My Science School

Plastics are polymers, which means that they are made of lots of small molecules joined together to form larger molecules in the form of long chains. Polymers can be manufactured from crude oil, natural gas, or coal. They include artificial fibers and many kinds of plastic. Plastics are extremely useful because they are extraordinarily versatile. They are easy to shape and color. They can be made into rigid objects or thin, pliable sheets. Some plastics are heatproof, while others melt at low temperatures.

Plastic is a material consisting of any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic compounds that are malleable and therefore can be molded into solid objects. Plasticity is the general property of all materials that involves permanent deformation without breaking. Polymers’ name is derived from their flexible and plastic properties.

Plastics are typically organic polymers of high molecular mass, but they often contain other substances. They are usually synthetic and most commonly derived from petrochemicals. However, today’s focus on the environment has led to a growing number of plastics to be derived from renewable materials such as polylactic acid from corn or cellulosic’s from cotton linters.

Plastics have been adopted in a significant, and ever-expanding, range of products thanks to their relatively low cost, ease of manufacture, versatility, and imperviousness to water. They can be found in products as simple as paperclips or as complex as planes.

A large source of diverse plastic material is available across a widespread manufacturing spectrum. One of the most recent and exciting manufacturing domains is in 3D Printing. As new applications for 3D Printing are discovered almost daily, diverse arrays of plastic objects have already been produced using the 3D Printing process. These objects can be found in prototyping labs, toys, mechanical gearboxes, medical prosthetics, and many more. Plastics are generally classified by the chemical structure of the polymer's backbone and side chains.

In 1960, in Rome, Italy, the first Paralympics were held. These are Olympic Games for athletes with disabilities. They are now held after each Olympic Games, often on the same site, and give disabled athletes from all over the world an opportunity to compete against each other. Taking place soon after the conclusion of the Olympic Games, the Olympic-style games for athletes with a disability attracted 400 participants from 23 countries, who competed in eight sports.

Paralympics Games, major international sports competition for athletes with disabilities. Comparable to the Olympic Games, the Paralympics are split into Winter Games and Summer Games, which alternately occur every two years. Many of the same Olympic events are included—such as Alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, and biathlon for winter sports and cycling, archery, and swimming for summer sports—although sports equipment for the Paralympics may be modified for specific disabilities. Since the late 20th century the Paralympics have been held in the same city that hosts the corresponding Olympic Games; the Paralympics follow shortly after the Olympics conclude. The International Paralympics Committee, which was founded in 1989 and is based in Germany, governs the Paralympics Games.

Paralympics athletes compete in six different disability groups—amputee, cerebral palsy, visual impairment, spinal cord injuries, intellectual disability, and “les autres” (athletes whose disability does not fit into one of the other categories, including dwarfism). Within each group, athletes are further divided into classes on the basis of the type and extent of their disabilities. Individual athletes may be reclassified at later competitions if their physical status changes.

The size and diversity of the Paralympics Games have increased greatly over the years. The Paralympics in 1960 hosted 400 athletes from 23 countries participating in eight sports. Just over 50 years later, at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, more than 4,200 athletes representing 164 countries participated in 20 sports.

The Ancient Greeks held sporting contests over 2000 years ago. In 1896, a Frenchman called Baron Pierre de Coubertin prompted the revival of the Olympic Games. The first modern Olympics were held in Athens, Greece, in honour of their origin. Since then they have been held every four years, except in wartime, in cities all over the globe.

The Olympic flame is a symbol of the Olympic spirit of striving to do one’s best. Before each Olympic Games, a series of runners carries the flame from Greece to the site of the Games, where it is used to light the main flame at the opening ceremony.

The original Olympics were always held at Olympia. Almost every modern Olympiad is celebrated in or near a different city of the world. The earlier Games were open only to Greek citizens and athletes from other Mediterranean countries. The modern Games encourage all nations to compete. A person may enter if his or her country has a National Olympic Committee (NOC) that is recognized by the International Olympic Committee. Events for women have become a major interest in the modern Games, and the winners receive honors equal to those given the male winners.

The ancient Greeks furthered culture by giving honors for cultural achievements at the Olympic Games. The modern Olympics hold an arts festival, where the culture of the host country is showcased in various art forms.

Footraces, jumping, discus and javelin throwing, boxing, wrestling, and some other events were carried over from the original Olympic Games. But such present Olympic contests as cycling, canoeing and sailing, football (soccer), basketball, judo, rifle shooting, and water polo were unknown in early times. The modern pentathlon tests an athlete's all-around ability in swimming (300-meter freestyle), cross-country running (4,000 meters), fencing with the horse show jumping, and shooting with a target pistol at 10 meters.

