Quantum tunnelling

Quantum tunnelling or tunneling (see spelling differences) refers to the quantum mechanical phenomenon where a particle tunnels through a barrier that it classically could not surmount. This plays an essential role in several physical phenomena, such as the nuclear fusion that occurs in main sequence stars like the Sun. It has important applications to modern devices such as the tunnel diode,quantum computing, and the scanning tunnelling microscope. The effect was predicted in the early 20th century and its acceptance as a general physical phenomenon came mid-century.

Tunnelling is often explained using the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the wave–particle duality of matter. Pure quantum mechanical concepts are central to the phenomenon, so quantum tunnelling is one of the novel implications of quantum mechanics.

History

Quantum tunnelling was developed from the study of radioactivity, which was discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. Radioactivity was examined further by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, for which they earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.Ernest Rutherford and Egon Schweidler studied its nature, which was later verified empirically by Friedrich Kohlrausch. The idea of the half-life and the impossibility of predicting decay was created from their work.

Tunnel (New York nightclub)

Coordinates: 40°45′9″N 74°0′27″W / 40.75250°N 74.00750°W / 40.75250; -74.00750

Tunnel was a nightclub in New York City, located at 220 Twelfth Avenue, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, in the Terminal Warehouse Company Central Stores Building, which is now part of the West Chelsea Historic District. It operated from 1986 to 2001.

History and description

Tunnel, frequently misnamed as "The Tunnel", was opened in December 1986 at the cost of $5 million by Eli Dayan – the founder of Bonjour Jeans – in a space which was formerly a railroad freight terminal. Eli Dayan sold the property to Marco Riccota in January 1990. Peter Gatien acquired the 80,000-square-foot nightclub in 1992. The club was named for the tunnel-like shape of the main room, in which train tracks from the early 1900s ran through a sunken area of the dance floor. These were a relic of an era in which railroad sidings from the Eleventh Avenue freight line of the New York Central Railroad ran directly into warehouse buildings in that area, so that goods could be transferred to and from freight cars which were floated across the Hudson on barges from Hoboken.

Tunnel 57

Tunnel 57 was a tunnel under the Berlin Wall, that in October of 1964 was the location of a mass escape by 57 East Berlin citizens. Student and future astronaut Reinhard Furrer was among the West German escape helpers who assisted the East Berliners in escaping. During the escape, East German border guards came upon the scene. A West German escape helper, Christian Zobel, opened fire, the bullet piercing the lung of young East German guard Egon Schultz, who was then also fatally wounded by friendly fire from another guard. A memorial plaque on the site today commemorates both the successful escape, and Schultz's death as a victim of the Berlin Wall.

References

Coordinates: 52°32′10.62″N 13°23′33.79″E / 52.5362833°N 13.3927194°E / 52.5362833; 13.3927194

Coil (band)

Coil was an English cross-genre, experimental music group formed in 1982 by John Balance—later credited as "Jhonn Balance"—and his life partner and collaborator Peter Christopherson, aka "Sleazy". The duo worked together on a series of releases before Balance chose the name Coil, which he claimed to be inspired by the omnipresence of the coil's shape in nature. Today, Coil remains one of the most influential and best-known industrial music groups.

The group's first official release as Coil was a 1984 12" album titled How to Destroy Angels released on the Belgian Les Disques du Crépuscule's sublabel LAYLAH Antirecords. Following the 12"s success, Some Bizarre Records produced two albums, Scatology, Horse Rotorvator and Coil departed SomeBizzare Label and Produced Love's Secret Domain, which met with little commercial success, but were praised as innovative due to their blend of industrial music and acid house.

In 1985, the group began working on a series of soundtracks, amongst them music for the first Hellraiser movie based on the novel The Hellbound Heart by their acquaintance at that time, Clive Barker. The group's first live performance in 16 years occurred in 1999, and began a series of mini-tours that would last until 2004. Following the death of John Balance on 13 November 2004, Christopherson announced via their official record label website Threshold House that Coil as an entity had ceased to exist.

List of Pokémon (52–101)

The Pokémon (ポケモン, Pokemon) franchise has 721 (as of the release of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire) distinctive fictional species classified as the titular Pokémon. This is a selected listing of 50 of the Pokémon species, originally found in the Red and Green versions, arranged as they are in the main game series' National Pokédex.

Meowth

Meowth (ニャース, Nyāsu, Nyarth), known as the Scratch Cat Pokémon, has a distinctly feline appearance, resembling a small housecat. It has cream-colored fur, which turns brown at its paws and tail tip. Its oval-shaped head features prominent whiskers, black-and-brown ears, and a koban, a gold oval coin (also known as "charm") embedded in its forehead. Meowth are valued for their ability to collect coins using their signature move, "Pay Day", as it is the only Pokémon that learns it. Meowth's coloration, its love of coins, and its charm indicate that Meowth is based on the Japanese Maneki Neko, a cat-shaped figurine that is said to bring good luck and money to its owner. Aspects of Meowth were drawn from a Japanese myth dealing with the true value of money, in which a cat has money on its head but does not realize it.

Electromagnetic coil

An electromagnetic coil is an electrical conductor such as a wire in the shape of a coil, spiral or helix. Electromagnetic coils are used in electrical engineering, in applications where electric currents interact with magnetic fields, in devices such as inductors, electromagnets, transformers, and sensor coils. Either an electric current is passed through the wire of the coil to generate a magnetic field, or conversely an external time-varying magnetic field through the interior of the coil generates an EMF (voltage) in the conductor.

A current through any conductor creates a circular magnetic field around the conductor due to Ampere's law. The advantage of using the coil shape is that it increases the strength of magnetic field produced by a given current. The magnetic fields generated by the separate turns of wire all pass through the center of the coil and add (superpose) to produce a strong field there. The more turns of wire, the stronger the field produced. Conversely, a changing external magnetic flux induces a voltage in a conductor such as a wire, due to Faraday's law of induction. The induced voltage can be increased by winding the wire into a coil, because the field lines intersect the circuit multiple times.

Japanese language

Japanese (日本語, Nihongo, [nihõŋɡo] or [nihõŋŋo]) is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million speakers, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family, whose relation to other language groups, particularly to Korean and the suggested Altaic language family, is debated.

Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial texts did not appear until the 8th century. During the Heian period (794–1185), Chinese had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw changes in features that brought it closer to the modern language, as well as the first appearance of European loanwords. The standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo (modern Tokyo) region in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid-19th century). Following the end in 1853 of Japan's self-imposed isolation, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly. English loanwords in particular have become frequent, and Japanese words from English roots have proliferated.