title: Plovdiv

text: Filibe was described as consisting of Turks, Bulgarians, Hellenized Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, Vlachs, Arvanites, Greeks, and Roma people. In the 16–17 century a significant number of Sephardic Jews settled along with a smaller Armenian community from Galicia. The Paulicians adopted Catholicism or lost their identity. The abolition of Slavonic as the language of the Bulgarian Church as well as the complete abolition of the church in 1767 and the introduction of the Millet System led to ethnic division among people of different religions. Christian and Muslim Bulgarians were subjected to Hellenization and Turkification respectively. A major part of the inhabitants was fully or partly Hellenized due to the Greek patriarchate. The "Langeris" are described as Greeks from the area of the nearby Stenimachos. The process of Hellenization flourished until the 1830s but declined with the Tanzimat as the idea of the Hellenic nation of Christians grew and was associated with ethnic Greeks.


title: Plovdiv

text: The re-establishment of the Bulgarian Church in 1870 was a sign of ethnic and national consciousness. Thus, although there is a little doubt about the Bulgarian origin of the Gulidas, the city could be considered of Greek or Bulgarian majority in the 19th century. Raymond Detrez has suggested that when the Gudilas and Langeris claimed to be Greek it was more in the sense of "Romei than Ellines, in a cultural rather than an ethnic sense". According to the statistics by the Bulgarian and Greek authors, there were no Turks in the city; according to an alternative estimate the city was of Turkish majority.


title: Plovdiv

text: Filibe had an important role in the struggle for Church independence which was, according to some historians, a peaceful bourgeois revolution. Filibe became the center of that struggle with leaders such as Nayden Gerov, Dr Valkovich, Joakim Gruev, and whole families. In 1836 the first Bulgarian school was inaugurated, and in 1850, modern secular education began when the "St Cyrill and Methodius" school was opened. On 11 May 1858, the day of Saints Cyril and Methodius was celebrated for the first time; this later became a National holiday which is still celebrated today (but on 24 May due to Bulgaria's 1916 transition from the Old Style (Julian) to the New Style (Gregorian) calendar). In 1858 in the Church of Virgin Mary, the Christmas liturgy was served for the first time in the Bulgarian language since the beginning of the Ottoman occupation. Until 1906 there were Bulgarian and Greek bishops in the city. In 1868 the school expanded into the first grammar school. Some of the intellectuals, politicians, and spiritual leaders of the nation graduated that school.


title: Plovdiv

text: The city was conquered by the Russians under Aleksandr Burago for several hours during the Battle of Philippopolis on 17 January 1878. It was the capital of the Provisional Russian Administration in Bulgaria between May and October. According to the Russian census of the same year, Filibe had a population of 24,000 citizens, of which ethnic Bulgarians comprised 45.4%, Turks 23.1% and Greeks 19.9%.


title: Plovdiv

text: According to the Treaty of San Stefano on 3 March 1878, the Principality of Bulgaria included the lands with predominantly Bulgarian population. Plovdiv which was the biggest and most vibrant Bulgarian city was selected as a capital of the restored country and for a seat of the Temporary Russian Government. Great Britain and Austria-Hungary, however, did not approve that treaty and the final result of the war was concluded in the Congress of Berlin which divided the newly liberated country into several parts. It separated the autonomous region of Eastern Rumelia from Bulgaria, and Plovdiv became its capital. The Ottoman Empire created a constitution and appointed a governor.


title: Plovdiv

text: In the spring of 1885, Zahari Stoyanov formed the Secret Bulgarian Central Revolutionary Committee in the city which actively conducted propaganda for the unification of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. On 5 September, several hundred armed rebels from Golyamo Konare (now Saedinenie) marched to Plovdiv. In the night of 5–6 September, these men, led by Danail Nikolaev, took control of the city and removed from office the General-Governor Gavril Krastevich. A provisional government was formed led by Georgi Stranski, and universal mobilization was announced. After the Serbs were defeated in the Serbo-Bulgarian War, Bulgaria and Turkey reached an agreement that the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia had a common government, Parliament, administration, and army. Today, 6 September is celebrated as the Unification Day and the Day of Plovdiv.


title: Plovdiv

text: After the unification, Plovdiv remained the second most populous city in Bulgaria after the capital Sofia. The first railway in the city was built in 1874 connecting it with the Ottoman capital, and in 1888, it was linked with Sofia. In 1892 Plovdiv became the host of the First Bulgarian Fair with international participation which was succeeded by the International Fair Plovdiv. After the liberation, the first brewery was inaugurated in the city.


title: Plovdiv

text: The noteworthy English travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor visited Plovdiv in the late summer of 1934 and he was charmed by the town and a local woman name Nadjeda.


title: Plovdiv

text: In the beginning of the 20th century, Plovdiv grew as a significant industrial and commercial center with well-developed light and food industry. In 1927 the electrification of Plovdiv has started. German, French, and Belgian capital was invested in the city in the development of modern trade, banking, and industry. In 1939, there were 16,000 craftsmen and 17,000 workers in manufacturing factories, mainly for food and tobacco processing. During the Second World War, the tobacco industry expanded as well as the export of fruit and vegetables. In 1943, 1,500 Jews were saved from deportation in concentration camps by the archbishop of Plovdiv, Cyril, who later became the Bulgarian Patriarch. In 1944, the city was bombed by the British-American coalition.


title: Plovdiv

text: On 6 April 1956 the first trolleybus line was opened and in the 1950s the Trimontsium Hotel was constructed. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a construction boom and many of the modern neighborhoods took shape. In the 1970s and 1980s, antique remains were excavated and the Old Town was fully restored. In 1990 the sports complex "Plovdiv" was finished. It included the largest stadium and rowing canal in the country. In that period, Plovdiv became the birthplace of Bulgaria's movement for democratic reform, which by 1989 had garnered enough support to enter government.


title: Plovdiv

text: The population by permanent address for the municipality of Plovdiv for 2007 is 380,682, which makes it the second in population in the nation. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (NSI), the population of people who actually live in Plovdiv is 346,790.


title: Plovdiv

text: According to the 2012 census, 339,077 live within the city limits and 403,153 in the municipal triangle of Plovdiv, including Maritsa municipality and Rodopi municipality.


title: Plovdiv

text: At the first census after the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1880 with 24,053 citizens, Plovdiv is the second largest city behind Ruse, which had 26,163 citizens then, and ahead of the capital Sofia, which had 20,501 citizens then. As of the 1887 census, Plovdiv was the largest city in the country for several years with 33,032 inhabitants compared to 30,428 for Sofia. According to the 1946 census, Plovdiv was the second largest city with 126,563 inhabitants compared to 487,000 for the capital.


title: Plovdiv

text: In its ethnic character Plovdiv is the second or the third-largest cosmopolitan city inhabited by Bulgarians, after Sofia and possibly Varna. According to the 2001 census, out of a population of 338,224 inhabitants, the Bulgarians numbered 302,858 (90%). Stolipinovo in Plovdiv is the largest Roma neighbourhood in the Balkans, having a population of around 20,000 alone; further Roma ghettos are Hadji Hassan Mahala and Sheker Mahala. Therefore, the census number is a deflation of the number of Roma people, and they are most likely the second-largest group after the Bulgarians, most of all because the Muslim Roma in Plovdiv claim to be of Turkish ethnicity and Turkish-speaking at the census ("Xoraxane Roma"). For further information see the article Roma people in Plovdiv. Like elsewhere in the country, Roma people are subjected to discrimination and segregation (See the Bulgaria section of the article Antiziganism).


title: Plovdiv

text: After the Wars for National Union (Balkan Wars and World War I), the city became home for thousands of refugees from the former Bulgarian lands in Macedonia, Western and Eastern Thrace. Many of the old neighbourhoods are still referred to as "Belomorski", "Vardarski". Most of the Jews left the city after the foundation of Israel in 1948, as well as most of the Turks and Greeks. Prior to the population exchange, as of 1 January 1885, the city of Plovdiv had a population of 33,442, of which 16,752 were Bulgarians (50%), 7,144 Turks (21%), 5,497 Greeks (16%), 2,168 Jews (6%), 1,061 Armenians (3%), 151 Italians, 112 Germans, 112 Romani people, 80 French people, 61 Russians and 304 people of other nationalities.


title: Plovdiv

text: The vast majority of the inhabitants are Christians, mostly Eastern Orthodox, Catholics, Eastern Catholics, and Protestant trends (Adventists, Baptists and others). There are also some Muslims and Jews. In Plovdiv, there are many churches, two mosques and one synagogue (see Plovdiv Synagogue).


title: Plovdiv

text: Plovdiv is the administrative center of Plovdiv Province which consists of the Municipality of Plovdiv, the Maritsa municipality, and the Rodopi municipality. The mayor of the Municipality of Plovdiv, Ivan Totev, with the six district mayors represent the local executive authorities. The Municipal Council which consists of 51 municipal counsellors, represents the legislative power, and is elected according to the proportional system by parties' lists. The executive government of the Municipality of Plovdiv consists of a mayor who is elected by majority representation, five deputy mayors, and one administrative secretary. All the deputy mayors and the secretary control their administrative structured units.


title: Plovdiv

text: According to the "Law for the territorial subdivision of the Capital municipality and the large cities," the territory of Plovdiv Municipality is subdivided into six district administrations with their mayors being appointed following approval by the Municipal Council.


title: Plovdiv

text: In 1969 the villages of Proslav and Komatevo were incorporated into the city. In 1987 the municipalities of Maritsa and Rodopi were separated from Plovdiv which remained their administrative center. In the last several years, the inhabitants from those villages had taken steps to rejoin the "urban" municipality.


title: Plovdiv

text: The city has more than 200 archaeological sites, 30 of which are of national importance. There are many remains from antiquity. Plovdiv is among the few cities with two ancient theatres; remains of the medieval walls and towers; Ottoman baths and mosques; a well-preserved old quarter from the National Revival period with beautiful houses; churches; and narrow paved streets. There are numerous museums, art, galleries and cultural institutions. Plovdiv is host to musical, theatrical, and film events. The Knyaz Alexander I Street is the main street in Plovdiv.