One of the most grueling events of the modern Olympics is the marathon. This footrace over a distance of 26 miles, 385 yards (42.195 kilometers) is a supreme test of the runners' endurance. The marathon was not run at Olympia, but it has its origin in ancient Greece. In 490 B.C. the Athenians defeated an army of invading Persians at Marathon, which is northeast of Athens. From there, Pheidippides, a champion runner in the Olympic Games, carried the news of victory to the people of Athens. To do this he had to run a great distance. Once he reached Athens and gasped out his news of victory, he died. It is in his honor that the marathon race is run.

In 1924, the Winter Games became a new feature of the modern Olympics. Such cold-weather sports as pair and figure skating, ice hockey, bobsledding, and the biathlon (rifle shooting on a cross-country ski course) could never have developed in the warm climate of Greece (although figure and pair skating and ice hockey had been included in previous modern Games). Until 1992, the Winter Games were held in the same year as the Summer Games. Beginning in 1994, the winter and Summer Games were held two years apart, on separate four-year cycles.

When Athletes are running a circuit, those on the inside tracks have to run less far than those on the outside. In order to ensure that everyone runs the same distance, the start is staggered, so that those on the inside appear to start much further back than those on the outside. It is not until the final straight that it is really possible to see who is winning. Longer races often start from a simple curved line. Athletes break out of their lanes quite quickly and each runs as close to the inside of the track as possible.

If they all started from the same line, then the athletes in the outer lanes would have to run further than the athletes in the inner lanes, because of the semicircles at the top and bottom of the track.

So each lane has to have a special starting position so they all have to run the same distance.

In every Olympic event, officials try to keep things is as fair as possible. In track, this means making sure runners cover the same distance. Short distances make this easy—simply paint a perpendicular line across the track to denote the starting and finishing points. This works quite nicely for the 100 meter race.

But what if the distance is longer than 100 meters? Of course, officials could use a longer track, creating, say, a 400 meter track for the 400 meter hurdles. But with longer distances, it starts getting difficult for spectators to see all the action. Instead, the answer is a curved track. Modern track and field tracks typically are an oval.

This presents a problem. If you run around the entire track, an inner lane is a shorter distance than an outer lane. The solution to this is to make the athletes start at different points on the track.

Some Athletes do not specialize in just one sport but maintain a very high standard at several. For them, multi-disciplinary sports, in which points are awarded for performance in a variety of events, are ideal.

A multi-sport event is an organized sporting event, often held over multiple days, featuring competition in many different sports among organized teams of athletes from (mostly) nation-states. The first major, modern, multi-sport event of international significance was the Olympic Games, first held in modern times in 1896 in Athens, Greece and inspired by the Ancient Olympic Games, one of a number of such events held in antiquity. Most modern multi-sports events have the same basic structure. Games are held over the course of several days in and around a “host city”, which changes for each competition. Countries send national teams to each competition, consisting of individual athletes and teams that compete in a wide variety of sports. Athletes or teams are awarded gold, silver or bronze medals for first, second and third place respectively. Each game is generally held every four years, though some are annual competitions.

On April 23, 2016, the world paid tribute to the Bard of England, William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent playwright. From around 1590 to 1613, he wrote about 37 plays, which continue to be performed around the globe to this day. He is believed to have been born in 1564, and died on his 52nd birthday.

William Shakespeare had a tremendous influence on the art of drama and the English language. His writings presented compelling plots, complex characters, in different genre. His use of the soliloquy went beyond the conventional plot description to explore his characters’ thinking and state of mind. His writing influenced many playwrights and novelists that followed such as Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Patricia Highsmith, Tom Stoppard, and William Faulkner. And he brought forth many new words and phrases into the English language that is commonly used today.

 

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The 2010s revolutionized how we watch television shows and films. Online streaming services replaced DVDs and download. Binge-watching our favourite shows -both old and new – back-to-back on smartphone and laptops became the new norm. This also marked the birth of web series. Believe it or not, India first started watching web series in 2015 in the form of back-to-back short fiction stories such as Permanent Roommates and Little Things on YouTube. And when the U.S.-based video streaming services, Netflix and Amazon Prime launched in 2016, it took our viewing experience to a whole new level Stranger Things, a sci-fi series, had us on the edge of our seats with Millie Bob Brown’s Eleven or El and the rest of the gang from Hawkins, Indiana.

