A Ton of Crap (7 page)

PHONICS

Vowel Patterns
Short vowels are the sounds that
a
,
e
,
i
,
o
, and
u
create in words like
cat
,
pet
,
hit
,
hot
, and
cup
. They are called short because they aren’t diphthongs. Long vowels sound like the names of the letters themselves. Examples of long vowels can be found in words like
cake
or
meter
. Schwa is another sound single vowels produce, and it is an indistinct sound in an unstressed syllable. For example, the sound the
o
makes in the word
lesson
is a schwa.

ZERO

The Origins of the Symbol
Originally, the Babylonians put a space between numbers and didn’t have a symbol representing zero. (For instance, 303 would have been 3 3.) By 300 b.c., the notion of the placeholder was represented by two slanted wedges. In a.d. 130, Greek astronomer Ptolemy represented the zero placeholder as a circle with a long overbar.

CELLS

Animal Cells Animal cells
are much smaller than plant cells and do not have the rigid cell walls that plant cells have. This allows animal cells to take on various shapes. While plants have the ability to make their own food with chloroplasts and sunlight, in animal cells, it is the role of the mitochondria to get energy from food that is consumed.

SPANISH

Framing a Sentence
Unlike English, in Spanish the object of your sentence can come before the verb, and the subject is part of the verb. For example, in English, we would say, “I see you.” The word “you” being the object, it is at the end of the sentence. “I see you” in Spanish translates as “Te veo.” The object is “te,” and “veo” is actually a combination of “I” and “see.”

XIA DYNASTY

Controversies Today
In the 1920s, Gu Jiegang created a school of scholars in China called the Skeptical School. It was the first group of people to question whether the Xia Dynasty actually existed or whether it was just a legend; they cited the lack of archaeological findings corresponding to the historical texts. Today, scholar Sarah Allan argues that the Zhou Dynasty created Xia to justify their conquest of the dynasty that followed Xia, the Shang Dynasty.

PHONICS

Consonant Patterns
Consonant digraphs are letter combinations that represent consonant phonemes. Examples of these include
ch
,
ph
,
sh
,
th
, and
wh
. Consonant patterns with a short vowel appear in words that have two possible spellings based on how they sound. They can be
ck
or
k
,
tch
or
ch
, and
dge
or
ge
. To determine the spelling in these cases, one must look at the vowel that precedes the sound. If there is not a short vowel, the latter forms are used. For example, in the word “pick,” there is a short vowel, so
ck
is used, while in the word “took,” a
k
is used because there is no short vowel present.

ZERO

The Rules of Brahmagupta
Rules governing how the zero should be used as a value and not a placeholder first appeared in a book written by the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta in a.d. 628. Though he states some things that modern science disagrees with, he also laid down much of the groundwork for how zero is applied in mathematics. Such examples are:

The sum of a positive number and zero is the positive number.

The sum of a negative number and zero is the negative number.

The sum of zero with zero equals zero.

The sum of a positive number and a negative number equals their difference, and if their absolute values are equal, then the result is zero.

CELLS

Structure of a Cell
The plasma membrane is the outer lining of a eukaryote cell. It protects the cell from the surrounding environment and is composed of lipids and proteins. The nucleus inside of the cell is surrounded by a membrane that separates it from the cytoplasm. Two kinds of genetic material, DNA and RNA, exist inside the cell. The cell’s chromosomes are in the nucleus, which is also the location for RNA synthesis and DNA replication.

SPANISH

Spanish Today
Today, Spanish is the native language of 332 million people, and it is the second most popular language in the world. It is the official language of numerous countries including Spain, Colombia, Peru, Cuba, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Honduras, and Costa Rica. By the 1990s, the number of people in the United States who spoke Spanish as their primary language at home was more than 17 million.

XIA DYNASTY