Friday, March 20, 2020

How To Make a Ketchup Packet Cartesian Diver

How To Make a Ketchup Packet Cartesian Diver Place a ketchup packet in a bottle of water and make it rise and fall at your command, as if by magic. Of course, the magic involves some basic science. Heres how to do the diving ketchup trick and how it works. Diving Ketchup Magic Trick Materials Plastic bottleKetchup packet from a fast food restaurantWater Perform the Diving Ketchup Magic Trick Drop the ketchup packet into the bottle.Seal the lid of the bottle.Fill the bottle with water. The ketchup packet should float somewhere in the middle of the bottle. If it sinks, either try using a different packet (the size of the air bubble inside the ketchup packet varies slightly) or else dump out the water and ketchup, bend the packet slightly so that it can hold an air bubble when you fill the bottle again, and refill the bottle. My packet was heavy, so I trapped an air bubble on the packet and tapped the bottle with a fingernail until I knocked off just enough air bubbles to get the packet to sit in the middle of the bottle.Squeeze the bottle to cause the ketchup packet to sink.Relax your grip on the bottle to cause the packet to float. With a little practice, you can make it appear that you arent squeezing the bottle. If you are performing this demonstration as a magic trick you can say you are using the power of your mind to move the ketchup. Pretend to be concentrating very hard, using your incredible powers of telekinesis. How the Diving Ketchup Magic Trick Works An air bubble is trapped inside a ketchup packet when it is sealed at the factory. If the bubble is big enough, it makes the packet float in water. When you squeeze the bottle, the water wont compress but the air bubble inside the ketchup packet is squeezed and becomes smaller. The size of the packet is reduced, but its mass remains unchanged. Density is mass per volume, so squeezing the bottle increases the density of the ketchup packet. When the density of the packet is more than the density of the water the packet will sink. When you release the pressure on the bottle the air bubble expands and the ketchup packet rises.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Definition and Examples of Solecism

Definition and Examples of Solecism In prescriptive grammar, a usage error or any deviation from conventional word order. In its broader implications, notes Maxwell Nurnberg, a solecism is a deviation from the norm, something illogical, incongruous, absurd, or even an impropriety, a breach of etiquette (I Always Look Up the Word Egregious, 1998).The term solecism is derived from Soli, the name of an ancient Athenian colony where a dialect regarded as substandard was spoken. Examples and Observations: Solecism. An ancient term for an error in syntax arising from a mismatch between words. E.g., those page would be a solecism since plural those does not match or is not congruent with, singular page. . . .The extension to errors other than of language is modern.(P.H. Matthews, Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford Univ. Press, 1997)I quit school when I were sixteen.(public service ad)Songs you sang to me, sounds you brang to me.(Neil Diamond, Play Me)Curiouser and Curiouser[T]he phrase curiouser and curiouser . . . occurs for the first time in the 1865 Alices Adventures in Wonderland at the start of Chapter 2: Curiouser and curiouser! cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); now Im opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Its not good English because of the rule that -er may . . . be added only to words of one or two syllables; a three-syllable word like curious requires the use of more instead, s o Alice would properly have said, More and more curious! But, recalling Alice and her truly curious adventures, curiouser and curiouser has passed into general use as a phrase to evoke any situation so curious as to cause one to forget good English.(Allan Metcalf, Predicting New Words. Houghton, 2002) Between You and IBetween you and IAnd the stars that light up the sky . . ..(Jessica Simpson, Between You and I)[S]ome things we now consider to be mistakes or solecisms were once quite acceptable. . . . Are we racked with indignation when we hear Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice read a letter from Antonio containing the words All debts are cleared between you and I?(Henry Hitchings, The Language Wars. John Murray, 2011)Solecisms and Barbarisms (1882)Solecism. In rhetoric, a solecism is defined as an offense against the rules of grammar by the use of words in a wrong construction; false syntax.Modern grammarians designate by solecism any word or expression which does not agree with the established usage of writing or speaking. But, as customs change, that which at one time is considered a solecism may at another be regarded as correct language. A solecism, therefore, differs from a barbarism, inasmuch as the latter consists in the use of a word or expression which is altogether con trary to the spirit of the language, and can, properly speaking, never become established as correct language. Penny Cyclopaedia(Alfred Ayres, The Verbalist: A Manual Devoted to Brief Discussions of the Right and the Wrong Use of Words. D. Appleton, 1882) Roman Rhetoricians on SolecismsI allow that a solecism may occur in one word, but not unless there be something having the force of another word, to which the incorrect word may be referred; so that a solecism arises from the union of things by which something is signified or some intention manifested; and, that I may avoid all caviling, it sometimes occurs in one word, but never in a word by itself.(Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory)There are two faults in speaking that can mar its Latinity: solecism and barbarism. A solecism occurs if the concord between a word and the one before it in a group of words is defective. A barbarism is when something faulty is expressed in the words.