Badminton

Introduction

Olympic Badminton Match

Badminton is a racket sport played with a shuttlecock, a cork ball fitted with stabilizing feathers. Badminton was first played as an Olympic medal sport at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Spain. Seen here is a match from the men’s doubles competition.

Badminton, game for two or four players using lightweight rackets and a shuttlecock, a cork ball fitted with stabilizing feathers. Players hit the shuttlecock back and forth over a net, trying to keep it from hitting the ground. Some people play badminton outdoors on a level grassy area or beach. However, tournament-level badminton is played indoors on a specially marked court.


Badminton’s governing body, the International Badminton Federation (IBF), has about 140 member nations. The IBF estimates that about 200 million people play the game worldwide and that more than 1,000 players participate in international competition. Badminton’s growth accelerated after the game’s debut as a medal sport during the 1992 Summer Olympic Games. China, Denmark, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and South Korea are just a few of the countries where badminton is popular.


Playing Area

Badminton Court

A badminton court resembles a tennis court in shape and markings, but it has smaller dimensions.

International rules state that an indoor badminton court must be rectangular, with white lines marked on a level wooden floor or on a special mat that is rolled onto a level playing surface. A singles court is 44 ft (13.41 m) long and 17 ft (5.18 m) wide. For doubles, alleys 1 ft 6 in (0.46 m) wide along the two longer sides of the court come into play, making the court 20 ft (6.10 m) wide. Because many shots fly high into the air, there must be clearance of at least 30 ft (9.14 m) above the court. A net stretched across the middle of the court has a top edge set to a height of 5 ft (1.52 m) at the center and 5 ft 1 in (1.55 m) at the posts


Equipment


Badminton rackets weigh between 3.5 and 5 oz (99 and 141 g) and consist of a leather or terrycloth handle; a long, thin shaft; and a stringed area called the head. Official rules limit the total length of a racket to 26.75 in (67.95 cm). The head of a racket measures 11 in (28 cm) in length and 8.6 in (21.8 cm) in width and is strung with synthetic nylon or gut at between 25 and 35 lb (11.3 and 15.9 kg) of tension. Early rackets were made of wood, but badminton rackets are now commonly made of aluminum, boron, graphite, and titanium.

Shuttlecock

The shuttlecock used in tournament badminton is typically 2.5 in (6.4 cm) long, 0.2 oz (5.7 g) in weight, and made of 16 goosefeathers inserted into a cork base. The shuttlecock is designed so that it will spin in flight and the players will hit the cork end rather than the feathers.

Tournament-quality shuttlecocks, also called shuttles or birdies, weigh 0.2 oz (5.7 gm) and consist of 16 goose feathers that protrude from one side of a ball-shaped cork base. Most shuttles used by casual players are plastic and have synthetic feathers. Both types of shuttles are 2.5 in (6.4 cm) long. When the shuttlecock is in the air, its aerodynamics cause it to spin so that when players hit it, they almost always strike the cork, not the feathers.


Service and Play

Play begins with a serve from a service area on the right-hand side of the court to a receiver in a diagonally opposite service area across the net. To serve, the server stands behind the service line and strikes the cork base of the shuttle in an underhand motion. The receiver must then return the shuttle before it hits the ground, and the players hit the shuttle back and forth until one side fails to return it.

Play ends when the shuttle hits the ground on one side of the court or when one player makes a fault, or error, such as hitting the shuttle into the net or out of bounds. Specific faults for servers include striking the feathers of the shuttle first or serving overhand. The receiver can be faulted for not being within the service court, for not having both feet on the floor when receiving, and for moving before the serve is made.

During play, faults include hitting the shuttle into the roof or lights, hitting it through the net, double-hitting or slinging a shot, touching the net, playing a shot by reaching over the net, and allowing the shuttle to hit the player’s body. Unsportsmanlike conduct—such as intentionally distracting an opponent—will also earn a player a fault.

Scoring and Officials

Points are scored when the opponent fails to return the shuttle, hits it out of bounds, or earns a fault. Points only count for the server (or serving side in doubles), so keeping the service privilege is an important part of the game. If the server loses a rally or makes a fault, the service privilege passes to the opponent. In doubles, this immediate loss of service occurs only at the start of the game. After this first loss of service, each team receives two chances to hold serve. When the first teammate loses serve, the partner serves. If the partner loses serve, the opposing team takes over.

In men’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles, the first side to score 15 points is the winner. Women’s singles games are played to 11 points. If the score is tied at 14-14 (or 10-10 in women’s singles) a system called setting settles the outcome. The first side that reached 14 (or 10) elects either to play through, meaning that the next side to win a point wins the game, or to set the game to three additional points, meaning that the first side to reach 17 points (or 13 in women’s singles) wins the game. Each badminton match is a best-of-three-games contest. Average matches last about 45 minutes, but professional matches can last more than 2 hours.

Badminton tournaments involve a number of officials. A referee supervises the tournament organization while an umpire controls each match. Aided by a service judge, the umpire keeps score and rules on faults during play. Up to ten line judges rule on whether particular shots have landed in or out of the court.

Skills and Strokes

Badminton requires speed, strength, power, agility, and nerve. Players must move quickly from side to side and back and forth, and stamina is important.

There are six key badminton strokes: the serve, drive, net shot, smash, lift (or lob), and clear. To hit these strokes, players use either a forehand or a backhand grip, depending on court positioning. On the forehand the forefinger acts as a lever and creates power and direction for the stroke. For the backhand the thumb creates this power and direction while placed along the back of the handle.

Many players aim the serve toward the centerline of the opposite service box. This technique limits the angle of the opponent’s return shot. Sometimes players use long, high serves to force opponents to the back of the court. Players also make specialty serves, such as flick serves that barely clear the net or drive serves that are hit down the sideline of the service area, to catch opponents out of position.

Once play has started, players tend to hit straight, low-flying shots called drives. When the shuttle remains close to the center of the court, net shots can be a good option. Net shots can be hard-hit or delicate. They are aimed at the front area of the opponent’s court, forcing the opponent to play the shot close to the net.

If the opponent manages to return a net shot, the return must be hit high to clear the net. This gives the player a chance for a smash—the deadliest attacking stroke in badminton. A smash is hit to the floor so forcefully that the opponent has no chance to return the shuttle before it hits the ground. The hardest smash has been recorded at more than 200 mph (320 km/h).

Players also use two looping strokes that knock the shuttle high and deep. The lift, or lob, is an offensive stroke made from the middle or front of the court. This shot sends the shuttle in a high arc above the opponent’s reach, forcing the opponent to the back of the court. The clear is a similar stroke, but it is used for defensive purposes when players find themselves out of position. The high arc gives players time to return to the middle of the court and to prepare for another rally.

Competition

Badminton World Singles Champions

Year

Winner

Country

	Men
1977	Flemming Delfs	Denmark
1980	Rudy Hartono	Indonesia
1983	Icuk Sugiarto	Indonesia
1985	Han Jian	China
1987	Yang Yang	China
1989	Yang Yang	China
1991	Zhao Jianhua	China
1993	Joko Suprianto	Indonesia
1995	Heryanto Arbi	Indonesia
1997	Peter Rasmussen	Denmark
1999	Sun Jun	China
2001	Hendrawan	Indonesia
2003	Xia Xuanze	China
2005	Taufik Hidayat	Indonesia
2006	Lin Dan	China
	Women
1977	Lene Koppen	Denmark
1980	Wiharjo Verawaty	Indonesia
1983	Li Lingwei	China
1985	Han Aiping	China
1987	Han Aiping	China
1989	Li Lingwei	China
1991	Tang Jiuhong	China
1993	Susi Susanti	Indonesia
1995	Ye Zhaoying	China
1997	Ye Zhaoying	China
1999	Camilla Martin	Denmark
2001	Gong Ruina	China
2003	Zhang Ning	China
2005	Xie Xingfang	China
2006	Xie Xingfang	China