title: Plovdiv

text: The city is a starting point for trips to places in the region, such as the Bachkovo Monastery at to the south, the ski-resort Pamporovo at to the south or the spa resorts to the north Hisarya, Banya, Krasnovo, and Strelcha.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Ancient theatre (Antichen teatur) is probably the best-known monument from antiquity in Bulgaria. During recent archaeological survey, an inscription was found on a postament of a statue at the theatre. It revealed that the site was constructed at the 90s of the 1st century CE. The inscription itself refers to Titus Flavius Cotis, the ruler of the ancient city during the reign of Emperor Domitian.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Ancient theatre is situated in the natural saddle between two of the Three Hills. It is divided into two parts with 14 rows each divided with a horizontal lane. The theatre could accommodate up to 7,000 people. The three-story scene is on the southern part and is decorated with friezes, cornices, and statues. The theatre was studied, conserved, and restored between 1968 and 1984. Many events are still held on the scene including the Opera Festival Opera Open, the Rock Festival Sounds of the Ages, and the International Folklore festival. The Roman Odeon was restored in 2004. It was built in the 2nd–5th centuries and is the second (and smaller) antique theatre of Philipopolis with 350 seats. It was initially built as a bulevterion, an edifice of the city council, and was later reconstructed as a theatre.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Ancient Stadium is another important monument of the ancient city. It was built in the 2nd century during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. It is situated between Danov Hill and one of the Three Hills, beneath the main street from Dzhumaya Square to Kamenitsa Square. It was modelled after the stadium in Delphi. It was approximately long and wide, and could seat up to 30,000 spectators. The athletic games at the stadium were organised by the General Assembly of the province of Thrace. In their honour, the royal mint of Philippopolis coined money featuring the face of the ruling emperor as well as the types of athletic events held in the stadium. Only a small part of the northern section with 14 seat rows can be seen today; the larger part lies under the main street and a number of buildings.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Roman forum dates from the reign of Vespasian in the 1st century and was finished in the 2nd century. It is near the modern post office next to the Odeon. It has an area of 11 hectares and was surrounded by shops and public buildings. The forum was a focal point of the streets of the ancient city.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Eirene Residence is in the southern part of the Three Hills on the northern part of an ancient street in the Archeological underpass. It includes remains of a public building from the 3rd–4th centuries which belonged to a noble citizen. Eirene is the Christian name for Penelopa, a maiden from Megadon, who was converted to Christianity in the 2nd century. There are colourful mosaics which have geometrical forms and figures.


title: Plovdiv

text: On Nebet hill are the remains of the first settlement which in 12th century BCE grew to the Thracian city of Eumolpias, one of the first cities in Southeastern Europe. Massive walls surrounding a temple and a palace have been excavated. The oldest part of the fortress was constructed from large syenite blocks, the so-called "cyclopean construction".


title: Plovdiv

text: The Archaeological Museum was established in 1882 as the People's Museum of Eastern Rumelia. In 1928 the museum was moved to a 19th-century edifice on Saedinenie Square built by Plovdiv architect Josef Schnitter. The museum contains a rich collection of Thracian art. The three sections "Prehistory", "Antiquity", and "Middle Ages" contain precious artifacts from the Paleolithic to the early Ottoman period (15th–16th centuries). The famous Panagyurishte treasure is part of the museum's collection.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Plovdiv Regional Historical Museum was founded in 1951 as a scientific and cultural institute for collecting, saving, and researching historical evidence about Plovdiv and the surrounding region from 16th to 20th centuries. The exhibition is situated in three buildings.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Plovdiv Regional Ethnographic Museum was inaugurated in 1917. On 14 October 1943, it was moved to a house in the Old Town. In 1949 the Municipal House-museum was reorganized as a People's Ethnographic Museum and in 1962 it was renovated. There are more than 40,000 objects.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Museum of Natural Science was inaugurated in 1955 in the old edifice of the Plovdiv Municipality built in 1880. It is among the most important museums in the country with rich collections in its Paleontology, Mineralogy, and Botanic sections. There are several rooms for wildlife and it contains Bulgaria's largest freshwater aquarium with 40 fish species. It has a collection of minerals from the Rhodope mountains.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Museum of Aviation was established on 21 September 1991 on the territory of the Krumovo airbase to the southeast of the city. The museum possesses 59 aircraft and indoor and outdoor exhibitions.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Old Town of Plovdiv is a historic preservation site known for its Bulgarian Renaissance architectural style. The Old Town covers the area of the three central hills (Трихълмие, "Trihalmie"). Almost every house in the Old Town has its characteristic exterior and interior decoration.


title: Plovdiv

text: There are a number of 19th-century churches, most of which follow the distinctive Eastern Orthodox construction style. They are the Saint Constantine and Saint Helena, the Saint Marina, the Saint Nedelya, the Saint Petka, and the Holy Mother of God Churches. As the city has been a gathering center for Orthodox Christians for a long period of time, Plovdiv is surrounded by several monasteries located at the foot of the Rhodope Mountains such as "St. George", "St. Kozma and Damian", St. Kirik, and Yulita (Ulita). They remain good examples of the late Middle Age Orthodox architecture and iconography masterpieces typical for the region. There are also Roman Catholic cathedrals in Plovdiv, the Cathedral of St Louis being the largest. There are several more modern Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Protestant churches, as well as older style Apostolic churches.


title: Plovdiv

text: Two mosques remain in Plovdiv from the time of Ottoman rule. The Djumaya Mosque is considered the oldest European mosque outside Moorish Spain.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Sephardic Plovdiv Synagogue is at Tsar Kaloyan Street 13 in the remnants of a small courtyard in what was once a large Jewish quarter. Dating to the 19th century, it is one of the best-preserved examples of the so-called "Ottoman-style" synagogues in the Balkans. According to author Ruth E. Gruber, the interior of the Plovdiv Synagogue is a "hidden treasure…a glorious, if run-down, burst of color." An exquisite Venetian glass chandelier hangs from the center of the ceiling, which has a richly painted dome. All surfaces are covered in elaborate, Moorish-style, geometric designs in once-bright greens and blues. Torah scrolls are kept in the gilded Aron-ha-Kodesh.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Plovdiv Drama Theatre is a successor of the first professional theatre group in Bulgaria founded in 1881. The Plovdiv Puppet Theatre, founded in 1948, remains one of the leading institutions in this genre. The Plovdiv Opera was established in 1953.


title: Plovdiv

text: Another pillar of Plovdiv's culture is the Philharmonic, founded in 1945. Soloists such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Yuri Boukov, and Mincho Minchev have worked with the Plovdiv Philharmonic. The orchestra has toured in almost all of the European countries.


title: Plovdiv

text: The Trakiya Folklore Ensemble, founded in 1974, has performed thousands of concerts in Bulgaria and more than 42 countries. The Trakiya Traditional Choir was nominated for a Grammy Award. The Detska Kitka Choir is one of the oldest and best-known youth choirs in Bulgaria and the winner of numerous awards from international choral competitions. The Evmolpeya choir is another girls' choir from Plovdiv, whose establishing patron, Ivan Chomakov, became the then mayor in 2006. The choir was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador and a municipal choir.


title: Plovdiv

text: Plovdiv is among the nation's primary literary centres. In 1855 Hristo G. Danov created the first Bulgarian publishing company and printing-press. The city's traditions as a literary centre are preserved by the first public library in Bulgaria, the Ivan Vazov National Library, the 19 "chitalishta" (cultural centres), and by numerous booksellers and publishers. The library was founded in 1879 and named after the famous Bulgarian writer and poet Ivan Vazov who worked in Plovdiv for five years creating some of his best works. Today the Ivan Vazov National Library is the second largest national library institution with more than 1.5 million books, owning rare Bulgarian and European publications.


title: Plovdiv

text: The city has traditions in iconography since the Middle Ages. During the Period of National Revival, a number of notable icon-painters (called in Bulgarian "zografi", "зографи") from all regions of the country worked in Plovdiv such as Dimitar Zograf, his son Zafir Zograf, Zahari Zograf, Georgi Danchov, and others. After the Liberation, the Bulgarian painter of Czech origin Ivan Mrkvička came to work in the city. The Painters' Society was established there by artists from southern Bulgaria in 1912 whose members included painters Zlatyu Boyadzhiev, Tsanko Lavrenov and Sirak Skitnik.


title: Plovdiv

text: Today the city has more than 40 art galleries with most of them being privately owned. The Art Gallery of Plovdiv was founded in the late 19th century. It possesses 5,000 pieces of art in four buildings. Since 1981, it has had a section for Mexican art donated by Mexican painters in honour of the 1,300-year anniversary of the Bulgarian State.


title: Plovdiv

text: On 5 September 2014, Plovdiv was selected as the Bulgarian host of European Capital of Culture in 2019. The city will co-host the event with Matera and another city (yet to be decided).


title: Plovdiv

text: After Plovdiv was elected as European Capital of Culture in 2019, an ambitious cultural program has started its realisation. According to this program, there will be an Island of Arts in the middle of the Maritsa River in Plovdiv. The "Kapana" area (the "Trap") will become a quarter of the arts where the creative industries are going to be developed and presented. This famous area, Kapana, was renovated in 2014, restoring its authentic outlook. It has been used for a number of festivals and art events, attracting visitors from all over Bulgaria and the world.


title: Plovdiv

text: For 2019 the City Under the Hills is planning a number of concerts, including "Balkan Music in Plovdiv".The city will host the Plovdiv Biennale and a number of international forums, such as a meeting of collectors from Europe, a summer art school, dance projects, etc.


title: Plovdiv

text: Although it is located in the middle of a rich agricultural region, Plovdiv's economy has shifted from agriculture to industry since the beginning of the 20th century. Food processing, tobacco, brewing, and textiles formed the pillars of the industrial economic shift. During Communist rule, the city's economy expanded and was dominated by heavy industry. After the fall of Communism in 1989 and the collapse of Bulgaria's planned economy, a number of industrial complexes were closed; production of lead and zinc, machinery, electronics, motor trucks, chemicals, and cosmetics have continued.


