List of Marvel Comics characters: Q

Quantum

Quantum is an alien supervillain in the Marvel Universe. Created by Steve Englehart and Al Milgrom, the character first appeared in West Coast Avengers vol. 2, #12 (September 1986).

Within the context of the stories, Quantum is an alien soldier from the planet Dakkam, one of the platoon of superpowered Dakkamite troops known as The Elect. The scientists of his race noted that exposure to Earth's sun had given one Dakkamite renegade superpowers - they sought to exploit this by placing a platoon of soldiers inside specially designed 'incubator capsules', which were then located close to the sun. Quantum wakes at the end of this treatment to discover that his powers have manifested - but that the rest of The Elect has already gone. Searching for his comrades, he becomes part of a supervillain team assembled by Graviton to resemble the Unified Field Theory. Halflife represents the weak force, Quantum represents the strong force, while Zzzax represents electromagnetism. Graviton himself represents gravity, and promises Quantum that he would help to locate the missing soldiers. Graviton and his allies are defeated by the West Coast Avengers. Quantum, no longer believing Graviton's promises, abandons the team and goes his own way.

Quantum

In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction. Behind this, one finds the fundamental notion that a physical property may be "quantized," referred to as "the hypothesis of quantization". This means that the magnitude can take on only certain discrete values.

A photon is a single quantum of (visible) light as well as all other forms of electromagnetic radiation and can be referred to as a "light quantum". The energy of an electron bound to an atom is quantized, which results in the stability of atoms, and hence of matter in general.

As incorporated into the theory of quantum mechanics, this is regarded by physicists as part of the fundamental framework for understanding and describing nature.

Etymology and discovery

The word "quantum" comes from the Latin "quantus", meaning "how much". "Quanta", short for "quanta of electricity" (electrons) was used in a 1902 article on the photoelectric effect by Philipp Lenard, who credited Hermann von Helmholtz for using the word in the area of electricity. However, the word quantum in general was well known before 1900. It was often used by physicians, such as in the term quantum satis. Both Helmholtz and Julius von Mayer were physicians as well as physicists. Helmholtz used "quantum" with reference to heat in his article on Mayer's work, and indeed, the word "quantum" can be found in the formulation of the first law of thermodynamics by Mayer in his letter dated July 24, 1841. Max Planck used "quanta" to mean "quanta of matter and electricity", gas, and heat. In 1905, in response to Planck's work and the experimental work of Lenard (who explained his results by using the term "quanta of electricity"), Albert Einstein suggested that radiation existed in spatially localized packets which he called "quanta of light" ("Lichtquanta").

Kvant (magazine)

Kvant (Russian: Квант for "quantum") is a popular science magazine in physics and mathematics for school students and teachers, issued since 1970 in Soviet Union and continued in Russia. Translation of selected articles from Kvant had been published in Quantum Magazine in 1990–2001, which in turn had been translated and published in Greece in 1993–2001.

History

Kvant was started as a joint project of the USSR Academy of Sciences and USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. In Soviet time, it was published by Nauka publisher with circulation about 200,000.

The idea of the magazine was introduced by Pyotr Kapitsa. Its first chief editors were physicist Isaak Kikoin and mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov. In 1985, its editorial board had 18 Academicians and Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences and USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, 14 Doctors of Sciences and 20 Candidates of Science.

Availability

All published issues of Kvant are freely available online.

Translations

Android (operating system)

Android (from its former owner Android, Inc.) is a mobile operating system (OS) currently developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android's user interface is mainly based on direct manipulation, using touch gestures that loosely correspond to real-world actions, such as swiping, tapping and pinching, to manipulate on-screen objects, along with a virtual keyboard for text input. In addition to touchscreen devices, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars, and Android Wear for wrist watches, each with a specialized user interface. Variants of Android are also used on notebooks, game consoles, digital cameras, and other electronics.

Since 2013, Android is the best selling on tablets; and on smartphones the OS is dominant, thereby giving it the largest installed base of all operating systems of any kind.

Initially developed by Android, Inc., which Google bought in 2005, Android was unveiled in 2007, along with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance – a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices.As of July 2013, the Google Play store has had over one million Android applications ("apps") published, and over 50 billion applications downloaded. An April–May 2013 survey of mobile application developers found that 71% of developers create applications for Android, and a 2015 survey found that 40% of full-time professional developers see Android as their priority target platform, which is comparable to Apple's iOS on 37% with both platforms far above others. At Google I/O 2014, the company revealed that there were over one billion active monthly Android users, up from 538 million in June 2013.