Badminton World Doubles Champions

Year

Winner

Country

Men
1977	Tjun Tjun Johan Wahjudi	Indonesia
1980	Christian Hadinata Ade Chandra	Indonesia
1983	Steen Fladberg Jesper Helledie	Denmark
1985	Joo Bong Park Moon Soo Kim	Korea
1987	Li Yongbo Tian Bingyi	China
1989	Li Yongbo Tian Bingyi	China
1991	Joo Bong Park Moon Soo Kim	Korea
1993	Ricky Subagja Rudy Gunawan	Indonesia
1995	Rexy Mainaky Ricky Subagja	Indonesia
1997	Sigit Budiarto Chandra Wijaya	Indonesia
1999	Ha Tae Kwon Kim Dong Moon	Korea
2001	Halim Haryanto Tony Gunawan	Indonesia
2003	Lars Paaske Jonas Rasmussen	Denmark
2005	Tony Gunawan Howard Bach	United States
2006	Cai Yun Fu Haifeng	China
Women
1977	Etsuko Toganoo Emiko Ueno	Japan
1980	Nora Perry Jane Webster	England
1983	Lin Ying Wu Dixi	China
1985	Han Aiping Li Lingwei	China
1987	Lin Ying Guan Weizhen	China
1989	Lin Ying Guan Weizhen	China
1991	Guan Weizhen Nong Qunhua	China
1993	Nong Qunhua Zhou Lei	China
1995	Gil Young Ah Jang Hye Ock	Korea
1997	Ge Fei Gu Jun	China
1999	Ge Fei Gu Jun	China
2001	Huang Sui Gao Ling	China
2003	Huang Sui Gao Ling	China
2005	Wei Yang Jiewen Zhang	China
2006	Huang Sui Gao Ling	China
Mixed Doubles
1977	Steen Skovgaard Lene Koppen	Denmark
1980	Christian Hadinata Imelda Wiguno	Indonesia
1983	Thomas Kihlström Nora Perry	Sweden England
1985	Park Joo Bong Yoo Sang Hee	Korea
1987	Wang Pengren Shi Fangjing	China
1989	Park Joo Bong Chung Myung Hee	Korea
1991	Park Joo Bong Chung Myung Hee	Korea
1993	Thomas Lund Catrine Bengtsson	Denmark Sweden
1995	Thomas Lund Marlene Thomsen	Denmark
1997	Liu Yong Ge Fei	China
1999	Kim Dong Moon Ra Kyung Min	Korea
2001	Zhang Jun Gao Ling	China
2003	Kim Dong Moon Ra Kyung Min	Korea
2005	Nova Widianto Lilyana Natsir	Indonesia
2006	Nathan Robertson Gail Emms	England

Many badminton enthusiasts play in clubs or at local and regional levels. Top players compete in the World Grand Prix series, an international circuit of tournaments sanctioned by the IBF. 


The world championships are badminton’s biggest event and are held every two years. The tournament features five competitions: men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. The world championships are always preceded the previous week at the same venue by the Sudirman Cup world mixed team championships, where contests between nations are decided by five matches: men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles, and mixed doubles.

Two of badminton’s most exciting events are the men’s Thomas Cup and the women’s Uber Cup. These world team championships, which take place every two years side by side at the same time and at the same venue, have continental qualifying rounds. Contests are staged in a round-robin format with knockout finals at both the qualifying stages in February and the grand finals in May. Thomas Cup and Uber Cup contests consist of three singles and two doubles matches.

Other major events are the European championships, held every two years, and the Olympic Games and the Commonwealth Games, both held every four years.

The IBF, located in Cheltenham, England, regulates all these events and is the sport’s governing body. Representatives from Canada, Denmark, England, France, Ireland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales founded the organization in 1934. Today the IBF has about 140 member nations.

History

Badminton traces its beginnings to a game played thousands of years ago in Asia. The modern form of the sport was refined in Britain, but it is popular in countries all over the world.

     Beginnings

     Badminton evolved from a Chinese game of the 5th century bc called ti jian zi that involved kicking the shuttle. A later version of the sport was played in ancient Greece and India with rackets rather than with feet. A similar game called shuttlecock, or jeu de volant, appeared in Europe during the 1600s.

