Meteor!

Meteor! is a 1987 children's picture book by author Patricia Polacco. Polacco is well known for writing and illustrating novels depicting events from her childhood in Michigan. Meteor! was published in 1987 by The Trumpet Club, commonly known for publications of children’s books from grades PreK-6. The novel is about Patricia, her brother Richard, and Cousin Steve as young children spending time with their grandparents on their farm in Michigan. It seems to be a normal summer night until a flash from the sky and a crash in the yard.

According to Publishers Weekly, "Based on a true event, this enchanting book overwhelmingly expresses the magic that suddenly pervades a small town, from the funny folksy way the story is told to the imaginative, full color illustrations."

Booklist says, "Polacco’s full-color pictures are completely in tandem with the telling".

Story

The novel tells the story of Patricia, her brother Steve, and her cousin Steve spending the summer at their grandparents' farm in Union City, Michigan. Late one night while sitting in their cozy home, a bright light falls from the sky landing in the Gaw’s farm with a loud crash. Curiosity overcomes the family as they set foot outside to find a fallen star in their backyard. One line in the book reads, “Of all the places on earth a meteor could have fallen, it landed smack-dab in the middle of our yard, Gramma exclaimed.” This was such a huge deal for the residents of Mudsock Medow. Word gets around quickly, and before long there is a carnival at the Gaw farm. There is a band, a circus, a hot air balloon, and more. The entire town gathers to celebrate the meteor. Many residents touched the meteor claiming it was magical. It seemed like magic to all that the fallen star, which flew through the galaxy, had landed in Union City and brought such joy to all.

RV Meteor (1986)

The RV Meteor (also Meteor III) is a multidisciplinary research vessel operating mainly in high seas. She is owned by the German state represented by its Federal Ministry of Education and Research and registered in Hamburg.

RV Meteor operates mainly in the areas of the Atlantic, the eastern Pacific, and the western Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean and the Baltic Seas. The current Meteor is the third German research vessel in a row sharing the same name, after Meteor (1915) and Meteor (1964).

Until 2012, Meteor was operated by Bremerhaven based company F. Laeisz GmbH. Since January 2013 the ship has a new operator, Briese Schiffahrt in Leer. It can accommodate up to 30 scientists for work in 20 laboratories on the main deck.

References

External links

Media related to RV Meteor at Wikimedia Commons

Meteor (missile)

Meteor is an active radar guided beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM) being developed by MBDA. Meteor will offer a multi-shot capability against long range manoeuvring targets in a heavy electronic countermeasures (ECM) environment with range in excess of 100 km.

It is intended to equip the Eurofighter Typhoons of the United Kingdom Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Saudi Air Force, Germany's Luftwaffe, Spain's Ejército del Aire and Italian Air Force, British and Italian F-35s, Dassault Rafale of French Armée de l'air, the Saab JAS 39 Gripen of the Swedish Air Force, and the Dassault Rafale of the Egyptian Air Force and the Qatar Air Force.

It is scheduled to enter service for with the RAF and with the Swedish Air Force in 2015, possibly with the SwAF as the first operator of the missile due to most testing having been done on the JAS-39. This date slipped to 2016. According to MBDA, Meteor has three to six times the kinematic performance of current air-air missiles of its type. The key to Meteor's performance is a throttleable ducted rocket (ramjet) manufactured by Bayern-Chemie of Germany.

Class (education)

A class in education has a variety of related meanings.

It can be the group of students which attends a specific course or lesson at a university, school, or other educational institution, see Form (education).

It can refer to a course itself, e.g., a class in Shakespearean drama.

It can be the group of students at the same level in an institution: the freshman class; or the group of students which graduates from the institution at the same time: the Class of 2005 (cf. alumnus/a). The term can be used in a slightly more general context, such as "the graduating class."

It can also refer to the classroom, in the building or venue where such a lesson is conducted.

In some countries' educational systems (such as Taiwan's), it can refer to a subdivision of the students in an academic department, consisting of a cohort of students of the same academic level. For example, a department's sophomores may be divided into three classes.

In countries such as the Republic of Ireland, India, Germany, and in the past Sweden, the word can mean a grade: 1st class is ages 4–5, 2nd class is ages 6–7, 3rd class is ages 8–9, 4th class is ages 9–10, 5th class is ages 10–11, 6th class is ages 11–12, and 9th class is ages 14–15.

Character class (Dungeons & Dragons)

A character class is a fundamental part of the identity and nature of characters in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. A character's capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses are largely defined by his or her chosen class; choosing a class is one of the first steps a player takes in order to create a Dungeons & Dragons player character. A character's class affects a character's available skills and abilities. A well-rounded party of characters requires a variety of abilities offered by the diverse classes in the game.

Dungeons & Dragons was the first game to introduce the usage of character classes to role-playing. Many other traditional role-playing games and massively multiplayer online role-playing games have since adopted the concept as well. Dungeons & Dragons classes have generally been defined in the Player's Handbook, one of the three core rulebooks; a variety of alternate classes have also been defined in supplemental sourcebooks.

Classes by type

Social class

Social class (or simply "class"), as in a class society, is a set of concepts in the social sciences and political theory centered on models of social stratification in which people are grouped into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle, and lower classes.

Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and social historians. However, there is not a consensus on the best definition of the "class," and the term has different contextual meanings. In common parlance, the term "social class" is usually synonymous with "socio-economic class," defined as "people having the same social, economic, or educational status," e.g., "the working class"; "an emerging professional class." However, academics distinguish social class and socioeconomic status, with the former referring to one’s relatively stable sociocultural background and the latter referring to one’s current social and economic situation and, consequently, being more changeable over time.