title: Plovdiv

text: Plovdiv is the economic capital of Bulgaria as it has the country's largest economy and contributes 7.5% of Bulgaria's GDP . In 2014, more than 35 thousand companies operate in the region which create jobs for 285,000 people. The advantages of Plovdiv include the central geographic location, good infrastructure, and large population. Plovdiv has an international airport, terminal for intermodal transport, several connections with Trakia motorway (connecting Sofia and Burgas), proximity to Maritsa motorway (the main corridor to Turkey), and well-developed road and rail infrastructure which all led to the development of the city as the leading city in terms of industrial output in Bulgaria.


title: Plovdiv

text: The economy of Plovdiv has long tradition in manufacturing, commerce, transport, communications, and tourism. Apart from the industrial development of Plovdiv, there has been a significant surge in the IT and outsourcing service sector in the recent years, as well as a double-digit increase in the tourism growth in the city every year for the past 5 years.


title: Plovdiv

text: Industry has been the sole leader in attracting investment. Industry has been expanding since the late 1990s, with manufacturing plants being built in the city or in its outskirts mainly the municipality of Maritsa. In this period, some €500,000,000 has been invested in the construction of new factories. Trakia Economic Zone which is one of the largest industrial zones in Eastern Europe, is located around Plovdiv. Some of the biggest companies in the region include the Austrian utility company EVN, PIMK (transport), Insa Oil (fuels), Liebherr (refrigerator plant), Magna International (automotive industry), Bella Bulgaria (food manufacturing), Socotab (tobacco processing), ABB Group, Schneider Electric, Osram, Sensata Technologies, etc.


title: Plovdiv

text: The commercial sector is developing quickly. Shopping centers have been built mainly in the Central district and the district of Trakiya. Those include Shopping Center Grand, Market Center, and two more all on the Kapitan Raycho Street, Forum in Trakiya, Excelsior, and others. Plovdiv has three large shopping centers: the €40 million Mall of Plovdiv (opened 2009) with a shopping area of , 11 cinema halls, and parking for 700 cars; Markovo tepe Mall (opened 2016); and Plovdiv Plaza Mall which is 6 stories high with 127 000 m area, half of which is the parking lot and the rest is shopping area.


title: Plovdiv

text: Due to the high demand for business office space, new office and commercial buildings have been built. Several hypermarkets have been built mainly on the outskirts of the city: Metro, Kaufland, Triumf, Praktiker, Billa, Mr. Bricolage, Baumax, Technopolis, Technomarket Europa, and others. The main shopping area is the central street with its shops, cafés, and restaurants. A number of cafés, craftsmen workshops, and souvenir shops are in the Old Town and the small streets in the centre, known among the locals as "The Trap" ().


title: Plovdiv

text: The Plovdiv International Fair, held annually since 1892, is the largest and oldest fair in the country and all of southeastern Europe, gathering companies from all over the world in an exhibition area of located on a territory of on the northern banks of the Maristsa river. It attracts more than 600,000 visitors from many countries.


title: Plovdiv

text: The city has had a duty-free zone since 1987. It has a customs terminal handling cargo from trucks and trains.


title: Plovdiv

text: Plovdiv's geographical position makes it an international transport hub. Three of the ten Pan-European corridors run into or near the city: Corridor IV (Dresden–Bucharest–Sofia-Plovdiv-Istanbul), Corridor VIII (Durrës-Sofia-Plovdiv-Varna/Burgas), and Corridor X (Salzburg–Belgrade-Plovdiv-Istanbul). A major tourist centre, Plovdiv lies at the foot of the Rhodope Mountains, and most people wishing to explore the mountains choose it as their trip's starting point.


title: Plovdiv

text: The city is a major road and railway hub in southern Bulgaria with the Trakia motorway (A1) only to the north. It lies on the important national route from Sofia to Burgas via Stara Zagora. First-class roads lead to Sofia to the west, Karlovo to the north, Asenovgrad, Kardzhali to the south, and Stara Zagora and Haskovo to the east. There are intercity buses which link Plovdiv with cities and towns all over the country and many European countries. They are based in three bus stations: South, Rodopi, and North.


title: Plovdiv

text: Railway transport in the city dates back to 1872 when it became a station on the Lyubimets–Belovo railway line. There are railway lines to Sofia, Panagyurishte, Karlovo, Peshtera, Stara Zagora, Dimitrovgrad, and Asenovgrad. There are three railway stations: Plovdiv Central, Trakia, and Filipovo as well as a freight station.


title: Plovdiv

text: Plovdiv has a large public transport system including around 29 main and 10 extra bus lines. However, there are no trams in the city, and the Plovdiv trolleybus system was closed in autumn 2012. Six bridges span the Maritsa river including a railway bridge and a covered bridge. There are important road junctions to the south, southwest, and north.


title: Plovdiv

text: Plovdiv has a well-developed cycling infrastructure which covers almost all districts of the city. The total length of the cycling roads is ( are completed and are under construction). The city has a total of 690 bike parkings.


title: Plovdiv

text: The number of registered private automobiles in the city increased from 178,104 in 2005 to 234,298 in 2009. There are around 658 cars per 1,000 inhabitants


title: Plovdiv

text: The Plovdiv International Airport is near the village of Krumovo, southeast of the city. It takes charter flights from Europe and has scheduled services with Ryanair to London Stansted and Dublin and S7 to Moscow. Wizz Air have services to London Luton, Dortmund, and Munich West.Many small airports are in the city's surroundings, including the Graf Ignatievo Air Base in Graf Ignatievo to the north of Plovdiv.


title: Plovdiv

text: The BIAF Airshow is held every two years on the Krumovo airbase and is one of the biggest airshows in the Balkans.


title: Plovdiv

text: Around two thirds of the citizens (62,38%) have secondary, specialized, or higher education. That percentage increased from 1992 to 2001.


title: Plovdiv

text: Plovdiv has 78 schools including elementary, high, foreign language, mathematics, technical, and art schools. There are also 10 private schools and a seminary. The number of pupils in 2005 was 36,964 and has been constantly decreasing since the mid-1990 due to lower birth rate. Among the most prestigious schools are the English Language School, the High School of Mathematics, the Ivan Vazov Language School, the National Schools of Commerce Plovdiv, the English Academy, the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts Plovdiv, and the French High School of Plovdiv.


title: Plovdiv

text: The city has six universities and a number of state and private colleges and branches of other universities. Those include Plovdiv University, with 900 lecturers and employees and 13,000 students; the Plovdiv Medical University, with 2,600 students; the Medical College; the Technical University of SofiaBranch Plovdiv; the Agricultural University Plovdiv; the University of Food Technologies; the Academy for Music, Dance and Fine Arts; and others.


title: Plovdiv

text: The 2009 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) was held at the University of Plovdiv "Paisiy Hilendarski", between 8 and 15 August 2009. The 2009 IOI Honorary Patron was Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov.


title: Plovdiv

text: Between 1875 and 1906, the Zariphios School was one of the local Greek educational institutions that provided elementary and secondary education.


title: Plovdiv

text: Plovdiv Sports Complex consists of Plovdiv Stadium with several additional football fields, tennis courts, swimming pools, a rowing base with a 2 km-long channel, restaurants, and cafés in a spacious park in the western part of the city just south of the Maritsa river. There are also playgrounds for children. It is popular among the citizens and guests of Plovdiv who use it for jogging, walking, and relaxation. Plovdiv Stadium (55,000 seats) is the largest football venue in Bulgaria.


title: Plovdiv

text: Other stadiums include Stadion Botev, Lokomotiv (10,000 seats), Maritsa Stadium (5,000 seats), and Todor Diev Stadium (7,000 seats). There are seven indoor sports halls: Kolodruma, University Hall, Olimpia, Lokomotiv, Dunav, Stroitel, Chaika, Akademik, and Total Sport. In 2006, Aqualand, a water park, was opened near the city centre. Several smaller water parks are in the city as well.


title: Plovdiv

text: Football is the most popular sport in the city; Plovdiv has three professional teams. The city has PFC Botev Plovdiv, founded in 1912 and PFC Lokomotiv, founded in 1926. Both teams are a regular fixture in the top Bulgarian league. The rivalry between them is considered to be even more fierce than the one between Levski and CSKA of Sofia. There are two other football clubs in the city – Maritsa FC (founded in 1921) and Spartak Plovdiv (1947).


title: Plovdiv

text: Plovdiv is host of the international boxing tournament "Strandzha" which has taken place since 1949. In 2007, 96 boxers from 20 countries participated in the tournament. There is a horse racing club and a horse base near the city. Plovdiv has several volleyball and basketball teams.


title: Plovdiv

text: Three of the city's seven hills are protected natural territories since 1995. Two of the first parks in Bulgaria are located in the city center "Tsar Simeon garden – city garden", where the very first work of the Italian sculptor Arnoldo Zocchi could be seen, and "Dondukov garden – old city garden". Some of the larger parks include the "Botanical garden", "Beli Brezi", "Ribnitsa", and "Lauta".


title: Plovdiv

text: The asteroid (minor planet) is named after the city. It was discovered by the Belgian astronomer Eric W. Elst and the Bulgarian astronomer Violeta G. Ivanova on 8 August 1986. Plovdiv Peak () on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, is also named after Plovdiv.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council was abolished in 2009.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Bedfordshire is bordered by Cambridgeshire to the east and north-east, Northamptonshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the west and Hertfordshire to the south-east and south. It is the fourteenth most densely populated county of England, with over half the population of the county living in the two largest built-up areas: Luton (258,018) and Bedford (106,940). The highest elevation point is on Dunstable Downs in the Chilterns.


title: Bedfordshire

text: The first recorded use of the name in 1011 was "Bedanfordscir," meaning the shire or county of Bedford, which itself means "Beda's ford" (river crossing).


title: Bedfordshire

text: Bedfordshire was historically divided into nine hundreds: Barford, Biggleswade, Clifton, Flitt, Manshead, Redbornestoke, Stodden, Willey, Wixamtree, along with the liberty and borough of Bedford.


