Topic Review
Annus Mirabilis Papers
The Annus mirabilis papers (from Latin annus mīrābilis, "miracle year") are the papers of Albert Einstein published in the Annalen der Physik scientific journal in 1905. These four articles contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time, mass, and energy. The annus mirabilis is often called the "miracle year" in English or Wunderjahr in German. The first paper elucidated the theory of the photoelectric effect; the second paper explained Brownian motion; the third paper introduced special relativity; and the fourth, mass-energy equivalence. Together, these papers substantially advanced the field of modern physics.
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Topic Review
UV-Vis Absorption Spectroelectrochemistry
Ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) absorption spectroelectrochemistry (SEC) is a multiresponse technique that analyzes the evolution of the absorption spectra in UV-Vis regions during an electrode process. This technique provides information from an electrochemical and spectroscopic point of view. In this way, it enables a better perception about the chemical system of interest. On one hand, molecular information related to the electronic levels of the molecules is obtained from the evolution of the spectra. On the other hand, kinetic and thermodynamic information of the processes is obtained from the electrochemical signal. UV-Vis absorption SEC allows qualitative analysis, through the characterization of the different present compounds, and quantitative analysis, by determining the concentration of the analytes of interest. Furthermore, it helps to determine different electrochemical parameters such as absorptivity coefficients, standard potentials, diffusion coefficients, electronic transfer rate constants, etc. Throughout history, reversible processes have been studied with colored reagents or electrolysis products. Nowadays, it is possible to study all kinds of electrochemical processes in the entire UV-Vis spectral range, even in the near infrared (NIR).
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Topic Review
Electrostatic Fluid Accelerator
An electrostatic fluid accelerator (EFA) is a device which pumps a fluid such as air without any moving parts. Instead of using rotating blades, as in a conventional propeller or in the turbine of an airbreathing jet engine, an EFA uses the Coulomb force from a high voltage electric field to accelerate electrically charged air molecules, a phenomenon studied in the academic discipline called electrohydrodynamics (EHD). Because air molecules are normally electrically neutral, not charged, the EFA has to create some charged molecules, or ions, first. Thus there are three basic steps in the fluid acceleration process: ionize air molecules, accelerate those charge carriers and, through ion-ion and ion-neutral collisions, push many more neutral molecules in a desired direction, and finally neutralize ions again to eliminate any net charge in the downstream flow. This principle is used for spacecraft propulsion in ion thrusters. The basic working principle has been understood for some time but only in recent years have seen developments in the design and manufacture of EFA devices that may allow them to find practical and economical applications, such as in micro-cooling of electronics components.
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Topic Review
Potential Flow Around a Circular Cylinder
In mathematics, potential flow around a circular cylinder is a classical solution for the flow of an inviscid, incompressible fluid around a cylinder that is transverse to the flow. Far from the cylinder, the flow is unidirectional and uniform. The flow has no vorticity and thus the velocity field is irrotational and can be modeled as a potential flow. Unlike a real fluid, this solution indicates a net zero drag on the body, a result known as d'Alembert's paradox.
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Topic Review
Power
In physics, power is the amount of energy transferred or converted per unit time. In the International System of Units, the unit of power is the watt, equal to one joule per second. In older works, power is sometimes called activity. Power is a scalar quantity. Power is related to other quantities; for example, the power involved in moving a ground vehicle is the product of the traction force on the wheels and the velocity of the vehicle. The output power of a motor is the product of the torque that the motor generates and the angular velocity of its output shaft. Likewise, the power dissipated in an electrical element of a circuit is the product of the current flowing through the element and of the voltage across the element.
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Topic Review
Black Belt (U.S. Region)
The Black Belt is a region of the Southern United States. The term originally described the prairies and dark fertile soil of central Alabama and northeast Mississippi. Because this area in the 19th century was historically developed for cotton plantations based on enslaved African American labor, the term became associated with these conditions. It was generally applied to a much larger agricultural region in the Southern United States, which was characterized by a history of cotton plantation agriculture in the 19th century and a high percentage of African Americans outside metropolitan areas. The enslaved peoples were freed after the American Civil War, and many continued to work in agriculture afterward. Their descendants make up much of the African-American population of the United States. During the first half of the 19th Century, as many as one million enslaved Africans were transported through sales in the domestic slave trade to the Deep South in a forced migration to work as laborers for the region's cotton plantations. After having lived enslaved for several generations in the area, many remained as rural workers, tenant farmers and sharecroppers after the Civil War and emancipation. Beginning in the early 20th century and up to 1970, a total of six million black people left the South in the Great Migration to find work and other opportunities in the industrial cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Because of relative isolation and lack of economic development, the rural communities in the Black Belt have historically faced acute poverty, rural exodus, inadequate education programs, low educational attainment, poor health care, urban decay, substandard housing, and high levels of crime and unemployment. In December 2017, the Special Rapporteur of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights declared that Alabama was the most impoverished area in the developed world. Given the history of decades of racial segregation into the late 20th century, African-American residents have been the most disproportionately affected, although these problems apply broadly to all ethnic groups in the rural Black Belt. The region and its boundaries have varying definitions, but it is generally considered a band through the center of the Deep South, although stretching from as far north as Delaware to as far west as East Texas.
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Topic Review
Electron Rest Mass
The electron rest mass (symbol: me) is the mass of a stationary electron, also known as the invariant mass of the electron. It is one of the fundamental constants of physics. It has a value of about 9.109×10−31 kilograms or about 5.486×10−4 daltons, equivalent to an energy of about 8.187×10−14 joules or about 0.5110 MeV.