     British army officers brought a revised version of the game back to Britain from India in the mid-19th century. In 1873 the duke of Beaufort introduced the game to royalty at his country estate, Badminton House, and the sport became known as badminton. Four years later the Bath Badminton Club was founded. The version played by its members forms the basis for today’s game.

     Growth in Popularity

     Badminton soon spread beyond Britain to the rest of Europe and to countries throughout the world. It became especially popular in Asia and North America. The only major change through the years was in playing equipment, as lightweight rackets made of aluminum, boron, graphite, and titanium gradually replaced wooden models.

     During and after World War II (1939-1945), American badminton players came to prominence in international play. In the 1940s David Freeman was recognized as the world’s best player. He won seven United States singles titles (1939-1942, 1947, 1948, 1953) and the All-England singles title (1949). He remained unbeaten in singles competition from the age of 19 until he retired at age 33. American-born player Judy Devlin Hashman dominated the women’s game during the 1950s and 1960s; she became a naturalized citizen of Britain in 1970. England’s Gillian Gilks dominated women’s singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles play during the early 1970s.

     Badminton’s first world championships were held in 1977. Denmark’s Flemming Delfs and Lene Koppen won the men’s and women’s singles titles, respectively. Since then, East Asian nations—primarily China and Indonesia—have dominated professional badminton. In both countries, badminton is as popular as basketball is in the United States or soccer is in Britain. Spectators at matches typically sing, chant, and cheer for their favorite players or teams.

     Recent Developments

     Individuals from China and Indonesia have won numerous world championship titles. Men’s singles world champions include Rudy Hartono (1980) of Indonesia and Yang Yang (1987, 1989), Zhao Jianhua (1991), and Sun Jun (1999) of China. Women’s world champions include Indonesia’s Susi Susanti (1993) and China’s Ye Zhaoying (1995, 1997).

     The most noted doubles player is South Korean men’s star Park Joo Bong, who won an Olympic gold medal in men’s doubles in 1992 and a silver medal in mixed doubles in 1996.

     Denmark is also a badminton powerhouse, with players such as 1996 men’s Olympic gold medalist Poul-Erik Hoyer-Larsen, 1997 men’s world champion Peter Rasmussen, and 1999 women’s world champion Camilla Martin.

Contributed By:
William Kings

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Physics

INTRODUCTION

Physics, major science, dealing with the fundamental constituents of the universe, the forces they exert on one another, and the results produced by these forces. Sometimes in modern physics a more sophisticated approach is taken that incorporates elements of the three areas listed above; it relates to the laws of symmetry and conservation, such as those pertaining to energy, momentum, charge, and parity.

MODERN PHYSICS

A. RELATIVITY
 

To extend the example of relative velocity introduced with the Michelson-Morley experiment, two situations can be compared. One consists of a person, A, walking forward with a velocity v in a train moving at velocity u. The velocity of A with regard to an observer B stationary on the ground is then simply V = u + v. If, however, the train were at rest in the station and A was moving forward with velocity v while observer B walked backward with velocity u, the relative speed between A and B would be exactly the same as in the first case. In more general terms, if two frames of reference are moving relative to each other at constant velocity, observations of any phenomena made by observers in either frame will be physically equivalent. As already mentioned, the Michelson-Morley experiment failed to confirm the concept of adding velocities, and two observers, one at rest and the other moving toward a light source with velocity u, both observe the same light velocity V, commonly denoted by the symbol c.

B. QUANTUM THEORY

The quandary posed by the observed spectra emitted by solid bodies was first explained by the German physicist Max Planck. According to classical physics, all molecules in a solid can vibrate with the amplitude of the vibrations directly related to the temperature. All vibration frequencies should be possible and the thermal energy of the solid should be continuously convertible into electromagnetic radiation as long as energy is supplied. Planck made a radical assumption by postulating that the molecular oscillator could emit electromagnetic waves only in discrete bundles, now called quanta, or photons. Quantum Theory. Each photon has a characteristic wavelength in the spectrum and an energy E given by E = hf, where f is the frequency of the wave. The wavelength λ related to the frequency by λf = c, where c is the speed of light. With the frequency specified in hertz (Hz), or cycles per second, h, now known as Planck's constant, is extremely small (6.626 × 10^-27 erg-sec). With his theory, Planck again introduced a partial duality into the theory of light, which for nearly a century had been considered to be wavelike only.

