A Ton of Crap (69 page)

GANDHI

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience
In January of 1915, Gandhi returned to India and was now known as Mahatma, meaning “great soul.” The Rowlatt Acts of 1919, which allowed the British to try political cases without juries and allowed for the internment of suspects without a trial, enraged the people of India, and Gandhi called for a strike (though it was eventually called off due to violence toward the English). Following this, the Amritsar Massacre occurred, in which on a high holy day, the British began firing on unarmed men, women, and children, killing from 300 to 1,500 people. After the Amritsar Massacre, Gandhi began a noncooperation movement, urging the people to boycott, resign from employment by the British, and refuse to pay taxes.

HORROR

Mary Shelley
In 1818, Mary Shelley brought to life a monster that is still one of the most well-known creatures to this day with her book,
Frankenstein
;
or, The Modern Prometheus
.
Frankenstein
infuses elements of gothic horror and romance, and is one of the earliest forms of science fiction. Shelley began the book at eighteen years of age as a bet with other writers about who could write the better horror novel. Three years later, the tale of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster was published.

CALCULUS

Limits
Limits are the intended height of a particular function. The formula for limits looks like this:

lim 
f
(
x
) = 
n

x
 → 
c

Limits deal with the process of moving up the graph, and are not concerned with the value of
c
. For example, if
f
(
x
) = 
x
²
, we know that
x
 = 2, we can just plug it into the formula to figure out the answer and arrive at
c
. What limits do is figure out where the line is as it moves to the constant.

QUANTUM MECHANICS

Bohr’s Model
The Bohr Model of the atom was modified from the Rutherford Model by Niels Bohr in 1915. The model features negatively charged electrons orbiting around a positively charged nucleus. According to the Bohr Model, the orbits of the electrons have a specific size and energy; energy is related to the orbit’s size, with the lowest energy in the smaller orbit; and when electrons move from orbit to orbit, radiation is emitted or absorbed. There are several problems with this model, such as not taking Heisenburg’s uncertainty principle into account, and it doesn’t predict the intensities of the spectral lines.

MANDARIN

Differences in Phonology
Mandarin is known as a stress-timed language. What this means is that syllables, as in English, can last for different lengths of time, but there is still a constant amount of time between the stressed syllables. Mandarin differs from other Chinese languages such as Cantonese and Min Nan for this very reason. Cantonese and Min Nan are known as syllable-timed languages, where each syllable takes the same amount of time.

GANDHI

The Dandi March
After six years in prison, Gandhi took part in his most famous act of nonviolent civil disobedience: the Dandi March. The march was 240 miles in protest of British taxes on salt. In Dandi, Gandhi and the protesters made their own salt from the seawater, breaking the law. The march lasted twenty-four days and over 60,000 people were imprisoned.

HORROR

H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft is not as well known as Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker, but he has become a cult figure, often compared to the likes of Edgar Allan Poe. He is most widely known for his “Cthulhu Mythos,” a shared literary universe about which he and fellow authors wrote horror stories. One of his most well-known books was
The Call of Cthulhu
.

CALCULUS

Maxima and Minima
Maxima and minima (known as extrema) are the largest and smallest values a function has within a specific area (local), or as a whole (global or absolute). Local maximum is the height at a point that is greater than or equal to any other points in the interval. The formula for local maximum is
f
(
a
) ≥ 
f
(
x
). Local minimum is the opposite, with a formula of:
f
(
a
) ≤ 
f
(
x
).

QUANTUM MECHANICS

Schrödinger’s Cat
One of the most famous paradoxes found in quantum theory was created by Erwin Schrödinger. He proposed a theoretical experiment where a cat is placed into a steel box with a vial of a radioactive substance, hydrocyanic acid. If even one atom decays, the vial will break, and the cat will be dead. The observer, however, does not know whether the cat will be dead or alive until opening the box, and in calculations, the cat has to be considered both dead and alive. This is called quantum indeterminacy, and it means there aren’t any outcomes until a measurement is observed.

MANDARIN