In the late 1500s and early 1600s, the Dutch and the French tried to take land in Brazil. Dutch, French, and Portuguese started moving inland further than the Treaty of Tordesillas said they could. This caused some fights with the Spaniards (people from Spain) and indigenous peoples in the area.
In 1822, Brazil claimed to be its own country and not a part of Portugal anymore. Soon there was civil war. Meanwhile, the quilombos survived and Brazil was bringing in more slaves than any other country in the Americas, even though many countries were beginning to legally abolish slavery. This led to an increase in slave revolts, especially in the 1860s and 1880s, which forced the government to change the system in order to keep the country stable. Slavery was legally abolished in 1888.
In 1889, there was a military coup, and Pedro II had to leave the country. In 1889, Brazil became a republic. The only people who could vote were people who owned land. There were some uprisings in the 1920s because some people thought the government was unfairly helping coffee growers. Brazil joined the Allies during World War II.
During the 1960s, the military leader Castelo Branco overthrew the government and created a dictatorship that was supported by the United States. It was very anti-communist and they imprisoned, tortured, or killed many people on the left. Since then, the country has become more democratic, but some people feel that there are still big problems in health, education, crime, poverty and social inequality.
In August 2016, then-president Dilma Rousseff was removed from office because of impeachment.
The official language of Brazil is Portuguese. Brazil is the only country in South America that speaks Portuguese.
Some people in Brazil speak German dialects. That came from German immigrants. 2% of Brazilians speak German as their first language. Yiddish is spoken by the elders of the Jewish community.
Other people in Brazil speak their ancestors' languages like Italian, Japanese, Polish, Ukrainian, French, Russian, Lithuanian, Chinese, Dutch and Korean. Spanish or "Portunhol", a mix of Portuguese and Castilian (Spanish) is spoken at some of the borders. Indigenous languages as Guarani and Aymará are the first languages of a small number of Brazilians.
Brazil has the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon Rainforest. It makes up 40% of the country's land area. Brazil also has other types of land, including a type of savanna called "cerrado", and a dry plant region named "caatinga".
The most important cities are Brasília (the capital), Belém, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Florianópolis, Fortaleza, Goiânia, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, São Paulo (the biggest city) and Vitória. Other cities are at List of largest cities in Brazil.
Brazil is divided into 26 states plus the Federal District in five regions (north, south, northeast, southeast and centre-west):
The country is the fifth largest in the world by area. It is known for its many rainforests and jungles. It is next to every country in South America except Chile and Ecuador.
The name Brazil comes from a tree named brazilwood.
Brazil is the largest country in South America and fifth largest in the world. Its people are called Brazilians or Brasileiros (In Portuguese). The people include citizens of Portuguese or other European descent who mainly live in the South and Southeast, Africans, Native Americans, Arabs, Gypsies and people of Mixed ancestry. Brazil also has the largest Japanese community outside Japan. Other East Asians follow the Japanese group.The Amazon River flows through Brazil, it is the 2nd longest river in the world (after the Nile).The current President of Brazil is Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Two major sporting events were held in Brazil recently: the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Chemistry
Chemistry is a branch of science that deals with chemical elements and compounds, and how they work together and change.
Before 1600, people studied substances to figure out how to do things such as turn lead into gold, but no one managed to do that. This was called alchemy. After 1600, using the scientific method alchemists became chemists. Chemists separated the air into many parts and isolated the noble gases from it. They also processed special minerals from a mine in Sweden to get rare earth metals. Radioactivity was also discovered. Today chemists have discovered 118 different elements. Some are very common, like oxygen. Many are very rare and expensive, like platinum. Some cannot be found on earth and can only be made in labs, like rutherfordium.
Since the 1920s, the increased understanding of physics has changed chemists' theories about chemical reactions. With smaller and faster computers, chemists have built better tools for analyzing substances. These tools have been sent to study chemicals on Mars. Police also use those tools to study evidence from crime scenes.
There are several types of chemistry. Analytical chemistry looks at which chemicals are in things. For example, looking at how much arsenic is in food. Organic chemistry looks at things that have carbon in them. For example, making acetylene. Inorganic chemistry looks at things that do not have carbon in them. One example is making an integrated circuit. Theoretical chemistry tries to explain chemical data with mathematics and computers.
A large area of chemistry is polymer chemistry. This looks at plastics. One example is making nylon. Because plastics are made of carbon, polymer chemistry is part of organic chemistry. Another area is biochemistry. This looks at the chemistry of living things. An example would be seeing how arsenic poisons people. Biochemistry is also part of organic chemistry. There are many other small branches of chemistry.
The basic unit of an element is called an atom. An atom is the smallest building block that you can cut an element into without the element breaking down (turning into a lighter element, for example through nuclear fission or radioactive decay). A chemical compound is a substance made up of two or more elements. In a compound, two or more atoms are joined together to form a molecule. The tiniest speck of dust or drop of liquid, that one can see is made up of many millions or billions of these molecules. Mixtures are substances where chemicals are mixed but not reacted. An example would be mixing sand and salt. This can be undone again to produce salt and sand separately. Chemical compounds are changed by a chemical reaction. An example would be heating sodium bicarbonate, common baking soda. It will make water, carbon dioxide, and sodium carbonate. This reaction cannot be undone.
One very important concept in chemistry is that different atoms interact with one another in very specific proportions. For example, two hydrogen atoms interacting with one oxygen atom lead to the water molecule, HO. This relationship is known as the "Law of constant proportions" and leads to the idea of "stoichiometry", a term that refers to the ratios of different atoms in chemical compounds. For example, in water, there are always exactly 2 hydrogen atoms to 1 oxygen atom. In carbon dioxide, there are exactly 2 oxygen atoms for 1 carbon atom. These relationships are described using chemical formulas such as HO (two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom) and CO (one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms).