A Ton of Crap (50 page)

Textiles
In 1750 England, the modern factory system developed in textiles as a result of power-driven machinery. Prior to these machines, textile work was done completely by hand. With the spinning machine, however, a person would just have to operate a foot pedal and let the machine do the rest. The most famous model of the spinning machine was the spinning jenny. In the 1740s, the first textile mills began appearing in England, and by the 1780s, there were over 120 textile mills.

LITERARY ELEMENTS

Protagonist
The protagonist is the main character found in the story. It is who the entire plot of the story revolves around. For example, even though in
The Wizard of Oz
, the story is about finding the Wizard of Oz, whose name is the title of the book, the story’s protagonist is actually Dorothy, because the story is about her journey, not the Wizard. The protagonist can sometimes be the narrator of the story. A false protagonist is a dramatic device where the protagonist is disposed of unexpectedly. A famous example of this can be found in Hitchcock’s
Psycho
, where halfway through the movie, the main character is killed.

GEOMETRY

Area
The area is the amount of space inside a shape. To find the area of a square or any other plane shape, the formula is simple. You multiply the length by the height of the object. To find the area of a parallelogram, you multiply the base by the height of the object. For trapezoids — shapes with four sides but only one pair of parallel sides — you add the lengths of the two parallel sides, divide by two, and then multiply that number by the height.

THE PERIODIC TABLE

The History of the Periodic Table
The periodic table of today was created by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869; however, he was not the first. In 1789, a list of thirty-three chemical elements was published. These were organized by earths, gases, metals, and nonmetals. In 1829, Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner came to the realization that based on chemical properties, elements could be grouped into groups of three, or triads. By 1869, there had been several attempts at perfecting the table, and what made Mendeleev’s table so special was that it left gaps for elements not yet discovered. Also, it occasionally ignored the order by atomic weight to better classify into chemical families.

CROATIAN

Attempt at Standardizing Croatian
In the seventeenth century, there was an attempt to unify Croatia, which at the time had been ruled by two dynasties. Ikavian-Kajkavian was chosen to be the unifying dialect because it was an intermediate between all of the other dialects. However, when the dynasties were overtaken by the Holy Roman Emperor, the standard language was abandoned and replaced by Neo-Shtokavian.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Steam Power
The steam engine provided an efficient and cheap source of power. The first practical steam engine was created in 1712, and it was later perfected by Scottish inventor James Watt in the 1770s. The steam engine was an integral part of the Industrial Revolution. It provided power for machinery and soon moved from the factories to being used in locomotives and ships.

LITERARY ELEMENTS

Antagonist
The antagonist is the character in opposition to the protagonist. The antagonist may also represent a threat or opposing idea to the protagonist. For example, if the superhero is the protagonist, the evil villain is the antagonist. A classic example of an antagonist is Voldemort or Snape from the Harry Potter series. Harry is the protagonist, and they are his antagonists.

GEOMETRY

Perimeter
Perimeter is a very simple idea, with a very simple solution to finding it. The perimeter of an object is the distance around the outside of the shape. The easiest way of finding the perimeter is by adding up all of the sides. For example, if a rectangle has two sides that are 7 inches and two sides that are 3 inches, then the perimeter would be 7 + 7 + 3 + 3 = 20.

THE PERIODIC TABLE

Groups
The vertical columns in the periodic table are called groups. The groups are the most important way to classify elements. In the current format, the groups are numbered 1 to 18 from the left to the right. Elements in a group share similar configurations of the atom’s outermost electron shells. The groups are given names such as alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, halogens, pnictogens, and chalcogens, to name a few.

CROATIAN

The Illyrian Movement and Forward
In the nineteenth century, there was an attempt to create a common South Slavic literary language. This was known as the Illyrian movement. The Shtokavian dialect was chosen as the standard language to be used among Croats and Serbs, and the Serbo-Croatian language was standardized. In 1954, the Novi Sad Agreement established Serbo-Croatian as one language with two variants. The Novi Sad Agreement remained until the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, which led to several disputes.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION