Physics of racing cars Essay Example for Free

Physics of racing cars Essay Racing cars are high performance cars. In order for them to be fast the cars body (and interior must be very light). By re-arranging Newton’s 2nd it can be seen that the larger the mass of the car the smaller the acceleration the car will have. For the car to accelerate (or decelerate) there must be some friction in between the cars tyres and the road surface. This traction helps the car to move at a very high speed and if the traction isn’t there the car won’t move even though the tires are rotating. This can be seen when the road surface is icy and the cars loose grip, the wheels are rotating but the car doesn’t move very fast. The force required to slide a tyre is called the adhesive limit of the tyre, or sometimes the stiction. image00.png The formula F  µN shows the relationship between the frictional force and the surface the tyre is moving on. F is the frictional force, N is the normal reaction between on the tyre and  µ is the coefficient of the friction, the more the  µ value the rougher the surface is. The maximum frictional force provided by the tyre is given by  µN, beyond this value slipping starts to occur. This equation implies that the frictional force made by the tyres is independent of the width of the tyre. A car fitted with a wider tyre is creates the same friction as a thinner tyre because the thinner tyre creates more pressure point hence created more contact between the tyre and road surface whereas, the wider tyre covers more surface area therefore creates the same grip between the tyre and surface. Newton’s second law (F=ma), shows that when the traction force is generated the car accelerates forward. Newton’s third law, every action has an opposite and equal reaction shows that when the car does accelerate the driver experiences a force opposite and is pushed backwards into the seat. When the steering wheel is turned the driver tries to get the front tyres to push a little sideways on the ground, and by Newton’s third law the ground pushes back, which causes little sideways acceleration. This changes the sideway velocity. The acceleration is relative to the sideways force and inversely relative to the mass of the car. The sideways acceleration causes the car to go sideways which the driver requires when turning the wheel. When the car decelerates the resistive braking force acts in the opposite direction to the moving car and the driver is pushed forward. The car experiences torque when traction and braking forces are generated. This transfers the weight forward when accelerating sharply and backward when braking sharply. Weight transfer can be controlled by using throttle, brakes and steering. The equation shows that if the speed of the car doubles, the centripetal force must quadruple for the car to go around the same bend, the centrifugal force must also quadruple if this happens. Therefore, racing cars are subject to forward and backward forces due to linear acceleration and deceleration and also large side forces during cornering bends at high speeds, which are called G forces. The equation also shows that if the bend is doubled the centripetal halves. It’s useful for the driver to go around bends at high speeds as the fastest route given by tracing out a curve with the largest radius possible. Air resistance can be modelled by the equation C-Coefficient of drag (0.25-0.45 for cars) p-Density of air A-Reference area (area of car perpendicular to the direction of motion) Ï…-Speed/velocity of car If the speed of the vehicle doubles the drag force quadruples. The drag force can be minimised by decreasing the reference area. This is achieved by making the car flatter so that it cuts through the wind easily giving it a stream lined shape. The shape is also usually like the wings of an aeroplane upside down. In aeroplane the wings will give it a lift whereas the upside down shape on the car will give it a downwards force which helps it prevent from lifting up at high speeds. According to Newton’s first law of motion a car in a straight line motion at a constant speed will keep such motion until it’s acted upon with an external force. The reason why the car does not perform such a motion forever is because of air resistance and friction. Reference: http://www.dur.ac.uk/r.g.bower/PoM/pom/node16.html#eqweight, Richard Bower, 8 16:09:30 BST 1998

Margit Stange’s Literary Criticism of Chopin’s The Awakening Essay

Margit Stange’s Literary Criticism of Chopin’s The Awakening Kate Chopin created Edna Pontellier, but neither the character nor her creator was divorced from the world in which Chopin lived. As a means to understand the choices Chopin gave Edna, Margit Stange evaluates The Awakening in the context of the feminist ideology of the late nineteenth century. Specifically, she argues that Edna is seeking what Chopin’s contemporaries denoted self-ownership, a notion that pivoted on sexual choice and â€Å"voluntary motherhood† (276). Stange makes a series of meaningful connections between Kate Chopin’s dramatization of Edna Pontellier’s â€Å"awakening† and the historical context of feminist thought that Stange believes influenced the novel. For example, she equates Edna’s quest for financial independence with the late nineteenth century’s Married Women’s Property Acts, which sought to give married women greater control over their property and earnings. Ultimately, Stange believes, Edna’s awakening, her acquisition of self-determination, comes from identifying and re-distributing what she owns, which Stange argues is her body, much as contemporary feminist thinkers discussed what she calls women’s â€Å"sexual exchange value† (281). Additional references to reformers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as the legal standards of femme seule and femme couverte buttress Stange’s position that Edna’s experiences are a reflection of historical reality, even if some of the equations are a bit rough. Chopin, Stange notes, is careful to separate Edna the wife from Edna the woman – â€Å"Mrs. Pontellier† becomes â€Å"Edna† in the text, and then â€Å"Mrs. Pontellier† once more when her sense of self-ownership again seems lost. Chopin... ...alls a â€Å"moment of extreme maternal giving,† Stanton argued for women’s right to a public voice because â€Å"‘alone [woman] goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world; no one can share her fears, no one can mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown’† (289). Chopin may have had a clearer grasp of the immense hold of the rhetoric of motherhood than Stange acknowledges. Edna at â€Å"the gates of death† may be a woman caught in an evolving conception of self-ownership, burdened by the sorrow of realizing that she can only really own what she no longer wants, because what she does want is yet beyond her grasp. Edna’s trap is indeed a historical reflection, a comment on the tumultuous, even violent, evolution of ideologies, expectations, choices, and realities.

