Language - Pregnancy

It's always interesting to look at different languages and see how their words for certain ideas relate to how different cultures view that same said idea.

For example pregnancy!

The word pregnancy has such different connotations in different languages.

In Russian, the most common word for pregnancy is Беременная. The word for pregnancy has the same exact root for the word "burden" (this applies to most other slavic languages too). Babies bad. This is really interesting considering that Russia is experiencing one of the lower birth rates in the world. In fact, the government has implemented various social programs to encourage couples to have babies. The majority of the factors behind Russia's lower birth rate probably has much more to do than just language (cough economics cough), but culture has to be considered.

Swinging to the other end of the spectrum to a country that has historically produced a lot of babies, the word for pregnancy is 有喜, which translates roughly to "having happiness". Babies good. Is this related to China's ridiculously high population? Probably only a little, but still cool to think about it. Now if only my parents were happy about my existence.....

Anyway there are countless other examples. The Spanish word for pregnancy has the same root as the english word "embarrassed". Etc. etc. 

Language can only influence so much of a person's view on something. But I believe that languages are a part of a greater structure that really dictates how an individual perceives the world. I believe certain individuals from different parts of the world are more susceptible to certain optical illusions because the images and symbols in their cultural environment are different than those of others. It's a little bit of a depressing concept. But then again this is another reason why I feel the entirety of society must be restructured.

It's a really interesting thought. Is there a perfect language out there? Like what even is a perfect language? Something that doesn't subtly encourage racism/sexism? Would a perfect language eliminate all connotations from words? Do we lose the beauty of poetry and stuff there?

point is language is super cool!

source: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-04-14/language-pregnancy-seems-pregnant-meaning-it

Galvanic Corrosion

This is surprisingly fun!

Like seriously, I know my writing is pretty crappy and all but I'm already learning so much random stuff. One thing leads to another and then another and then another. Maybe I should have started doing this sooner.

Anyway something about my last post bothered me a little bit. I wrote something along the lines of "copper corroded iron". I literally had no idea what that meant. So I decided to look it up and guess what, it has to do with what we're covering in chem this unit!

Now I'm not the greatest at chemistry, but there is a process called Galvanic Corrosion. More or less two metals submerged in an electrolyte function as a galvanic or voltaic cell. What makes this important is that salt water functions rather effectively as an electrolyte. So in the case of copper sheathing, copper, iron, and salt water.

Based on my understanding of chemistry (not that much) the reaction goes something like this, where the iron is oxidized and the free electrons attach themselves to copper ions to form solid copper.

Cu²⁺ + 2e^- -> Cu               (cathode)
and
Fe + 2e^- = Fe²⁺                       (anode)

Except for this to be true in the situation of the British ships, then there must be random copper ions floating around in the water. My best guess is that water is able to oxidize solid copper to form  Cu²⁺. Of course, that's just my best guess and I have no idea if that is true or not. Be proud of me Mr. Grosse! Gosh if I was a chem teacher I would make all my real life examples really random history stuff that no one understands or should have any business knowing.I think that would be fun.

Copper Sheathing

I was doing a bit of reading today and I came across something that I found pretty interesting.

Now this certainly isn't something that everybody would find interesting. One of the great tragedies of my life is it seems my interests never really line up with anybody else's. It's truly a shame. But moving past that it seems that the American Revolution may or may not have been won because of poor ship design by the Royal Navy.

So apparently in the 1780's the Royal Navy decided to implement a shipbuilding technique called copper sheathing. What this does is it covers the bottom of a ships hulk with plates of copper. In theory, this technique eliminates marine growth, such as crustacea, which both slow ships down and can cause potential damages to the vessel (you'd think that copper plates would weigh more than crustacea but I guess not).

While this sounds nice and all, like all great ideas it didn't manifest itself into the greatest of results. Perhaps it was the pressure to furnish as many ships as possible in a short amount of time. The country was at war after all. Not like the Americans could touch the British at sea but the French always remain a threat. Either way, the copper ended up corroding iron nails underwater. Obviously this wasn't too great for British ships.

Relating this back to the Revolutionary War, British naval ineffectiveness was essentially how the Americans were able to win at Yorktown. After all, Washington was only able to trap Cornwallis because he was cut off by the French at sea. Well, by the time the French arrived the British ships were in such poor condition that the HMS Terrible almost tore itself apart simply by firing its own guns.

It was always a point of interest to me as in how the French of all people managed to beat the British in a naval confrontation. I mean, just 20 odd years later the British would crush the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar. Surely I had always assumed that it was some fluke of history. I find military history a little bit dull. All I want is for wars to make sense. The British, with superior naval everything, probably shouldn't have lost at Chesapeake Bay. That's the part that didn't really make sense to me. And now I know why. Happy Austin!

Hi!!!

Well, I'm not really sure what I'm doing here. But who really cares anyway!

After all it's not like I'm ever really sure of what I'm doing. In essence, starting a blog has been something my parents have been pushing me to do for many years. They feel it is in my best interest to create an online page where my "personality can shine through", or something of the like. Of course, my parents don't care so much about my wonderful individuality but more so about college applications. I am very reluctant to do anything solely for college, a notion i find very distasteful, but in the end why not. I won't be a high schooler much longer and in a couple years I may very well have forgotten everything about my current self. I thought it would be nice to capture just a little bit of me for future reference. Something that I can cry reading (out of embarrassment, of course) in the near future. So here I go. Why ever not.