C. PHOTOELECTRICITY

If electromagnetic radiation of appropriate wavelength falls upon suitable metals, negative electric charges, later identified as electrons, are ejected from the metal surface. The important aspects of this phenomenon are the following: (1) the energy of each photoelectron depends only on the frequency of the illumination and not on its intensity; (2) the rate of electron emission depends only on the illuminating intensity and not on the frequency (provided that the minimum frequency to cause emission is exceeded); and (3) the photoelectrons emerge as soon as the illumination hits the surface. These observations, which could not be explained by Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light, led Einstein to assume in 1905 that light can be absorbed only in quanta or photons, and that the photon completely vanishes in the absorption process, with all of its energy E (=hf) going to one electron in the metal. With this simple assumption Einstein extended Planck's quantum theory to the absorption of electromagnetic radiation, giving additional importance to the wave-particle duality of light. It was for this work that Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics.

D. X RAYS

 These very penetrating rays, first discovered by Roentgen, were shown to be electromagnetic radiation of very short wavelength in 1912 by the German physicist Max Theodor Felix von Laue and his coworkers. The precise mechanism of X-ray production was shown to be a quantum effect, and in 1914 the British physicist Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley used his X-ray spectrograms to prove that the atomic number of an element, and hence the number of positive charges in an atom, is the same as its position in the periodic table. The photon theory of electromagnetic radiation was further strengthened and developed by the prediction and observation of the so-called Compton effect by the American physicist Arthur Holly Compton in 1923.

E. ELECTRON PHYSICS

That electric charges were carried by extremely small particles had already been suspected in the 19th century and, as indicated by electrochemical experiments, the charge of these elementary particles was a definite, invariant quantity. Experiments on the conduction of electricity through low-pressure gases led to the discovery of two kinds of rays: cathode rays, coming from the negative electrode in a gas discharge tube, and positive or canal rays from the positive electrode. Sir Joseph John Thomson's 1895 experiment measured the ratio of the charge q to the mass m of the cathode-ray particles. Lenard in 1899 confirmed that the ratio of q to m for photoelectric particles was identical to that of cathode rays. The American inventor Thomas Alva Edison had noted in 1883 that very hot wires emit electricity, called thermionic emission (now called the Edison effect), and in 1899 Thomson showed that this form of electricity also consisted of particles with the same q to m ratio as the others. About 1911 Millikan finally determined that electric charge always arises in multiples of a basic unit e, and measured the value of e, now known to be 1.602 × 10^-19 coulombs. From the measured value of q to m ratio, with q set equal to e, the mass of the carrier, called electron, could now be determined as 9.110 × 10^-31 kg.

Finally, Thomson and others showed that the positive rays also consisted of particles, each carrying a charge e, but of the positive variety. These particles, however, now recognized as positive ions resulting from the removal of an electron from a neutral atom, are much more massive than the electron. The smallest, the hydrogen ion, is a single proton with a mass of 1.673 × 10^-27 kg, about 1837 times more massive than the electron (see Ion; Ionization). The “quantized” nature of electric charge was now firmly established and, at the same time, two of the fundamental subatomic particles identified.

F. ATOMIC MODELS

In 1913 the New Zealand-born British physicist Ernest Rutherford, making use of the newly discovered radiations from radioactive nuclei, found Thomson's earlier model of an atom with uniformly distributed positive and negative charged particles to be untenable. The very fast, massive, positively charged alpha particles he employed were found to deflect sharply in their passage through matter. This effect required an atomic model with a heavy positive scattering center. Rutherford then suggested that the positive charge of an atom was concentrated in a massive stationary nucleus, with the negative electron moving in orbits about it, and positioned by the electric attraction between opposite charges. This solar-system-like atomic model, however, could not persist according to Maxwell's theory, where the revolving electrons should emit electromagnetic radiation and force a total collapse of the system in a very short time.