 Netflix is choosing to focus resources on developing its Hindi and English offerings, producing original Netflix series such as Sacred Games, centered on the Mumbai underworld, and Lust Stories, a film anthology exploring love, sex, and relationships. In contrast, India’s video streaming giant Hotstar provides programming Malyalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada, in addition to Hindi and English.

 

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The Nobel Peace Prize 2014 was awarded jointly to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” Malala, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban, became the youngest person to receive the prize. She published her autobiography, I am Malala in 2013.

Similarly , Satyarthi has led the crusade against child labour in India. His books Every Child Matters (2018) and Will For Children (2017) elaborates on his four-decade-long struggle to abolish child trafficking, child labour, slavery and exploitation.

 

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In April 2013, a somber-looking, detective novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling hit the stands quietly.

Written by a British author, Robert Galbraith, who was said to have previously served in the army, there was no hype surrounding the book. It would’ve continued to live on as just another mystery book. Then four months later, a tweet divulging the true identity of the author sent the world in a tizzy. Galbraith was a pseudonym used by none other than J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame.

Within days, the book shot from obscurity to number one on the sales charts. Despite the surge in sales, Rowling filed a law suit against the people who uncovered her nom-de-plume.

 

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The Hunger games books by Suzanne Collins, which came out in 2009 and 2010, sold about 10 million copies globally. The popularity of the books also spilled over into the films, which several box office records. The trilogy – Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay is set in a post-apocalyptic Panem, where the dystopian government forces children to fight in a gladiatorial match and broadcasts it on the television. The series shot Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss Everdeen in the films to mega stardom.

Collins says she drew inspiration for the series from both classical and contemporary sources. Her main classical source of inspiration is the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, in which, as a punishment for past crimes, Minos forces Athens to sacrifice seven youths and seven maidens to the Minotaur, which kills them in a vast labyrinth. Collins says that even as a child, she was stunned by the idea since "it was just so cruel" to force Athens to sacrifice its own children.

Collins also cites as a classical inspiration the Roman gladiator games. She feels three key elements create a good game: an all powerful and ruthless government, people forced to fight to the death, and the game's role as a source of popular entertainment.

A contemporary source of inspiration was Collins' recent fascination with reality television programs. She says they are like The Hunger Games because the Games are not just entertainment but also a reminder to the districts of their rebellion. On a tired night, Collins says that while she was channel-surfing the television, she saw people competing for some prize and then saw footage of the Iraq War. She described how the two combined in an "unsettling way" to create her first ideas for the series.

 

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The year 2012 spelt the best of times for Charles Dickens fans. Celebrations were held across the world in honour of the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth on February 7. Legacy projects, festivals and exhibitions commemorated the author’s life and works were scheduled throughout the year. The Museum of London showcased rarely seen manuscripts including Bleak House and David Copperfield – written in the author’s own hand.

The Museum of London will showcase paintings, photographs, costumes and objects that “illustrate themes that Dickens wove into his works, while rarely seen manuscripts including Bleak House and David Copperfield – written in the author’s own hand – will offer clues to his creative genius,” the museum’s Web site states. The exhibit details how Dickens's childhood experiences in London, “working in a blacking factory while his father was locked away in a debtor's prison, were introduced into the stories he wrote. The great social questions of the 19th century, including wealth and poverty, prostitution, childhood mortality and philanthropy, will also be examined.” Also featured will be an audio-visual experience and a commissioned documentary film that explores similarities between London after dark today and during Dickens’s day over 150 years ago.

 

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The potter saga ended with the final confrontation between Voldemort and our young bespectacled hero. And so did the eight-part film series, which it inspired. The last installment of one of the most successful film franchise in history, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II released on July 15, 2011 in India to packed houses and teary-eyed audiences. While most of the fans had already bid adieu to Hogwarts when the seventh book by J.K. Rowling came out in July 21, 2007, they couldn’t resist meeting their magical friends – the faithful companions of their childhood – one last time on the silver screen.

Voldemort, thinking Snape is the master of the Elder Wand because he killed Dumbledore, kills Snape. While viewing Snape's memories, Harry comes across the stunning realization that Harry himself is an unintended Horcrux and that he must die for Voldemort to die. Voldemort "kills" Harry, but he only destroyed the Horcrux in Harry. Harry and Voldemort have a fight, during which Neville kills Nagini, also a Horcrux. Harry uses Malfoy's wand in the duel against Voldemort, and since Malfoy is the true master of the Elder Wand (he disarmed Dumbledore before he was killed by Snape), Harry is now the Elder Wand's master. When Voldermort tries to kill Harry with the Elder Wand, it backfires and kills Voldemort. Harry snaps the Elder Wand in two. We then cut to nineteen years later where an adult Harry and Ginny, along with Ron and Hermione, are sending their kids off to Hogwarts.

