Free fall

In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. In the context of general relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time curvature, a body in free fall has no force acting on it and moves along a geodesic. The present article only concerns itself with free fall in the Newtonian domain.

An object in the technical sense of free fall may not necessarily be falling down in the usual sense of the term. An object moving upwards would not normally be considered to be falling, but if it is subject to the force of gravity only, it is said to be in free fall. The moon is thus in free fall.

In a uniform gravitational field, in the absence of any other forces, gravitation acts on each part of the body equally and this is weightlessness, a condition that also occurs when the gravitational field is zero (such as when far away from any gravitating body). A body in free fall experiences "0 g".

The term "free fall" is often used more loosely than in the strict sense defined above. Thus, falling through an atmosphere without a deployed parachute, or lifting device, is also often referred to as free fall. The aerodynamic drag forces in such situations prevent them from producing full weightlessness, and thus a skydiver's "free fall" after reaching terminal velocity produces the sensation of the body's weight being supported on a cushion of air.

Charles "Nish" Bruce

Sergeant Charles Christian Cameron "Nish" Bruce QGM (8 August 1956 – 8 January 2002) was a former British Army soldier and freefall expert of high altitude military parachuting who served in 22 (SAS) Special Air Service (1982–88). He served with the 22 SAS in the Falklands War, on anti-drug operations in South and Central America and in Northern Ireland during Operation Banner for which he was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal in 1986.

He received the South Atlantic Medal in 1982 with B Squadron of the 22 Special Air Service and the General Service Medal with the 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment for services in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.

Family & Early Life

Bruce was born in Chipping Norton in 1956, middle son of Ewen Anthony Guy Cameron Bruce. He was the paternal grandson of Major Ewen Cameron Bruce (of Blaen-y-cwm).

Military career

Bruce joined the Parachute Regiment in 1973 at age 17 and in 1978 spent 4 years with The Red Devils Display Team participating in test jumping, international exhibitions and competitions before passing SAS selection and joining 22 SAS in April 1982.

Free fall (disambiguation)

Free fall is the ability to achieve the sensation of weightlessness (for example to be falling freely in an atmosphere, or to be in zero-g). In skydiving, the term freefall is also used for the portion of the skydive prior to the deployment of a parachute, even though significant portions of it are at terminal velocity rather than freely accelerating in gravity.

Free fall, Free-fall or Freefall may also refer to:

Books & comics

Lithium

Lithium (from Greek: λίθος lithos, "stone") is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silver-white metal belonging to the alkali metal group of chemical elements. Under standard conditions it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly reactive and flammable. For this reason, it is typically stored in mineral oil. When cut open, it exhibits a metallic luster, but contact with moist air corrodes the surface quickly to a dull silvery gray, then black tarnish. Because of its high reactivity, lithium never occurs freely in nature, and instead, only appears in compounds, which are usually ionic. Lithium occurs in a number of pegmatitic minerals, but due to its solubility as an ion, is present in ocean water and is commonly obtained from brines and clays. On a commercial scale, lithium is isolated electrolytically from a mixture of lithium chloride and potassium chloride.

The nuclei of lithium verge on instability, since the two stable lithium isotopes found in nature have among the lowest binding energies per nucleon of all stable nuclides. Because of its relative nuclear instability, lithium is less common in the solar system than 25 of the first 32 chemical elements even though the nuclei are very light in atomic weight. For related reasons, lithium has important links to nuclear physics. The transmutation of lithium atoms to helium in 1932 was the first fully man-made nuclear reaction, and lithium-6 deuteride serves as a fusion fuel in staged thermonuclear weapons.

Lithium Technologies

Lithium Technologies provides social customer experience management software for the enterprise. Headquartered in San Francisco, Lithium has additional offices in London, Austin, Paris, Sydney, Singapore, New York, and Zürich.

Lithium was founded in 2001 as a spin-out from GX Media, which created technologies for professional rankings and tournaments and now hosts a number of popular gaming sites. The company's founders include brothers Lyle Fong and Dennis Fong, who together also founded GX Media, as well as Kirk Yokomizo, John Joh, Nader Alizadeh, Michel Thouati, Michael Yang, and Matt Ayres. The company sells largely to enterprise customers, including HP, Best Buy, Research In Motion, Sony, Comcast, Symantec, and AT&T.

The Lithium Social Customer Experience Management Platform combines online customer community applications such as forums, blogs, innovation management, product reviews, and tribal knowledge bases with the broader social Web and traditional CRM business processes, resulting in a wide range of online customer interaction methods. Lithium's SaaS-based platform delivers products on-demand in a hosted environment rather than as traditional, packaged software. Stemming from its gaming roots, the platform incorporates elaborate rating systems for contributors, with ranks, badges, and “kudos counts.”

Lithium (Sirius)

Lithium is a 1990s grunge and alternative rock channel airing on Sirius XM Radio channel 34 and Dish Network channel 6034. It debuted on Sirius Satellite Radio on February 14, 2007, moving SIRIUS Disorder to channel 32 and later to channel 70. An update was sent to all Sirius radios which corrected the issue where Lithium was called "'90s Alternative" and the Stiletto radios displayed the Sirius logo.

The Sirius radios and website displayed the channel as "Lithium." It took its name from the Nirvana song, Lithium. Lithium was the first all-1990s channel since I-90 signed off on November 4, 2002.

While the primary focus is grunge and alternative rock, the channel also played bands from the late 1990s wave of nu metal and alternative metal, such as Limp Bizkit, Orgy and Slipknot.

Merger with Lucy

On November 12, 2008, during the Sirius/XM channel merger, the XM channel Lucy was renamed as Lithium. Whereas the old Lithium didn't feature adult album alternative bands such as The Cranberries or Crash Test Dummies, Lucy featured those artists. The Lucy playlist dropped all the 2000s music already played on its sister Alt Nation channel, and Lucy took on the Lithium name. Mediabase lists Lithium as X054-FM rather than S024-FM.