Length between perpendiculars, often abbreviated as p/p, p.p., pp, LPP, LBP or Length BPP is a term describing the length of a ship. LBP refers to the length of a vessel along the waterline from the forward surface of the stem, or main bow perpendicular member, to the after surface of the sternpost, or main stern perpendicular member. This was believed to give a reasonable idea of the ship's carrying capacity, as it excluded the small, often unusable volume contained in her overhanging ends. On some types of vessels this is, for all practical purposes, a waterline measurement. In a ship with raked stems, naturally that length changes as the draught of the ship changes, therefore it is measured from a defined loaded condition.
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PP, pp or Pp may refer to:
The pipa (Chinese: 琵琶; pinyin: pípa, [pʰǐpʰǎ]) is a four-stringed Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 26. Another Chinese four-string plucked lute is the liuqin, which looks like a smaller version of the pipa.
The pipa is one of the most popular Chinese instruments and has been played for almost two thousand years in China. Several related instruments in East and Southeast Asia are derived from the pipa; these include the Japanese biwa, the Vietnamese đàn tỳ bà, and the Korean bipa. The Korean instrument is the only one of the three that is no longer widely used; examples survive in museums, but recent attempts to revive the Korean instrument have been partially successful in recent years.
There are considerable confusion and disagreements about the origin of pipa. This may be due to the fact that the word pipa was used in ancient texts to describe a variety of plucked chordophones from the Qin to the Tang Dynasty, as well as the differing accounts given in these ancient texts. One traditional Chinese narrative recounts the story of the Han Chinese princess, Wang Zhaojun, who was sent to marry a Hun king as part of a peace accord during the Han Dynasty between the Hans and Huns, and the pipa was created so she can play music on horseback to soothe her longings. Some researchers such as Laurence Picken and John Myers suggest a "non-Chinese origin".