title: Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions

text: In 2022 (Season 38) the tournament took a new format which expanded the field to 21 contestants. The top three seeded contestants will qualify for the semifinal rounds; the remaining 18 contestants will play six quarterfinal games, with no wild-card spots given. The six winners will advance to the semifinals and join the top three seeds. The winners of the semifinal matches will advance to the finals, which will consist of a minimum of three and a maximum of seven games, similar to the "Greatest of All Time" tournament (see below). The first finalist to win three games will win the tournament and the $250,000 top prize. The second-place and third-place prizes will be determined first by number of wins, then by number of second-place finishes, and finally by total score across all games played, and will win $100,000 and $50,000, respectively.


title: Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions

text: From time to time, special Tournaments of Champions have been played. In 2002, the show held a Million Dollar Masters tournament. This was a two-week tournament where the winner won $1,000,000. It was taped at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. In 2005, the show held an Ultimate Tournament of Champions. It was a 15-week tournament with 145 players. The two players who made it to the finals would play against Ken Jennings for $2,000,000. In 2014, the show held a Battle of the Decades to commemorate the show's 30th anniversary. It was a 5-week tournament featuring 45 players; the field of contestants was broken up into three decades. The first three weeks featured players from their respective decades. Five winners from each decade advanced to the quarterfinals to compete for a $1,000,000 grand prize.


title: Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions

text: The following is a list of contestants and where they placed in the tournament. Prize amounts for the non-winning finalists who won more than the minimum guarantees are as indicated in parentheses.


title: Motorcycle

text: A motorcycle (or motorbike) is a vehicle used to transport people from one place to another. It does not have 4 wheels like a car. It has 2 wheels like a bicycle, and it has a motor like a car. A motorcycle is usually driven by one person. A passenger can also ride on the back of the motorcycle. Some motorcycles have a sidecar that can carry another passenger.


title: Motorcycle

text: In 1901, the first successful motorcycle was made by the company called "Indian motorcycles" in Springfield, Massachusetts. Since then, many other companies have made them. Major manufacturers include Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha. A well known American manufacturer of motorcycles is Harley-Davidson.


title: Motorcycle

text: Since motorcycles are lighter than almost all cars, they can accelerate more quickly. But it also makes them not as safe as cars, because they do not have a protecting chassis around them like cars. Very often motorcycle riders are injured heavily in accidents. Motorcycle riders should wear a helmet and other protective clothing like shoes and gloves, of which some have armor. This special clothing may reduce the rider's injuries in an accident. Motorcycles also do not protect riders against wind and rain. That makes it difficult to drive in winter or during bad weather.


title: Motorcycle

text: In poor countries, motorcycles are used by many as a cheap method of transportation. Many people who do not have the money to buy a car can afford a small motorcycle. In rich countries, large powerful motorcycles are used more as a hobby or sport.


title: Motorcycle

text: On-road bikes (ones that are allowed on public roads) require the rider to have a special type of driver's license to be ridden legally. Off-road bikes are not allowed to be driven on public roads.


title: Motorcycle

text: Speed and stunts are the main goals for off-road bike sports. Many on-road bikes are much faster than off-road bikes and can be used in sports such as motorbike racing.


title: Motorcycle

text: Motocross is a form of motorcycle racing. It is on an off-road circuit. The sport came from motorcycle trials competitions held in the United Kingdom.


title: Kanye West

text: Kanye Omari West (; born June 8, 1977, and legally named Ye since October 2021) is an American rapper, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer from Chicago, Illinois. In 2020, West ran for President of the United States, under his own political party, the Birthday Party.


title: Kanye West

text: He rose to fame in the mid 2000s. His first three albums, "The College Dropout", "Late Registration", and "Graduation" received many awards, critical acclaim, and commercial success. In 2008, he released his fourth album, "808s & Heartbreak". In 2010, he released his fifth album, titled "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy". In 2013, he released his sixth album, "Yeezus". "Yeezus" obtained great reviews from many music critics. In 2016, he released his seventh album, "The Life of Pablo". West also runs his own record label called GOOD Music.


title: Kanye West

text: Kanye Omari West was born at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. He was from a middle-class African-American family. He moved with his mother to Chicago, Illinois when he was three years old. He started writing poetry at the age of five. Kanye moved with his mother to Nanjing, China when he was 10. In 1997 West started taking painting classes at Chicago's American Academy of Art. After a short time he changed to Chicago State University to major in English. When he was 20 he left college to focus on music.


title: Kanye West

text: West started his music career as a producer creating beats for local Chicago artists. He was well known in these beats to take samples of old and popular soul songs, speed them up, raise the pitch and put these samples in his beats to enhance the sound. This is called Chipmunk Soul. In the late 1990s, West became a member of the amateur rap group called Go-Getters with GLC, Timmy G, and Really Doe. In 1999 they released their only album, "World Record Holders".


title: Kanye West

text: In 2003 West released his first mixtape, "Get Well Soon...". In "Get Well Soon..." He rapped on an instrumental from Twista's single "Slow Jamz". In 2004. West's first album "The College Dropout" was released by Roc-A-Fella. It entered the "Billboard" 200 at number two. Five singles were released from the album. That year West started a record label called GOOD Music. John Legend is signed to the label. West was nominated for three American Music Awards.


title: Kanye West

text: In 2005 West's second album "Late Registration" was released. Five singles were released from the album. The second single "Gold Digger" was nominated for Record of the Year at the 2006 Grammy Awards. West was also nominated for Best New Artists. Other rappers on the album included Jay-Z, Ludacris, and Mos Def. In 2005 West released his first fashion line. West's third album "Graduation" was released in 2007. The album was nominated for eight Grammy Awards. Five singles were released from the album. The album's second single "Stronger" won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance.


title: Kanye West

text: In 2008, West's fourth album "808s & Heartbreak" was released. The album was sung instead of rapped by West. It sold 450,145 copies in its first week. West acted in the 2008 movie "The Love Guru".


title: Kanye West

text: "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" was released on Roc-A-Fella Records in 2010. Music critics gave it great reviews. "Pitchfork" gave the album a score of 10/10. "Pitchfork" rarely gives a 10/10 rating, so this was a big achievement. "Rolling Stone" gave it five out of five stars. Four singles were released from the album.


title: Kanye West

text: In 2011 West released an album with Jay-Z called "Watch the Throne". In 2011 "All of the Lights" was released as the fourth single from "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy". Rihanna sang in it.


title: Kanye West

text: On May 23, 2012 a short film made by West called "Cruel Summer" was shown for the first time at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The film was given good reviews. The film's name came from an album West released called "Cruel Summer" on his record label GOOD Music.


title: Kanye West

text: On June 18, 2013 West's sixth album "Yeezus" was released. The album got very good reviews from music critics. In November 2013 West gave a lecture at Harvard University. On November 15, 2013 Busta Rhymes' single "Thank You" was released. West rapped on it with Lil Wayne and Q-Tip. On November 24, 2013, West said in an interview that he is making his seventh album. "New Slaves" was nominated for Best Rap Song at the 2014 Grammy Awards. On June 27 2015, West headlined Glastonbury Festival 2015 to much controversy.


title: Kanye West

text: On February 14 2016, Kanye West released "The Life of Pablo" on Tidal, Jay-Z's online music service. On April 1, 2016, West released "The Life Of Pablo" on other music services, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music.


title: Kanye West

text: West married Kim Kardashian in 2014. They have a daughter, North "Nori" West, who was born on June 15, 2013. They also have a son, Saint West, who was born on December 5, 2015. Their third child, daughter Chicago West, was born on January 15, 2018. They had their fourth child on May 9, 2019, a son named Psalm West. In January 2021, CNN reported that the couple were discussing divorce. On February 19, 2021, the couple officially filed for divorce. The divorce became official in 2022.


