A maze is a confusing network of passages and winding interconnecting paths.
A maze was a British measurement for herring equal to 615 fish. Research Maze
John Charles Fremont was an American explorer. He was born in 1813 at Norfolk, Virginia and died in 1890. Educated at Charleston, South Carolina, after a brief service in the navy he joined the US corps of topographical engineers, and married the daughter of SenatorBenton. In 1842 he explored a portion of the Rocky Mountains. In 1843 and 1844, with remarkable skill and energy, he conducted an exploration of the regions of Utah, the basin of the Columbia, and the passes of the Sierra Nevada. In 1846, while in conduct of another exploration in California, he assisted in the Bear Flag War, alleging instructions from George Washington, co-operated with Commodore Stockton in the conquest of California, but was court-martialed for disobedience to General Kearny.
In 1848 he explored, amid great hardships, the paths from Sante Fe to Sacramento, and made a similar expedition in 1853 and 1854. These explorations made him famous as the 'Pathfinder', and in 1856 the new Republican party made him its candidate for the Presidency, but was defeated. In 1861 he commanded in Missouri, but, prematurely ordering emancipation, was removed. In 1862 he commanded against Jackson in the Valley. In 1864 he was nominated for the Presidency by a convention of radical Republicans dissatisfied with Abraham Lincoln, but finally withdrew. Research John Fremont
A barrage balloon is a captive balloon, of tear-drop shape and with fins to keep it headed into the wind, which can be positioned around likely bombing targets to interfere with the probable flight paths of enemy aircraft. Their prime function is to force enemy aircraft to stay high to avoid the balloons, so placing them at the optimum height for engagement by anti-aircraft guns. Research Barrage Balloon
The DM 51 is a German dual-purpose hand grenade comprising a high-explosive offensive hand grenade body and a fragmentation jacket which can be placed around it for defensive use. The DM 51 is a plastic hexagonal prism-shaped hand grenade containing compressed nitropenta explosive, the fragmentation jacket is barrel-shaped and contains 6500 steel balls. The explosive grenade can be joined together to form a cluster, or joined end to end to form a Bangalore torpedo for engineering work such as blowing holes in barbed wire fences or paths through mine fields. Research DM 51
Acoustics is the experimental and theoretical science of sound and hearing, and especially the phenomena of sound in space, such as buildings.
Acoustics teaches the cause, nature, and phenomena of such vibrations of elastic
bodies as affect the organ of hearing; the manner in which sound is produced, its transmission through air and other media, the doctrine of reflected sound or echoes, the properties and effects of different sounds, including musical sounds or notes, and the structure and action of the organ of hearing, etc. The propagation of sound is analogous to that of light, both being due to vibrations which produce successive waves, and Isaac Newton was the first to show that its propagation through any medium depended upon the elasticity of that medium. Regarding the intensity, reflection, and refraction of sound, much the same rules apply as in light. In ordinary cases of hearing the vibrating medium is air, but all substances capable of vibrating may be employed to propagate and convey sound. When a bell is struck its vibrations are communicated to the particles of air surrounding it, and from these to particles outside them, until they reach the ear of the listener. The intensity of sound varies inversely as the square of the distance of the body sounding from the ear. Sound travels through the air at the rate of about 332 metres per second; through water at the rate of about 1433 metres.
Sounds may be musical or non-musical. A musical sound is caused by a regular series of exactly similar pulses succeeding each other at precisely equal intervals of time. If these conditions are not fulfilled the sound is a noise. Musical sounds are comparatively simple, and are combined to give pleasing sensations according to easy numerical relations. The loudness of a note depends on the degree to which it affects the ear; the pitch of a note depends on the number of vibrations to the second which produce the note; the timbre, quality, or character of a note depends on the body or bodies whose vibrations produce the sound, and is due to the form of the paths of vibrating particles. The gamut is a series of eight notes, which are called by the names Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do, and the numbers of vibrations which produce these notes are respectively proportional to 24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 40, 45, 48. The numerical value of the interval between any two notes is given by dividing one of the above numbers corresponding to the higher note by the number corresponding to the lower note. The intervals from Do to each of the others are called a second, a major third, a fourth, a, fifth, a sixth, a seventh, and an octave respectively. The interval from La to Do is a minor third. An interval of nine eights is a major tone; ten ninths is a minor tone; sixteen fifteenths is called a limma.
AutoDesk Animator is an animation program that lets you create desktop videos for promotion and training. The program includes a number of animation techniques, painting functions, text effects, and file-import capabilities that provide a workbench for creating impressive diskette-based presentations. AutoDesk Animator incorporates five types of animation. Each is specifically designed to make creating and displaying animation sequences as impressive and easy as possible. The program provides traditional cell-by-cell animation capabilities. This technique displays a sequence of individual cells or images in rapid succession resulting in movement. Optical animation is best suited for animations where objects swoop across the screen. This technique uses complex combinations of spline paths and full 3D transformations along with other optical functions to maximise this type of effect.
