A Ton of Crap (99 page)

THE BABY BOOMERS AND THE SIXTIES

The Suburbs
The rise in numbers of families brought a rise in consumerism, and people began moving outside of the cities, concentrating in the suburbs. Suburbs made living in houses affordable. The first, and most famous, example of a suburban community was Levittown in Long Island, New York. Thousands of identical homes were built by Bill Levitt and his company, and suburbs like Levittown began popping up all over the nation. The rise of suburbs led to the building of new schools, strip malls, and a sense that everything was the same. Black families were originally not allowed to live in suburbs, furthering segregation.

NONFICTION

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
In August of 1969, over the course of two days, a series of horrible murders occurred in Los Angeles that shook the world. The murderers were a group of young men and women who followed the leadership of Charles Manson. Written by Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor in Charles Manson’s case, and Curt Gentry,
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
tells the story of how Manson was able to coerce people into following him, details the murders and other horrible escapades of Manson’s, and brings to light Manson’s idea of Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war between the blacks and the whites.

FERMAT’S LAST THEOREM

Fermat’s Last Theorem
Fermat did not want his work published, and many feared it would be lost. After his death, his son began collecting his father’s work. His calculations and theorems were in the form of letters and comments in books, and inside a copy of Diophantus’s
Arithmetica
, was a note referring to a theorem. This would become Fermat’s most famous work. Fermat’s last theorem states:

If
n
is greater than 2 in the problem
x
ⁿ
 + 
y
ⁿ
 = 
z
ⁿ
, there are no solutions that are not non-zero integer solutions.

Fermat claimed to have discovered a “remarkable” proof of this problem that would not fit in the margins of the book. The proof was never discovered, and for three centuries mathematicians were unable to figure it out.

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

Leaf Structure
The main organs for plants to perform photosynthesis are leaves. Leaves play a critical role in allowing carbon dioxide and water in and allowing oxygen and sugar to escape. As water comes in through the roots of the plant, it is transported to the leaves via cells. A waxy layer, called the cuticle, covers the leaf. This waxy layer prevents carbon dioxide from coming in and oxygen from going out. As a result, leaves have tiny openings called stomata (
stoma
is the singular term), which allow the carbon dioxide to pass and the oxygen to enter.

FILIPINO

Differences Between Tagalog and Filipino
Though Filipino is almost identical to Tagalog, when the language was adopted as the official language, some minor changes did occur. The inclusion of new words from other languages like English and Spanish was embraced, and Western sounds and letters of the alphabet that were not previously found in Tagalog were incorporated into the Filipino alphabet. Students are taught in schools that the language is Filipino, and do not refer to it as Tagalog.

THE BABY BOOMERS AND THE SIXTIES

The Sixties
By the 1960s, the baby boomers (of which there were 70 million) were now teenagers, and the innocence of the 1950s was replaced with rock and roll music, the tensions of the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the assassination of President Kennedy, experimentation with drugs, a sexual revolution, and antiwar protests. The “American Dream” that was so sought after in the 1950s started to crumble and the role of government was constantly questioned. The sixties was a period dominated by a countercultural revolution.

NONFICTION

In Cold Blood
Truman Capote was a celebrity due to his writing and his personality. His best-known work had been romantic novels like
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
(1958). After ten years abroad in Europe, Capote decided to turn to nonfiction. In 1966,
In Cold Blood
came out, and it is considered by many to be the first nonfiction novel. The subject of his book was the 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter and his wife and children in Holcomb, Kansas. Capote researched the book for five years, interviewing the two murderers and becoming very close to them.
In Cold Blood
tells the stories of both the murderers and the victims.

FERMAT’S LAST THEOREM

Sophie Germain
Many mathematicians attempted to solve Fermat’s last theorem. Though great progress was made, the theorem was far from being proved and remained famous in the math world. Sophie Germain, who lived from 1776 to 1831 in France, used the pseudonym Monsieur Le Blanc in her studies to hide the fact that she was a woman. Germain began working on the theorem, and after several years of work, believed she had made a breakthrough. Germain showed that for exponents that were prime numbers and less than 100, there were no solutions that were prime to the exponent.

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

Chloroplast and Chlorophyll
Plant cells have specialized organelles known as chloroplasts that are not found in animal cells. The chloroplasts make sugar and starch through photosynthesis. They also contain the molecule chlorophyll, which is a pigment that absorbs the energy of light and gives plants their green color. As the sunlight hits the plant, all of the wavelengths are absorbed except for green, which gets reflected back. When the light hits the chloroplast, the chlorophyll uses the sun’s energy to combine water and carbon dioxide, which leads to the creation of sugar and oxygen.