Another sharp break with classical physics was required at this point. It was provided by the Danish physicist Niels Henrik David Bohr, who postulated the existence within atoms of certain specified orbits in which electrons could revolve without electromagnetic radiation emission. These allowed orbits, or so-called stationary states, are determined by the condition that the angular momentum J of the orbiting electron must be a positive multiple integral of Planck's constant, divided by 2 p, that is, J = nh/2p, where the quantum number n may have any positive integer value. This extended “quantization” to dynamics, fixed the possible orbits, and allowed Bohr to calculate their radii and the corresponding energy levels. Also in 1913 the model was confirmed experimentally by the German-born American physicist James Franck and the German physicist Gustav Hertz.

Bohr developed his model much further. He explained how atoms radiate light and other electromagnetic waves, and also proposed that an electron “lifted” by a sufficient disturbance of the atom from the orbit of smallest radius and least energy (the ground state) into another orbit, would soon “fall” back to the ground state. This falling back is accompanied by the emission of a single photon of energy E = hf, where E is the difference in energy between the higher and lower orbits. Each orbit shift emits a characteristic photon of sharply defined frequency and wavelength; thus one photon would be emitted in a direct shift from the n = 3 to the n = 1 orbit, which will be quite different from the two photons emitted in a sequential shift from the n = 3 to n = 2 orbit, and then from there to the n = 1 orbit. This model now allowed Bohr to account with great accuracy for the simplest atomic spectrum, that of hydrogen, which had defied classical physics.

Although Bohr's model was extended and refined, it could not explain observations for atoms with more than one electron. It could not even account for the intensity of the spectral colors of the simple hydrogen atom. Because it had no more than a limited ability to predict experimental results, it remained unsatisfactory for theoretical physicists.

G. QUANTUM MECHANICS

Within a few years, roughly between 1924 and 1930, an entirely new theoretical approach to dynamics was developed to account for subatomic behavior. Named quantum mechanics or wave mechanics, it started with the suggestion in 1923 by the French physicist Louis Victor, Prince de Broglie, that not only electromagnetic radiation but matter could also have wave as well as particle aspects. The wavelength of the so-called matter waves associated with a particle is given by the equation λ = h/mv, where m is the particle mass and v its velocity. Matter waves were conceived of as pilot waves guiding the particle motion, a property that should result in diffraction under suitable conditions. This was confirmed in 1927 by the experiments on electron-crystal interactions by the American physicists Clinton Joseph Davisson and Lester Halbert Germer and the British physicist Sir George Paget Thomson. Subsequently, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Ernst Pascual Jordan of Germany and the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger developed Broglie's idea into a mathematical form capable of dealing with a number of physical phenomena and with problems that could not be handled by classical physics. In addition to confirming Bohr's postulate regarding the quantization of energy levels in atoms, quantum mechanics now provides an understanding of the most complex atoms, and has also been a guiding spirit in nuclear physics. Although quantum mechanics is usually needed only on the microscopic level (with Newtonian mechanics still satisfactory for macroscopic systems), certain macroscopic effects, such as the properties of crystalline solids, also exist that can only be satisfactorily explained by principles of quantum mechanics.

Going beyond Broglie's notion of the wave-particle duality of matter, additional important concepts have since been incorporated into the quantum-mechanical picture. These include the discovery that electrons must have some permanent magnetism and, with it, an intrinsic angular momentum, or spin, as a fundamental property. Spin was subsequently found in almost all other elementary particles. In 1925 the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli expounded the exclusion principle, which states that in an atom no two electrons can have precisely the same set of quantum numbers. Four quantum numbers are needed to specify completely the state of an electron in an atom. The exclusion principle is vital for an understanding of the structure of the elements and of the periodic table. Heisenberg in 1927 put forth the uncertainty principle, which asserted the existence of a natural limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical quantities can be known simultaneously.

Finally, a synthesis of quantum mechanics and relativity was made in 1928 by the British mathematical physicist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, leading to the prediction of the existence of the positron and bringing the development of quantum mechanics to a culmination.