title: Kanye West

text: In August 2015 during MTV Video Music Award, West announced his candidacy for President of the United States in the 2020 election.


title: Kanye West

text: In September 2015, West announced that he intends to run for President of the United States in 2020. He later implied on Twitter that he intends to run for President in 2024 due to Donald Trump's rigged win in the 2016 election. On December 13, 2016, West met with President-elect Trump to discuss (according to West) "bullying, supporting teachers, modernizing curriculums, and violence in Chicago."


title: Kanye West

text: On July 4, 2020, West announced on Twitter that he would be running in the 2020 presidential election, although it's unclear if he has filed official paperwork to appear on ballots.


title: Economics

text: Economics is the social science which studies economic activity: how people make choices to get what they want. It has been defined as "the study of scarcity and choice" and is basically about the choices people make. It also studies what affects the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in an economy.


title: Economics

text: Investment and income relate to economics. The word comes from Ancient Greek, and relates to οἶκος oíkos "house" and νόμος nomos "custom" or "law". The models used in economics today were mostly started in the 19th century. People took ideas from political economy and added to them because they wanted to use an empirical approach similar to the one used in the natural sciences.


title: Economics

text: The subjects (actors) in economic study are households, business companies, the government (the state), and foreign countries. Households offer their "factors of production" to companies. This includes work, land, capital (things like machines and buildings) and information. In exchange for their factors of production, households get income which they use to consume (buy) goods from other subjects.


title: Economics

text: Business companies produce and sell goods and services and buy factors of production from households and from other companies.


title: Economics

text: The state or public sector includes institutions and organisations. The state takes some of the earnings from the business companies and households, and uses it to pay for "public goods" like streets or education, to be available for everyone. The last subject is foreign countries. This includes all households, business companies and state institutions, which are not based in one's own country. They demand and supply goods from abroad.


title: Economics

text: The objects (things acted upon) in economic study are consumer goods, capital goods, and factors of production. Consumer goods are classified as "usage goods" (for example, gasoline or toilet paper), as "purpose goods" (for example, a house or bicycle), and as "services" (for example, the work of a doctor or cleaning lady). Capital goods are goods which are necessary for producing other goods. Examples of these are buildings, equipment, and machines. Factors of production are work, ground, capital, information, and environment.


title: Economics

text: The ideas that economists have depend a lot on the times they live in. For example, Karl Marx lived in a time when workers' conditions were very poor, and John Maynard Keynes lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. Today's economists can look back and understand why they made their judgments, and try to make better ones.


title: Economics

text: Macroeconomics is about the economy in general. For example, macroeconomists study things that make a country's wealth go up and things that make millions of people lose their jobs. Microeconomics is about smaller and more specific things such as how families and households spend their money and how businesses operate.


title: Economics

text: Famous economists of the 19th and 20th century include Friedrich August von Hayek, Wassily Leontief, Carl Menger, and Léon Walras.


title: Niagara Falls

text: Niagara Falls is the collective, name of three big waterfalls on the Niagara River in eastern North America, on the border between the United States and Canada. The three waterfalls are: the Horseshoe Falls, sometimes called the Canadian Falls, the American Falls, and the smaller Bridal Veil Falls. The American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls are separated with Goat Island, and the Bridal Veil Falls separated from the other waterfalls with Luna Island. Niagara falls is very well known for both its beauty and hydroelectric power. It has been a tourist attraction, commercial site and hydroelectricity source since the 19th century.


title: Niagara Falls

text: It is located near Niagara Falls, New York in the United States and Niagara Falls, Ontario in Canada.The volume of water approaching the falls during peak flow season may sometimes be as much as 225,000 cubic feet (6,400 m3) per second. The cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, and Niagara Falls, New York, United States, are connected by two international bridges.


title: Niagara Falls

text: Niagara Falls were formed when glaciers receded at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation (the last ice age). Water from the newly formed Great Lakes carved a path through the Niagara Escarpment en route from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and the Atlantic Ocean. The Escarpment has hard limestone on top and soft shale below.


title: Niagara Falls

text: Although not very high, Niagara Falls is very wide, and is probably the most popular waterfall in the world. The Horseshoe Falls are the largest out of the three falls. It is named the Horseshoe Falls because it looks like a horse shoe.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Hyderabad (pronounced ( )) is the largest capital of the state of Telangana. At over 12.2 million, it has the largest population of any city in the state Hyderabad is an A-1 city under the terms of development priorities. It is also known as "city of pearls" or "city of Nizams". The people of Hyderabad are called "Hyderabadis."


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Hyderabad was founded in 1591 AD by Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah on the banks of river Musi. It was later ruled by the Mughal governor Nizam Asaf Jah I who then founded the Asaf Jahi Dynasty (Also known as The Nizams). There were a total of 10 Nizams with the last one being Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: The city is home to the Ramoji Film City which spans an area of over . The movieindustry here is called The "Hyderabad Deccan Urdu" film industry (also known as "Deccanwood").


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Archaeologists have found Iron Age sites in Hyderabad that are 2,500 years old. These sites have been found near Haythnagar and Ramoji Film City, and have burials and tools. The Qutub Shahi kings ruled Hyderabad till 1687 when the city was taken over by the Mughals. Muhammad Quli Qutub Shah was a Qutub Shahi ruler who ordered the construction of the Charminar as a mosque. Nawab Abdul Hassan Shah who is popularly known as Tanisha was the last Qutub Shahi ruler of Hyderabad before Aurangzeb captured it in 1687. Asaf Jah was declared the governor of Hyderabad by Aurangzeb. This is how the Asaf Jahi Dynasty began which ruled Hyderabad till 1948.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Hyderabad became a princely state in 1947 after the collaboration with India. But soon the Nizam had to sign an Instrument of Accession to the Union of India so that Hyderabad becomes a part of India. On 1 November 1956, the province of Hyderabad was divided into Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh on the basis of language. So, Hyderabad came into the Telugu speaking community and thus became the capital of Andhra Pradesh. The state of Telangana was formed on 2 June 2014 and separated from Andhra Pradesh retaining Hyderabad as it's capital.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: The city has now developed in fields of IT with four IT universities including JNTU (Jawaharlal Nehru's Technological University ). The rise of International Airport and real estate has a major impact on the development of Hyderabad.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Hyderabad is situated at the Deccan Plateau, 500 meters above the sea level and most of the area is rocky. Paddy is the main crop grown and other crops include Bengal gram, groundnut, sugar cane and sunflower. Hyderabad was found on the banks of Musi river in 1591. Today that area is known as old city where Mecca Masjid and Hussain Sagar Lake exist. The area has many official buildings and that area is very old. From the recent time, Hyderabad has been merged with Secunderabad. This has led a large, united and populous city with many villages surrounding it.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Hyderabad has a hot, wet and dry climate. The monsoon or rainy season is from late June until late October. On average, 32 inches of rain falls on the city each year. The highest temperature ever recorded was 51.5 °C (113.9 °F) on 2 June 1966. The lowest recorded temperature was 1.1 °C (43 °F) on 8 January 1946. It is cooler in the evenings and mornings because the city is high above sea level.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: The city has a population of over four million. Hindus form the majority while Muslims are 40% of the population. The Muslim community of Hyderabad is largest in Telangana. Muslims are mainly located in and around the old city. Christians are small in number in the city. Famous churches include those around Abids and Secunderabad like St. Joseph's Cathedral.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Charminar is actually founded as a Mosque and later by archaeological department changed into a monument. Charminar has long been the icon of Hyderabad. The name means "Four minarets". The towers rise to a height of 48.7 m above the ground. There is a mosque with 45 prayer spaces in the upper storeys of the building.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: The Golconda Fort was the capital of the Qutb Shahi kingdom. In the 16th century, it was the center of a busy diamond trade. The outer wall of the fort is 10 km around.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Mecca Masjid is one of the oldest mosques in the city. Muhammed Quli Qutub Shah began building it in 1617. Mughal emperor Aurangzeb finished the building in 1694. The mosque is made of granite. The main hall of the mosque is 75 feet high, 220 feet wide and 180 feet long. Ten thousand worshippers can fit inside at the same time. The entrance arches are made of single slabs of granite. It is believed that Muhammed Quli had bricks made from earth brought from Mecca. He used them the central arch of the mosque. This explains the name of the mosque.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: The Chowmahalla Palace was Asaf Jahi dynasty capital. The Nizam entertained official guests and royal visitors here.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Nawab Viqar al-Umra built Falaknuma Palace in 1872. The palace includes sculptures by artists from Florence.


