Surely, you have noticed the tall poles along the roadside. Do you know what is on top of those poles? Thats right, wires that carry electric current. These wires carry electric current to your home. But what is electric current? Electric current is actually the flow of electrons. You may recall, an electron is the outer-most particle in an atom. They have a negative charge. Electricity is the continuous flow of these particles. Electrons are able to move through wires. Their speed can even be measured. The SI unit for electric current (or speed) is the ampere (A). Ampere is often shortened to amp. Electric current may flow in just one direction, or it may keep reversing direction. Direct current (DC) flows in only one direction. Direct current is what is used in devices like flashlights. Alternating current (AC) flows in two directions. This is the type of current that flows into your home through wires.

How many directions is the current flowing in that arrives through wires into our homes?

Alexander II's death caused a great setback for the reform movement. One of his last ideas was to draft plans for an elected parliament, or Duma, which were completed the day before he died but not yet released to the Russian people. In a matter of 48 hours, Alexander II planned to release his plan for the duma to the Russian people. Had he lived, Russia might have followed a path to constitutional monarchy instead of the long road of oppression that defined his successor's reign. The first action Alexander III took after his father's death was to tear up those plans. A Duma would not come into fruition until 1905, when Alexander II's grandson, Nicholas II, commissioned the Duma following extreme pressure on the monarchy as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The assassination triggered major suppression of civil liberties in Russia, and police brutality burst back in full force after experiencing some restraint under the reign of Alexander II, whose death was witnessed first-hand by his son, Alexander III, and his grandson, Nicholas II, both future emperors who vowed not to have the same fate befall them. Both of them used the Okhrana to arrest protestors and uproot suspected rebel groups, creating further suppression of personal freedom for the Russian people. A series of anti-Jewish pogroms and antisemitic legislation, the May Laws, were yet another result. Finally, the tsar's assassination also inspired anarchists to advocate "'propaganda by deed'--the use of a spectacular act of violence to incite revolution." With construction starting in 1883, the Church of the Savior on Blood was built on the site of Alexander's assassination and dedicated in his memory.

What effect did Alexander II's death have on the Russian political climate?

Tocqueville asserted that the values that had triumphed in the North and were present in the South had begun to suffocate old-world ethics and social arrangements. Legislatures abolished primogeniture and entails, resulting in more widely distributed land holdings. This was a contrast to the general aristocratic pattern in which only the eldest child, usually a man, inherited the estate, which had the effect of keeping large estates intact from generation to generation. In America, in contrast, landed elites were less likely to pass on fortunes to a single child by the action of primogeniture, which meant that as time went by, large estates became broken up within a few generations which, in turn, made the children more equal overall. It was not always a negative development, according to Joshua Kaplan's interpretation of Tocqueville, since bonds of affection and shared experience between children often replaced the more formal relation between the eldest child and the siblings, characteristic of the previous aristocratic pattern. Overall, in the new democracies, hereditary fortunes became exceedingly difficult to secure and more people were forced to struggle for their own living. This rapidly democratizing society, as Tocqueville understood it, had a population devoted to "middling" values which wanted to amass, through hard work, vast fortunes. In Tocqueville's mind, this explained why America was so different from Europe. In Europe, he claimed, nobody cared about making money. The lower classes had no hope of gaining more than minimal wealth, while the upper classes found it crass, vulgar, and unbecoming of their sort to care about something as unseemly as money; many were virtually guaranteed wealth and took it for granted. At the same time in America, workers would see people fashioned in exquisite attire and merely proclaim that through hard work they too would soon possess the fortune necessary to enjoy such luxuries. Despite maintaining with Aristotle, Montesquieu, and others that the balance of property determined the balance of power, Tocqueville argued that, as America showed, equitable property holdings did not ensure the rule of the best men. In fact, it did quite the opposite. The widespread, relatively equitable property ownership which distinguished America and determined its mores and values also explained why the American masses held elites in such contempt.
How did Europeans' and Americans' attitudes toward amassing wealth differ?