title: Bedfordshire

text: There have been several changes to the county boundary; for example, in 1897 Kensworth and part of Caddington were transferred from Hertfordshire to Bedfordshire.


title: Bedfordshire

text: The southern end of the county is on the chalk ridge known as the Chiltern Hills. The remainder is part of the broad drainage basin of the River Great Ouse and its tributaries. Most of Bedfordshire's rocks are clays and sandstones from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, with some limestone. Local clay has been used for brick-making of Fletton style bricks in the Marston Vale. Glacial erosion of chalk has left the hard flint nodules deposited as gravel—this has been commercially extracted in the past at pits which are now lakes, at Priory Country Park, Wyboston and Felmersham. The Greensand Ridge is an escarpment across the county from near Leighton Buzzard to near Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Bedfordshire is relatively dry, being situated in the east of England. Average annual rainfall is at Bedford. October is the wettest month, with and February the driest, with . While there is little difference from month to month, there are more wet days in autumn and winter but often heavier individual falls in spring and summer; of note were the 1998 Easter floods.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Average temperatures in Bedford range from a low of overnight in February to a high of during the day in July. Record temperatures by month for Woburn follow.


title: Bedfordshire

text: The Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner is Festus Akinbusoye who is a member of the Conservative Party.


title: Bedfordshire

text: For local government purposes, Bedfordshire is divided into three unitary authorities: the boroughs of Bedford and Luton, and the District of Central Bedfordshire. Healthcare in the county is dealt with by a single Clinical Commission Group (CCG), which serves all three local authorities in the county, alongside the City of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Policing, fire and rescue services continue to be provided on a county-wide basis, with Bedfordshire Police governed by the Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner and Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service governed members of the three councils.


title: Bedfordshire

text: For elections to the House of Commons, Bedfordshire is divided into six constituencies, each returning a single Member of Parliament (MP):


title: Bedfordshire

text: The present constituencies date from 1997. The boundaries were slightly modified for the 2010 general election.


title: Bedfordshire

text: This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Bedfordshire at current basic prices published (pp. 240–253) by "Office for National Statistics" with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Bedfordshire is the location of a number of notable UK and international companies who have either headquarters or major bases in the county. Autoglass, Boxclever and Charles Wells Pubs are all based in Bedford, while the Kier Group and Kingspan Timber Solutions are based in Sandy, and Jordans Cereals are based in Biggleswade. EasyJet, Impellam, TUI Airways and Vauxhall Motors are all based in Luton, Whitbread is based in Houghton Regis and Costa Coffee is now based in Dunstable. UltraVision is based in Leighton Buzzard, while Moto Hospitality is based at Toddington service station.


title: Bedfordshire

text: The "Bedfordshire clanger" is a local dish consisting of a suet crust pastry filled with meat in one end and a fruit preserve in the other. It was traditionally a farm labourers' meal, designed so as to produce no waste as well as two separate meals.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Chocolate Toothpaste is another local delicacy. A chocolate tart, Chocolate Toothpaste consists of a gritty chocolate filling (said to resemble the texture of toothpaste) within a pastry tart, commonly finished with a swirl of whipped cream on top.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Bedfordshire lies on many of the main transport routes which link London to the Midlands, Northern England and the rest of the UK.


title: Bedfordshire

text: To these was added in 1959 the M1 motorway, running from London to Leeds. Running from junctions 10 to 13 in Bedfordshire, there are two junctions serving Luton (at the southern end), with another one serving Bedford and Milton Keynes (at the northern end). Between these lies two other junctions in the county, with one connecting to the A5 and serving Dunstable, and the other serving the town of Flitwick. There is also one motorway service station in the county: Toddington Services.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Former trunk roads, now local roads managed by the local highway authorities, include the A428 (Cambridge-Coventry) running east–west through Bedford Borough, and the A6 from Luton to Carlisle.


title: Bedfordshire

text: There are London North Western rural services also running between Bedford and Bletchley along the Marston Vale Line.


title: Bedfordshire

text: The River Great Ouse links Bedfordshire to the Fenland waterways. As of 2004 there are plans by the Bedford & Milton Keynes Waterway Trust to construct a canal linking the Great Ouse at Bedford to the Grand Union Canal at Milton Keynes, 14 miles (23 km) distant.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Luton Airport (the fifth busiest in the United Kingdom) has flights to many UK, European, Middle Eastern and North African destinations, operated largely (but not exclusively) by low-cost airlines.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Local news is provided by BBC East and ITV Anglia from Cambridge, southern part of the county such as Luton will also receive BBC London & ITV London meaning the area can get news and television programs from Cambridge and London.


title: Bedfordshire

text: The state education system for all of Bedfordshire used to be organised by Bedfordshire County Council. Unlike most of the United Kingdom, Bedfordshire County Council operated a three-tier education system arranged into lower, middle and upper schools, as recommended in the Plowden Report of 1967, although Luton continued to operate a two-tier system. The three-tier arrangement continued in the rest of the county, though in 2006 a vote was held with a view to moving to the two-tier model, but this was rejected.


title: Bedfordshire

text: After the 2009 structural changes to local government in England, Bedfordshire County Council was abolished, and its responsibilities for education were passed to Bedford Borough Council and Central Bedfordshire Council.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Bedford Borough Council voted in November 2009 to change to the two-tier model in its area. The change was due to be introduced over a five-year period and be completed in 2015. However, with the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme in 2010, the borough changed its proposals, and the switch proceeded on school by school basis where council funds allowed. However as of 2020 all of Bedford Borough has a two-tier education structure apart from in the Marston Vale area (one upper school remains).


title: Bedfordshire

text: Most of the secondary schools in the area offer sixth form courses (such as A Levels), though Bedford College and The Bedford Sixth Form also offer a range of further education courses. Additionally, Stella Mann College is a private college which offers a range of further education courses relating to the performing arts.


title: Bedfordshire

text: There are a number of independent schools, many of which have links to the Harpur Trust. These include Bedford School, Bedford Modern School and Bedford Girls' School.


title: Bedfordshire

text: In Central Bedfordshire, the school systems in Dunstable and Sandy have been re-organised into the two-tier model in response to parent and school demand, but elsewhere in the authority the three-tier model continues. Plans for the construction of new settlements in Marston Vale have included lower, middle and upper schools.


title: Bedfordshire

text: As well as sixth form departments in schools, the main further education providers in the district are Central Bedfordshire College and Shuttleworth College


title: Bedfordshire

text: Luton also operates a three-tier education system, though its organisation of infant, junior and high schools mirrors the traditional transfer age into secondary education of 11 years. However, most of Luton's high schools do not offer sixth-form education. Instead, this is handled by Luton Sixth Form College, though Barnfield College and Cardinal Newman Catholic School also offer a range of further education courses.


title: Bedfordshire

text: There are two universities based in the county – the University of Bedfordshire and Cranfield University. These institutions attract students from all over the UK and abroad, as well as from Bedfordshire.


title: Bedfordshire

text: The enormous Cardington airship sheds are situated to the south of Bedford, near the villages of Cardington and Shortstown. They were originally built for the construction of large airships during WW1. Since falling out of their intended use, one has been used for many purposes including housing film sets for 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and 'Batman Begins' and as a rehearsal space for Take That, with the other having been extensively refurbished and now accommodating Hybrid Air Vehicles, a British modern airship design and manufacturing company.


title: Bedfordshire

text: St Paul's Church, Bedford is a Church of England parish church and the Civic Church of the Borough of Bedford and the County of Bedfordshire. Located on St Paul's Square, the large medieval and later church of cathedral proportions and iconic spire dominates the town and area, exercises a ministry of welcome to thousands of visitors and pilgrims from far and wide each year, and is a focus for special commemorations and celebrations in the borough, county, region and wider community, as well as being a central venue for concerts, recitals and exhibitions. Historically, St Paul's played a key part in the life of the British nation during the Second World War as the church of the BBC.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Bedfordshire is home to Luton Town F.C. and the Ampthill RUFC and Bedford Blues rugby teams, amongst other various sporting teams.


title: Bedfordshire

text: Bedfordshire boasts a 40-mile (64  km) walk traversing the county from Leighton Buzzard at the southern endpoint and Sandy, Bedfordshire/Gamlingay in southern Cambridgeshire to the east; this is called the Greensand Ridge Walk. For cyclists, there is a parallel route called the Greensand Cycle Way that follows minor country roads.


title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

text: The Sorrows of Young Werther (; ) is a 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which appeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the main novels in the "Sturm und Drang" period in German literature, and influenced the later Romantic movement. Goethe, aged 24 at the time, finished "Werther" in five and a half weeks of intensive writing in January to March 1774. It instantly placed him among the foremost international literary celebrities and was among the best known of his works.


title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

text: Most of "The Sorrows of Young Werther", a story about a young man's extreme response to unrequited love, is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of a sensitive and passionate temperament, to his friend Wilhelm. These give an intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on , near Wetzlar), whose peasants have enchanted him with their simple ways. There he meets Charlotte, a beautiful young girl who takes care of her siblings after the death of their mother. Werther falls in love with Charlotte despite knowing beforehand that she is engaged to a man named Albert, eleven years her senior.


title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

text: Despite the pain it causes him, Werther spends the next few months cultivating a close friendship with them both. His sorrow eventually becomes so unsupportable that he is forced to leave Wahlheim for Weimar, where he makes the acquaintance of "Fräulein" von B. He suffers great embarrassment when he forgetfully visits a friend and unexpectedly has to face there the weekly gathering of the entire aristocratic set. He is not tolerated and asked to leave since he is not a nobleman. He then returns to Wahlheim, where he suffers still more than before, partly because Charlotte and Albert are now married. Every day becomes a torturing reminder that Charlotte will never be able to requite his love. She, out of pity for her friend and respect for her husband, decides that Werther must not visit her so frequently. He visits her one final time, and they are both overcome with emotion after he recites to her a passage of his own translation of "Ossian".