title: Hyderabad, India

text: Telugu, Urdu and Hindi are mainly spoken in Hyderabad. English is also spoken among the educated people. The Telugu dialect spoken across Telangana is very different from the one in the Andhra Pradesh Region.


title: Nikola Tesla

text: Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943), was an ethnically Serbian inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer and physicist. He is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. He was born in the village of Smiljan, in the part of former Austria-Hungary that is now Croatia. He later became an American citizen.


title: Nikola Tesla

text: Tesla got his first job in Budapest in 1882, working at a telephone company. A few years later he moved to the United States. Even in his early life, he was inventing things. His best known invention was an electric motor that could run well on AC power. Tesla died of coronary thrombosis in a hotel room in Manhattan, New York City on 7 January 1943. Elon Musk was inspired by him for his very famous project: Tesla.


title: Nikola Tesla

text: Tesla was born on 10 July 1856 in Smiljan, Austro-Hungarian Empire (modern-day Croatia), from a Serbian family. Tesla's father, Milutin Tesla, was a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church. His mother, Đuka Mandić, could useful household tools. Even she was a daughter of the Serbian Orthodox Church priest. Although very smart and with excellent memory, (she knew thousands of lines from "Gorski Vijenac" by Petar Petrovic Njegos) she had to take care of her siblings when her mother, Sofia Budisavljevic, died. Nikola Tesla's mother was a great influence on him. Both his parents were born in Lika, Croatia. He was the fourth child out of five. He had one older brother, Dane, who died when Tesla was 5, two older sisters, Angelina and Milka, and one younger sister, Marica.


title: Nikola Tesla

text: Tesla, who loved science, was afraid that after his brother's accidental death he would have to continue the family tradition and become a priest. After he graduated from a prestigious High School in Karlovac, Croatia, he went back to Gospic during summer to see his family and almost died of cholera. He asked his father if he could go study engineering if by miracle he survived, and the father promised his dying son to send him to the best school in the whole world. Nikola's health improved quickly and his father sent him to study at the Technical College in Graz, Austria, in 1875.


title: Nikola Tesla

text: Tesla had a job in telephony and electrical engineering before moving to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison. They quarrelled, and soon Tesla started working on his own with other people investing in his work. He set up laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical devices. His patented AC electric motor (induction motor) and transformer were licensed by American industrialist George Westinghouse.


title: Nikola Tesla

text: Westinghouse also hired Tesla for one year to help develop a power system using alternating current. The advantage that popularized alternating current is the use of transformers for long distance electric power transmission. Tesla is also known for his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs, Colorado which included inventions and ideas used in the invention of radio communication, for his X-ray experiments, and for his unsuccessful attempt at worldwide wireless transmission in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.


title: Nikola Tesla

text: Tesla's achievements made him very famous. So did his abilities as a showman, demonstrating his seemingly miraculous inventions. Although he made a great deal of money from his patents, he spent a lot on his experiments. He lived for most of his life in a series of hotels in New York City. The end of his patent income and eventual bankruptcy led him to live in much poorer circumstances. Tesla still continued to invite the press to parties he held on his birthday to announce new inventions he was working and make (sometimes unusual) statements. Because of his wonderful pronouncements without results or proof, Tesla gained a reputation in popular culture as the archetypal "mad scientist". He died in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel on 7 January 1943.


title: Nikola Tesla

text: Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but since the 1990s, his reputation has experienced a comeback in popular culture. His work and reputed inventions are also at the center of many conspiracy theories and have also been used to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories and New Age occultism. In 1960, in honor of Tesla, the General Conference on Weights and Measures for the International System of Units dedicated the term "tesla" to the SI unit measure for magnetic field strength.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: A Molotov cocktail, also known as a petrol bomb, fire bomb, or benzine torch, is a simple incendiary device, meant to start a fire. It is relatively easy to make and is used by irregular paramilitary forces and by rioters. It is also used for arson.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: It was used for the first time in the Spanish Civil War between July 1936 and April 1939, but it became known as "Molotov cocktails" only during the Second World War.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: A Molotov cocktail consists of a glass bottle partly filled with a flammable liquid. The liquid will typically be gasoline, alcohol, methanol or ethanol. The mouth of the bottle is closed with a cork or other type of tight sealing made of rubber, glass, or plastic, and a cloth rag is fixed securely around the mouth. The weapon is used by first soaking the rag in a flammable liquid immediately before using it, lighting the rag, and throwing the bottle at the target. The bottle breaks when it lands, spilling the flammable liquid over the target, which is then ignited by the burning rag.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: Many substances may be added to the basic Molotov cocktail to enhance its use as a weapon. These include:


title: Molotov cocktail

text: Molotov cocktails are similar to napalm bombs in principle. Napalm was originally made by combining flammable naphthalene and petrol with a thickening agent palmitic acid. The latter two are the main ingredients of Molotov cocktails. When gasoline is used as the main ingredient, motor oil is commonly added to help the gasoline cling to the target.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: The name "Molotov cocktail" is derived from Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, a Soviet politician. He was the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, or the Foreign Minister, of the Soviet Union.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: During the early part of World War II, when Finland refused to surrender some land to the Soviet Union, the Soviets invaded it. The poorly equipped and heavily outnumbered Finnish Army faced Red Army tanks in what came to be known as the Winter War. The army borrowed an improvised incendiary device from the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War. In that conflict, the Spanish Nationalists under the orders of General Francisco Franco had used the weapon against Soviet T-26 tanks. Those tanks helped the Spanish Republicans in a failed 1936 Soviet assault near Toledo, 30 km from Madrid.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: When Molotov claimed in radio broadcasts that the Soviet Union was not dropping bombs but rather delivering food to the starving Finns, the Finns started to call the air bombs satirically "Molotov bread baskets". Soon they responded by saluting the advancing tanks with "Molotov cocktails." At first the term was used to describe only the burning mixture itself, but the term was soon applied to the combination of both the bottle and its contents. This Finnish use of the hand- or sling-thrown explosive against Soviet tanks was repeated in the subsequent Continuation War. Molotov cocktails were eventually mass-produced by the Finnish military, bundled with matches to light them.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: These weapons saw widespread use by all sides in World War II. They were very effective against light tanks, and very bad for enemy morale. The following is a first-hand description of their effects, written during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943:


title: Molotov cocktail

text: During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, members of the Israeli Kibbutz Degania managed to stop a Syrian tank assault by using Molotov cocktails. They were frequently used against Soviet tanks with great efficiency in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: The weapon has been used against tanks effectively because of the conformation of parts of tanks, particularly around the undersides and fuel tank "entrances". A Molotov cocktail could blow up the fuel tank, destroying the machine, particularly for older (before 1940) tank models. Molotov cocktails are much more effective against gasoline engines than diesel engines' tanks. This is because diesel has a high flashpoint of 64 °C – making it more difficult to ignite compared to petrol. Some Soviet tanks actually had an entry to the gas tank on the side of the vehicle, which could be opened by combatants in close quarters, letting out the highly flammable liquid and making destruction of the tank even easier. These tactics are effective only inside a small space, where tanks cannot easily maneuver. In such conditions quick-moving enemies, armed with incendiary bombs, have a huge advantage.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: Petrol bombs were widely used throughout the Troubles in Northern Ireland in riot situations, directed towards the RUC or the British Army. As well as occasional situations where they continue to be used against the PSNI and army, they are frequently used in sectarian attacks on homes and businesses by both communities. Fireworks and homemade grenades, known as blast bombs now commonly accompany petrol bomb attacks on the security forces.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: As such things can cause a lot of damage, and actually kill people, it is illegal in most countries to make or possess them. When they are used against property, this usually counts as "arson". When they are used against people, the charges range from manslaughter to murder.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: Molotov cocktails were put to use recently during the riotous 2005 civil unrest in France. Another situation with popularity for them is the Palestinian Intifada.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: In Sydney, during the Cronulla Riots, rioters carrying Molotov cocktails were apprehended when they carried open bottles in a bus. The resulting smell of petrol alerted the driver, who in turn alerted the police.


