Making revision 'fun' part 3: Static Electricity - Sparks = 'splosions

 So, this is another one of those revision posts I meant to do a lot more of. I don't think you missed much, but whatever. This one covers the stuff in GCSE Physics/Additional Science (I'm doing Physics, but the content should be the same (as of 2011-12)) about static electricity. As with my Geography post about the drought (and the rain, and why the drought is still a thing), there are a metric ton of caveats regarding my personal knowledge. That aside, let's get this thing started.

Static electricity, as the name would imply, is basically a build up of charge which is pretty still (I.e. isn't being conducted throughout the charged object), and we generally experience it through either making our hair stand on end for shits and giggles* or those annoying electric shocks. This build up of charge comes through a transfer of electrons. If the charged object gains electrons, it gains negative charge. If an object loses electrons, it gains positive charge. Polythene's an example of the former, acetate the latter. Fairly simple, right? Well, yeah, it is. That is, assuming the standard of 'lies (well, simplifications) to teenagers' which typically comes into play in these situations doesn't actually apply here. I'll know for certain in a year or 2 when I'm done with my A-levels.

Generally speaking, the transfer of electrons comes from friction - for instance when walking across a carpet or taking a jumper off or rubbing a balloon against a curtain/person's hair.

Of course, the hair standing up on end thing is caused by like charges repelling and unlike charges attracting, which is due to some stuff which I'm going to have to explain using personification. To wit, the positively charged object wants more electrons, whilst the negatively charged object wants to lose electrons. Also, electrons don't like each other for some reason (since they're all negatively charged, so repel each other).

The attraction created by static electricity has uses other than shenanigans (for a given value of 'shenanigans', of course. The attraction has uses in stuff like printers, photocopiers, those smoke scrubber chimney things and spray-painting cars. I'll use those last 2 as an example, since I know them off the top of my head and they strike me as most likely to come up in the exam.

The SSCTs consist of two either earthed (connected to ground) or positively charged collection plates up the side of the chimney, with a negatively charged grid in the middle of said chimney. Smoke particles in the, er, smoke float up through the grid, gain negative charge, and then get attracted to/stuck to the collection plates, for later scrubbing off. This means less smoke particles get into the air proper, which is cool, I guess.

The car thing is even simpler -  the body of the car is given negative charge, whilst the friction of paint droplets being forced through the narrow funnel of the paint sprayer gives them positive charge. This makes them stick onto the body of the car at least for long enough for them to be made to stick permanently.

Right, now to get to the explosion stuff. I mentioned earlier about those annoying little electric shocks, well, that's a spark. There are quite a few environments where sparks are a bit of an issue, probably the most obvious one being petrol stations - where there's loads of highly flammable gas floating around. More obscurely, surgeons apparently have to be earthed with a wire lest (the also highly flammable) anaesthetic gases catch light due to a spark. Sparks, in situations like these, equal explosions (or "'splosions" if I'm in the mood for forced alliteration). Obviously, a hospital is probably the very last place anyone wants an explosion, so preventing the static build up using the aforementioned earthing techniques is kind of important.

Not all of the undesirable effects of static are as explosiony though - if you're fixing a computer (which I've never done) you also need to prevent static since it can damage the delicate internal circuitry of them (or something like that).

Okay, that concludes this (probably incoherent) amble about a random topic that one of my GCSEs covers. Come back if/when there's a next time and see what dumb idea I decide to do then!

*sorry for the crudeness - I really couldn't come up with a funnier way of phrasing this.

MRF Part 2: English Essay: "How is Jack presented in Lord of the Flies?

Just figured I'll use this as an excuse to share an essay I did for homework a while back in the hope someone will find it useful. I don't really like the book, and I reckon I get a bit nonsensical in places, but whatever. It got pretty much full marks, so I must have done something right. You'll note I use the term 'anarchy' at the end. Whilst I'll bet my English teacher thought I was using it to meant "chaos" (despite the redundancy), I actually did mean it as in an ideal non-hierarchal society. It's an Eng Lit essay, and Golding hardly strikes me as having anarchist sympathies. And it's an Eng Lit essay ('Death of the author" means I can read Ayn bloody Rand as a socialist if I look hard enough - mild BS like that is barely an issue).

Anyway, how is Jack presented in Lord of the Flies?

Jack is probably the main antagonist (besides human nature) in William Golding’s 1957 novel Lord of the Flies, whose plot centers around a group of boys stranded on an island, and their descent into savagery. 

