Monday, August 27, 2007

Tomato

The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, as are its close cousin’s tobacco, chili peppers, potato, and eggplant. The tomato is subject to Central, South, and southern North America from Mexico to Peru. It is a perennial, often grown outdoors in temperate climates as an annual, typically attainment to 1–3 m (3 to 10 ft) in height, with a weak, woody stem that often vines over other plants.

The leaves are 10–25 cm long, pinnate, with 5–9 leaflets, each leaflet up to 8 cm long, with a jagged margin; both the stem and leaves are thickly glandular-hairy. The flowers are 1–2 cm across, yellow, with five sharp lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of 3–12 together. The word tomato derives from an expression in the Nahuatl language, tomatl. The exact name, lycopersicum, means "wolf-peach" compare the related species S. lycocarpum, whose scientific name means "wolf-fruit", common name "wolf-apple".

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Electron

The electron is a basic subatomic particle that carries a negative electric charge. It is a spin-½ lepton that participates in electromagnetic connections, and its mass is less than one thousandth of that of the smallest atom. Its electric charge is clear by convention to be negative, with a charge of -1 in atomic unit. Together with atomic nuclei, electrons make up atoms; their interaction with adjoining nuclei is the main cause of chemical bonding.
The electron is in the class of subatomic particles called leptons, which are supposed to be basic particles (that is, they cannot be broken down into smaller constituent parts).
As with all particles, electrons are able to act as waves. This is called the wave-particle duality; also known by the term complementarily coined by Niles Bohr and can be established using the double-slit experiment.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Donkey jacket

A Donkey jacket is a tiny buttoned coat, normally made of unlined black or dark blue woolen stuff; originally worn as a work jacket in the United Kingdom.
When used as a work jacket, it occasionally bears the name of the company which supplies the jacket, or the name of the company for which the wearer works. The jacket usually has two large hip pockets, and at times an inside poacher's pocket.
The donkey jacket is regarded as characteristic of the British manual worker.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Infrared

Infrared (IR) emission is electromagnetic emission of a wavelength longer than that of noticeable light, but shorter than that of radio waves. The name means "below red", red being the color of detectable light of longest wavelength. Infrared radiation spans three instructions of magnitude and has wavelengths between about 750 nm and 1 mm.

These divisions are suitable by the different human response to this radiation: near infrared is the area closest in wavelength to the radiation detectable by the human eye, mid and far infrared are gradually further from the visible regime. Other definitions follow different physical mechanisms and the newest follow technical reasons .Unfortunately the international standards for these specifications are not currently obtainable.

The boundary between visible and infrared light is not precisely defined. The human eye is markedly less responsive to light above 700 nm wavelength, so longer frequencies make irrelevant contributions to scenes illuminated by common light sources. But particularly strong light (e.g., from lasers, or from bright daylight with the visible light removed by colored gels can be detected up to approximately 780 nm, and will be apparent as red light. The onset of infrared is defined at different values typically between 700 nm and 780 nm.