title: Molotov cocktail

text: During the Columbine High School massacre, the two gunmen built and threw several Molotov cocktails; however, none of them exploded. It is presumed that this was due to bottles being overfilled.


title: Telegram (software)

text: Telegram Messenger is a messaging service which lets its users send each other messages, photos, videos and documents (all file types are supported). The client applications are open source and the server is proprietary software (closed source). It is based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.


title: Telegram (software)

text: Telegram was started in 2013 by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the creators of VK, the largest social network of Russia.


title: Telegram (software)

text: Telegram is registered as a company in the British Virgin Islands and as an LLC in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Pavel Durov said that the service was headquartered in Berlin, Germany, between 2014 and early 2015, but moved to different jurisdictions after failing to obtain residence permits for everyone on the team. According to press reports, Telegram had employees in Saint Petersburg, Russia, from 2014 to 2017. The Telegram team is based in Dubai as of 2017.


title: Telegram (software)

text: In April 2018, Russian court ruled to block Telegram in Russia. Some Russians tried to circumvent the ban by using open proxies in other countries.


title: Telegram (software)

text: On 5 October 2021, Telegram gained over 70 million new users as a result of an outage which affected Facebook and its affiliates.


title: Telegram (software)

text: Telegram lets its users send voice notes, photos, videos and files of all types. Groups can also have a maximum of 200,000 members. Telegram uses a similar system of message read statuses to WhatsApp, with 1 check = sent, 2 checks = read (opened).


title: Polish language

text: Polish () is the official language of Poland. It is the most common Western Slavic language and the second Slavic language, after Russian.


title: Polish language

text: Polish has been an important language in Central and Eastern Europe. Polish is now spoken by over 43.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a Second language in western parts of Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine. Because of emigration during different times, millions of Polish-speakers can be found in Australia, Ireland, Brazil, Canada, United Kingdom, United States and elsewhere. There are over 50 million speakers around the world.


title: Polish language

text: There are 9 letters in Polish that English does not have. They look like English letters with marks above or below them.


title: Polish language

text: There are 7 combinations of 2 letters that are like a single letter sound (similar to "th" or "qu" in English). These include "ch", "cz", "dz", "dź", "dż", "rz", "sz".


title: Polish language

text: Many letters have the same sound in Polish and English, such as "f" "m", and others, but other letters sound different: Polish "w" sounds like an English "v", and Polish "ł" sounds like an English "w". There are also some Polish sounds that do not exist in English and some English sounds that do not exist in Polish.


title: Polish language

text: The vowels "ą" and "ę" are nasal and so they are pronounced by blowing air partly out of both the nose and the mouth.


title: Polish language

text: Most words are pronounced with an accent on the second-last syllable: "student" (which means the same as the English word) is pronounced with the accent on "stu" ("STU-dent"), and "studenci" (the plural form of "student") is pronounced with the accent on "den" (stu-DEN-ci).


title: Polish language

text: The Polish language has several dialects but they are more similar to one another than most other European languages. There are small differences, but all speakers can understand one another, and non-native speakers often cannot notice the differences.


title: Polish language

text: Like many other languages, Polish has grammatical gender. A table ("stół") is masculine, a book ("książka") is feminine, and a window ("okno") is neuter.


title: Polish language

text: Nouns and adjectives and verbs have many endings, depending on their role in a sentence. There are 7 cases that show the role of a noun in a Polish sentence. Each has its own ending, which also depends on the gender of the noun.


title: Polish language

text: Word order is freer than in English, partly because the case and gender endings help to understand the role of the noun. In English, "The boy bites the dog" is quite different from "The dog bites the boy", but in Polish, both orders can be used without confusion.


title: Polish language

text: Tak (tahk) - "Yes" (in Polish, long-short answers like "Yes, I did" are not needed, and Tak is enough)


title: Polish language

text: Nie (nyeh) - "No" or "Not" (in Polish, long-short answers like "No, I won't" are not needed, and Nie is enough)


title: Polish language

text: Jak się nazywasz? (YAHK shyeh nahZYvash) or Jak masz na imię? (YAHK mahsh nah EE-myeng/EE-myeh) - "What's your name?"


title: Polish language

text: Jak dojechać na lotnisko/dworzec (yak do-YEH-khatch nah lot-NEE-sco/dvo-ZHETS) - "How do you get the airport/rail station?"(where dworzec - "station" means "rail station" by default)


title: Tennis

text: Tennis is a sport played with a felt-covered rubber ball, a tennis racket, and a court. Since 1998, every September 23 has been called "Tennis Day". Tennis’s official name is "lawn tennis".


title: Tennis

text: First, early in the 11th century, players in France played a sport like this with their hands. It was called “Jeu de Paume”. In the 15th century the players played with rackets. Now it is called “tennis”. It became popular in England and France. King Henry III of France was a big fan of the game. This kind of sport is still played but is known as real tennis ("real" here meaning "royal"). The sport of "lawn tennis" played on grass courts was invented in mid 19th-century England and later spread into many other countries. The name of the sport is usually shortened to "tennis".


title: Tennis

text: There are many different kinds of courts, like grass, clay or hard court. The goal of tennis is to hit the ball over the net into the other player’s court. When the other player cannot return the ball, a point is won. The game is played with two or four people. When it is played with two people, it is called “singles”, and when it is played with four people, it is called “doubles”. The court has "alleys" on each side, which are "fair" territory when playing doubles.


title: Tennis

text: A tennis game has a number of sets. Each set has a number of games, and each game has points. The points are counted love (0, after the French l'oeuf), fifteen (15), thirty (30), and forty (40). If both players get to forty, the score is "deuce" from which 2 more points are needed to win the game. When one player reaches six games, it is one set. If it is a three-set match, the player who wins two sets first is the winner. If the game count reaches 5–5, the set must be won with two more games than the other player, like 7–5 or 8–6. If the game count gets to 6–6, a "tiebreaker" is played. In a tiebreak, players have to get at least seven points while getting two more points than the other player to win the set. In tiebreak points are called “one,” “two,” etc.


title: Tennis

text: There is also soft tennis. Soft tennis is different from regulation tennis. For example, the racket, ball and rules are much different. Soft tennis is popular in Japan. Thousands of people play soft tennis. Tennis is quite a popular sport which lots of people enjoy watching.


title: Tennis

text: There are many different "shots" and "strokes", ways to hit the ball, in tennis. A stroke is the way the body is moved to hit the ball. A shot is how the ball is hit. These include:


title: Tennis

text: Tennis is now a sport that is played at the Olympics. They also have big tournaments like the U.S. Open, Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. These four are known as Grand Slam events.


