Pinch (cooking)

A pinch in cooking (pn) is an amount of an ingredient, typically salt, sugar, or spice. Traditionally it was defined as "an amount that can be taken between the thumb and forefinger". Historically the pinch was more precisely defined by Leslie Godwin as approximately ¹⁄₈ teaspoon.

In the early 2000s some companies began selling measuring spoons that defined (or redefined) a dash as ¹⁄₈ teaspoon, a pinch as ¹⁄₁₆ teaspoon, and a smidgen as ¹⁄₃₂ teaspoon. Based on these spoons, there are two pinches in a dash and two smidgens in a pinch.

One pinch of fine salt is approximately ¹⁄₄ gram (20–24 pinches per teaspoon), while one pinch of sugar is ¹⁄₂ – ¹⁄₃ = ¹⁄₆ gram.

References

Pinch (plasma physics)

A pinch is the compression of an electrically conducting filament by magnetic forces. The conductor is usually a plasma, but could also be a solid or liquid metal. Pinches were the first device used by mankind for controlled nuclear fusion.

The phenomenon may also be referred to as a Bennett pinch (after Willard Harrison Bennett), electromagnetic pinch,magnetic pinch,pinch effect or plasma pinch.

Pinches occur naturally in electrical discharges such as lightning bolts, the aurora,current sheets, and solar flares.

Basic mechanism

Types

Pinches exist in laboratories and in nature. Pinches differ in their geometry and operating forces. These include:

Common behavior

Pinches may become unstable. They radiate energy as light across the whole electromagnetic spectrum including radio waves, x-rays,gamma rays,synchrotron radiation, and visible light. They also produce neutrons, as a product of fusion.

Applications and devices

Pinches are used to generate X-rays and the intense magnetic fields generated are used in electromagnetic forming of metals. They also have applications in particle beams including particle beam weapons, astrophysics studies and it has been proposed to use them in space propulsion. A number of large pinch machines have been built to study fusion power; here are several:

Blood (OSI album)

Blood is the third studio album by American progressive rock band OSI, released by InsideOut Music on April 27, 2009 in Europe and May 19, 2009 in North America.

Guitarist Jim Matheos and keyboardist and vocalist Kevin Moore started work on the album in 2008, collaborating by email. Matheos would send Moore a song idea which Moore would edit and send back to Matheos. Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, who performed drums on Office of Strategic Influence and Free, was replaced by Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison on Blood. Matheos played bass guitar on the album, having hired guest musicians to perform bass duties on the first two OSI albums. Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth and Tim Bowness of No-Man wrote lyrics and performed vocals on one track each.

Critical reception of Blood was generally positive. The more atmospheric and ambient tracks were praised; the more metal-oriented tracks received mixed reactions. Moore's lyrics and Harrison's drumming, in particular, were met with acclaim.

Vs. (Pearl Jam album)

Vs. is the second studio album by the American rock band Pearl Jam, released on October 19, 1993 through Epic Records. After a relentless touring schedule in support of their 1991 debut album Ten, Pearl Jam headed into the studio in early 1993 facing the challenge of following up the commercial success of its debut. The resulting album, Vs., featured a rawer and more aggressive sound compared with the band's previous release. It was the band's first collaboration with producer Brendan O'Brien.

Pearl Jam decided to scale back its commercial efforts for Vs., including declining to produce music videos for any of the album’s singles. Upon its release, Vs. set the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week, a record it held for five years. Vs. occupied the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart for five weeks, the longest duration for a Pearl Jam album. The album has been certified seven times platinum by the RIAA in the United States.

Recording

For its second album, Pearl Jam felt the pressures of trying to match the success of its debut album, Ten. In a 2002 interview, guitarist Mike McCready said, "The band was blown up pretty big and everything was pretty crazy."Vs. was the first Pearl Jam album to have production duties handled by producer Brendan O'Brien. It was also the band's first album with drummer Dave Abbruzzese, who had joined the band in August 1991 and toured for the album Ten. Rehearsals for Vs. began in February 1993 at Potatohead Studio in Seattle, Washington. The band then moved to The Site in Nicasio, California in March 1993 to begin recording. Abbruzzese called the tranquil recording site "paradise" while lead vocalist Eddie Vedder said, "I fucking hate it here...I've had a hard time...How do you make a rock record here?"

Blood (This Mortal Coil album)

Blood is the third and final album released by 4AD collective This Mortal Coil, an umbrella title for a loose grouping of guest musicians and vocalists brought together by label boss Ivo Watts-Russell. The supergroup consists primarily of artists attached to the 4AD label, of which Watts-Russell was co-founder and (at the time) boss and president. The double album was released in April 1991, and was the second release on 4AD to utilize the double album-identifier "DAD" prefix in its catalog number.

Blood was the final LP in the project's history, although Watts-Russell used two TMC performers on his next project, The Hope Blister, in 1998. A remastered and repackaged CD edition of Blood was issued with the complete This Mortal Coil recordings in a self-titled box set, released in late November 2011. The CD was released individually shortly thereafter.

In 2013, NME ranked the album at number 492 in its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Track listing

Credits

Combustion

Combustion /kəmˈbʌs.tʃən/ or burning is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combustion in a fire produces a flame, and the heat produced can make combustion self-sustaining. Combustion is often a complicated sequence of elementary radical reactions. Solid fuels, such as wood, first undergo endothermic pyrolysis to produce gaseous fuels whose combustion then supplies the heat required to produce more of them. Combustion is often hot enough that light in the form of either glowing or a flame is produced. A simple example can be seen in the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen into water vapor, a reaction commonly used to fuel rocket engines. This reaction releases 242 kJ/mol of heat and reduces the enthalpy accordingly (at constant temperature and pressure):

Combustion of an organic fuel in air is always exothermic because the double bond in O₂ is much weaker than other double bonds or pairs of single bonds, and therefore the formation of the stronger bonds in the combustion products CO₂ and H₂O results in the release of energy. The bond energies in the fuel play only a minor role, since they are similar to those in the combustion products; e.g., the sum of the bond energies of CH₄ is nearly the same as that of CO₂. The heat of combustion is approximately -418 kJ per mole of O₂ used up in the combustion reaction, and can be estimated from the elemental composition of the fuel.

Nick the Knife

Nick the Knife is a 1982 album by Nick Lowe. The album was Lowe's third solo LP, and his first since the 1981 breakup of his band Rockpile. However, the record still has several Rockpile ties, as Lowe's former bandmates Billy Bremner and Terry Williams play on the album. In addition, Lowe does a slowed-down remake of the Rockpile song "Heart"; the original version can be found on the band's album Seconds of Pleasure sung by Bremner.

Nick the Knife reached #50 on the Billboard 200, and #99 on the UK album charts. No singles from the album made the US or UK charts, although in Canada "Stick It Where The Sun Don't Shine" hit the top 40.

Nick the Knife is notable for being one of only two Nick Lowe solo albums with no covers, as it is composed entirely of songs written or co-written by Lowe (the other album is 1990's Party of One).

The album is currently out of print.

Track listing

All tracks composed by Nick Lowe, except where indicated