Right from his presentation he is presented as something of an antithesis to the book’s main protagonist, Ralph. He insists on being known by his last name in (going off his “kids’ names” remark) what is clearly meant to present him as having a superiority complex, although he soon relents. He is also presented as being markedly different in physique to Ralph, their faces in particular: Ralph had “a mildness about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil”, yet Jack’s face “was ugly, without silliness” (immediately presenting him in a negative light), and his “light blue eyes” were “turning, or ready to turn, to anger”. At this stage, it is also worth noting that the choir is “wearily obedient” and he seems to wield total control over them. He, as “the most obvious leader”, also attempts to seize control undemocratically (“I ought to be leader”), presenting him as a possible dictator at even this early stage. He also shows a strong dislike of Piggy (who is intended to be a symbol of civilization, and is essentially golding’s mouthpiece character). Despite this, the violence (not to be confused with his cruelty towards the weak shown in his actions towards Piggy) that marks him out particularly is only exhibited after his earlier inability to face “the unbearable blood” and the enormity of killing, and when exploring with Ralph and Simon he seems to act like a protagonist in books like The Coral Island (from which he takes his name, the book is also referred to by name on a few occasions - Lord of the Flies was in part a response to it) - “This is proper exploring”.

By chapter 3, Jack is already shown to be succumbing to the allure of savagery, with a “compulsion to track down and kill” “swallowing him up”, and him being reduced to “running, dog-like, on all fours” by this. Golding presents this as “madness”, outright stating it to be such in the narrative (which appears to be not from any character’s perspective). This aspect is furthered by him becoming “the mask” in Chapter 4, which ‘liberates’ him “from shame and self consciousness”, fully confirming his conversion towards a focus on the “brilliant world of hunting exhilaration and tactics” as opposed to “the world of longing and baffled commonsense”. This presentation is furthered by him letting “the bloody fire out” through his desire, showing how his savagery is getting the better of civilization due to the lack of a true authority beyond the symbol of the conch. His violent, dictatorial, side is shown once more in his use of the chant (“Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill her blood!”) and him whacking Piggy, breaking one lense in his glasses. A degree of cruelty, but cunning, is shown in his ‘apology’ (a “verbal trick”), and the very fact it’s directed at Ralph shows that he’s already starting to see his leadership as invalid.

This strain is later shown in him disparaging the conch in chapter 6, instead suggesting that the bigguns form a sort of cabal to decide things “We don’t need the conch any more... it’s time some people knew they’ve got to keep quiet and leave deciding things to the rest of us”, and earlier showing that he doesn’t care about the littluns at all (“Sucks to the littluns”), also showing a lack of compassion. Yet, at the same time, his own childishness shows up but a few pages later, his immediate response to Castle Rock being “What a place for a fort”, although the nature of this observation is also an early sign of the warmongering tendencies which would become so major later on.

Jack’s desire to gain control, and hypocritical tendencies in his attempts to do this, come to a head in Chapter 8 in which he tries to take control of the group (“Hands up... whoever wants Ralph not to be chief”) after disparaging Ralph for being “ a coward” in the face of the Beast (which, at this moment, he is presented as believing in, and responded to in the same way), only to fail humiliatingly, his childishness showing once again in his declaration that he isn’t “going to play any longer” and him outright crying in humiliation. This leads to the split and the clear presentation of the difference between his and Ralph’s leadership styles, the savagery of his becoming evident in the spearing of the sow, and desecration of Simon’s eden in order to put the eponymous Lord of the Flies (the pig’s head) in place. 

By chapter 9, he has become “decorated and garlanded like an idol”, similar to the cult of personality that many dictators around the time Golding wrote the book had had (and still do have). He also seems to be the catalyst for the descent of all those present at the feast into savagery through forcing them to do the “dance”, leading directly to Simon’s death (although he later maintains (probably knowingly falsely (albeit possibly hidden to himself through some form of doublethink)) that the Simon they killed was in fact a guise of the beast). 

Come Chapter 10, he is the Chief, and is hinted to be something of a fascist bully, having one kid beat up for nothing. His desire for control extends to stealing the fire (rather than asking, in part to show that “we’re strong, we hunt”), and ultimately forcing everyone but Ralph and Piggy (who he doesn’t like (since he’s the bad guy and they’re Golding’s mouthpieces mostly, although Piggy’s outsiderness is something else as well) and the littluns (who he simply doesn’t count) to join his tribe, using implied torture. His “full intent” to kill Ralph is presented, he is a “terror” (“but Roger” is implied to be worse), and his tribe are presented as nothing but “painted savages”, in contrast to the nice britishness of Ralph and Piggy (“Is it better...”).

In conclusion, Jack is presented wholly as Ralph's antithesis and is a representative of savagery, dictatorship and anarchy (these are all contradictory ideas, but he still somehow manages to be all 3). However, this said, perhaps the last time he is referred to is meant to be what he really is being presented as, nothing more than “a little boy” (mainly because it appears Golding thinks little boys are, in fact, naturally “terrors” and would regress to being such if left alone for too long).