title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

text: Even before that incident, Werther had hinted at the idea that one member of the love triangle – Charlotte, Albert or Werther himself – had to die to resolve the situation. Unable to hurt anyone else or seriously consider murder, Werther sees no other choice but to take his own life. After composing a farewell letter to be found after his death, he writes to Albert asking for his two pistols, on the pretext that he is going "on a journey". Charlotte receives the request with great emotion and sends the pistols. Werther then shoots himself in the head, but does not die until twelve hours later. He is buried between two linden trees that he had mentioned frequently in his letters. The funeral is not attended by any clergy, or by Albert or Charlotte. The book ends with an intimation that Charlotte may die of a broken heart: "I shall say nothing of...Charlotte's grief. ... Charlotte's life was despaired of."


title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

text: "Werther" was one of Goethe's few works aligned with the aesthetic, social and philosophical ideals that pervaded the German proto-Romantic movement known as "Sturm und Drang", before he and Friedrich von Schiller moved into Weimar Classicism. The novel was published anonymously, and Goethe distanced himself from it in his later years, regretting the fame it had brought him and the consequent attention to his own youthful love of Charlotte Buff, then already engaged to Johann Christian Kestner. Although he wrote "Werther" at the age of 24, it was all for which some of his visitors in his old age knew him. Goethe had changed his views of literature radically by then, even denouncing the Romantic movement as "everything that is sick."


title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

text: Goethe described the powerful impact the book had on him, writing that even if Werther had been a brother of his whom he had killed, he could not have been more haunted by his vengeful ghost. Yet, Goethe substantially reworked the book for the 1787 edition and acknowledged the great personal and emotional influence that "The Sorrows of Young Werther" could exert on forlorn young lovers who discovered it. As he commented to his secretary in 1821, "It must be bad, if not everybody was to have a time in his life, when he felt as though "Werther" had been written exclusively for him." Even fifty years after the book's publication, Goethe wrote in a conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann about the emotional turmoil he had gone through while writing the book: "That was a creation which I, like the pelican, fed with the blood of my own heart."


title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

text: "The Sorrows of Young Werther" turned Goethe, previously an unknown author, into a literary celebrity almost overnight. Napoleon Bonaparte considered it one of the great works of European literature, having written a Goethe-inspired soliloquy in his youth and carried "Werther" with him on his campaigning to Egypt. It also started the phenomenon known as "Werther Fever," which caused young men throughout Europe to dress in the clothing style described for Werther in the novel. Items of merchandising such as prints, decorated Meissen porcelain and even a perfume were produced. Thomas Carlyle coined an epithet, "Wertherism", to describe the self-indulgency of the age that the phenomenon represented.


title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

text: The book reputedly also led to some of the first known examples of copycat suicide. The men were often dressed in the same clothing "as Goethe's description of Werther and using similar pistols." Often the book was found at the scene of the suicide. Rüdiger Safranski, a modern biographer of Goethe, dismisses the Werther Effect "as only a persistent rumor." Nonetheless, this aspect of "Werther Fever" was watched with concern by the authorities – both the novel and the Werther clothing style were banned in Leipzig in 1775; the novel was also banned in Denmark and Italy. It was also watched with fascination by fellow authors. One of these, Friedrich Nicolai, decided to create a satirical piece with a happy ending, entitled "Die Freuden des jungen Werthers" (""The Joys of Young Werther""), in which Albert, having realized what Werther is up to, loaded chicken's blood into the pistol, thereby foiling Werther's suicide, and happily concedes Charlotte to him. After some initial difficulties, Werther sheds his passionate youthful side and reintegrates himself into society as a respectable citizen.


title: The Sorrows of Young Werther

text: Goethe, however, was not pleased with the "Freuden" and started a literary war with Nicolai that lasted all his life, writing a poem titled "Nicolai auf Werthers Grabe" ("Nicolai on Werther's grave"), in which Nicolai (here a passing nameless pedestrian) defecates on Werther's grave, so desecrating the memory of a Werther from which Goethe had distanced himself in the meantime, as he had from the "Sturm und Drang". This argument was continued in his collection of short and critical poems the "Xenien " and his play "Faust".


title: VfL Bochum

text: Verein für Leibesübungen Bochum 1848 Fußballgemeinschaft, commonly referred to as simply VfL Bochum (), is a German association football club based in the city of Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia. The club has spent 35 seasons in the Bundesliga.


title: VfL Bochum

text: VfL Bochum is one of the oldest sports organizations in the world, claiming an origin date of 26 July 1848 when an article in the "Märkischer Sprecher" – a local newspaper – called for the creation of a gymnastics club. The Turnverein zu Bochum was then formally established on 18 February 1849. The club was banned on 28 December 1852 for political reasons and then reestablished on 19 June 1860. The club was reorganized in May 1904 as Turnverein zu Bochum, gegründet 1848 and formed a football department on 31 January 1911. On 1 April 1919, the club merged with Spiel und Sport 08 Bochum to form Turn- und Sportverein Bochum 1848. On 1 February 1924, the two clubs from the earlier merger split into the Bochumer Turnverein 1848 (gymnastics department) and Turn- und Sportverein Bochum 1908 (football, track and field, handball, hockey and tennis departments).


title: VfL Bochum

text: Bochumer Turnverein 1848 was forced by the Nazi regime to merge with Turn- und Sport Bochum 1908 and Sportverein Germania Vorwärts Bochum 1906 into the current-day club VfL Bochum on 14 April 1938. After the merger, VfL Bochum continued to compete in the top flight as part of the Gauliga Westfalen.


title: VfL Bochum

text: As World War II progressed, play throughout Germany became increasingly difficult due to player shortages, travel problems and damage to football fields from Allied bombing raids. VfL became part of the wartime side Kriegsspielgemeinschaft VfL 1848/Preußen Bochum alongside Preußen 07 Bochum before re-emerging as a separate side again after the war. Although they fielded competitive sides, they had the misfortune of playing in the same division as Schalke 04, which was the dominant team of the era. VfL's best result was therefore a distant second place in 1938–39.


title: VfL Bochum

text: Following World War II, the football section resumed play as the independent VfL Bochum 1848 and played its first season in the second division 2. Oberliga West in 1949, while Preußen Bochum went on to lower tier amateur level play. VfL captured the division title in 1953 to advance to the Oberliga West for a single season. They repeated their divisional win in 1956 and returned to the top-flight until again being relegated after the 1960–61 season.


title: VfL Bochum

text: With the formation of the Bundesliga, Germany's new professional league, in 1963 VfL found itself in the third tier Amateurliga Westfalen. A first-place result there in 1965 raised them to the Regionalliga West (II), from which they began a steady climb up the league table to the Bundesliga in 1971. During this rise, Bochum also played its way to the final of the 1967–68 DFB-Pokal, where they lost 1–4 to 1. FC Köln.


title: VfL Bochum

text: In spite of being a perennial lower table side, Bochum developed a reputation for tenaciousness on the field in a run of 20 seasons in the top flight. The club made a repeat appearance in the DFB-Pokal final in 1988, losing 0–1 to Eintracht Frankfurt. Relegated after a 16th-place finish in the 1992–93 season, the team has become a classic "yo-yo club", bouncing up and down between the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga. The club finished in 5th place in the Bundesliga in 1996–97 and 2003–04, which earned them appearances in the UEFA Cup. In 1997, they advanced to the third round, where they were eliminated by Ajax, and in 2004, they were eliminated early through away goals (0–0 and 1–1) by Standard Liège.


title: VfL Bochum

text: Today's sports club has 5,000 members, with the football department accounting for over 2,200 of these. Other sections now part of the association include athletics, badminton, basketball, dance, fencing, gymnastics, handball, field hockey, swimming, table tennis, tennis, and volleyball.


title: VfL Bochum

text: Ruhrstadion (also known as the Vonovia Ruhrstadion under a sponsorship deal) was one of the first modern football-only stadiums in Germany. It was built in the 1970s on the traditional ground of TuS Bochum 08 at the Castroper Straße, north of the city centre.


title: High School Musical 2

text: High School Musical 2 is a 2007 American musical television film written by Peter Barsocchini and directed by Kenny Ortega. The 70th Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM), it is the sequel to "High School Musical" (2006) and the second installment of the "High School Musical" film series. The film stars Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel, Corbin Bleu, and Monique Coleman. In "High School Musical 2", Troy Bolton (Efron), Gabriella Montez (Hudgens), and the Wildcats find summer jobs at a country club, but tensions rise when Sharpay Evans (Tisdale) recruits Bolton for a talent show performance.


title: High School Musical 2

text: "High School Musical 2" retained Utah as a central filming location with a return to East High School, while Entrada at Snow Canyon Country Club was used as filming location for the Evans' country club. Additional scenes were filmed in Los Angeles.


title: High School Musical 2

text: Upon the film's release on August 17, 2007, it broke a plethora of viewership records as it became the most commercially successful Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM) ever produced. In the U.S., "High School Musical 2" generated 17 million viewers in its premiere broadcast, smashing the record of its predecessor by over ten million, while the figure remains the highest the network has ever produced. It also ranked as the highest-rated basic cable telecast at the time. The film's soundtrack enjoyed widespread success; it was certified double platinum in its first week as it debuted at number one in the United States, with its lead single "What Time Is It?" reaching number six on the "Billboard" Hot 100. The film and soundtrack received generally positive reviews from critics and audiences, with many considering it an improvement over its predecessor. The final installment of the film series, "", was theatrically released in October 2008.


title: High School Musical 2

text: The school year ends with everyone at East High School looking forward to summer vacation ("What Time Is It?"). Troy Bolton is still dating Gabriella Montez, who decides to stay in Albuquerque with her mother. Troy eventually decides to look for a summer job to gain money for college.


title: High School Musical 2

text: Sharpay and Ryan Evans plan to spend the summer at their family's country club, Lava Springs ("Fabulous"), but Sharpay's summer plans also include pursuing Troy, whom she has arranged for to be hired at the club. However, Troy convinces the club's manager, Mr. Fulton, into hiring Gabriella and their close group of friends as well, including Taylor and Chad. Sharpay is enraged upon learning that Gabriella is working as one of the lifeguards but is unable to get her fired, so she orders Fulton to give them difficult tasks so they would want to quit. Fulton attempts to intimidate the group, but Troy rebuilds their confidence and convinces them that they can persevere ("Work This Out").