title: Tennis

text: They are the most important tennis tournaments of each season (year). This is because of the world ranking points, tradition, prize-money, and public attention.


title: Coconut palm

text: The coconut palm is a palm tree in the family Arecaceae (palm family). It is a large palm, growing to 30 m tall. It has leaves that are 4–6 m long. The term "coconut" refers to the fruit of the coconut palm


title: Coconut palm

text: There are many coconut palms on the coasts of Indonesia, India, America, South Sudan, Bangladesh and Tanzania. People of this area use coconut milk in cooking. Women use coconut oil as oil for their hair. The coconut's shell is relatively hard, but can be broken. Because its shell is hard, it can be used as an ingredient to make craftworks.


title: Coconut palm

text: Coconut milk is also used in many drinks. Coconut oil is often in food and soaps. People in Sri Lanka use coconut flowers for wedding celebrations. In the Maldives it is the National tree.


title: Coconut palm

text: The coconut is not actually a nut, but is in fact a drupe. Coconuts grow in tropical countries. The flesh of a coconut is white and can be eaten raw or used in cooking. It is used in many of the foods we eat for flavour. It is native to tropical areas.


title: Coconut palm

text: Coconuts floats on water and can float to another island and germinate there. It has often been noted that coconuts can travel up to 110 days, or 3000 miles, by sea and still be able to germinate.


title: Vietnam

text: Vietnam () is a country in Southeast Asia. The long-form name of the country is the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The neighboring countries of Vietnam are China, Laos and Cambodia. Vietnam is one of five countries that still have a communist government. The capital of Vietnam is Hanoi. The biggest city is Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). There are about 94,444,200 people living in Vietnam.


title: Vietnam

text: After the Japanese occupation in the 1940s, the Vietnamese fought French colonial rule during the First Indochina War between the Viet Minh and the French in 2 September 1945. Hồ Chí Minh declared Vietnam's independence from France under the new name of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, but French colonialists tried to put down the independence movement. In 1954, the Vietnamese declared victory in Dien Bien Phu which took place between March and May 1954 and culminated in a major French defeat. Shortly after Vietnamese independence, Vietnam was divided into two political states, North Vietnam (officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (officially the Republic of Vietnam). Conflicts between the two sides intensified in the so-called Vietnam War with strong influence from the US in South Vietnam. The war ended in 1975 with a North Vietnamese victory.


title: Vietnam

text: Vietnam was then united under a communist government. In 1986, the government made many economic and political changes that began Vietnam's path to be a part of the world economy. By 2000, it had form diplomatic relations with all nations. Since 2000, Vietnam's economic growth has been among the highest in the world, and in 2011 it had the highest global growth generator index among 11 major economies. Its successful economic reforms resulted in its becoming a member of the World Trade Organization in 2007. It is also a member of economic cooperation between Asia and the Pacific and the International de la Francophonie Organization.


title: Vietnam

text: In Vietnam, the approximate population is 97,094,658. 25.2% of these people are aged between 0-14, with 11,954,354 being male and 10,868,610 being female. 69.3% of the population are between the ages of 15-64. The male-to-female ratio is almost evenly split, with 31,301,879 being male and 31,419,306 being female. 5.5% are 65 and over, with 1,921,652 being male and 3,092,589 being female. So within the older two categories, there are more women than men.


title: Vietnam

text: The population is not from one origin. There are many ethnic tribes that developed in the history of Vietnam. This makes Vietnam's history and culture very diverse. It's not the same as a country where every family landed on the country's shores in the same century. French and Chinese colonization didn't involve an excessive migration of people to Vietnam.


title: Vietnam

text: Nowadays, the blend of cultures has been increasing with the influence of globalization and world interest. Many Vietnamese that have been living overseas are described as the Viet Kieu. The population has several communities in many countries around the world.


title: Vietnam

text: The length of the country, from North to South, is 1,650 kilometers (1,025 miles). "At its narrowest point, Vietnam is only 30 miles (48 kilometers) wide". Due to the long and narrow shape of Vietnam, the weather in the country varies considerably from north to south. Northern Vietnam offers a humid subtropical climate with four distinct seasons (winter, spring, summer, and fall) while Southern Vietnam is hot year-round.


title: Vietnam

text: The country is covered in rainforests that are currently going through rapid deforestation. It borders the South China Sea to the east, Laos and Cambodia to the west, and China to the north. The country is slightly larger than Malaysia and smaller than Japan.


title: Vietnam

text: Vietnam's history has long been characterized by the neighborhood of China in the north. For about 1,000 years, northern Vietnam belonged to China, but from 938 the country became independent and later expanded southward at the expense of the Champa kingdom. In the 19th century the country was colonized by France and during the Second World War, the country was occupied by Japan. After this war, the colonial empire did not have the resources to restore the regime and lost the military battle against the liberation forces. This led to the division of the country, which in turn led to the Vietnam War with major human and material losses for the country. The war ended on 30 April 1975 by the fact that North Vietnam took the southern part. After experimental planning in the 1970s and 1980s, the economy was reformed in a market economy direction.


title: Vietnam

text: About 5000 years ago, the two ethnic tribes of the Lac Viet and Au Viet lived together in many areas with other inhabitants. Due to increasing needs to control floods, fights against invaders, and culture and trade exchanges, these tribes living near each other tended to gather together and integrate into a larger mixed group.


title: Vietnam

text: Among these Lac Viet tribes was the Van Lang, which was the most powerful tribe. The leader of this tribe later joined all the tribes together to found Van Lang Nation in 2897 BC, addressing himself as the King Hung. The next generations followed in their father's footsteps and kept this appellation. Based on historical documents, researchers correlatively delineated the location of Van Lang Nation to the present day regions of North and north of Central Vietnam, as well as the south of present-day Kwangsi (China). The Van Lang Nation lasted to the 3rd century B.C.


title: Vietnam

text: The Dong Son civilization that covered much of Southeast Asia was also the beginning of Vietnam's history. In 221 BC, the Qins invaded the land of the Viet tribes. Thuc Phan, leader of the alliance of Au-Viet tribes managed to expel the enemies and declared himself King An Duong Vuong and his territory Au Lac Nation (257-207 BC). In 208 BC, a Qin Dynasty general named Triệu Đà invaded Au Lac. An Duong Vuong failed this time. As a result, the northern feudalist took turns dominating the country over the next eleven centuries, establishing their harsh regime in the country and dividing the country into administrative regions and districts with unfamiliar names. However, the country's name of Au Lac could not be erased from the people's minds in their everyday life.


title: Vietnam

text: In 207 BC Triệu Đà established a state called Nam Việt which encompassed southern China and the Red River Delta. The historical significance of the original Nam Việt remains controversial because some historians consider it a Chinese occupation while others believe it was an independent era. For most of the period from 111 BCE to the early 10th century, Vietnam was under the rule of successive Chinese dynasties. Sporadic independence movements were attempted, but were quickly suppressed by Chinese forces.


title: Vietnam

text: The kings of Champa (Chiêm Thành in Vietnamese) started construction of Hindu temples at Mỹ Sơn in the 4th century AD.


title: Vietnam

text: In 1930 Nguyễn Ái Quốc established the Vietnamese Independence League ("Việt Nam Ðộc Lập Ðồng Minh Hội") which is also known as the Việt Minh.


title: Vietnam

text: The Japanese took over Vietnam in World War II. The Việt Minh fought against both the Japanese and the Vichy French.


title: Vietnam

text: When the Japanese were defeated, the Vietnamese people, led by the Việt Minh started the August Revolution.


title: Vietnam

text: On 2 September 1945, Nguyễn Ái Quốc (who was now calling himself Hồ Chí Minh, meaning 'Hồ (a common last name) with the will of light') read the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Ba Ðình Square, in Hànội. It was based on the American Declaration of Independence.


