. 倍儿: bèi'ér means 'very much'; 拌蒜: bànsuàn means 'stagger'; 不吝: bùlìn means 'do not worry about'; 撮: cuò means 'eat'; 出溜: chūliū means 'slip'; 大老爷儿们儿: dàlǎoyérmenr means 'men, males';
The following samples are some Beijing dialects which have been already accepted as Mandarin in recent years. 二把刀: èrbǎdāo means 'not very skillful'; 哥们儿: gēmenr means 'good male friends'; 抠门儿: kōuménr means 'parsimony'; 打小儿: dǎxiǎo'ér means 'since childhood'
Algeria ( or ), officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a former French colony and the largest country in Africa. It is part of the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa. Algiers is the capital. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea in the north, Tunisia in the northeast, Libya in the east, Niger in the southeast, Mauritania and Mali in the southwest, Western Sahara in the west and Morocco in the northwest. It is also the largest country in the Arab world.
People have lived in Algeria for thousands of years, which can be seen in the cave paintings at Tassili National Park that date to around 7000BC. By 600 BC, Phoenicians were in Hippo Regius (now called Annaba), Rusicade (now Skikda), and Tipasa in the central coastal part of the country. The Romans would annex (take over) the region by the conclusion of the Punic Wars in 146BC, with what is now modern day Algeria staying in Roman hands till the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century and the region being taken over by the Germanic Vandals.
Algeria would become part of the islamic world when the first Muslim Arabs came to Algeria in the mid-7th century, resulting in many people converting to the new religion of islam. In the 11th century, the Arab tribes of Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym were living between Tunisia and eastern Algeria (Constantois). The famous mathematician, Fibonacci (1170—1250) lived in Algeria as a teenager. This is where he learned the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. Algeria was made part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Enslavement of black people was practiced there as it was throughout the empire.
In the 1500s and 1700s, the Spanish Empire ruled a lot of Algeria. France colonized Algeria starting in 1830. In 1954, the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale or FLN) wanted freedom from France. They fought a war. It became independent from France in July 5, 1962.
In 1963 Ahmed Ben Bella became the first President of Algeria.
The Algerian Civil War started in 1991. It ended in 2002. the government stopped the state of emergency on 24 February 2011.
A large part of southern Algeria is the Sahara Desert. The Aures and Nememcha mountain ranges are in the north. The highest point is Mount Tahat (3,003 m).
The official languages of the country are Arabic as a first language and Berber as a second language. Many people speak French, too.
Algeria's population is about 45 million people. There are over 40 cities with more than 100,000 people.
The Parliament of Algeria is made up of two chambers:
There are 48 provinces (since 1983) in Algeria, they are:
There are several UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Algeria including Al Qal'a of Beni Hammad, the first capital of the Hammadid empire; Tipasa, a Phoenician and later Roman town; and Djémila and Timgad, both Roman ruins; M'Zab Valley, a limestone valley containing a large urbanized oasis; also the Casbah of Algiers is an important citadel. The only natural World Heritage Sites is the Tassili n'Ajjer, a mountain range.
Plymouth, Devon
Plymouth is a city in Devon, South West England. It is on the south coast. It has a large port at Devonport used by the Royal Navy. Nearly 250,000 people live in Plymouth and it is the largest place in Devon. West of Plymouth is the mouth of the River Tamar which is called the Hamoaze. Plymouth means mouth of the River Plym.
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Plymouth has his cathedral here. Plymouth was badly affected by German bombing during the Second World War, when many buildings were destroyed. The Plymouth Fathers and the Plymouth Brethren were both named after Plymouth. Plymouth is linked to Saltash in Cornwall by two bridges across the River Tamar: the Royal Albert Bridge (built in 1859) carries the railway line to Penzance and the Tamar Bridge the A38 main road. On Plymouth Hoe is the third lighthouse which formerly stood on the Eddystone Rock in the English Channel.
It has a football team called Plymouth Argyle and a rugby football team called Plymouth Albion.
Plymouth is the name of various places:
Other meanings of the word Plymouth are:
George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was the first President of the United States (1789–1797), the commander-in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Washington's mother was Mary Washington and his father was August Washington. They owned a farm with slaves in Virginia.
Washington became a farmer like his father. His farm was called Mount Vernon. He also worked as a surveyor, measuring land. Washington always wanted to be a soldier and was active in the colonial militia of Virginia. He was sent several times to the "forks of the Ohio River", now called Pittsburgh. His job was to get rid of the French who were trying to take control of the Ohio River Valley.
He failed and many of his men were killed. The fight opened the French and Indian War, bringing Britain into the Seven Years' War. In 1758 he was elected to the Virginia legislature.
In 1759, Washington married a widow named Martha Custis. The marriage produced no children.
Washington was a delegate to the First Continental Congress, which was created by the Thirteen Colonies to respond to various laws passed by the British government. The Second Continental Congress chose him to be the commanding general of the Continental Army. Washington led the army from 1775 until the end of the war in 1783. After losing the big Battle of Long Island, and being chased across New Jersey, Washington led his troops back across the Delaware River on Christmas Day, 1776, in a surprise attack on Hessian mercenaries at the small Battle of Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey. The British had more troops and more supplies than Washington, however, Washington kept his troops together and won these small battles.