title: High School Musical 2

text: Troy continues to worry about funding for college. Sharpay senses his need and arranges for Troy to be promoted to the University of Albuquerque's senior basketball team, hoping that this will convince him to sing with her at the talent show. Meanwhile, Kelsi writes a song for Troy and Gabriella and they agree to sing with their friends in the show ("You Are the Music in Me"), not knowing that Sharpay is vying for his attention. In the extended version, Sharpay and Ryan trap Troy as he prepares for a date with Gabriella by rehearsing their own song ("Humuhumunukunukuapua'a"), much to Troy's annoyance.


title: High School Musical 2

text: Ryan realizes he does not mean much to Sharpay anymore, as she is ready to blow her brother aside for the opportunity to perform with Troy. This leads to tension between the siblings, and Ryan angrily informs Sharpay that he will no longer obey her orders. Taylor and Gabriella invite Ryan to the baseball game, where he persuades the Wildcats to take part in the talent show ("I Don't Dance").


title: High School Musical 2

text: Troy and Gabriella's relationship is strained when Troy sees Ryan with Gabriella, sparking jealousy. Owing to a "promise" from Troy, he and Sharpay rehearse another song for the talent show ("You Are the Music in Me (Sharpay Version)"). Troy also gets into a heated argument with Chad for abandoning his friends, due to his perceived change of attitude after being promoted by Sharpay.


title: High School Musical 2

text: When Sharpay discovers that Ryan and the Wildcats are putting together their own performance in the show, she furiously orders Mr. Fulton to ban all staff members from performing. Upset, Gabriella confronts Sharpay about her interference and quits from Lava Springs. Troy overhears the exchange and tries to persuade Gabriella to change her mind. Gabriella expresses her loss of trust with Troy ("Gotta Go My Own Way"), leaves Lava Springs, and returns her necklace, which he had given to her after school ended. At home, Troy explains to his father about the situation, and begins to regret his actions.


title: High School Musical 2

text: Troy returns to work the next day to find that his friends now refuse to talk to him, following his earlier argument with Chad. Kelsi silently shows Troy the notice from Mr. Fulton, causing Troy to question his own motivations ("Bet on It") and confronts Sharpay, informing her that he will not sing with her. He then reconciles with Chad and apologizes to the Wildcats for his absence. They convince him to perform in the talent show, which he does only under the condition that they are all allowed to perform as well.


title: High School Musical 2

text: At Sharpay's supposed instruction, Ryan gives Troy a new song to learn moments before the show. As Troy goes onstage, he asks Sharpay why she switched the song, and Sharpay is shocked to find that her brother tricked her. Troy performs the song ("Everyday") and reunites with Gabriella as the Wildcats joins him onstage, while Sharpay presents Ryan with the award for the talent show. After the talent show, all the Wildcats go to the golf course to enjoy the fireworks ("You Are the Music In Me (Reprise)") and everyone in Lava Springs celebrates the end of the summer with a pool party the next day ("All for One").


title: High School Musical 2

text: The premiere of "High School Musical 2" aired at 8 PM Eastern Time on August 17, 2007, and included a telecast hosted by Kenny Ortega and the movie's cast. On Saturday, August 18, Disney Channel aired "High School Musical 2: Wildcat Chat", in which the stars of the movie answered questions posed by fans. On August 19, Disney aired a sing-along version of the movie. On May 23, DirecTV announced that they would be hosting an exclusive high-definition airing of the movie a few days after the August 17 premiere on its network-only channel, The 101.


title: High School Musical 2

text: Disney Channel aired a weekly program called "Road to High School Musical 2", beginning on June 8, 2007, and leading up to the premiere of "High School Musical 2" in August. The show offered viewers a behind-the-scenes look into the production of the movie. The world premiere of the opening number "What Time Is It" was on Radio Disney May 25, 2007, and similarly "You Are The Music In Me" premiered on July 13, 2007.


title: High School Musical 2

text: On December 11, 2007, the movie was released on DVD and Blu-ray titled "High School Musical 2: Extended Edition". On September 15, 2008, a 2-disc special edition of the movie was released titled "High School Musical 2: Deluxe Dance Edition".


title: High School Musical 2

text: The first broadcast of the film on August 17, 2007, broke records, receiving 17.2 million viewers. This number made it, at the time, the most-watched basic-cable telecast in history (the previous record was held by an edition of ESPN's "Monday Night Football" between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys on October 23, 2006, which attracted 16 million viewers), the most-watched made-for-cable movie ever (the previous record was held by TNT's January 21, 2001, airing of "Crossfire Trail", which brought in 12.5 million viewers), and the largest audience of any program on broadcast or cable in the 2007 summer television season, along with Friday nights for the past five years. Ratings for the second showing of the movie fell to 8.4 million, and the third showing fell to 7.4 million, totaling the premiere weekend to 33.04 million viewers. Following the movie's airing, a preview of the new Disney Channel show Phineas and Ferb aired, which starred Tisdale.


title: High School Musical 2

text: In Latin America, the premiere of "High School Musical 2" was seen by 3.3 million viewers in the north region. The film was the most-watched in its schedule, among all cable channels, and produced the highest rating of the channel, surpassing all original films of Disney Channel. Among other records, the premiere in Argentina surpassed the debut of "High School Musical" the last year, in a 107 percent, while in Brazil the sequel reached 208 percent, and Mexico did so with 61 percent. In the United Kingdom, the movie became Disney Channel UK's most viewed program ever, totaling 1.2 million viewers in its first showing.


title: High School Musical 2

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 83% based on 23 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Surprisingly better than its predecessor, "High School Musical 2" returns to enchant tweens with its snappy songs, wicked dance moves, and peppy spirit." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: High School Musical 2

text: "USA Today"'s Robert Bianco awarded the film three stars out of four, saying "High School Musical 2" was "sweet, smart, bursting with talent and energy, and awash in innocence". While critics enjoyed the film, they noted that the timing of the movie's premiere seemed odd, premiering just when school was about to start up again, while the movie's plot involved the gang going on summer vacation. "High School Musical 2" won the "So Hot Right Now" award at the Nickelodeon Australian Kids' Choice Awards 2007, in which "High School Musical" castmate Zac Efron hosted with The Veronicas.


title: High School Musical 2

text: Like its predecessor, "High School Musical 2" has been adapted into two different theatrical productions: a one-act, 70-minute version and a two-act full-length production. This stage production includes the song "Hummuhummunukunukuapua'a" that was left out of the original movie but included in the DVD. Through Music Theater International, Disney Theatrical began licensing the theatrical rights in October 2008. MTI had originally recruited 7 schools to serve as tests for the new full-length adaptation, but due to complications with multiple drafts of both the script and the score, all but two schools were forced to drop out of the pilot program.


title: Casimir effect

text: In quantum field theory, the Casimir effect is a physical force acting on the macroscopic boundaries of a confined space which arises from the quantum fluctuations of the field. It is named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir, who predicted the effect for electromagnetic systems in 1948.


title: Casimir effect

text: In the same year, Casimir together with Dirk Polder described a similar effect experienced by a neutral atom in the vicinity of a macroscopic interface which is referred to as the Casimir–Polder force. Their result is a generalization of the London–van der Waals force and includes retardation due to the finite speed of light. Since the fundamental principles leading to the London–van der Waals force, the Casimir and the Casimir–Polder force, respectively, can be formulated on the same footing, the distinction in nomenclature nowadays serves a historical purpose mostly and usually refers to the different physical setups.


title: Casimir effect

text: It was not until 1997 that a direct experiment by S. Lamoreaux quantitatively measured the Casimir force to within 5% of the value predicted by the theory.


title: Casimir effect

text: The Casimir effect can be understood by the idea that the presence of macroscopic material interfaces, such as conducting metals and dielectrics, alters the vacuum expectation value of the energy of the second-quantized electromagnetic field. Since the value of this energy depends on the shapes and positions of the materials, the Casimir effect manifests itself as a force between such objects.


title: Casimir effect

text: Any medium supporting oscillations has an analogue of the Casimir effect. For example, beads on a string as well as plates submerged in turbulent water or gas illustrate the Casimir force.


title: Casimir effect

text: In modern theoretical physics, the Casimir effect plays an important role in the chiral bag model of the nucleon; in applied physics it is significant in some aspects of emerging microtechnologies and nanotechnologies.


title: Casimir effect

text: The typical example is of two uncharged conductive plates in a vacuum, placed a few nanometers apart. In a classical description, the lack of an external field means that there is no field between the plates, and no force would be measured between them. When this field is instead studied using the quantum electrodynamic vacuum, it is seen that the plates do affect the virtual photons which constitute the field, and generate a net force – either an attraction or a repulsion depending on the specific arrangement of the two plates. Although the Casimir effect can be expressed in terms of virtual particles interacting with the objects, it is best described and more easily calculated in terms of the zero-point energy of a quantized field in the intervening space between the objects. This force has been measured and is a striking example of an effect captured formally by second quantization.


title: Casimir effect

text: The treatment of boundary conditions in these calculations has led to some controversy. In fact, "Casimir's original goal was to compute the van der Waals force between polarizable molecules" of the conductive plates. Thus it can be interpreted without any reference to the zero-point energy (vacuum energy) of quantum fields.


title: Casimir effect

text: Because the strength of the force falls off rapidly with distance, it is measurable only when the distance between the objects is extremely small. On a submicron scale, this force becomes so strong that it becomes the dominant force between uncharged conductors. In fact, at separations of 10 nm – about 100 times the typical size of an atom – the Casimir effect produces the equivalent of about 1 atmosphere of pressure (the precise value depending on surface geometry and other factors).


title: Casimir effect

text: Dutch physicists Hendrik Casimir and Dirk Polder at Philips Research Labs proposed the existence of a force between two polarizable atoms and between such an atom and a conducting plate in 1947; this special form is called the Casimir–Polder force. After a conversation with Niels Bohr, who suggested it had something to do with zero-point energy, Casimir alone formulated the theory predicting a force between neutral conducting plates in 1948. This latter phenomenon is called the Casimir effect in the narrow sense.


title: Casimir effect

text: Predictions of the force were later extended to finite-conductivity metals and dielectrics, and recent calculations have considered more general geometries. Experiments before 1997 had observed the force qualitatively, and indirect validation of the predicted Casimir energy had been made by measuring the thickness of liquid helium films. However, it was not until 1997 that a direct experiment by S. Lamoreaux quantitatively measured the force to within 5% of the value predicted by the theory. Subsequent experiments approach an accuracy of a few percent.


title: Casimir effect

text: The causes of the Casimir effect are described by quantum field theory, which states that all of the various fundamental fields, such as the electromagnetic field, must be quantized at each and every point in space. In a simplified view, a "field" in physics may be envisioned as if space were filled with interconnected vibrating balls and springs, and the strength of the field can be visualized as the displacement of a ball from its rest position. Vibrations in this field propagate and are governed by the appropriate wave equation for the particular field in question. The second quantization of quantum field theory requires that each such ball-spring combination be quantized, that is, that the strength of the field be quantized at each point in space. At the most basic level, the field at each point in space is a simple harmonic oscillator, and its quantization places a quantum harmonic oscillator at each point. Excitations of the field correspond to the elementary particles of particle physics. However, even the vacuum has a vastly complex structure, so all calculations of quantum field theory must be made in relation to this model of the vacuum.


title: Casimir effect

text: The vacuum has, implicitly, all of the properties that a particle may have: spin, or polarization in the case of light, energy, and so on. On average, most of these properties cancel out: the vacuum is, after all, "empty" in this sense. One important exception is the vacuum energy or the vacuum expectation value of the energy. The quantization of a simple harmonic oscillator states that the lowest possible energy or zero-point energy that such an oscillator may have is


title: Casimir effect

text: Summing over all possible oscillators at all points in space gives an infinite quantity. Since only "differences" in energy are physically measurable (with the notable exception of gravitation, which remains beyond the scope of quantum field theory), this infinity may be considered a feature of the mathematics rather than of the physics. This argument is the underpinning of the theory of renormalization. Dealing with infinite quantities in this way was a cause of widespread unease among quantum field theorists before the development in the 1970s of the renormalization group, a mathematical formalism for scale transformations that provides a natural basis for the process.


title: Casimir effect

text: When the scope of the physics is widened to include gravity, the interpretation of this formally infinite quantity remains problematic. There is currently no compelling explanation as to why it should not result in a cosmological constant that is many orders of magnitude larger than observed. However, since we do not yet have any fully coherent quantum theory of gravity, there is likewise no compelling reason as to why it should instead actually result in the value of the cosmological constant that we observe.


title: Casimir effect

text: The Casimir effect for fermions can be understood as the spectral asymmetry of the fermion operator, where it is known as the Witten index.


title: Casimir effect

text: Alternatively, a 2005 paper by Robert Jaffe of MIT states that "Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be computed without reference to zero-point energies. They are relativistic, quantum forces between charges and currents. The Casimir force (per unit area) between parallel plates vanishes as alpha, the fine structure constant, goes to zero, and the standard result, which appears to be independent of alpha, corresponds to the alpha approaching infinity limit", and that "The Casimir force is simply the (relativistic, retarded) van der Waals force between the metal plates." Casimir and Polder's original paper used this method to derive the Casimir–Polder force. In 1978, Schwinger, DeRadd, and Milton published a similar derivation for the Casimir effect between two parallel plates. More recently, Nikolic proved from first principles of quantum electrodynamics that Casimir force does not originate from vacuum energy of electromagnetic field, and explained in simple terms why the fundamental microscopic origin of Casimir force lies in van der Waals forces.


title: Casimir effect

text: Casimir's observation was that the second-quantized quantum electromagnetic field, in the presence of bulk bodies such as metals or dielectrics, must obey the same boundary conditions that the classical electromagnetic field must obey. In particular, this affects the calculation of the vacuum energy in the presence of a conductor or dielectric.


title: Casimir effect

text: Consider, for example, the calculation of the vacuum expectation value of the electromagnetic field inside a metal cavity, such as, for example, a radar cavity or a microwave waveguide. In this case, the correct way to find the zero-point energy of the field is to sum the energies of the standing waves of the cavity. To each and every possible standing wave corresponds an energy; say the energy of the th standing wave is . The vacuum expectation value of the energy of the electromagnetic field in the cavity is then


title: Casimir effect

text: with the sum running over all possible values of enumerating the standing waves. The factor of is present because the zero-point energy of the th mode is , where is the energy increment for the th mode. (It is the same as appears in the equation .) Written in this way, this sum is clearly divergent; however, it can be used to create finite expressions.


title: Casimir effect

text: In particular, one may ask how the zero-point energy depends on the shape of the cavity. Each energy level depends on the shape, and so one should write for the energy level, and for the vacuum expectation value. At this point comes an important observation: The force at point on the wall of the cavity is equal to the change in the vacuum energy if the shape of the wall is perturbed a little bit, say by , at . That is, one has


title: Casimir effect

text: Attraction between the plates can be easily understood by focusing on the one-dimensional situation. Suppose that a moveable conductive plate is positioned at a short distance from one of two widely separated plates (distance apart). With , the states within the slot of width are highly constrained so that the energy of any one mode is widely separated from that of the next. This is not the case in the large region where there is a large number of states (about ) with energy evenly spaced between and the next mode in the narrow slot, or in other words, all slightly larger than . Now on shortening by an amount (which is negative), the mode in the narrow slot shrinks in wavelength and therefore increases in energy proportional to , whereas all the states that lie in the large region lengthen and correspondingly decrease their energy by an amount proportional to (note the different denominator). The two effects nearly cancel, but the net change is slightly negative, because the energy of all the modes in the large region are slightly larger than the single mode in the slot. Thus the force is attractive: it tends to make slightly smaller, the plates drawing each other closer, across the thin slot.


title: Casimir effect

text: In the original calculation done by Casimir, he considered the space between a pair of conducting metal plates at distance apart. In this case, the standing waves are particularly easy to calculate, because the transverse component of the electric field and the normal component of the magnetic field must vanish on the surface of a conductor. Assuming the plates lie parallel to the -plane, the standing waves are


title: Casimir effect

text: where stands for the electric component of the electromagnetic field, and, for brevity, the polarization and the magnetic components are ignored here. Here, and are the wavenumbers in directions parallel to the plates, and


title: Casimir effect

text: is the wavenumber perpendicular to the plates. Here, is an integer, resulting from the requirement that vanish on the metal plates. The frequency of this wave is


title: Casimir effect

text: where is the speed of light. The vacuum energy is then the sum over all possible excitation modes. Since the area of the plates is large, we may sum by integrating over two of the dimensions in -space. The assumption of periodic boundary conditions yields,


title: Casimir effect

text: where is the area of the metal plates, and a factor of 2 is introduced for the two possible polarizations of the wave. This expression is clearly infinite, and to proceed with the calculation, it is convenient to introduce a regulator (discussed in greater detail below). The regulator will serve to make the expression finite, and in the end will be removed. The zeta-regulated version of the energy per unit-area of the plate is


title: Casimir effect

text: In the end, the limit is to be taken. Here is just a complex number, not to be confused with the shape discussed previously. This integral sum is finite for real and larger than 3. The sum has a pole at , but may be analytically continued to , where the expression is finite. The above expression simplifies to:


title: Casimir effect

text: where polar coordinates were introduced to turn the double integral into a single integral. The in front is the Jacobian, and the comes from the angular integration. The integral converges if , resulting in


title: Casimir effect

text: The sum diverges at in the neighborhood of zero, but if the damping of large-frequency excitations corresponding to analytic continuation of the Riemann zeta function to is assumed to make sense physically in some way, then one has


title: Casimir effect

text: The analytic continuation has evidently lost an additive positive infinity, somehow exactly accounting for the zero-point energy (not included above) outside the slot between the plates, but which changes upon plate movement within a closed system. The Casimir force per unit area for idealized, perfectly conducting plates with vacuum between them is


title: Casimir effect

text: The force is negative, indicating that the force is attractive: by moving the two plates closer together, the energy is lowered. The presence of shows that the Casimir force per unit area is very small, and that furthermore, the force is inherently of quantum-mechanical origin.


title: Casimir effect

text: By integrating the equation above it is possible to calculate the energy required to separate to infinity the two plates as:


title: Casimir effect

text: In Casimir's original derivation, a moveable conductive plate is positioned at a short distance from one of two widely separated plates (distance apart). The zero-point energy on "both" sides of the plate is considered. Instead of the above "ad hoc" analytic continuation assumption, non-convergent sums and integrals are computed using Euler–Maclaurin summation with a regularizing function (e.g., exponential regularization) not so anomalous as in the above.


title: Casimir effect

text: Casimir's analysis of idealized metal plates was generalized to arbitrary dielectric and realistic metal plates by Evgeny Lifshitz and his students. Using this approach, complications of the bounding surfaces, such as the modifications to the Casimir force due to finite conductivity, can be calculated numerically using the tabulated complex dielectric functions of the bounding materials. Lifshitz's theory for two metal plates reduces to Casimir's idealized force law for large separations much greater than the skin depth of the metal, and conversely reduces to the force law of the London dispersion force (with a coefficient called a Hamaker constant) for small , with a more complicated dependence on for intermediate separations determined by the dispersion of the materials.


title: Casimir effect

text: Lifshitz's result was subsequently generalized to arbitrary multilayer planar geometries as well as to anisotropic and magnetic materials, but for several decades the calculation of Casimir forces for non-planar geometries remained limited to a few idealized cases admitting analytical solutions. For example, the force in the experimental sphere–plate geometry was computed with an approximation (due to Derjaguin) that the sphere radius is much larger than the separation , in which case the nearby surfaces are nearly parallel and the parallel-plate result can be adapted to obtain an approximate force (neglecting both skin-depth and higher-order curvature effects). However, in the 2000s a number of authors developed and demonstrated a variety of numerical techniques, in many cases adapted from classical computational electromagnetics, that are capable of accurately calculating Casimir forces for arbitrary geometries and materials, from simple finite-size effects of finite plates to more complicated phenomena arising for patterned surfaces or objects of various shapes.


