The silicon in grey cast iron causes the carbon to change into graphite. This causes it to have a dark grey or almost black color. With less silicon, the carbon in white cast iron changes to cementite or "iron carbide" (FeC). This causes white fractures to form on the surface and give white cast iron the name.
Grey cast iron is very good at conducting heat. Because of this, it is often used to make cookware.
Incest
Incest means sexual intercourse between people who are closely related. Usually, this means members of the same family. In many societies, it is forbidden by law and religion. Which relatives it is forbidden to have sex with depends on the law, religion and culture. If pregnancy is a risk, there may be reasons based on health. Children that result from incest between blood relatives are more likely to have birth defects.
The exact definition of the incest relationship varies. In some societies it is immediate relations, such as parents and their children; or brothers and sisters of the same parents. It sometimes includes extended family like aunts, nephews, nieces and uncles. That way, intercourse between cousins is legally permitted in the large majority of the world, but is disliked in many countries. In some U.S. states, such as Texas, the legal definition of incest includes first cousins, but not second cousins. A person who engages in incest is called an "incestophile" or "incestualist".
Other societies define it much more widely, to include all "blood relatives", or all who live in the same household, or belong to the same clan. Some religions say that sex between people related by marriage is incest. For example, the Old Testament forbids sex between siblings-in-law. In South Africa, sex between a parent-in-law and child-in-law is illegal.
The type of incest most often reported in the Western world is father-daughter incest. Incest between adults and children is a form of child sexual abuse. This form has been shown to cause one of the worst forms of childhood trauma, a trauma that often causes serious and long-term psychological damage, especially in the case of parental incest. Stepparents are more likely to abuse stepchildren than biological parents are to abuse their children, because people typically care about their own children more than they care about their stepchildren the Cinderella effect. It is suggested that the Westermarck effect prevents a person being attracted to anyone whom he lived in the same house as during his childhood, hence most people are never sexually attracted to their siblings or parents.
The term is often used to apply to less serious sexual relationships between related people. It is difficult to say how frequent incest is, but researchers have estimated that between 10% and 15% of people have at least one "incest experience" (this means some kind of sexual relationship falling short of actual incest). Less than 2% of these involve intercourse or attempted intercourse. Among women, research by Russell (1986) and Wyatt (1985) has given estimates as high as twenty percent (for such 'incest experience'). In a survey of women in San Francisco, of those who had grown up with a stepfather, 17% (1 in 6) said that he sexually abused her. In the same study, 2.5% (1 in 40) of the women said that they had been sexually abused by their father. Cousincest refers to incest with a cousin. Siblingcest refers to incest with a sibling.
Incest between consenting adults is very rare, or rarely reported. Willing incest between adults is a crime in most countries. It is seen by some as a victimless crime. A reason why it is prohibited is because severely handicapped children are often born to parents who are blood-related. Other reasons for it being illegal are religion and to try to prevent sexual predation.
Most societies have some form of incest avoidance. The incest taboo is and has been one of the most common of all cultural taboos, both in current nations and many past societies, with legal penalties imposed in some jurisdictions. Most modern societies have legal or social restrictions on closely consanguineous marriages. However, in some societies, such as that of Ancient Egypt, brother–sister, father–daughter, and mother–son relations were practiced among royalty. In addition, the Balinese and some Inuit tribes have altogether different beliefs about what constitutes illegal and immoral incest.
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a book of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer. It was written in the 14th century. It was one of the first books to be written in Middle English. The book is about a group of pilgrims travelling from London to Canterbury. As they travel along, each person tells a story to pass the time. Chaucer planned to write 120 stories, with each person telling two stories on the way there and two on the way back. However, only 23 were completed, and one was partially finished. Two of the stories are written in prose. The others are written in verse. They were so popular that he was invited to read his stories to the king and royal court.
"The Canterbury Tales" is about a group of people who are pilgrims. They are travelling to an important sacred site. In the Middle Ages, many Christian people went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela and Canterbury. Canterbury Cathedral was a famous pilgrimage site because it contained the "shrine" (a place for remembering) of Saint Thomas Becket.
Thomas Becket had been the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1100s. He had an argument with his old friend, King Henry II, and in 1170 he was murdered by some of the King's knights on order from the King. The King felt very sad and guilty. He had a magnificent tomb built for his old friend.
People began to visit the tomb. Soon, some people said that Thomas Becket was a saint, and that his bones could work miracles. He is regarded as a martyr for the Christian faith and as a saint by both the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. In the late Middle Ages his shrine made Canterbury one of the four most important pilgrimage places in Europe.
Many pilgrims used to meet together in London. "The Canterbury Tales" tells of the meeting of a group at an inn in Southwark, which was a village south of the Thames River and now making up part of London. This was a good place to meet because people from the north could cross the Thames River by London Bridge.
Canterbury is in the south-east of England. Pilgrims used to gather in groups because it was dangerous to travel alone. In the days before modern banking, every traveller had to carry a lot of money to pay for food and accommodation (a place to sleep). Robbers often attacked people along the roads.
When pilgrims gathered in a group, the group could be made up of many different kinds of people, both rich and poor, noble and humble. The groups often contained a number of religious people such as priests, monks and nuns. In Chaucer's story, the most noble person is a knight.
"The Canterbury Tales" begins with a Prologue (which means "a few words to begin"). In the prologue Chaucer describes the time of year, which is April, when the weather begins to get warmer after winter. He says that it is at this time that people begin to go on pilgrimage. Chaucer tells the reader about the people who are gathered at the inn. He describes the people so clearly that many of them have become famous characters in English Literature, and have often been shown in paintings. Chaucer describes how each person tells a story to entertain the other as they travel along.
The Tales are: