A Ton of Crap (51 page)

Transportation
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, transportation was limited to horse-drawn carriages and boats. In the 1800s, the first steamboat was created by an American inventor. Within just a few years, steamboats appeared both in the United States and in England and traveled the Atlantic with goods and raw materials. Technological advancements soon led to better roads and the first steam-powered rail systems.

LITERARY ELEMENTS

Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is used to suggest developments that will be found later on in the plot. Formal patterning is a form of foreshadowing where certain events, actions, and gestures let the reader anticipate the plot. A red herring is a hint given to the reader that intentionally misleads the reader.

GEOMETRY

Circumference
Circumference is the same idea as perimeter, only it applies to circles. The formula for finding the circumference requires a little more work however. To find the circumference, multiply the diameter of the circle by π, which as you may recall, is simplified to 3.14. If only the radius is provided, multiply the radius by 2 to find the diameter, and then solve for the circumference.

THE PERIODIC TABLE

Periods
The horizontal rows in the periodic table are known as periods. All the elements in a period have the same number of electron shells. Currently, the maximum number of electron shells for any type of element is seven. As you move across a period, the atomic number increases. The atomic number is the number of protons found in the atom’s nucleus.

CROATIAN

Phonology
Croatian has a total of thirty letters in its alphabet (which stems from the Latin alphabet), with twenty-five of those letters being consonants and only five being vowels. Vowels can be long or short, and when they are stressed, they carry a rising or falling tone. Understanding consonants is a bit more difficult, and they are affricate (begin as a stop and end with a sound of incomplete closure) and palatal (where the tongue is raised to the hard palate).

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Iron and Coal
Without iron and coal, there would not have been an Industrial Revolution. Coal provided the power for the steam engines as well as energy to fuel the smelting of iron. The iron was then used to build and improve machinery, ships, and bridges. The reason Great Britain became a leader in the Industrial Revolution, and in fact, the first industrialized nation, was due to their large coal and iron ore deposits.

LITERARY ELEMENTS

Point of View
The point of view is the perspective the story is being told from. A narrator can tell the story in first person, where it is the narrator who is experiencing it (use of the word
I
), and sometimes is limited to the information in the moment. The third-person narrator is objective, an unattached observer that does not take a character’s perspective. An omniscient narrator can relate multiple characters’ perspectives, knowing all, including characters’ thoughts. And a limited omniscient narrator knows all, like an omniscient narrator, but only about one or two of the characters.

GEOMETRY

Volume
Whereas area deals with two-dimensional figures, volume is the amount of space in three-dimensional figures. To find the volume of a rectangular prism, multiply the length by the width by the height. To find the volume of a triangular prism, you do the same formula and then multiply by ½. As the shapes get more advanced, so too does the formula for volume. For example, the formula for finding the volume of a cone is 1∕3 times the area of the base times the height.

THE PERIODIC TABLE

Blocks
A set of adjacent groups is known as a block or family. There are five blocks: s-block (the first two groups), p-block (the last six groups except for helium), d-block (the transition metals), f-block (part of the lanthanoids and actinoids), and g-block (which is hypothetical; no elements exist in the g-block yet). These blocks reflect the configuration of the electrons.

CROATIAN

Croatian Today
Croatian is spoken by 6 million people today, and is the national language of Croatia. The language is also spoken in Herzegovina, Bosnia, Slovakia, Italy, Austria, and Hungary. Though Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian are extremely similar, speakers emphasize differences between the languages as a result of a deep and complicated cultural, political, and religious history.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION