Brittleness

A material is brittle if, when subjected to stress, it breaks without significant deformation (strain). Brittle materials absorb relatively little energy prior to fracture, even those of high strength. Breaking is often accompanied by a snapping sound. Brittle materials include most ceramics and glasses (which do not deform plastically) and some polymers, such as PMMA and polystyrene. Many steels become brittle at low temperatures (see ductile-brittle transition temperature), depending on their composition and processing.

When used in materials science, it is generally applied to materials that fail when there is little or no evidence of plastic deformation before failure. One proof is to match the broken halves, which should fit exactly since no plastic deformation has occurred.

When a material has reached the limit of its strength, it usually has the option of either deformation or fracture. A naturally malleable metal can be made stronger by impeding the mechanisms of plastic deformation (reducing grain size, precipitation hardening, work hardening, etc.), but if this is taken to an extreme, fracture becomes the more likely outcome, and the material can become brittle. Improving material toughness is therefore a balancing act.

Software brittleness

In computer programming and software engineering, software brittleness is the increased difficulty in fixing older software that may appear reliable, but fails badly when presented with unusual data or altered in a seemingly minor way. The phrase is derived from analogies to brittleness in metalworking.

Causes

When software is new, it is very malleable; it can be formed to be whatever is wanted by the implementers. But as the software in a given project grows larger and larger, and develops a larger base of users with long experience with the software, it becomes less and less malleable. Like a metal that has been work-hardened, the software becomes a legacy system, brittle and unable to be easily maintained without fracturing the entire system.

Brittleness in software can be caused by algorithms that do not work well for the full range of input data. A good example is an algorithm that allows a divide by zero to occur, or a curve-fitting equation that is used to extrapolate beyond the data that it was fitted to. Another cause of brittleness is the use of data structures that restrict values. This was commonly seen in the late 1990s as people realized that their software only had room for a 2 digit year entry; this led to the sudden updating of tremendous quantities of brittle software before the year 2000. Another more commonly encountered form of brittleness is in graphical user interfaces that make invalid assumptions. For example, a user may be running on a low resolution display, and the software will open a window too large to fit the display. Another common problem is expressed when a user uses a color scheme other than the default, causing text to be rendered in the same color as the background, or a user uses a font other than the default, which won't fit in the allowed space and cuts off instructions and labels.

Brittle (food)

Brittle is a type of confection consisting of flat broken pieces of hard sugar candy embedded with nuts such as pecans, almonds, or peanuts. It has many variations around the world, such as pasteli in Greece,croquant in France,gozinaki in Georgia, chikki in India and kotkoti in Bangladesh. In parts of the Middle East, brittle is made with pistachios, while many Asian countries use sesame seeds and peanuts. Peanut brittle is the most popular brittle recipe in the US. The term brittle first appears in print in 1892, though the candy itself has been around for much longer.

Traditionally, a mixture of sugar and water is heated to the hard crack stage corresponding to a temperature of approximately 300 °F (149 °C), although some recipes also call for ingredients such as corn syrup and salt in the first step. Nuts are mixed with the caramelized sugar. At this point spices, leavening agents, and often peanut butter or butter are added. The hot candy is poured out onto a flat surface for cooling, traditionally a granite or marble slab. The hot candy may be troweled to uniform thickness. When the brittle cools, it is broken into pieces.

Davy

Davy may refer to:

Davy is the surname of:

Davy (album)

Davy is Coconut Records' 2009 second release. The album is, as was Nighttiming, the product of Jason Schwartzman, who wrote all of the songs and performs the majority of the instruments.

The first official single for the album was "Microphone." The song was also used in the 2012 film LOL, starring Miley Cyrus and subsequently featured on the soundtrack. A portion of "Any Fun" is in a teaser video on the Coconut Records MySpace page. The tracklisting and album art first appeared on the independent online music store Amie Street.

Like Nighttiming, the CD pressing of Davy contains demo and alternate versions of the album's songs after the final track.

The songs "Wires" and "I Am Young" were featured on the Funny People original soundtrack.

Two music videos were made for this album; "Microphone" and "Any Fun."

Cover art

The album's artwork was inspired by the book cover of the Penguin Books' edition of Aldous Huxley's novel Island.

Track listing

All songs written by Jason Schwartzman.

Davy (film)

Davy is a 1958 British comedy-drama film directed by Michael Relph and starring Harry Secombe, Alexander Knox and Ron Randell. It was the last comedy to be made by Ealing Studios and had the distinction of being the first British film in Technirama.Davy was intended to launch the solo career of Harry Secombe, who was already a popular British radio personality on The Goon Show, but it was only moderately successful.

Peter Frampton, who plays young Tim was the son of Harry Frampton: Makeup artist for many years at Ealing. He would eventually follow in his father's footsteps: working as his assistant on several films, including Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972). In 1995, Peter Frampton won the Oscar® for Best Makeup for Braveheart. He remembered his filming on Davy fondly, as "it meant time off school and (getting the) star treatment."

Plot

A young entertainer is conflicted over the chance of a big break. He has to decide whether to remain with his family's music hall act or to go solo. An audition scene at Covent Garden includes an especially fine rendition of Puccini's Nessun Dorma by Secombe, who, while known mainly as a comedian, had a fine tenor voice, and Mozart's Voi Che Sapete performend by Adele Leigh.