Largely as a result of Bohr's ideas, a different and statistical approach developed in modern physics. The fully deterministic cause-effect relations produced by Newtonian mechanics were supplanted by predictions of future events in terms of statistical probability only. Thus, the wave property of matter also implies that, in accordance with the uncertainty principle, the motion of the particles can never be predicted with absolute certainty even if the forces are known completely. Although this statistical aspect plays no detectable role in macroscopic motions, it is dominant on the molecular, atomic, and subatomic scale.

H. NUCLEAR PHYSICS

The understanding of atomic structure was also facilitated by Becquerel's discovery in 1896 of radioactivity in uranium ore (see Uranium). Within a few years radioactive radiation was found to consist of three types of emissions: alpha rays, later found by Rutherford to be the nuclei of helium atoms; beta rays, shown by Becquerel to be very fast electrons; and gamma rays, identified later as very short wavelength electromagnetic radiation. In 1898 the French physicists Marie and Pierre Curie separated two highly radioactive elements, radium and polonium, from uranium ore, thus showing that radiations could be identified with particular elements. By 1903 Rutherford and the British physical chemist Frederick Soddy had shown that the emission of alpha or beta rays resulted in the transmutation of the emitting element into a different one. Radioactive processes were shortly thereafter found to be completely statistical; no method exists that could indicate which atom in a radioactive material will decay at any one time. These developments, in addition to leading to Rutherford's and Bohr's model of the atom, also suggested that alpha, beta, and gamma rays could only come from the nuclei of very heavy atoms. In 1919 Rutherford bombarded nitrogen with alpha particles and converted it to hydrogen and oxygen, thus producing the first artificial transmutation of elements.

Meanwhile, a knowledge of the nature and abundance of isotopes was growing, largely through the development of the mass spectrograph. A model emerged in which the nucleus contained all the positive charge and almost all the mass of the atom. The nuclear-charge carriers were identified as protons, but except for hydrogen, the nuclear mass could be accounted for only if some additional uncharged particles were present. In 1932 the British physicist Sir James Chadwick discovered the neutron, an electrically neutral particle of mass 1.675 × 10^-27 kg, slightly more than that of the proton. Now nuclei could be understood as consisting of protons and neutrons, collectively called nucleons, and the atomic number of the element was simply the number of protons in the nucleus. On the other hand, the isotope number, also called the atomic mass number, was the sum of the neutrons and protons present. Thus, all atoms of oxygen (atomic no. 8) have eight protons, but the three isotopes of oxygen, O¹⁶, O ¹⁷, and O¹⁸, also contain within their respective nuclei eight, nine, or ten neutrons.

Positive electric charges repel each other, and because atomic nuclei (except for hydrogen) have more than one proton, they would fly apart except for a strong attractive force, called the nuclear force, or strong interaction that binds the nucleons to each other. The energy associated with this strong force is very great, millions of times greater than the energies characteristic of electrons in their orbits or chemical binding energies. An escaping alpha particle (consisting of two protons and two neutrons), therefore, will have to overcome this strong interaction force to escape from a radioactive nucleus such as uranium. This apparent paradox was explained by the American physicists Edward U. Condon, George Gamow, and Ronald Wilfred Gurney, who applied quantum mechanics to the problem of alpha emission in 1928 and showed that the statistical nature of nuclear processes allowed alpha particles to “leak” out of radioactive nuclei, even though their average energy was insufficient to overcome the nuclear force. Beta decay was explained as a result of a neutron disruption within the nucleus, the neutron changing into an electron (the beta particle), which is promptly ejected, and a residual proton. The proton left behind leaves the “daughter” nucleus with one more proton than its “parent” and thus increases the atomic number and the position in the periodic table. Alpha or beta emission usually leaves the nucleus with excess energy, which it unloads by emitting a gamma-ray photon.

In all these nuclear processes a large amount of energy, given by Einstein's E = mc² equation, is released. After the process is over, the total mass of the product is less than that of the parent, with the mass difference appearing as energy.

SCOPE OF PHYSICS

Physics is closely related to the other natural sciences and, in a sense, encompasses them. Chemistry, for example, deals with the interaction of atoms to form molecules; much of modern geology is largely a study of the physics of the earth and is known as geophysics; and astronomy deals with the physics of the stars and outer space. Even living systems are made up of fundamental particles and, as studied in biophysics and biochemistry, they follow the same types of laws as the simpler particles traditionally studied by a physicist.

