It is a colorless liquid. It smells like ether. It evaporates quite quickly. It can dissolve fats and oils as well as other stuff such as iodine. It doesn't burn, but it does make phosgene when heated to a high temperature.
It is made by reacting methane with chlorine. This reaction is similar to the burning of methane (reaction of methane with oxygen). Hydrogen chloride is a byproduct (left over substance). It used to be made by reacting carbon disulfide with chlorine. This reaction would produce sulfur(I) chloride.
The uses of carbon tetrachloride have diminished lately because it is known to be damage people's health. People think it might damage the ozone layer. Today, it is rarely used for anything.
Previously, was used in fire extinguishers. It was also used to make freon, used in dry cleaning and as a refrigerant.
Carbon tetrachloride is very poisonous to the liver, the kidneys and the nervous system; it might also cause cancer.
Freon
Freon is a word for certain chemical compounds, often used as refrigerants. Thomas Midgley, Jr. invented using Freon as a refrigerant. "Freon" is a registered trademark of DuPont. Freon was first used to describe chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants, but it is now used to describe many other kinds of chemicals used as refrigerant. Refrigerants may contain carbon, chlorine, fluorine and sometimes bromine. For example, Freon 10 is carbon tetrachloride. Many kinds of freon are not toxic to animals. They also are cheap and work well. However, most refrigerants can reduce the amount of ozone from the upper atmosphere. Reducing ozone lets more ultraviolet light to come through. Too much ultraviolet light can cause skin cancer and cataracts, and can kill off plankton in the oceans.
The chlorine part of CFC refrigerants can reduce ozone. Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) can also damage ozone. Newer Hydrofulorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants do not have chlorine in them and do not reduce ozone in the atmosphere. Most refrigerants also increase global warming because they are powerful greenhouse gasses. These refrigerants increase global warming thousands of times more than carbon dioxide (CO).
Refrigerant
A refrigerant is a chemical substance that is found in an air conditioner, a refrigerator, and in other refrigeration equipment. Refrigerants are chosen for the ease of converting them from liquid to vapor or vice versa, depending on their temperature and pressure. Most refrigerants in their liquid state will evaporate very fast if at atmospheric pressure.
In refrigeration equipment, a refrigerant vapor is compressed by a compressor. Compression makes it hot. It enters a condenser, where it condenses into a liquid. The refrigerant then passes through a part called a metering device, or an expansion device (there are several types of this part) where the pressure is reduced to a point where the liquid begins to boil. At this point, the refrigerant is very cold and it enters an evaporator, where it absorbs heat from the air passing over it. By the time the refrigerant leaves the evaporator, it is all a vapor again, and it goes back to the compressor where the cycle begins again. This is called the refrigeration cycle. This is one example of the use of a refrigerant, as in a residential air conditioning system.
2010 Canterbury earthquake
The 2010 Canterbury earthquake was a powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake, which struck the South Island of New Zealand at 4:35 am September 4, 2010 local time (16:35 3 September UTC).
It was centred 40 km west of Christchurch, near the town of Darfield, at a depth of 10 km. Strong aftershocks were reported, including ones of magnitude 5.3.
The main quake was felt widely across the South Island, and in the North Island as far north as New Plymouth.
It caused a lot of damage and cut off power and water supply, mainly in the city of Christchurch. Two people were seriously injured. The quake caused damage to historic buildings in Lyttelton, near Christchurch, including a church and parts of a hotel. Businesses in the city centre were closed the day of the quake. The total cost of damages may be as high as NZ$2 billion.
A state of emergency was declared by Civil Defence for Christchurch and the Selwyn District.
New Zealand sits on the boundary between the Australian and Pacific plates. In the South Island, these plates mainly slide past each other horizontally, producing earthquakes along fault lines such as the Alpine fault. The 2010 earthquake was centred about 80–90 km to the southeast of the plate boundary through the island, probably on one of a network of smaller faults linked to the main faults that mark the plate boundary itself.
William Langland
William Langland (c. 1332 – c. 1386) was an English poet. He wrote a long and complicated poem called Piers Plowman. The poem is an allegory about the struggle to lead a virtuous Christian life when the institution of the Church is often corrupt.
We do not know for sure that this poem was written by Langland. The strongest evidence we have is one manuscript which says that the poem was written by 'Willielmi de Langlond', son of 'Stacy de Rokayle, who died in Shipton-under-Wichwood, a tenant of the Lord Spenser in the county of Oxfordshire'. Other manuscripts also name the author as 'Robert or William langland', or 'Wilhelmus W.' (probably an abbreviation for 'William of Wichwood', since Wychwood is the village he probably came from). Another piece of evidence is within the poem itself. At one stage the narrator says: 'I have lyved in londe...my name is longe wille'. Scholars agree that this is a code for the poet's name: Longe-Land, and Wille meaning Will, short for William. This may seem unlikely, but this method of hiding the poet's name within a poem was used in Roman times, and was quite common in late-medieval literature.
Alexandra David-Néel
Alexandra David-Néel (full name Louise Eugénie Alexandrine Marie David) born in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne on 24 October 1868, and died in Digne-les-Bains, on 8 September 1969. She was a Belgian-French explorer.
Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford
Christ Church Cathedral is the cathedral of the diocese of Oxford, which includes the City of Oxford and the surrounding countryside as far north as Banbury. It is also, uniquely, the chapel of Christ Church, the largest college of the University of Oxford.
The cathedral was originally the church of St Frideswide's Priory.
In 1522, the priory was surrendered to Cardinal Wolsey, who chose it as the site for his proposed college. However, in 1529 it was taken over by King Henry VIII. Work stopped, but in June 1532 the college was refounded by the King. In 1546, Henry VIII transferred to it from Osney Abbey to the see of Oxford. The cathedral has the name of "Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxoniensis", given to it by King Henry VIII's foundation charter.
The nave, choir, central tower, and transepts (as far as the roofs) are late Norman, and were probably erected during the lifetime of Canutus, the second prior, in the 12th century. As a whole the cathedral contains examples of the various styles from late Norman to Perpendicular.
Once this was the smallest cathedral in England. But according to their website, this has changed:
Cathedral (or Christ Church) Time is traditionally five minutes behind Greenwich Mean Time. This dates back to the days before the railways when each region of the country kept to its own local time. Hence what is now called Cathedral Time is a survival of old Oxford Time.
Tattva
Tattva is a Sanskrit word that means 'thatness', 'principle', 'reality' or 'truth'. According to many Indian schools of philosophy, a tattva is an element or aspect of reality conceived as an aspect of deity.
Mahābhūta
Mahābhūta is Sanskrit and Pāli for "great element." In Buddhism, the "four great elements" (Pali: cattāro mahābhūtāni) are earth, water, fire and air. Hinduism adds a fifth "great" or "gross" element: ether.
Cyma Zarghami