Discourse Analysis Essay

Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, vocal, or sign language use or any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis — discourse, writing, conversation, communicative event, etc. — are variously defined in terms of coherent sequences of sentences, propositions, speech acts or turns-at-talk. Contrary to much of traditional linguistics, discourse analysts not only study language use ‘beyond the sentence boundary’, but also prefer to analyze ‘naturally occurring’ language use, and not invented examples. Text linguistics is related. The essential difference between discourse analysis and text linguistics is that it aims at revealing socio-psychological characteristics of a person/persons rather than text structure.[1] Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of social science disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, anthropology, social work, cognitive psychology, social psychology, international relations, human geography, communication studies, and translation studies, each of which is subject to its own assumptions, dimensions of analysis, and methodologies. Topics of interest Topics of discourse analysis include: * The various levels or dimensions of discourse, such as sounds (intonation, etc.), gestures, syntax, the lexicon, style, rhetoric, meanings, speech acts, moves, strategies, turnsand other aspects of interaction * Genres of discourse (various types of discourse in politics, the media, education, science, business, etc.) * The relations between discourse and the emergence of syntactic structure * The relations between text (discourse) and context * The relations between discourse and power * The relations between discourse and interaction * The relations between discourse and cognition and memory Discourse Analysis Deborah Tannen Discourse analysis is sometimes defined as the analysis of language ‘beyond the sentence’. This contrasts with types of analysis more typical of modern linguistics, which are chiefly concerned with the study of grammar: the study of smaller bits of language, such as sounds (phonetics and phonology), parts of words (morphology), meaning (semantics), and the order of words in sentences (syntax). Discourse analysts study larger chunks of language as they flow together. Some discourse analysts consider the larger discourse context in order to understand how it affects the meaning of the sentence. For example, Charles Fillmore points out that two sentences taken together as a single discourse can have meanings different from each one taken separately. To illustrate, he asks you to imagine two independent signs at a swimming pool: â€Å"Please use the toilet, not the pool,† says one. The other announces, â€Å"Pool for members only.† If you regard each sign independently, they seem quite reasonable. But taking them together as a single discourse makes you go back and revise your interpretation of the first sentence after you’ve read the second. Discourse and Frames ‘Reframing’ is a way to talk about going back and re-interpreting the meaning of the first sentence. Frame analysis is a type of discourse analysis that asks, What activity are speakers engaged in when they say this? What do they think they are doing by talking in this way at this time? Consider how hard it is to make sense of what you are hearing or reading if you don’t know who’s talking or what the general topic is. When you read a newspaper, you need to know whether you are reading a news story, an editorial, or an advertisement in order to properly interpret the text you are reading. Years ago, when Orson Welles’ radio play â€Å"The War of the Worlds† was broadcast, some listeners who tuned in late panicked, thinking they were hearing the actual end of the world. They mistook the frame for news instead of drama. Turn-taking Conversation is an enterprise in which one person speaks, and another listens. Discourse analysts who study conversation note that speakers have systems for determining when one person’s turn is over and the next person’s turn begins. This exchange of turns or ‘floors’ is signaled by such linguistic means as intonation, pausing, and phrasing. Some people await a clear pause before beginning to speak, but others assume that ‘winding down’ is an invitation to someone else to take the floor. When speakers have different assumptions about how turn exchanges are signaled, they may inadvertently interrupt or feel interrupted. On the other hand, speakers also frequently take the floor even though they know the other speaker has not invited them to do so. Listenership too may be signaled in different ways. Some people expect frequent nodding as well as listener feedback such as ‘mhm’, ‘uhuh’, and ‘yeah’. Less of this than you expect can create the impression that someone is not listening; more than you expect can give the impression that you are being rushed along. For some, eye contact is expected nearly continually; for others, it should only be intermittent. The type of listener response you get can change how you speak: If someone seems uninterested or uncomprehending (whether or not they truly are), you may slow down, repeat, or overexplain, giving the impression you are ‘talking down.’ Frederick Erickson has shown that this can occur in conversations between black and white speakers, because of different habits with regard to showing listenership. Discourse Markers ‘Discourse markers’ is the term linguists give to the little words like ‘well’, ‘oh’, ‘but’, and ‘and’ that break our speech up into parts and show the relation between parts. ‘Oh’ prepares the hearer for a surprising or just-remembered item, and ‘but’ indicates that sentence to follow is in opposition to the one before. However, these markers don’t necessarily mean what the dictionary says they mean. Some people use ‘and’ just to start a new thought, and some people put ‘but’ at the end of their sentences, as a way of trailing off gently. Realizing that these words can function as discourse markers is important to prevent the frustration that can be experienced if you expect every word to have its dictionary meaning every time it’s used. Speech Acts Speech act analysis asks not what form the utterance takes but what it does. Saying â€Å"I now pronounce you man and wife† enacts a marriage. Studying speech acts such as complimenting allows discourse analysts to ask what counts as a compliment, who gives compliments to whom, and what other function they can serve. For example, linguists have observed that women are more likely both to give compliments and to get them. There are also cultural differences; in India, politeness requires that if someone compliments one of your possessions, you should offer to give the item as a gift, so complimenting can be a way of asking for things. An Indian woman who had just met her son’s American wife was shocked to hear her new daughter-in-law praise her beautiful saris. She commented, â€Å"What kind of girl did he marry? She wants everything!† By comparing how people in different cultures use language, discourse analysts hope to make a contribution to improving cross-cult ural understanding. How to do a discourse analysis The first point to note is that in order to do a discourse analysis you need to have read a handful yourself first. By reading published articles that use the method, you will have a better understanding of (1) how to do an analysis and (2) some of the theoretical orientations that you will need to know to do your own analysis. Having identified a theory and a chosen item (text or recorded conversation) to analyse, you need to transcribe it in one of the accepted/published ways. The transcript must always appear in the appendices. There are many different forms of discourse analysis, so here we will focus on thematic analysis as an example. What is thematic analysis? Thematic analysis is about trying to identify meaningful categories or themes in a body of data. By looking at the text, the researcher asks whether a number of recurring themes can be abstracted about what is being said. For example, on one level you might find an inconsistency, an attempt to assign blame, an attempt to cite others to support one’s views, a regular interruption of other people, an attempt to make one’s account of some event sound more authentic, and so on. On another level, you might idenitify a regulalry occurring attribution of blame or the repeated reference to some specific cause of an event. The reference might take slightly different forms but refers to the same cause. An example might be football fans blaming various aspects of a player’s motivation for the failure of their team (e.g., â€Å"he gets so much money, doesn’t need to try†, â€Å"he looked as though he wasn’t bothered†, â€Å"he didn’t want the ball†, and so on). In the results section of the report, the themes abstracted are collated and reported on. In doing so, it is usual to cite from the transcription examples of the points you are trying to make. A summary of the findings can be offered but also a critique of the author’s own interpretations – this refers to the concept of ‘reflexivity’, that the author’s is only one interpretation of the text.