The emphasis on the interaction between particles in modern physics, known as the microscopic approach, must often be supplemented by a macroscopic approach that deals with larger elements or systems of particles. This macroscopic approach is indispensable to the application of physics to much of modern technology. Thermodynamics, for example, a branch of physics developed during the 19th century, deals with the elucidation and measurement of properties of a system as a whole and remains useful in other fields of physics; it also forms the basis of much of chemical and mechanical engineering. Such properties as the temperature, pressure, and volume of a gas have no meaning for an individual atom or molecule; these thermodynamic concepts can only be applied directly to a very large system of such particles. A bridge exists, however, between the microscopic and macroscopic approach; another branch of physics, known as statistical mechanics, indicates how pressure and temperature can be related to the motion of atoms and molecules on a statistical basis.

Physics emerged as a separate science only in the early 19th century; until that time a physicist was often also a mathematician, philosopher, chemist, biologist, engineer, or even primarily a political leader or artist. Today the field has grown to such an extent that with few exceptions modern physicists have to limit their attention to one or two branches of the science. Once the fundamental aspects of a new field are discovered and understood, they become the domain of engineers and other applied scientists. The 19th-century discoveries in electricity and magnetism, for example, are now the province of electrical and communication engineers; the properties of matter discovered at the beginning of the 20th century have been applied in electronics; and the discoveries of nuclear physics, most of them not yet 40 years old, have passed into the hands of nuclear engineers for applications to peaceful or military uses.


Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Scorpio Night (1985) : Movie Review

Film Review Outline:

I. Movie Title

            Scorpio Nights

II. Cast of Characters

            Anna Marie Gutierrez as Security Guard’s Wife

    Daniel Fernando as Danny

            Orestes Ojeda as Security Guard

            Amanda Amores as Fely

            Mike Austria as Mike

            Eugene Enriquez as Genio

            Caloy Balasbas as Elton

            Carlito Abrasia as Karlo

III. Synopsis

            There was a couple lived in an apartment. The husband works as a security guard. The daily routine of the husband when he goes home is, eat his dinner, washes the dishes, goes straight to bed and make love with his wife. Every time the couple makes love with each other, the student above their room is peeking in everything they do and specially the love making. The guy peeks through a hole in his floorboard. One day the student goes to the room of the wife where he does the same thing as the husband does to her wife and the wife acts as if she didn’t know that the man having sex with her is not her husband. As the two does the act repeatedly, they just realize that they got addicted with what they are doing. The security guard knew that her wife and the student are having an affair. Until one day he goes home, he saw his wife and the student having sex. He didn’t control himself and he shoots the student and his wife then afterwards, he shoots himself.

IV. Review

a.       Character Analysis

Danny (Daniel Fernando)

-          Danny is such a (future) rapist. He maybe has a psychological problem because if he has a stable mind set, he will not let himself to have an affair to the security guard’s wife.

Security Guard’s Wife (Anna Marie Gutierrez)

-          I think she was just tempted with Danny because of the sense that she and her husband don’t have a child. Maybe she thinks that she and Danny may have their own child if they continue their affair.

Security Guard (Orestes Ojeda)

- He really loves her wife so much. He wants to give her wife a child but with some manner, he couldn’t. Because of the love for his wife he decided to kill her wife, Danny and himself. Maybe he can’t accept the fact that his beloved wife is cheating on him.

b.      Technical Critique

The movie itself may be erotic but if you look and realize the fact that was revealed in the movie, you can realize that the story is great to watch. The problem with the movie is the scenes (erotic scenes) that are not necessarily needed. The also problem of the movie is they don’t show us the background of each character. If the director included the background of the characters, it would be easier for the audience to understand where the characters are coming from.

c. Sociological Significance / Relevance

            The film wants us to be socially aware about people that thirst for love or maybe sex. The lascivious acts of the characters has something to do with their past. Doing such a thing like having sex with the person you’re not really related is not a thing that can be done by a person without any reason. Their behavior maybe affected by the people that surround them. The people surrounds you has a big part developing their behavior.