Polymorphic tweening is an animation technique used to blend between two completely different shapes. It can be combined with optical animation to
add three-dimensional effects. Colour cycling transforms the colour of various screen locations. Titling provides full text animation for incorporating text in any part of a desktop video. Titling effects include multiple-direction scrolling and type-on, where each letter of words appears in rapid succession. Paint functions combine image processing inks with over 20 tools for detailed image creation and editing. The image processing inks affect the dispersion and quality of onscreen colours. The inks can be applied to saturate, strengthen, and define colours and create effects such as opaque, soften, gloss, glaze, emboss, scrape-through, sheen, and highlight. The combination of Animator's painting tools and image processing inks lets you control the sharpness, illumination, intensity, and glow of on-screen presentation colours more effectively than with any other PC product. Research AutoDesk Animator
A cyclone is an area of low atmospheric pressure. The term was originally applied to the violent storms which occur in the Bay of Bengal and other parts of the tropics, generally after an ominous calm and a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure. In a region where a cyclone exists, the pressure decreases from the outside inwards, so that the pressure reading of a barometer is always low near the centre. The steeper the pressure gradient, the higher the wind velocity. The winds blow spirally inwards towards the centre, counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern. Outside of the tropics a cyclone is usually called a depression, in allusion to the lowering of the barometer height. Depressions vary greatly in size. the diameter may be as low as 160 km, but they average nearer 1600 km in diameter. A depression is, as a rule, accompanied by a lot of cloud and rain. The air in front of a depression feels humid, but towards the rear it becomes fresh and chilly. depressions are not stationary.
The velocities and paths of their centres depend on many factors. They move faster in winter than in summer, and deep depressions faster than shallow ones. The average velocity varies from region to region, in the USA the average being about 40 kmh, in Europe closer to 25 kmh, the winter velocity being roughly double the summer. The term anticyclone was first used by Sir Francis Galton to describe a condition of pressure and circulation just the reverse of the cyclonic condition. Research Cyclone
An ellipse is a figure in geometry ranking next in importance to the circle, and produced when any cone is cut by a plane which passes through it not parallel to nor cutting the base. Kepler discovered that the paths described by the planets in their revolutions round the sun are ellipses, the sun being placed in one of the foci. To describe an ellipse: At a given distance"on the surface on which the ellipse is to be described fix two pins, and pass a looped string round them. Keep the string stretched by a pencil, and move the pencil round, keeping the string at the same tension, then the ellipse will be described. A line drawn from any point in the curve perpendicularly to the axis is an ordinate to the axis. Any straight line drawn through the centre and terminated both ways by the curve is called a diameter. Research Ellipse
There are many theories as to how the solar system formed. And it is generally accepted that any theory of the formation of the solar system must explain at least the following two observations: First, the planets, with the exception of Pluto, orbit in almost the same plane (the 'ecliptic'). Second, the inner four planets are small and rocky, while the outer four planets are large and gaseous. One theory that does a reasonably good job of explaining these observations is the disk model.
The Sun is thought to have formed by the collapse of a large interstellar gas cloud. The original cloud was probably thousands of times larger than the present solar system. Initially the cloud had a very slow rotation rate (it's essentially impossible for one of these clouds to have a rotation rate of exactly zero). As it collapsed, it began rotating faster. The collapse process is not 100% efficient, though, so some of the material did not fall into the proto-Sun. This rotating gas that was left behind settled into a disk. In addition to gas, interstellar clouds can also contain dust. Therefore, the rotating disk consisted of dust grains and gas. In the process of settling into a disk-and even after the disk had formed-the dust grains began to collide and stick together. Initially quite small, this process of colliding dust grains sticking together (known as ' accretion') began to build up larger dust grains. The accretion process continued with large dust grains accreting to form small pebbles, small pebbles accreting to form large pebbles, pebbles forming rocks, rocks forming boulders, etc. Initially this process is quite random: Two dust grains collide only if their paths happen to cross. However, as particles became larger, they exert a larger gravitational force and attract smaller particles to them. Hence, once started, the accretion process can actually speed up.
The collapse process itself can generate considerable heat. Furthermore, as the Sun's mass grew, it eventually reached the point at which fusion reactions in its core could be sustained. The result was that there was a heat source in the middle of the disk: the inner parts of the disk were warmer than the outer parts. In the inner part of the disk, only those materials which can remain solid at high temperatures could form the planets. That is, the dust grains were composed of materials such as silicon, iron, nickel, and the like; as these materials accrete they form rocks. Farther from the early Sun, where the disk was cooler, there were not only dust grains but also snowflakes (primarily ice flakes of water, methane, and ammonia). In the outer parts of the disk, not only could dust grains accrete to form rocks, but these snowflakes could accrete to form snowballs. Water, methane, and ammonia are relatively abundant substances, particularly compared to substances formed from silicon, iron, etc.
In the inner part of the solar system, where only rocks could remain solid, we therefore expect small planets, whereas in the outer solar system, where both rocks and ices could remain solid, we therefore expect large planets. (Not only did the gaseous planets form from more abundant substances, they also had more raw material from which to form). It is currently thought that the giant planets, particularly Jupiter and Saturn, formed from a run-away accretion process. They started accreting slowly and probably initially were quite rocky. However, once their mass reached about 10 to 15 times that of Earth, their gravitational force was so strong that they could attract not only other rocks and snowballs around them, but also some of the gas in the disk that had not frozen into an ice. As they attracted more material, their gravitational force increased, thereby attracting even more material and increasing their gravitational force even more. The result was run-away accretion and large planets. One of the problems with this theory for the formation of Jupiter, though, is that it seems to take longer than the disk may have existed. The conventional scenario predicts that Jupiter might have taken several million years to form.
Other theories indicate that a giantplanet might also form from small, unstable clumps in the disk. Rather than being 'bottom-up'. One of the results of finding planets around other stars is the realization that this model does not require the planets to always have been in the same orbits as they have today. Interactions between the planets, particularly the giant planets, and the disk of material could have resulted from migration. The giant planets may have moved inward or outward from their current locations during their formation. If planets can migrate during or shortly after their formation, it makes it easier to explain the presence of Uranus and Neptune. A straightforward application of the above model encounters a slightly embarrassing problem: The time to form Uranus and Neptune is longer than the age of the solar system. If, however, these planets formed at a closer distance, then migrated outward, it may be easier to understand why Uranus and Neptune are at their current distances from the Sun. Research Formation of The Solar System
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Maze
