Snap (horse)

Snap (1750 – July 1777) was a Thoroughbred racehorse who won all four of his races. After retiring from racing he became a successful stallion. He was Champion sire four times and his progeny included the undefeated Goldfinder.

Background

Snap was a brown colt foaled in 1750. Bred by Cuthbert Routh and Lord Portmore, as a yearling he was valued at £70. Snap's sire was Snip, a son of the undefeated Flying Childers. His dam was a sister to Slipby and a daughter to Fox. He was sold to Jenison Shafto when Cuthbert Routh died in 1752.

Racing career

Snap's first race came in the spring of 1756 at Newmarket, where he beat Marske to win 1000 guineas. Both horses were carrying ten stone in weight. In the following meeting at Newmarket he again beat Marske for 1000 guineas off level weights, after starting as the 1/10 favourite he won easily. Snap beat Farmer and Music to win the £100 Free Plate, which was run in four mile heats. The Free Plate was run at York, his only race away from Newmarket. His fourth and final race came at Newmarket in April 1757, where he beat Sweepstakes to win 1000 guineas.

Jounce

In physics, jounce or snap is the fourth derivative of the position vector with respect to time, with the first, second, and third derivatives being velocity, acceleration, and jerk, respectively; hence, the jounce is the rate of change of the jerk with respect to time. Jounce is defined by any of the following equivalent expressions:

The following equations are used for constant jounce:

where

The notation (used in ) is not to be confused with the displacement vector commonly denoted similarly. Currently, there are no well-accepted designations for the derivatives of jounce. The fourth, fifth and sixth derivatives of position as a function of time are "sometimes somewhat facetiously" referred to as snap, crackle and pop respectively. Because higher-order derivatives are not commonly useful, there has been no consensus among physicists on the proper names for derivatives above jounce.

The dimensions of jounce are distance per (time to the power of 4). In SI units, this is "metres per quartic second", "metres per second per second per second per second", m/s⁴, m · s⁻⁴, or 100 Gal per second squared in CGS units. This pattern continues for higher order derivatives, with the 5th being m/s⁵.

Pillow Pal

Pillow Pals were a line of plush toys made by Ty, Inc. during the 1990s. The toys were given their name because they were soft like a pillow, and were made with children in mind. Though many of them resembled certain Beanie Babies, those that did not share names with their Beanie Baby counterparts. Such Pillow Pals saw a decline in popularity in the late 1990s with the introduction of Beanie Buddies, which were also larger versions of various Beanie Babies. In January 1999, all Pillow Pals were redesigned, and their colors were changed. This line did not sell well, and was discontinued by Ty around the end of the year. Today, PillowPals LLC takes children's drawings and replicates them into 3D pillows.

At the time of the final retirement, Ty donated its remaining stock of pillow pals to the Ronald McDonald House to be distributed to sick children.

List of Pillow Pals

The following Pillow Pals were made during the 1990s:

After the 1999 redesign, the following Pillow Pals were made:

Finger snapping

Snapping (or clicking) one's fingers is the act of creating a snapping or clicking sound with one's fingers. Primarily this is done by building tension between the thumb and another (middle, index, or ring) finger and then moving the other finger forcefully downward so it hits the palm of the same hand at a high speed. Alternatively, one can press the middle finger and thumb together and then fling the index finger into them.

Physics

There are three components to the snapping finger sound: (1) The "friction" or "sliding" sound between the second (middle) finger and the thumb (2) The "impact" sound from the second finger colliding with a groove created by contacting the third (ring) finger with the palm and (3) The "pop" sound from the rapid compression and subsequent decompression of air. The third "pop" sound is the most audible of the three components and because it is caused by a compression of air between the fast moving second finger and the groove between the palm and third finger, the second finger must hit both the palm and a small portion of the top of the third finger in order to get the full "snap" sound. If the second finger only hits the palm, only the first two components will be heard and there will be a significant reduction in the total "snap" sound. This usually happens because the third finger is simply not in contact with the palm, but it can also happen if the third finger doesn't align properly with the striking point of the second finger. In this case, no part of the second finger lands anywhere on top of the third finger and ends up only hitting the palm.

Horse

The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. It is an odd-toed ungulate mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Hyracotherium, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began to domesticate horses around 4000 BC, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated, such as the endangered Przewalski's horse, a separate subspecies, and the only remaining true wild horse. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.

Horses' anatomy enables them to make use of speed to escape predators and they have a well-developed sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response. Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months, and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training under saddle or in harness between the ages of two and four. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years.

Yakovlev Yak-24

The Yakovlev Yak-24 (NATO reporting name Horse) was a twin engine, tandem rotor transport helicopter developed in the USSR.

Design and development

In late summer 1952, the Soviet Union issued two design specifications for helicopters, with the intent of catching up to the United States in post-World War II helicopter development. The design for the a medium-size helicopter which could transport 12 people was issued to the Mil Design Bureau, whereas the design for a larger version capable transporting 24 people was given to the Yakovlev Design Bureau, which had not had any previous design experience on helicopters prior to this project.

Yakovlev made two prototypes for flight testing, and two more for static and dynamic ground tests. The first prototype was flown on 3 July 1952. It was powered with two 1,268 kW (1,700 hp) Shvetsov ASh-82V radial engines and was built in a tandem rotor layout, which was not typical for Soviet helicopters, which soon brought it nickname Letayushchiy Vagon (Летающий вагон) – 'the Flying Railroad Car'. The engines and transmission system were identical to the already-proven single-engine Mil Mi-4, but the Yak-24 proved to be less successful. Its engines were linked together so each could drive one or both rotors, but such arrangement caused strong vibrations in the airframe. After problems were partially solved, the new helicopter was order for production, which began in 1955.

Horse in Chinese mythology

Horses are an important motif in Chinese mythology. There are many myths about the horse or horses, or horse-like beings, including the pony. Chinese mythology refers to those myths found in the historical geographic area of China. This includes myths in Chinese and other languages, as transmitted by Han Chinese as well as other ethnic groups (of which fifty-six are officially recognized by the current administration of China, according to Lihui Yang, 2005:4). There are various motifs of horses in Chinese mythology. In some cases the focus is on a horse or horses as the protagonist of the action, in other cases they appear in a supporting role, sometimes as the locomotive power propelling a chariot and its occupant(s). According to a cyclical Chinese calendar system, the time period of 31 January 2014 - 18 February 2015 falls under the category of the (yang) Wood Horse.

Myth versus history

In the study of historical Chinese culture, many of the stories that have been told regarding characters and events which have been written or told of the distant past have a double tradition: one which tradition which presents a more historicized and one which presents a more mythological version (Yang 2005:12-13). This is also true of some accounts related to mythological horses in China.