Grow Your Own Multicolor Mineral Crystal Specimen

Natural minerals need millions of years to form, but you can make a homemade mineral in just a few days using inexpensive ingredients you can get at a home supply store. The chemicals grow different colors of crystals, which look like a geological specimen. The result is pretty enough to showcase at home or in the lab. Homemade Mineral Materials alum or chrome alumcopper sulfateborax or boric acidwaterfood coloring (optional)rock or other material for a base Regular white alum is sold as a kitchen spice. If you use this alum, youll want to add food coloring to grow colored crystals or you can stick with the natural clear crystals. Chrome alum (also known as chromium alum or potassium chromium sulfate) is available online and grows natural purple crystals. If you have both chemicals, you can mix them to produce natural lavender-colored crystals. Copper sulfate grows naturally blue crystals. It is sold either as a pure chemical online or as a root killer at a home supply store. Check the label to make sure copper sulfate is the ingredient. The product will look like a blue powder or granules. Boric acid is sold as an insecticide (roach killer) or disinfectant powder. Borax is sold as a laundry booster. The white powder of either chemical produces delicate white crystals. Procedure Growing a homemade mineral specimen is a multi-step process. Youll grow one layer of crystals on a rock, let the specimen dry, then grow another layer of a different chemical, let it dry, and grow the third layer to complete the project. First, find a rock and a container just large enough that you can add liquid to cover the rock completely. You dont want too big of a container or youll have to make up a lot of each crystal solution. Make up the crystal growing solutions one at a time, as you need them. In all cases, the procedure for preparing the solution is the same. Dissolve as much chemical as you can in boiling hot water. Add food coloring, if desired.Filter the solution through a paper towel or coffee filter to remove any sediment.Allow the solution to cool slightly so you dont burn yourself and dont accidentally dissolve any pre-existing crystals (for the second and third crystal sets).Place the rock or other substrate in a container. Pour the solution into the container until the rock is covered.Allow crystals to grow overnight or for a couple of days (until you are pleased with them). Then carefully remove the rock and place it on a paper towel to dry. Empty the container of solution and let it dry.When the rock is dry, return it to the empty container and add the next crystal solution. While you can grow the crystals in any order, my recommendation is to start with the alum, followed by the copper sulfate, and finally the borax. In any case, Id do borax last because the crystals are relatively fragile. Once the mineral specimen is complete, allow it to air dry. Once it is dry, you can display it. Over time, changes in the humidity of a room will alter the appearance of the crystals. If you wish to store the crystals, gently wrap them in paper to help keep the humidity stable. Alum Solution Recipe 5 tablespoons alum1 cup very hot water Copper Sulfate Recipe Copper sulfate saturation is highly dependent on water temperature. Determine how much water you need to fill your container. Heat it in a kettle or microwave until it boils. Keep stirring in copper sulfate until no more will dissolve. There will be undissolved material in the bottom of the container that you can filter out using a paper towel. Boric Acid or Borax Recipe Stir boric acid or borax into very hot tap water until no more will dissolve. Additional Crystals To Grow If three colors isnt enough for you, you can add delicate needle-like crystals of Epsom salts or red potassium ferricyanide crystals.

The People Who Survived The Holocaust Essay - 1314 Words

In the Holocaust millions of Jews lost their lives because of simply who they were. Many however hid and survived this dark event in history. It was the year 1933 and WW11 roared on, some saw it as a war against countries but eventually everything dark and ugly came to the light. Adolf Hitler was the chancellor of Germany and had obtained great popularity with the German people. While beginning to attack nations he was also trying to destroy all Jews in a horrific mass genocide. Creating concentration camps and taking all that the Jews owned he began to round up these human beings as if they were cattle. The stories account for them as being kidnapped at midnight to being tricked into going to their death thinking they were going for a†¦show more content†¦Searching the basement he acquired a pair of pliers. In the morning the Gestapo arrived ready to take him and the rest of the prisoners they had captured that night. He was among a group of six men to be loaded into a deat h train. These were the trains that transported Jews to concentration camps. The group of prisoners used Rolf’s pliers to pry off planks in the train. Late into the night they all jumped into the cold dark unknowing their fate. Along the way the escapees met a Sheppard who betrayed them. He told the Nazis were to find the prisoners. Quickly being arrested the Gestapo took Rolf and beat him so bad that we was left with epilepsy. This was the second time he was beaten within an inch of his life. Knowing death at a concentration camp was coming quick he had to think fast. Scratching his body all over claiming he had scarlet fever. When interviewed he quoted saying â€Å"That was a good idea – the Germans were really scared of infections† (Incredible Stories, Rolf) At this time he weighed less than 98 pounds. The Nazis took him to a Jewish hospital immediately, not wanting to spread the supposed disease. All of his companions of which he had escaped with were taken to Auschwitz and murdered. Guards had been put at his door to make sure he would not escape but this did not stop Rolf. Since he was so skinny at this time he snuck through the bars on his hospital window and jumped from the second floor.Show MoreRelatedThe Comic Book Maus1662 Words   |  7 PagesIn the comic book Maus, Art Spiegelman shows the readers what people endured during the Holocaust terror. Art mostly spoke about persons of Jewish descent. He utilized great imagery, and characteristics to allow readers to get a mental image and painting of the immense pain and suffering Jews endured during the Holocaust. His use of symbolism of mice and cats helped to show how Jews were just pawns, and experimental factors to Germans. Art allows for the reader to see how terrifying and ho rrificRead MoreHolocaust Essay701 Words   |  3 PagesLife during the Holocaust The Holocaust was a horrible event and had many tragedies and losses of family and friends. 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The Holocaust MuseumRead MoreThe Holocaust : A Important Part Of History1721 Words   |  7 PagesThe Holocaust is a topic that some think of as a very essential part of history that students should learn about. On the other hand, some would argue that it is too severe for middle school students. Without a doubt, Nazis abused their large power and used it towards destruction and in so, violated civil rights and killed 6 million Jews. The Holocaust was a turning point in history that is only taught based on the judgement of schools. The Holocaust Muse um in Houston says, â€Å"During the Holocaust religious

Passionate Destruction a Comparison of Wuthering Heights and Twilight free essay sample

On the other hand, there is the Twilight saga by contemporary young adult author, Stephanie Meyer. She brought forth a new kind of vampire who is not destroyed by sunlight but instead is transformed into a mesmerizing diamond studded Adonis. The love of Edward and Bella is all consuming and, in many, cases painful. With the happy ending Catherine and Heathcliff never got, is it truly possible that these two novels have anything in common? The evidence proves that it is. Despite having been set many years and miles apart, Wuthering Heights and Twilight have many similarities in the authors’ exploration of unhealthy relationships, masochism and insanity. Be it real or fiction, relationships are volatile cocktails of love, lust, honesty and secrets. There are the healthy ones that benefit both parties and protect them both from constant harm. In Wuthering Heights and Twilight we see examples of unhealthy relationships. These relationships always include more than the two people involved, are complicated and the people involved seem almost eager to hurt themselves and each other. Catherine and Heathcliff are the ultimate anti-love story. They are two people cut from the same cloth, both cruel, masochistic beings that enjoy inflicting pain upon themselves and others. Though Catherine says she is completed by Heathcliff, she marries Edgar Linton. Edgar is not much better than either Catherine or Heathcliff. He is solely devoted to his wife who is in turn, obsessed with another man. To simply complicate things, Bronte? throws in Isabella Linton who is infatuated with the man she believes Heathcliff to be. Heathcliff marries Isabella not for love but revenge, to torture Catherine and Edgar. This is not wholly different from the relationships in Twilight. Bella is a simple minded girl who becomes infatuated with Edward, a century old vampire who feeds on animal blood. As with Edgar being thrown in to complicate things, in comes Jacob Black, a shape-shifting Native American. He is in love with Bella and pursues her endlessly starting in New Moon and continuing into Eclipse and the first two thirds of Breaking Dawn. This only ends when Bella gives birth to her daughter, Renesmee. Upon sight of the newborn, Jacob imprints on her, effectively linking himself to the child in a relationship that will become romantic at some point in the rather near future. To summarize, there is a woman obsessed with one man, but marries another and a girl who marries a man who sees her as revenge in Wuthering Heights. In the Twilight saga we have two men in love with one simple girl and a seventeen year old boy involved with a baby. All the while these couples are doing nothing but inflicting pain upon themselves and the people they are involved with. For the characters of these novels, the infliction of physical and emotional pain upon themselves and others is nothing new. Whether it is Catherine breaking Heathcliff’s icy heart with her marriage to Edgar or Heathcliff remaining near Catherine though she is married and with child by her husband, they inflict pain upon themselves and those who care for them. Then there is Edgar Linton who is deeply in an obsessive love with Catherine Earnshaw and still he remains with her though she has only room for one man in her lost soul. While Wuthering Heights has a focus on emotional masochism, Twilight uses both physical and emotional pain to further the self destruction of its characters. Edward, the vampire, falls in love with Bella, the human whose blood sings to him. According to Edward, every vampire has a human or two whose blood they cannot resist and, for him, it is Bella Swan’s that acts like a drug to him. A cocktail of plasma and cells that is specifically designed to make him act like the animal he believes himself to be, but he denies his cravings at a cost. When a vampire in Twilight is hungry their throats get dry, causing a painful burn. This is something the Adonis that is Edward Cullen must face whenever he is with his â€Å"la tua cantante†. Edward is not alone in his masochistic ways. Bella inflicts her own emotion self harm when she supposedly falls in love with a vampire who will not turn her and let her remain with him for all of eternity. Later, in New Moon, Edward leaves Bella for her own safety and instead of letting him go, she sinks into an almost zombie-like depression. She is revived by Jacob, but the life she has with him does not last as she finds Edward and leaves Jacob on the sidelines. This doesn’t stop Jacob’s feelings for Bella as he continues to be around her in Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. The fourth novel in the Twilight saga brings the pregnancy of Bella, a pregnancy that is almost guaranteed to kill her. Jacob must sit back and watch as Bella kills herself to carry her daughter to term. This is similar to how Heathcliff sat back and watched Catherine grow with Edgar’s child and then die giving birth. Obsessive relationships, stalker tendencies and the enjoyment of self destruction are enough to convince almost anyone that these characters are insane. This is not the end of their lack of mental faculties. Insanity is the abnormal behavior of an individual. Within Wuthering Heights and Twilight, we see insanity in more characters than simply the main four. In the classic novel we see Catherine Earnshaw’s brother, Hindley, lose his mental faculties at the loss of his wife, Frances. He fell into a deep depression, abandoning his newborn son and falling into a self-destructive cycle of drinking and violence until it killed him years later. Hindley’s actions speak of an obsession with his wife. As much as he wished to be with his wife, it does not hold a candle to how obsessed his sister was with Heathcliff. How obsessed does a person have to be in order to consider themselves the same as them? Catherine goes so far as to claim to be Heathcliff in a conversation with the nanny, Nelly Dean, as shown in the following excerpt: My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliffs miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, Im well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! Hes always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. (Bronte? , 1943) Though she marries Edgar, it is not for love, but to help elevate Heathcliff’s standing, not believing he could do anything like that himself. The subjects of loss and obsession are also very present in Twilight. At the loss of her mate, James, in the first novel, Victoria, a carnivorous vampire, spends the next two books in the Twilight saga planning and attempting to kill Bella as revenge against Edward. In Victoria’s deranged mind, it is just: one mate for another. However, it must be asked: how much of a mate did Edward consider Bella at this point? Arguably the reason Bella fell into a depression in New Moon was not at the loss of her own lover, but at the loss of her potential future. Many times throughout the Twilight saga it seems as though Bella is not in love with Edward so much as she is in love with the idea of him and what he could give her. Who would not drink blood in exchange for being immortal? Vampires have become the romantic heroes of the fictional world, many even taking it a step further and pretending to be these immortal lovers. After the first book, Twilight seems to be little more than Bella trying to get Edward to turn her into one of the mythical night time predators. Bronte? ’s Wuthering Heights and Meyer’s Twilight are simply two sides of the same coin. Though they take place centuries and continents apart, the evidence is conclusive, they are similar. Both authors advocate unhealthy relationships, doomed and obsessive love. They both use their characters to inflict damning pain upon the characters themselves and the people they interact with. As if that were not bad enough, they bring to light the insanity that comes along with such self-destruction. Though they add drama for entertainment value and one delves into the supernatural, the main ideas of these novels holds true for the world today. Love is an all consuming thing and with it comes pain for those involved. It is simply unavoidable.

Theories Of Inequality Essays - Economy, Marxian Economics

Theories Of Inequality In briefly evaluating the classical and modern explanations of social inequality, it is essential that we step outside the realm of our own lives, class position, and discard any assumptions we might have about the nature of inequality. This process of critical pedagogy allows us to view our world, not from our perspective, but from a wider, more critical analysis of inequality's nature. Also, it should be considered within this wider perspective that all theories of inequality have a class perspective, where the theorist, based on the position their theory takes, is making claims from (or for) a particular class (whether they want to or not). With this in mind, it seems that most of these theories come from fairly elite class perspectives and, in turn, tend to be more pessimistic about bringing change to the inequalities they are evaluating. Of the classical (elite) explanations of inequality, Max Weber's seemed to be most accepted within the domain of sociology and other social sciences dealing with modes of inequality. Weber, who believes that we are living within a sort of ?iron cage? which cannot allow us to look beyond the rules and regulations of our capitalist system, emphasizes the importance of power relationships in society. Those who are in class positions at the top of the apex (of power distribution) are the people who, one, hold most of the power in society, and two, make the choices for the direction and reproduction of society. The majorities at the bottom of the apex, with very limited power, are unable to make choices that would bring them to their ends. The core attributes of the economic system are alienation and the bureaucracy, which create a dehumanizing effect on the characters within the system. The bureaucracy, with its rational legal authority, clear division of labor, career systems, and impersonality, is technologically more perfect than any other system (according to Weber). Within this structure, Weber describes there being three dimensions of inequality: class (which correlates with the economy), status (which correlates with the social aspects of society), and party (which correlates with the political aspects of society). I believe most of the modern explanations of inequality, at most, help build upon Weber's general theories, and at least, reflect the same elitist pessimism that Weber also holds. The dual-labor market thesis contends that there are two labor markets (in terms of income), in which the higher income market is of primary importance and the lower income market is of secondary importance. This tries to justify those people within high power positions by (somehow) trying to prove that our system is objectively rewarding higher incomes to professions that have higher social importance than lower income professions. Similarly, the functionalist theory of stratification ?views societies as social systems that have certain basic problems to solve or functions that have to be performed if the society is to survive? (243). So the reason for inequality, for functionalists, is because our system must reward (with significantly higher incomes) those individuals who are motivated enough to yield the stresses of such functionally important positions. The fact that our system reproduces classes into the same class assumes the neo-classical labor-market theory is correct, in which we have a perfect system based on an equal opportunity playing field. So, according to these elite theories, the problem of inequality is an individual problem. If an individual is not motivated enough, then someone else will be, in so that the crucial functions of society can be carried out by the most competent, talented individuals. Clearly, I think, these theories are poor analyses of inequality. These theories, especially the functionalist theory, are based on solely subjective measurement schemes, and are in no way objective (nor does it seem that these aspects can be objectively measured). If the theory requires that society must measure class and power positions in terms of importance, then who will be the measurers? Always, it seems, the power elite will be the ones who really have the control of measuring importance?and doesn't it seem likely, if not natural, that they would perceive themselves as being the most important people within the whole of society? Surely the underpaid educator would disagree with societies ability to