 

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Based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice novels, Game of Thrones, a HBO series, cemented its place as one of the most popular television series this decade. Here’s a brief timeline to jog your memory: The first season came out in April, 2011. The swordfights, the intrigue and the edgy plot twists, including Jon Snow’s death and swift resurrection, kept the fans hooked for eight seasons. But the show’s finale, which aired on May 19, 2019, was admittedly disappointing.

The fact that the well-crafted and complex character of Martin’s work is brought to the screen in HBO’s Game of Thrones undoubtedly accounts for its popularity to some degree. The writing is intelligent as a rule and the acting is also at a high level: sometimes it is excellent as in the case of performances by Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf outcast from the powerful ruling Lannister clan, and Lena Headey, who plays Tyrion’s sister, the scheming queen Cersei Lannister.

There are also supernatural and mystical elements. Daenerys Targaryen has fire-breathing dragons at her command. An invasion by telepathically manipulated undead from the frozen north threatens the more civilized lands to the south. Assassinations may be carried out by evoking evil spirits. A boy merges with animal and tree spirits and becomes clairvoyant. The dead come back to life.

These features, cast within a generally medieval social order, fit into the popular artistic genre known as high fantasy or epic fantasy, pioneered in the late 19th and early 20th century by writers such as William Morris and Lord Dunsany. Its most popular and gifted exponents in the aftermath of World War I were J. R. R. Tolkien and T. H. White. High fantasy has an appeal to many viewers, although there are many people who avoid the genre because of its non-rational and semi-religious elements.

 

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Love him or hate him, you cannot ignore Justin Bieber. The Canadian singer rules the pop world for most of the decade. And it all began in 2010 when he became the youngest solo male to hit #1 on the Billboard 200 album My World 2.0, helped him climb to the top.

And when his first concert in India, was held in Mumbai, all hell broke loose! On May 10, 2017, over 56,000 fans crammed into Mumbai’s D.Y. Patil Stadium to watch the singing sensation. However, hearts were broken when Bieber seemed unenergetic and lip-synced for most of the performance.

To promote the album, Bieber appeared on several live programs including The View, the 2010 Kids' Choice Awards, Nightline, Late Show with David Letterman, The Dome and 106 & Park. Sean Kingston appeared on the album's next single, "Eenie Meenie". The song reached the top ten in the United Kingdom and Australia, and the top-twenty of most other markets. On April 10, 2010, Bieber was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. On July 4, 2010, Bieber performed at the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular in New York City. The following single from My World 2.0, "Somebody to Love", was released in April 2010, and a remix was released featuring Bieber's mentor Usher. On June 23, 2010, Bieber went on his first official headlining tour, the My World Tour, starting in Hartford, Connecticut, to promote My World and My World 2.0. In May 2010, Bieber featured in Soulja Boy's song "Rich Girl". In July 2010, it was reported that Bieber was the most searched-for celebrity on the Internet. That same month, his music video for "Baby" surpassed Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" (2009) as the most viewed, and also the most disliked, YouTube video ever. However, Taylor Swift's video for her single "Blank Space" (2014) surpassed its number of views in 2015. In September 2010, it was reported that Bieber accounted for 3% of all traffic on Twitter, according to an employee of the social-networking site.

 

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James Cameron’s 3-D spectacle Avatar, featuring the blue-skinned inhabitants of the spectacular Pandora, won big at the Golden Globes in 2010 with three Oscars for Cinematography, Visual Effects and Art Direction. A seamless blend of live action and computer-generated images, the film was meant to be viewed on the biggest screen possible – and for most of us it was our first introduction to IMAX. Following its release in December 2009, it became the highest-grossing movie in the world till it was surpassed by Avengers: Endgame.

Innovations include a new system for lighting massive areas like Pandora's jungle, a motion-capture stage or "volume" six times larger than any previously used, and an improved method of capturing facial expressions, enabling full performance capture. To achieve the face capturing, actors wore individually made skull caps fitted with a tiny camera positioned in front of the actors' faces; the information collected about their facial expressions and eyes is then transmitted to computers. According to Cameron, the method allows the filmmakers to transfer 100% of the actors' physical performances to their digital counterparts. Besides the performance capture data which were transferred directly to the computers, numerous reference cameras gave the digital artists multiple angles of each performance. A technically challenging scene was near the end of the film when the computer-generated Neytiri held the live action Jake in human form, and attention was given to the details of the shadows and reflected light between them.

 

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