title: Casimir effect

text: One of the first experimental tests was conducted by Marcus Sparnaay at Philips in Eindhoven (Netherlands), in 1958, in a delicate and difficult experiment with parallel plates, obtaining results not in contradiction with the Casimir theory, but with large experimental errors.


title: Casimir effect

text: The Casimir effect was measured more accurately in 1997 by Steve K. Lamoreaux of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and by Umar Mohideen and Anushree Roy of the University of California, Riverside. In practice, rather than using two parallel plates, which would require phenomenally accurate alignment to ensure they were parallel, the experiments use one plate that is flat and another plate that is a part of a sphere with a very large radius.


title: Casimir effect

text: In 2001, a group (Giacomo Bressi, Gianni Carugno, Roberto Onofrio and Giuseppe Ruoso) at the University of Padua (Italy) finally succeeded in measuring the Casimir force between parallel plates using microresonators.


title: Casimir effect

text: In 2013, a conglomerate of scientists from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of Florida, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory demonstrated a compact integrated silicon chip that can measure the Casimir force. The integrated chip defined by electron-beam lithography does not need extra alignment, making it an ideal platform for measuring Casimir force between complex geometries. In 2017 and 2021, the same group from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology demonstrated the non-monotonic Casimir force and distance-independent Casimir force, respectively, using this on-chip platform.


title: Casimir effect

text: In order to be able to perform calculations in the general case, it is convenient to introduce a regulator in the summations. This is an artificial device, used to make the sums finite so that they can be more easily manipulated, followed by the taking of a limit so as to remove the regulator.


title: Casimir effect

text: for three-dimensional cavities. The infinite part of the sum is associated with the bulk constant which "does not" depend on the shape of the cavity. The interesting part of the sum is the finite part, which is shape-dependent. The Gaussian regulator


title: Casimir effect

text: is better suited to numerical calculations because of its superior convergence properties, but is more difficult to use in theoretical calculations. Other, suitably smooth, regulators may be used as well. The zeta function regulator


title: Casimir effect

text: is completely unsuited for numerical calculations, but is quite useful in theoretical calculations. In particular, divergences show up as poles in the complex plane, with the bulk divergence at . This sum may be analytically continued past this pole, to obtain a finite part at .


title: Casimir effect

text: Not every cavity configuration necessarily leads to a finite part (the lack of a pole at ) or shape-independent infinite parts. In this case, it should be understood that additional physics has to be taken into account. In particular, at extremely large frequencies (above the plasma frequency), metals become transparent to photons (such as X-rays), and dielectrics show a frequency-dependent cutoff as well. This frequency dependence acts as a natural regulator. There are a variety of bulk effects in solid state physics, mathematically very similar to the Casimir effect, where the cutoff frequency comes into explicit play to keep expressions finite. (These are discussed in greater detail in "Landau and Lifshitz", "Theory of Continuous Media".)


title: Casimir effect

text: The Casimir effect can also be computed using the mathematical mechanisms of functional integrals of quantum field theory, although such calculations are considerably more abstract, and thus difficult to comprehend. In addition, they can be carried out only for the simplest of geometries. However, the formalism of quantum field theory makes it clear that the vacuum expectation value summations are in a certain sense summations over so-called "virtual particles".


title: Casimir effect

text: More interesting is the understanding that the sums over the energies of standing waves should be formally understood as sums over the eigenvalues of a Hamiltonian. This allows atomic and molecular effects, such as the Van der Waals force, to be understood as a variation on the theme of the Casimir effect. Thus one considers the Hamiltonian of a system as a function of the arrangement of objects, such as atoms, in configuration space. The change in the zero-point energy as a function of changes of the configuration can be understood to result in forces acting between the objects.


title: Casimir effect

text: In the chiral bag model of the nucleon, the Casimir energy plays an important role in showing the mass of the nucleon is independent of the bag radius. In addition, the spectral asymmetry is interpreted as a non-zero vacuum expectation value of the baryon number, cancelling the topological winding number of the pion field surrounding the nucleon.


title: Casimir effect

text: A "pseudo-Casimir" effect can be found in liquid crystal systems, where the boundary conditions imposed through anchoring by rigid walls give rise to a long-range force, analogous to the force that arises between conducting plates.


title: Casimir effect

text: The dynamical Casimir effect is the production of particles and energy from an accelerated "moving mirror". This reaction was predicted by certain numerical solutions to quantum mechanics equations made in the 1970s. In May 2011 an announcement was made by researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology, in Gothenburg, Sweden, of the detection of the dynamical Casimir effect. In their experiment, microwave photons were generated out of the vacuum in a superconducting microwave resonator. These researchers used a modified SQUID to change the effective length of the resonator in time, mimicking a mirror moving at the required relativistic velocity. If confirmed this would be the first experimental verification of the dynamical Casimir effect.


title: Casimir effect

text: A similar analysis can be used to explain Hawking radiation that causes the slow "evaporation" of black holes (although this is generally visualized as the escape of one particle from a virtual particle–antiparticle pair, the other particle having been captured by the black hole).


title: Casimir effect

text: Constructed within the framework of quantum field theory in curved spacetime, the dynamical Casimir effect has been used to better understand acceleration radiation such as the Unruh effect.


title: Casimir effect

text: There are few instances wherein the Casimir effect can give rise to repulsive forces between uncharged objects. Evgeny Lifshitz showed (theoretically) that in certain circumstances (most commonly involving liquids), repulsive forces can arise. This has sparked interest in applications of the Casimir effect toward the development of levitating devices. An experimental demonstration of the Casimir-based repulsion predicted by Lifshitz was carried out by Munday et al. who described it as ""quantum levitation"". Other scientists have also suggested the use of gain media to achieve a similar levitation effect, though this is controversial because these materials seem to violate fundamental causality constraints and the requirement of thermodynamic equilibrium (Kramers–Kronig relations). Casimir and Casimir–Polder repulsion can in fact occur for sufficiently anisotropic electrical bodies; for a review of the issues involved with repulsion see Milton et al. A notable recent development on repulsive Casimir forces relies on using chiral materials. Q.-D. Jiang at Stockholm University and Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek at MIT show that chiral "lubricant" can generate repulsive, enhanced, and tunable Casimir interactions.


title: Casimir effect

text: Timothy Boyer showed in his work published in 1968 that a conductor with spherical symmetry will also show this repulsive force, and the result is independent of radius. Further work shows that the repulsive force can be generated with materials of carefully chosen dielectrics.


title: Casimir effect

text: It has been suggested that the Casimir forces have application in nanotechnology, in particular silicon integrated circuit technology based micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems, and so-called Casimir oscillators.


title: Casimir effect

text: The Casimir effect shows that quantum field theory allows the energy density in certain regions of space to be negative relative to the ordinary vacuum energy, and it has been shown theoretically that quantum field theory allows states where the energy can be "arbitrarily" negative at a given point. Many prominent physicists such as Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, and others therefore argue that such effects might make it possible to stabilize a traversable wormhole.


title: Carmen Sandiego (TV series)

text: Carmen Sandiego is an animated action-adventure television series with educational elements, based on the media franchise of the same name created by Broderbund. The series is produced by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt with WildBrain serving as the production company, and contains a "serialized look at Carmen's backstory that is told from her perspective". Serving as an origin story for the fictional thieving villain of the same name, it is the fourth "Carmen Sandiego" television show after the PBS game shows "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" and "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?", and the Fox animated series "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?"; it is also the first "Carmen Sandiego" related show since the end of "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego" in 1999.


title: Carmen Sandiego (TV series)

text: Serving as WildBrain's second reboot of an animated DIC Entertainment series, the series sees many characters drawn from the franchise's 35-year history: Carmen Sandiego herself who debuted in the original "World" video game; The Chief who took her current form in the "World" game show; Player, Zack, and Ivy who were featured in the "Earth" animated series, Chase Devineaux who debuted in "Word Detective", and Julia Argent who was featured in "Treasures of Knowledge".


title: Carmen Sandiego (TV series)

text: The first season was released on January 18, 2019, on Netflix. A second season was released on October 1, 2019. A third season announced on April 24, 2020 and was released on October 1. A fourth and final season was announced on October 2, 2020, and was released on January 15, 2021.


title: Carmen Sandiego (TV series)

text: An orphan girl codenamed Black Sheep was found on the side of a road in Buenos Aires, Argentina roughly 20 years ago and is raised and trained to become a master thief by a group of villains who double as the faculty at V.I.L.E. Academy, a school for thieves and secret criminal underworld organization, located on the Isle of V.I.L.E. in the Canary Islands. Black Sheep considers the island and faculty her home and family until she learns the organization's true nature. After seeing how much harm V.I.L.E causes, she goes rogue, escapes the island and adopts the name Carmen Sandiego, and seeks to take down V.I.L.E. by stealing things they have already stolen, returning them to their rightful place or owner and stopping their future heists and plans from being executed. Carmen's friends and team are white-hat hacker Player, who works as recon tech support, and Boston siblings Zack and Ivy, who help her on-site and often act as distractions or operate the various get-away vehicles. She treats each one of them with care and together, they set out to thwart V.I.L.E.'s criminal schemes all while on the run from the mysterious secret government agency, A.C.M.E., who have set their sights on arresting V.I.L.E and Carmen.


title: Carmen Sandiego (TV series)

text: A recurring theme is that both V.I.L.E. and A.C.M.E. make mistaken assumptions about Carmen's actions and intentions.


title: Carmen Sandiego (TV series)

text: In season one, Carmen is a modern-day Robin Hood, traveling the globe, stealing from V.I.L.E. and giving back to its victims. Cloaked in red, she is accompanied by her hacker Player, and her best friends Zack and Ivy. Carmen is publicly perceived as a master criminal by most law enforcement agencies due to the sheer scale and theatricality of her heists. We follow her escapades and get to determine not only where in the world but “who” is Carmen Sandiego?.