Platinum

Platinum is a chemical element with symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, gray-white transition metal. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina, which is literally translated into "little silver".

Platinum is a member of the platinum group of elements and group 10 of the periodic table of elements. It has six naturally occurring isotopes. It is one of the rarer elements in Earth's crust with an average abundance of approximately 5 μg/kg. It occurs in some nickel and copper ores along with some native deposits, mostly in South Africa, which accounts for 80% of the world production. Because of its scarcity in Earth's crust, only a few hundred tonnes are produced annually, and given its important uses, it is highly valuable and is a major precious metal commodity.

Platinum is the least reactive metal. It has remarkable resistance to corrosion, even at high temperatures, and is therefore considered a noble metal. Consequently, platinum is often found chemically uncombined as native platinum. Because it occurs naturally in the alluvial sands of various rivers, it was first used by pre-Columbian South American natives to produce artifacts. It was referenced in European writings as early as 16th century, but it was not until Antonio de Ulloa published a report on a new metal of Colombian origin in 1748 that it became investigated by scientists.

Platinum (quartet)

Platinum is a barbershop quartet, created in 1998 and the 2000 SPEBSQSA international quartet champions. They are famous for their long posts (held notes at the end of songs), particularly in their adaptation of the song Be Our Guest and in Clay Hine's arrangement of Auld Lang Syne, which is on Platinum's CD of the same name.

Connelly and DeRosa were also members of the 1992 international champion quartet Keepsake. Connelly won gold in 1987 with the quartet Interstate Rivals and again in 2011 with the quartet Old School. DeRosa and Lewis are the lead and baritone of the 2007 Champions, MaxQ. Kevin Miles has been a member of The Dapper Dans of Harmony and has served as the Voice of Epcot Center, both at Walt Disney World.

Platinum was notable for scoring the most points for a single song in the history of the contest with their rendition of Cuddle Up A Little Closer, Lovey Mine, in which they scored 1438 points out of a possible 1500.

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Platinum (Miranda Lambert album)

Platinum is the fifth studio album by American country recording artist Miranda Lambert, released on June 3, 2014, by RCA Nashville. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 180,000 copies in its first week and is Lambert's first album to reach the top of the Billboard 200. Platinum received widespread critical acclaim and earned Lambert a Grammy Award for Best Country Album and a CMA Award in the same category.

Background

Lambert wrote or co-wrote eight of the album's sixteen tracks. The album features collaborations with Little Big Town ("Smokin' and Drinkin'") and The Time Jumpers ("All That's Left"), as well as a duet with Carrie Underwood on "Somethin' Bad".

Promotion

Lambert and Carrie Underwood debuted "Somethin' Bad" on the 2014 Billboard Music Awards on May 18, 2014, and performed it again on June 4, 2014, during the CMT Music Awards.

In support of the album, Lambert has a North American tour scheduled for summer 2014. Select dates featured openers Justin Moore and Thomas Rhett.

Dude Ranch (album)

Dude Ranch is the second studio album by American pop punk band Blink-182. Recorded at Big Fish Studios in Encinitas, California with producer Mark Trombino, the album was released in the United States on June 17, 1997, jointly through independent label Cargo Music and major label MCA Records. MCA signed the band in 1996 following moderate sales of their debut Cheshire Cat (1995) and growing popularity of the trio in Australia. Dude Ranch was the band's final recording released on Cargo and their last with original drummer Scott Raynor before he was dismissed from the band in 1998.

The band recorded the album during the winter of 1996–1997. With lyrical material written on the band's nonstop tours over the previous years, as well as completed songs, the band recorded with Trombino in sessions that lasted for five weeks. During the production for Dude Ranch, the members of Blink-182 were plagued with difficulties only made worse by the rushed schedule: bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge, co-vocalists for the band, were having vocal problems and Raynor had to record his drum tracks with both heels broken, on crutches.

Degeneracy (mathematics)

In mathematics, a degenerate case is a limiting case in which an element of a class of objects is qualitatively different from the rest of the class and hence belongs to another, usually simpler, class. Degeneracy is the condition of being a degenerate case.

The definitions of many classes of composite or structured objects include (often implicitly) inequalities. For example, the angles and the side lengths of a triangle are supposed to be positive. The limiting cases, where one of these elements of the triangle is zero, are degenerate triangles.

Often, the degenerate cases are the exceptional cases where changes to the usual dimension or the cardinality of the object (or of some part of it) occur. For example, a triangle is an object of dimension two, and a degenerate triangle is contained in a line, and its dimension is thus one. Similarly, the solution set of a system of equations that depends on parameters generally has a fixed cardinality and dimension, but cardinality and/or dimension may be different for some exceptional values, called degenerate cases. In such a degenerate case, the solution set is said to be degenerate.