Islamic art includes geometric patterns, Islamic calligraphy, and architecture. In India and Tibet, painted sculptures, dance, and religious painting were done. In China, arts included jade carving, bronze, pottery, poetry, calligraphy, music, painting, drama, and fiction. There are many Chinese artistic styles, which are usually named after the ruling dynasty.
In Europe, after the Middle Ages, there was a "Renaissance" which means "rebirth". People rediscovered science and artists were allowed to paint subjects other than religious subjects. People like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci still painted religious pictures, but they also now could paint mythological pictures too. These artists also invented perspective where things in the distance look smaller in the picture. This was new because in the Middle Ages people would paint all the figures close up and just overlapping each other. These artists used nudity regularly in their art.
In the late 1800s, artists in Europe, responding to Modernity created many new painting styles such as Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism. The history of twentieth century art includes Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and Minimalism.
In some societies, people think that art belongs to the person who made it. They think that the artist put his or her "talent" and industry into the art. In this view, the art is the property of the artist, protected by copyright.
In other societies, people think that art belongs to no one. They think that society has put its social capital into the artist and the artist's work. In this view, society is a collective that has made the art, through the artist.
The functions of art include:
1) Cognitive function
2) Aesthetic function
3) Prognostic function
4) Recreation function
5) Value function
6) Didactic function
A
A or a is the first letter of the English alphabet. The small letter, a or α, is used as a lower case vowel.
When it is spoken, ā is said as a long a, a diphthong of ĕ and y. A is similar to alpha of the Greek alphabet. That is not surprising, because it stands for the same sound.
"Alpha and omega" (the last letter of the Greek alphabet) means from beginning to the end. In musical notation, the letter A is the symbol of a note in the scale, below B and above G. In binary numbers, the letter A is 01000001.
A is the letter that was used to represent a team in an old TV show, The A-Team. A capital a is written "A". Use a capital a at the start of a sentence if writing.
The letter 'A' was in the Phoenician alphabet's aleph. This symbol came from a simple picture of an ox head.
This Phoenician letter helped make the basic blocks of later types of the letter. The Greeks later modified this letter and used it as their letter alpha. The Greek alphabet was used by the Etruscans in northern Italy, and the Romans later modified the Etruscan alphabet for their own language.
The letter A has six different sounds. It can sound like æ, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, such as the word "pad". Other sounds of this letter are in the words "father", which developed into another sound, such as in the word "ace".
In algebra, the letter "A" along with other letters at the beginning of the alphabet is used to represent known quantities.
In geometry, capital A, B, C etc. are used to label line segments, lines, etc. Also, A is typically used as one of the letters to label an angle in a triangle.
Air
Air refers to the Earth's atmosphere. Air is a mixture of many gases and tiny dust particles. It is the clear gas in which living things live and breathe. It has an indefinite shape and volume. It has mass and weight, because it is matter. The weight of air creates atmospheric pressure. There is no air in outer space.
Air is a mixture of about 78% of nitrogen, 21% of oxygen, 0.9% of argon, 0.04% of carbon dioxide, and very small amounts of other gases. There is an average of about 1% water vapour.
Animals live and need to breathe the oxygen in the air. In breathing, the lungs put oxygen into the blood, and send back carbon dioxide to the air. Plants need the carbon dioxide in the air to live. They give off the oxygen that we breathe. Without it we die of asphyxia.
Wind is moving air, this is refreshing. This causes weather.
Air can be polluted by some gases (such as carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides), smoke, and ash. This air pollution causes various problems including smog, acid rain and global warming. It can damage people's health and the environment.
Since early times, air has been used to create technology. Ships moved with sails and windmills used the mechanical motion of air. Aircraft use propellers to move air over a wing, which allows them to fly. Pneumatics use air pressure to move things. Since the late 1900s, air power is also used to generate electricity.
Air is invisible: it cannot be seen by the eye, though a shimmering in hot air can be seen.
Air is one of the four classical elements in Greek theory. It was considered an intervening element, somewhere between fire and water, and the driving force for the birth of the cosmos.
Earth's atmosphere has changed much since its formation.
At first it was mainly a hydrogen atmosphere. It has changed dramatically on several occasions—for example, the Great Oxygenation Event 2.4 billion years ago, greatly increased oxygen in the atmosphere from practically no oxygen to levels closer to present day. Humans have also contributed to significant changes in atmospheric composition through air pollution, especially since industrialisation, leading to rapid environmental change such as ozone depletion and global warming.
Outgassing from volcanism, supplemented by gases produced during the late heavy bombardment of Earth by huge asteroids, produced the next atmosphere, consisting largely of nitrogen plus carbon dioxide and inert gases.
The constant re-arrangement of continents by plate tectonics influences the long-term evolution of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide was transferred to and from large continental carbonate stores. Free oxygen did not exist in the atmosphere until about 2.4 billion years ago. The Great Oxygenation Event is shown by the end of the banded iron formations.
Autonomous communities of Spain
Spain is divided in 17 parts called autonomous communities. "Autonomous" means that each of these autonomous communities has its own executive, legislative judicial powers. These are similar to, but "not" the same as, states in the United States of America, for example.
Spain has fifty smaller parts called provinces. In 1978 these parts came together, making the autonomous communities.
Before then, some of these provinces were together but were broken. The groups that were together once before are called "historic communities": Catalonia, Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia.
The Spanish language is the sole official language in every autonomous community but six, where Spanish is co-official with other languages, as follows:
List of the autonomous communities, with their Capital city (the place where the government has its offices):
Spain also has two cities on the north coast of Africa: Ceuta and Melilla. They are called "autonomous cities" and have simultaneously the majority of the power of an autonomous community and also power of provinces and power of municipalities.
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS (London, 23 June 1912 – Wilmslow, Cheshire, 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. He was born in Maida Vale, London.
Alan Turing was born in Maida Vale, London on 23 June 1912. His father was part of a family of merchants from Scotland. His mother, Ethel Sara, was the daughter of an engineer.
Turing went to St. Michael's, a school at 20 Charles Road, St Leonards-on-sea, when he was five years old.
"This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.” – Alan Turing.