title: Vietnam

text: The "Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina" ("République Autonome de Cochinchine") was proclaimed 1 June 1946 to frustrate the Việt Minh's desire to rule all of Vietnam.


title: Vietnam

text: The War between France and the Việt Minh lasted from 1946 to 1954. The French were defeated in 1954 after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.


title: Vietnam

text: The nation was then divided into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. After independence was achieved, the French gave the land of the Mekong delta that was part of Cambodia to South Vietnam. The anti-communist United States had a lot of influence in the South, and the communist and nationalist Việt Minh controlled the North. Hồ Chí Minh was extremely popular in the whole nation, as he was the only remaining leader after years of fighting, so he became President of the Democratic Republic of (North) Việtnam. It was agreed that the nation would be reunited by elections in 1956. But, the Americans and the Southern government stopped the elections from happening because they expected Hồ Chí Minh to win because communist North Vietnam refused to hold free elections. Dwight Eisenhower said he thought Hồ would win with around 80% of the vote if elections were held because of the majority of the population being in the north added with Ho's few supporters in the South.


title: Vietnam

text: Soon, the USA was at war with Vietnam. This war was known as the American War, the Vietnam War, or the Second Indochinese War. Soon, South Vietnam became a military dictatorship with some basic freedoms. The Southern army removed the controversial Ngo Dinh Diem from power and killed him.


title: Vietnam

text: On 30 April 1975, the National Liberation Front with the help of the N.V.A. overtook Sàigòn, which was the capital of South Vietnam and quickly renamed it Hồ Chí Minh City. The city is still colloquially called Saigon. The nation was fully reunified as Socialist Republic of Vietnam on 2 July 1976.


title: Vietnam

text: Vietnam is divided into 58 provinces. There are also five city municipalities which have province authority.


title: Vietnam

text: "Vietnam provides no incentives for students to return to Vietnam from their foreign graduate programmes" was the opinion (in 2011) of French physicist Pierre Darriulat.


title: Pac-Man

text: Pac-Man is an arcade video game that was made by Namco and designed by Toru Iwatani. It was released in 1980, and became very popular in the history of games.


title: Pac-Man

text: In "Pac-Man", the player makes a Pac-Man, a yellow disc, move around a maze. The ghosts are Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde. The goal is to eat every yellow pellet (circles) while not getting caught by the ghosts/monsters. For extra points, fruits that appear can also be eaten. When Pac-Man eats a big pellet, the ghosts turn blue for a short period of time and can be eaten. The time that the ghosts are blue generally decreases from one stage to the next. Beginning at stage 19, the ghosts do not turn blue at all when a power pellet is eaten. Even though the game has 256 stages, the last level can not be finished due to a problem with the creation of the game.


title: Pac-Man

text: The player begins the game with 3 lives, and lose one each time Pac-man collides with a ghost. The game ends when all lives are lost. Pac-man gets an extra life once the player gets 10,000 points.


title: Pac-Man

text: The game is called Puck-Man in Japan. The game was renamed to "Pac-Man" in the United States so that nobody could change the "P" to "F". There were many sequels and remakes based on the game. Hanna-Barbera made a animated TV show airing on ABC in the early 1970s. The game was also part of "Namco Museum" games. There is a "Namco Museum Remix" for the Wii.


title: Boxing

text: Boxing is one of the world's oldest combat sports. It is held in a ring and two boxers (people who fight in boxing fights) wear padded gloves and try to hit one another.


title: Boxing

text: There are a few different ways to win in boxing. One is by a way of a knockout, which is when a fighter is punched and falls to the ground and cannot get back up within ten seconds. Another way is by a technical knockout, which is when the fighter can not continue fighting thus the referee stops the fight. Technical knockout wins and losses are also knockout wins or losses for a boxer. Another possibility is winning on points, which a boxer gets by outboxing his or her opponent by hitting the opponent more often, harder, and more accurately. There are also draws in boxing. What in other sports are called "tie" in boxing it's called "draw". A referee can announce a technical draw due to an accidental cut or an accidental wound like a headbutt. Generally, it is considered a "no contest" (NC)-in which case, the fight is considered as not having taken place at all and not counting as a fight. However, after the fourth round, if the score cards for both fighters are equal, the fight could be called a draw. It is a way to defeat your enemy by brute physical force. Each round lasts 3 minutes for men, 2 minutes for women.


title: Atom

text: An atom is the basic unit of matter. All normal matter – everything that has mass – is made of atoms. This includes solids, liquids, and gases. The atom cannot be broken to parts by chemistry, so people once thought it was the smallest and simplest particle of matter. There are over 100 different types of atoms, called chemical elements. Each type has the same basic structure, but a different number of parts.


title: Atom

text: Atoms are very small, but their exact size depends on the type. Atoms are from 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers across. One nanometer is about 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. This makes one atom impossible to see without special tools. Scientists learn how they work by doing experiments.


title: Atom

text: Atoms are made of three types of subatomic particles. These are protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons have more mass, and are in the middle of the atom, the nucleus. The nucleus is very small and dense. It is surrounded by lightweight electrons. Electrons are attracted to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force because they have opposite electric charges.


title: Atom

text: Atoms with the same number of protons belong to the same chemical element. Examples of elements are carbon and gold. Atoms with the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons, are called isotopes. Usually an atom has the same number of electrons as protons. If an atom has more or less electrons than protons, it is called an ion, and has an electric charge.


title: Atom

text: Atoms can join by chemical bonds. Many things are made of more than one type of atom. These are chemical compounds or mixtures. A group of atoms connected by chemical bonds is called a molecule. For example, a water molecule is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The forming or breaking of bonds is a chemical reaction.


title: Atom

text: Atoms split if the forces inside are too weak to hold them together. This is what causes radioactivity. Atoms can also join to make larger atoms at very high temperatures, such as inside a star. These changes are studied in nuclear physics. Most atoms on Earth are not radioactive. They are rarely made, destroyed, or changed into another type of atom.


title: Atom

text: The word "atom" comes from the Greek (ἀτόμος) "atomos", which means "indivisible" or "uncuttable". One of the the first people to use the word "atom" is the Greek philosopher Democritus, around 400 . He thought that everything was made of particles called atoms. In his view, atoms moved in empty space, and they could not be divided into smaller pieces. Some Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist philosophers also had ideas like this. Atomic theory was a mostly philosophical subject, with not much scientific investigation or study, until the early 1800s.


title: Atom

text: In 1777 French chemist Antoine Lavoisier defined the term "element" as we use it today. He said that an element was any substance that could not be broken down into other substances by the methods of chemistry. Any substance which could be broken down was a "compound".


title: Atom

text: In 1803, English philosopher John Dalton suggested that elements were made of tiny, solid balls called atoms. Dalton believed that all atoms of the same element have the same mass. He said that compounds are formed when atoms of more than one element combine. According to Dalton, in a certain compound, the atoms of the compound's elements always combine in the same way.


title: Atom

text: In 1827, British scientist Robert Brown looked at pollen grains in water under his microscope. The pollen grains appeared to be shaking. Brown used Dalton's atomic theory to describe patterns in how they moved. This was called "Brownian motion". In 1905 Albert Einstein used mathematics to prove that the pollen particles were being moved by the motion, or heat, of individual water molecules. By doing this, he conclusively proved the existence of the atom.


title: Atom

text: In 1869, Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev published the first periodic table. The periodic table groups elements by their atomic number (how many protons they have; this is usually the same as the number of electrons).


title: Atom

text: Elements in the same column, or period, usually have similar properties. For example, helium, neon, argon, krypton and xenon are all in the same column and have very similar properties. All these elements are gases that have no color or smell. Also, they cannot combine with other atoms to form compounds. Together they are known as the noble gases.


