Dynamite

Dynamite is an explosive material based on nitroglycerin, using diatomaceous earth (AmE: kieselgur; BrE: kieselguhr), or another adsorbent substance such as powdered shells or clay. Dynamites using organic materials as sorbents such as sawdust are less stable and such use has been generally discontinued. Dynamite was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, and patented in 1867.

Invention, purpose, and use

Dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel and was the first safely manageable explosive stronger than black powder. Nobel obtained patents for his invention in England on May 7, 1867, in Sweden on October 19, 1867. After its introduction, dynamite rapidly gained wide-scale use as a safe alternative to black powder and nitroglycerin. Nobel tightly controlled the patents, and unlicensed duplicating companies were quickly shut down. However, a few American businessmen got around the patent by using a slightly different formula.

Dynamite (Stina Nordenstam album)

Dynamite is an album by Swedish singer-songwriter Stina Nordenstam, released in 1996. The album marked a turning point in her career as she experimented with introspective lyrics and darker musical tones, away from her jazz-influenced earlier albums.

Two of the songs on the album references the real-world murders of children, "Mary Bell" (Mary Bell, aged eleven, killed two children aged three and four) and "This Time, John" (John Hron, aged 14, was beaten and killed by neo-Nazis).

Track listing

All songs composed by Stina Nordenstam

Personnel

Dynamite (disambiguation)

Dynamite is a high explosive.

Dynamite may also refer to:

Places

Music

Albums

Block (periodic table)

A block of the periodic table of elements is a set of adjacent groups. The term appears to have been first used by Charles Janet. The respective highest-energy electrons in each element in a block belong to the same atomic orbital type. Each block is named after its characteristic orbital; thus, the blocks are:

The block names (s, p, d, f and g) are derived from the spectroscopic notation for the associated atomic orbitals: sharp, principal, diffuse and fundamental, and then g which follows f in the alphabet.

The following is the order for filling the "subshell" orbitals, according to the Aufbau principle, which also gives the linear order of the "blocks" (as atomic number increases) in the periodic table:

For discussion of the nature of why the energies of the blocks naturally appear in this order in complex atoms, see atomic orbital and electron configuration.

The "periodic" nature of the filling of orbitals, as well as emergence of the s, p, d and f "blocks" is more obvious, if this order of filling is given in matrix form, with increasing principal quantum numbers starting the new rows ("periods") in the matrix. Then, each subshell (composed of the first two quantum numbers) is repeated as many times as required for each pair of electrons it may contain. The result is a compressed periodic table, with each entry representing two successive elements:

Block (rural Australia)

Block is an Australian term for a small agricultural landholding. Block settlement has been used by Governments to encourage decentralization and during financial depressions to give families of unemployed workers an opportunity (frequently illusory) to become primary producers. It may also refer to a lifestyle choice or "hobby farm" for those with an independent source of income.

In parts of Australia, parcels of land of around 6 to 20 acres (2 to 8 ha) were allocated by Government to working-class men at nominal rent during the depression of the 1890s with the object of giving them work and, potentially, a source of income. Some eventually prospered, but those on marginal land were doomed to failure. Proponents of the "block system" included George Witherage Cotton. Holders of such allotments were referred to as "blockers" or "blockies".

See also

References

Block (data storage)

In computing (specifically data transmission and data storage), a block, sometimes called a physical record, is a sequence of bytes or bits, usually containing some whole number of records, having a maximum length, a block size. Data thus structured are said to be blocked. The process of putting data into blocks is called blocking, while deblocking is the process of extracting data from blocks. Blocked data is normally stored in a data buffer and read or written a whole block at a time. Blocking reduces the overhead and speeds up the handling of the data-stream. For some devices such as magnetic tape and CKD disk devices blocking reduces the amount of external storage required for the data. Blocking is almost universally employed when storing data to 9-track magnetic tape, to NAND flash memory, and to rotating media such as floppy disks, hard disks, and optical discs.

Most file systems are based on a block device, which is a level of abstraction for the hardware responsible for storing and retrieving specified blocks of data, though the block size in file systems may be a multiple of the physical block size. This leads to space inefficiency due to internal fragmentation, since file lengths are often not integer multiples of block size, and thus the last block of a file may remain partially empty. This will create slack space, which averages half a block per file. Some newer file systems attempt to solve this through techniques called block suballocation and tail merging.