Analysis Of The Penelopid Is A Novella By Margaret Atwood

Penelopid The Penelopid is a novella by Margaret Atwood, that tells the story of the Odyssey from Penelope’s perspective. Atwood incorporates many interesting elements in her work including, the women’s place in society, the fairness of justice, the double standard of the sexes at this time period, and a 21st century view on the Odyssey. Atwood uses different literary devices in her writing, such as the genres from the maids and the interesting perspective of writing from hades after death. Penelope’s view of the Odyssey, along with gender roles, reveal the patriarchal expectations though out the novel. In Atwood’s work there is justification to the unfairness, along with the roles women played in Penelope’s society. In the beginning of the Penelopid, Patriarchal social systems show where men have control over all aspects of women in their society. Reflecting back on the time period this is set in, Penelope’s marriage is being arranged by her father, King Icarius. It is told when the husband of a nobly born woman, he is expected to stay at the bride’s father’s palace to contribute his share of male offspring. In the beginning of the Penelopid the races to win Penelope’s hand in marriage, is quickly won by Odysseus, even with his known cheating. Rather than Odysseus staying with Penelope’s noble family he moves her back to Ithaca, where he becomes King. Shortly after they return to Ithaca, Penelope and Odysseus bare a son, named Telemachus. Before their marriage really