title: Atom

text: The physicist J.J. Thomson was the first person to discover electrons. This happened while he was working with cathode rays in 1897. He realized they had a negative charge, and the rest of the atom had a positive charge. Thomson made the plum pudding model, which said that an atom was like plum pudding: the dried fruit (electrons) were stuck in a mass of pudding (having a positive charge).


title: Atom

text: In 1909, Ernest Rutherford used the Geiger–Marsden experiment to prove that most of an atom is in a very small space, the atomic nucleus. Rutherford took a photo plate and covered it with gold foil. He then shot alpha particles (made of two protons and two neutrons stuck together) at it. Many of the particles went through the gold foil, which proved that atoms are mostly empty space. Electrons are so small and fast-moving that they did not block the particles from going through. Rutherford later discovered protons in the nucleus.


title: Atom

text: In 1913, Niels Bohr introduced the Bohr model. This model showed that electrons travel around the nucleus in fixed circular orbits. This was more accurate than the Rutherford model, but it was still not completely right. Improvements to the Bohr model have been made after it was first introduced.


title: Atom

text: In 1925, chemist Frederick Soddy discovered that some elements in the periodic table had more than one kind of atom, called isotopes. Soddy believed that each different isotope of an element has a different mass. To prove this, chemist Francis William Aston built the mass spectrometer, which measures the mass of individual atoms. Aston proved that Soddy was right. He also found that the mass of each atom is a whole number times the mass of the proton. This meant that there must be some particle in the nucleus besides protons. In 1932, physicist James Chadwick shot alpha particles at beryllium atoms. He saw that a particle shot out of the beryllium atoms. This particle had no charge, but about the same mass as a proton. He named this particle the neutron.


title: Atom

text: The most accurate model so far comes from the Schrödinger equation. Schrödinger learned that the electrons exist in a cloud around the nucleus, called the electron cloud. In the electron cloud, it is impossible to know exactly where electrons are. The Schrödinger equation says where an electron is likely to be. This area is called the electron's orbital.


title: Atom

text: In 1937, German chemist Otto Hahn became the first person to make nuclear fission in a laboratory. He discovered this by chance when shooting neutrons at a uranium atom, hoping to make a new isotope. However, instead of a new isotope, the uranium changed into a barium atom, a smaller atom than uranium. Hahn had "broken" the uranium atom. This was the world's first recorded nuclear fission reaction. This discovery led to the creation of the atomic bomb and nuclear power, where fission occurs repeatedly, creating a chain reaction.


title: Atom

text: Further, into the 20th century, physicists went deeper into the mysteries of the atom. Using particle accelerators, they discovered that protons and neutrons were made of other particles, called quarks.


title: Atom

text: The number of protons in an atom is called its "atomic number". Atoms of the same element have the same atomic number. For example, all carbon atoms have six protons, so the atomic number of carbon is six. Today, 118 elements are known. Depending on how the number is counted, 90 to 94 elements exist naturally on earth. All elements above number 94 have only been made by humans. These elements are organized on the periodic table.


title: Atom

text: Because protons and neutrons have nearly the same mass, and the mass of electrons is very small, we can call the number of protons and neutrons in an atom its "mass number". Most elements have several isotopes with different mass numbers. To name an isotope, we use the name of the element, followed by its mass number. So an atom with six protons and seven neutrons is called carbon-13. The average mass of all atoms of a particular element is called its "atomic mass" or "atomic weight".


title: Atom

text: If the protons, neutrons, or electrons of an atom are switched with other particles, exotic atoms can be made. Experiments show that every particle has an opposite called an antiparticle. Together, these particles make up antimatter. An antimatter atom would be made from antiprotons, antineutrons, and antielectrons (positrons). When a particle meets its antiparticle, they are both destroyed. Aside from that, antimatter atoms could be very much like normal atoms.


title: Atom

text: An atom is made of three main particles: the proton, the neutron and the electron. Hydrogen-1, an isotope of hydrogen, has no neutrons, just one proton and one electron. A positive hydrogen ion has no electrons, just one proton. All other atoms have at least one proton, one neutron, and one electron each.


title: Atom

text: Electrons are by far the smallest of the three atomic particles. Their mass is about grams (0.00055 atomic mass units). They have a negative charge. Protons and neutrons have nearly the same size and mass, with a mass of about grams (1 atomic mass unit). Protons have a positive charge, and neutrons have no charge. Most atoms have a neutral charge. The number of protons (positive) and electrons (negative) are the same, so the charges balance out to zero. However, ions have a different number of electrons than protons, so they have a positive or negative charge. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks of two types: up quarks and down quarks. A proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark, and a neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark.


title: Atom

text: The nucleus is in the middle of an atom. It is made of protons and neutrons. The nucleus makes up more than 99.9% of the mass of the atom. However, it is very small: about 1 femtometer (10 m) across, which is around 100,000 times smaller than the width of an atom, so it has a very high density.


title: Atom

text: Usually in nature, two things with the same charge repel or shoot away from each other. So for a long time, scientists did not know how the positively charged protons in the nucleus stayed together. We now believe that the attraction between protons and neutrons comes from the "strong nuclear force". This force also holds the quarks together that make up the protons and neutrons. Particles called mesons travel back and forth between protons and neutrons, and carry the force.


title: Atom

text: The number of neutrons in relation to protons defines whether the nucleus is stable or goes through radioactive decay. When there are too many neutrons or protons, the atom tries to make the numbers smaller or more equal by removing the extra particles. It sends out radiation in the form of alpha, beta or gamma decay. Nuclei can also change in other ways. Nuclear fission is when the nucleus breaks into two smaller nuclei, releasing a lot of energy. This release of energy is what makes nuclear fission useful for making bombs, and electricity in the form of nuclear power.


title: Atom

text: The other way nuclei can change is through nuclear fusion, when two nuclei join or fuse to make a larger nucleus. This process requires very high amounts of energy to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between the protons, as they have the same charge. Such high energies are most common in stars like our Sun, which fuses hydrogen for fuel. However, once fusion happens, far more energy is released because of the conversion of some of the mass into energy.


title: Atom

text: The energy needed to break a nucleus into protons and neutrons is called its nuclear binding energy. This energy can be converted to mass according to Einstein's famous formula "E" = "mc". Medium-sized nuclei, for example iron-56 and nickel-62, have the highest binding energy per proton or neutron, so they are the most stable. Very small and very large atoms have low binding energy. They can release energy through fission or fusion.


title: Atom

text: Electrons orbit, or travel around, the nucleus. They are called the atom's "electron cloud". They are attracted to the nucleus because of the electromagnetic force. Electrons have a negative charge, and the nucleus always has a positive charge, so they attract each other.


title: Atom

text: According to the Bohr model, some electrons are farther from the nucleus than others in different layers. These are called "electron shells". Only the electrons in the outer shell can make chemical bonds. The number of electrons in the outer shell determines whether the atom is stable or which atoms it will bond with in a chemical reaction. If an atom has only one shell, it needs two electrons to be complete. Otherwise, the outer shell needs eight electrons to be complete.


title: Atom

text: The Bohr model is important because it has the idea of energy levels. The electrons in each shell have a certain amount of energy. Shells that are farther from the nucleus have more energy. When a small burst of energy called a photon hits an electron, the electron can jump into a "higher energy" shell. This photon must carry exactly the right amount of energy to bring the electron to the new energy level. A photon is a burst of light, and the amount of energy determines the color of light. So each type of atom will absorb certain colors of light, called the absorption spectrum. An electron can also send out, or emit, a photon, and fall into a "lower energy" shell. For the same reason, the atom will only send out certain colors of light, called the emission spectrum.


