A brake is a device for slowing or stopping a moving machine part. The most common brakes are for wheels, such as those on cars and bicycles.
Bucket
A bucket is a container with a wide open top and a handle that is mainly used for carrying liquids. In some cases, solids may also be carried in a bucket (like sand which is hard to carry in your hands).
Some buckets are used for work, and some more for leisure, as seen here . A bucket used for work is often made of a strong material such as iron or steel and is used to carry things like coal or soil. A bucket used for leisure, e.g. for making sandcastles, is normally made of plastic.
In rare cases, a bucket may be worn as a piece of clothing, people may wear a bucket on their heads for humorous reasons. Buckethead is a famous example of this.
Light bulb
A light-bulb produces light from electricity. In addition to lighting a dark space, they can be used to show an electronic device is on, to direct traffic, for heat, and for many other purposes. Billions are in use, some even in outer space.
Early people used candles and oil lamps for light. Crude incandescent lights were made in the early and middle 19th century but had little use. Improved vacuum pumps and better materials made them shine longer and brighter late in the century. Electric power stations brought electricity to urban and later rural areas to power them. Later gas discharge lights, including fluorescent lights, use less electricity to make more light.
There are several kinds of light bulbs:
Light bulbs convert electricity into light and heat. Except for heat lamps, the heat is considered waste. A light bulb that produces more light and less heat is more efficient.
The incandescent light bulb turns electricity into light by sending the electric current through a thin wire called a filament. Electrical filaments are made up mostly of tungsten metal. The resistance of the filament heats the bulb. Eventually the filament gets so hot that it glows, producing light.
The filament needs to be protected from the air, so it is inside the bulb, and the air in the bulb is either removed (a vacuum) or more often, replaced with a noble gas that doesn't affect anything, like neon or argon. Only about 3% of the energy that goes into an incandescent light bulb actually makes light, the rest makes heat. That's one of the reasons LED's are more efficient.
This type of light bulb worked poorly and was little used until Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison improved it in the 1870s. It was the first light bulb that could be used in houses - it did not cost too much, and it worked well. For the first time, people did not need a fire (candles, oil lamps, kerosene lamps, etc.) to make light. It was bright enough to let people read easily at night or do work. It was used to light stores and streets, and people could travel after dark. This started the common use of electricity in homes and businesses. They had carbon filaments until tungsten ones were developed in the 1900s. They last longer and make a brighter light.
Early vacuum tube devices were incandescent bulbs made to operate at lower temperatures, with added electronic parts.
Fluorescent lamps are efficient, and only give off ¼ the amount of heat of an incandescent. They also last longer than incandescent but until the late 20th century were much bigger and did not fit into sockets for small overhead lights and lamps like an incandescent could.
A fluorescent bulb is a glass tube usually filled with argon gas and a little bit of mercury. When turned on, the cathode heats up and sends out electrons. These hit the argon gas and the mercury. The argon gas makes a plasma which lets the electrons move around better. When the electrons hit a mercury atom it puts the molecule into a state where it has a lot of energy (stores the energy). The energetic state doesn't last very long, and when the energy is released, it lets out a photon. Photons from mercury are not visible like some other photons; they are ultraviolet. So there's a phosphor coating on the wall of the bulb. When the photon hits a phosphor molecule, it in turn puts that molecule into an excited state. When this phosphor releases energy, it lets out a photon that we can see, and light is made. Changing the type of phosphor can change the color we see, but usually fluorescent light bulbs are whiter than incandescent light bulbs, which are slightly yellow.
An LED (also known as light-emitting diode) is made like electronics. It's a chip of semiconducting material. LED bulbs are more efficient and last much longer than either incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. Unlike fluorescent bulbs, LEDs do not use mercury, which is toxic. For several years LED bulbs were not as bright as the other kinds of lights, and cost more too.
Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (first named the Gramophone Awards and often called just Grammys), are awards given yearly by the (an association of Americans professionally involved in the recorded music industry) for outstanding work in the music and spoken recording industry. The Grammys have 128 categories with 16 genres. The Grammys are awarded once each year and are a major televised event. The award show does has it shares of criticism as being bias.
The name "Grammy" comes from the word "gramophone". A gramophone was an old machine that played music on records.
The British equivalent is the Brit Awards. The Canadian equivalent is the Juno Awards.
Georg Solti has won 31 Grammy Awards, more than any other person.
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards are United States television production awards which are given out each year. They are the television version of the Academy Awards. The first Emmy Awards were given out on January 25, 1949 at the Hollywood Athletic Club. Shirley Dinsdale was the very first person to be given an Emmy in the first awards ceremony.
Three organizations give Emmy Awards:
The best-known of the awards are the Primetime Awards (some of which are named "Creative Arts Emmys") and the Daytime Emmy Awards.
The Emmy Awards is a statuette of a woman with wings holding an atom. It was created by television engineer Louis McManus, using his wife as a model. The trophies are made by a company that has a manufacturing site at the El Dorado Correctional Facility, a prison in El Dorado, Kansas.
Maggie Simpson
Margaret "Maggie" Simpson is a fictional character shown in the animated television series "The Simpsons". She is a baby.
Like most babies, Maggie copies what she sees around her. She once hit Homer on the head with a mallet, shot a suction dart at his picture and attacked him with a pencil in imitation of "Itchy and Scratchy". Maggie is also very accurate with a gun, she shot Mr. Burns in "Who Shot Mr. Burns".
During the early episodes, Maggie's well-known feature would be to trip over her clothes and fall on her face causing a loud smack on the floor. Throughout the early episodes, Maggie fell down 39 times.
Maggie was named after Matt Groening's sister Maggie Groening. She often sucked on a pacifier and wore a sleep suit like Maggie. Groening thought that it would be funny to have a baby character that did not talk and never grew up, but showed any emotions that the scene needed.
With few exceptions, Maggie never speaks but is aware of what is going around her. Maggie has spoken in "Good Night", the first cartoon to air on "The Tracey Ullman Show". When the rest of the family falls asleep, she speaks and her voice is played by Liz Georges.