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Topic Review
Atomic Mass Unit
The dalton or unified atomic mass unit (SI symbols: Da or u) is a unit of mass widely used in physics and chemistry. . It is approximately the mass of one nucleon (either a proton or neutron). A mass of 1 Da is also referred to as the atomic mass constant and denoted by mu. Several definitions of this unit have been used, implying slightly different values. The current IUPAC endorsed definition is the unified atomic mass unit, denoted by the symbol u. As of 2019, the International System of Units (SI) lists the dalton, symbol Da, as a unit acceptable for use with the SI unit system and secondarily notes that the dalton (Da) and the unified atomic mass unit (u) are alternative names (and symbols) for the same unit. The symbol Da is more widely used in most fields. It is defined precisely as 1/12 of the mass of an unbound neutral atom of carbon-12 in its nuclear and electronic ground state and at rest. Despite being an official abbreviation for a related obsolete unit and not widely used in the scientific literature, the abbreviation "amu" now often refers to the modern unit (Da or u) in many preparatory texts. As of June 2019, the value recommended by the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) is 1.66053906660(50)×10−27 kg, or approximately 1.66 yoctograms. This unit is commonly used in physics and chemistry to express the mass of atomic-scale objects, such as atoms, molecules, and elementary particles. For example, an atom of helium has a mass of about 4 Da, and a molecule of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), C9H8O4, has a mass of about 180.16 Da. In general, the standard atomic weight of an element is the average weight of its atom as it occurs in nature, expressed in daltons. The molecular masses of proteins, nucleic acids, and other large polymers are often expressed with the units kilodalton (kDa), equal to 1000 daltons, megadalton (MDa), one million daltons, etc. Titin, one of the largest known proteins, has an atomic mass of between 3 and 3.7 megadaltons. The DNA of chromosome 1 in the human genome has about 249 million base pairs, each with an average mass of about 650 Da, or 156 GDa total. The mole is a unit of amount of substance, widely used in chemistry and physics, which was originally defined so that the mass of one mole of a substance, measured in grams, would be numerically equal to the average mass of one of its constituent particles, measured in daltons. That is, the molar mass of a chemical compound was meant to be numerically equal to its average molecular mass. For example, the average mass of one molecule of water is about 18.0153 daltons, and one mole of water is about 18.0153 grams. A protein whose molecule has an average mass of 64 kDa would have a molar mass of 64 kg/mol. However, while this equality can be assumed for almost all practical purposes, it is now only approximate, because of the way the mole was redefined on 20 May 2019. The mass in daltons of an atom is numerically very close to the number of nucleons A in its atomic nucleus. It follows that the molar mass of a compound (grams per mole) is also numerically close to the average number of nucleons per molecule. However, the mass of an atomic-scale object is affected by the binding energy of the nucleons in its atomic nuclei, as well as the mass and binding energy of the electrons. Therefore, this equality holds only for the carbon-12 atom in the stated conditions, and will vary for other substances. For example, the mass of one unbound atom of the common hydrogen isotope (hydrogen-1, protium) is 1.007825032241(94) Da, the mass of one free neutron is 1.008664915823(491) Da, and the mass of one hydrogen-2 (deuterium) atom is 2.014101778114(122) Da. In general, the difference (mass defect) is less than 0.1%; except for hydrogen (about 0.8%), helium-3 (0.5%), lithium (0.25%) and beryllium (0.15%). The atomic mass unit should not be confused with unit of mass in the atomic units systems, which is instead the electron rest mass (me).
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Topic Review Video
Physicochemical Processes Leading to Plasma-Driven Solution Electrolysis
A new type of electrolysis, initially known as the contact glow-discharge electrolysis (CGDE) and, more recently, as the plasma-driven solution electrolysis (PDSE), has attracted attention as an alternative method of hydrogen production. PDSE is a nontypical electrochemical process in which electric plasma is formed in the glow discharges excited by the direct or pulsed current in a gas–vapor envelope in the vicinity of the discharge electrode immersed in the electrolytic solution. The yield of chemicals in PDSE (i.e., the ratio of the moles of the product formed to the moles of electrons consumed in a chemical reaction) is several times higher than the Faradaic production of chemicals (predicted by Faraday’s law). In PDSE, new chemical compounds can also be synthesized, which does not happen using Faradaic electrolysis.
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Topic Review
Solid State Ionics
Solid-state ionics is the study of ionic-electronic mixed conductor and fully ionic conductors (solid electrolytes) and their uses. Some materials that fall into this category include inorganic crystalline and polycrystalline solids, ceramics, glasses, polymers, and composites. Solid-state ionic devices, such as solid oxide fuel cells, can be much more reliable and long-lasting, especially under harsh conditions, than comparable devices with fluid electrolytes. The field of solid-state ionics was first developed in Europe, starting with the work of Michael Faraday on solid electrolytes Ag2S and PbF2 in 1834. Fundamental contributions were later made by Walther Nernst, who derived the Nernst equation and detected ionic conduction in heterovalently doped zirconia, which he applied in his Nernst lamp. Another major step forward was the characterization of silver iodide in 1914. Around 1930, the concept of point defects was established by Yakov Frenkel, Walter Schottky and Carl Wagner, including the development of point-defect thermodynamics by Schottky and Wagner; this helped explain ionic and electronic transport in ionic crystals, ion-conducting glasses, polymer electrolytes and nanocomposites. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, solid-state ionics focused on the synthesis and characterization of novel solid electrolytes and their applications in solid state battery systems, fuel cells and sensors. The term solid state ionics was coined in 1967 by Takehiko Takahashi, but did not become widely used until the 1980s, with the emergence of the journal Solid State Ionics. The first international conference on this topic was held in 1972 in Belgirate, Italy, under the name "Fast Ion Transport in Solids, Solid State Batteries and Devices".
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