title: Atom

text: The complete picture is more complicated. Unlike the Earth moving around the Sun, electrons do not move in a circle. We cannot know the exact place of an electron. We only know the probability, or chance, that it will be in any place. Each electron is part of an "orbital", which describes where it is likely to be. No more than two electrons can be in one orbital; these two electrons have different "spin".


title: Atom

text: For each shell, numbered 1, 2, 3, and so on, there can be several orbitals with different shapes. Each type of orbital has a letter: s, p, d, and f. There can also be several orbitals for one number and letter combination. As more electrons are added, they join orbitals in order from lowest to highest energy. This order starts as follows: 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, 4p, 5s, 4d. For example, a chlorine atom has 17 electrons. So, it will have:


title: Atom

text: In other words, it has 2 electrons in the first shell, 8 in the second shell, and 7 in the third shell.


title: Atom

text: The size of an atom depends on the size of its electron cloud. Moving down the periodic table, more electron shells are added. As a result, atoms get bigger. Moving to the right on the periodic table, more protons are added to the nucleus. This more positive nucleus pulls electrons more strongly, so atoms get smaller. The biggest atom is caesium, which is about 0.596 nanometers wide according to one model. The smallest atom is helium, which is about 0.062 nanometers wide.


title: Atom

text: The mass of atoms is from to grams. Usually, the mass is measured using the atomic mass unit (amu), also called the dalton. One amu is exactly 1/12 of the mass of a carbon-12 atom, which is grams. Hydrogen-1 has a mass of about 1 amu. The heaviest atom known, oganesson, has a mass of about 294 amu.


title: Atom

text: When atoms are far apart, they attract each other. This attraction is stronger for some kinds of atoms than others. At the same time, the heat, or kinetic energy, of atoms makes them always move. If the attraction is strong enough, relative to the amount of heat, atoms will form a solid. If the attraction is weaker, they will form a liquid, and if it is even weaker, they will form a gas.


title: Atom

text: Chemical bonds are the strongest kinds of attraction between atoms. The movement of electrons explains all chemical bonds.


title: Atom

text: Atoms usually bond with each other in a way that fills or empties their outer electron shell. The most reactive elements have an almost full or almost empty outer shell. Atoms with a full outer shell, called noble gases, do not usually form bonds.


title: Atom

text: All atoms attract each other by Van der Waals forces. These forces are weaker than chemical bonds. They are caused when electrons move to one side of an atom. This movement gives a negative charge to that side. It also gives a positive charge to the other side. When two atoms line up their sides with negative and positive charge, they will attract.


title: Atom

text: Although atoms are mostly empty space, they cannot pass through each other. When two atoms are very close, their electron clouds will repel each other by the electromagnetic force.


title: Atom

text: To understand how magnets work, we can look at the properties of the atom. Any magnet has a north and south pole, and a certain strength. The direction and strength of a magnet, together, are called its magnetic moment. Every electron also has a magnetic moment, like a tiny magnet. This comes from the electron's individual spin and its orbit around the nucleus. The magnetic moments for the electrons add up to a magnetic moment for the whole atom. This tells us how atoms act in a magnetic field.


title: Atom

text: Every electron has one of two opposite spins. We can think of them as clockwise and counterclockwise. If every electron is paired with an electron with the opposite spin in the same orbital, the magnetic moments will cancel out to zero. Atoms like this are called diamagnetic: they are only weakly repelled by a magnetic field.


title: Atom

text: However, if some electrons are not paired, the atom will have a lasting magnetic moment: it will be paramagnetic or ferromagnetic. When atoms are paramagnetic, the magnetic moment of each atom points in a random direction. They are weakly attracted to a magnetic field. When atoms are ferromagnetic, the magnetic moments of nearby atoms act on each other. They point in the same direction. This means that the whole object is a magnet, and it can point in the direction of a magnetic field. Ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, cobalt, and nickel, are strongly attracted to a magnetic field.


title: Atom

text: Some elements, and many isotopes, have what is called an "unstable nucleus". This means the nucleus is either too big to hold itself together, or it has too many protons or neutrons. When a nucleus is unstable, it has to eliminate the excess mass of particles. It does this through radiation. An atom that does this is called "radioactive". Unstable atoms emit radiation until they lose enough particles in the nucleus to become stable. All atoms above atomic number 82 (82 protons, lead) are radioactive.


title: Atom

text: Every radioactive element or isotope has a "half-life". This is how long it takes half of any sample of atoms of that type to decay into a different isotope or element.


title: Atom

text: Nearly all the hydrogen atoms in the Universe, most of the helium atoms, and some of the lithium atoms were made soon after the Big Bang. Even today, about 90% of all atoms in the Universe are hydrogen. Larger atoms are made in stars by nuclear fusion, while the largest atoms are made in very massive stars or supernovae. Most atoms on Earth were made by a star that existed before the Sun.


title: Atom

text: People make very large atoms by smashing together smaller atoms in particle accelerators. However, these atoms often decay very quickly. Oganesson (element 118) has a half-life of 0.89 milliseconds. It is possible that even larger atoms will be created in the future.


title: Gold

text: Gold is a soft, dense, yellow metal. It is a chemical element. Its chemical symbol is Au. Its atomic number is 79. As a precious metal, it has been used for many thousands of years by people all over the world, for jewelry, and as money. Gold is important because it is rare, but also easier to use than other rare metals. It is also used to repair and replace teeth and in electronic equipment such as computers. The color of this metal is also called "gold".


title: Gold

text: Mining methods for gold are similar to other metals. Gold is so valued that the discovery of a new place to mine has sometimes caused a gold rush. The deepest workplaces for miners in the world are in South African gold mines.


title: Gold

text: Often, gold is found as a native metal. This means it is not part of an ore, and does not need smelting. It may be in large, pure nuggets but more often must be separated from other minerals and soil.


title: Gold

text: Most of the gold on Earth is deep inside the Earth's core because it is dense. Nearly all discovered gold was deposited on the surface by meteorites.


title: Gold

text: In chemistry, gold is chemical element 79, a transition metal in Group 11. It has an atomic weight of 199.966 a.m.u. Its symbol is Au, from the Latin word for gold, "aurum". It is a "noble metal" meaning it has low chemical reactivity.


title: Gold

text: Gold is very soft. It is malleable, meaning a goldsmith can hammer it into thin metal sheets. It is also ductile, which means it can be pulled into wire. When it is used in money or in jewelry, it is often alloyed with silver or some other metal to make it harder.


title: Gold

text: Most metals are gray in color. Gold is yellow because of the way its electrons behave. The only other metal in common use that has a non-gray color is copper. Caesium also has a gold-like color, but it is not commonly used as a metal because it reacts with water.


title: Gold

text: Gold is a fairly good electrical conductor, better than aluminium, but not as good as copper or silver. Copper and brass electrical connectors, especially those used with computer and audio/video equipment, are often plated with gold for corrosion resistance. Gold is also a good heat conductor, although it is not commonly used for this purpose due to its cost.


title: Gold

text: Gold can mean that something or someone is very good or has done very well. A gold medal is often the given to the first-place winner in a race or other sports. Something that is in some way good may be given gold status.


title: Gold

text: Metallic gold is non-toxic, which is unusual for a heavy metal. Soluble gold compounds, however, are toxic to the liver and kidneys. Gold is non-flammable, even in a pure oxygen environment or when finely powdered. It does not react with most household or laboratory chemicals. Gold is commonly processed with cyanide, which is highly toxic. Most of the cyanide is destroyed in the production process, so it is not present in the final product, but it can be a hazard to workers in a gold processing plant. Since gold conducts electricity, gold jewelry should never be worn when working with electricity.


title: Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Pashto/Dari: ), is a country in Central Asia. It borders with Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast. Kabul serves as the country's capital city.


title: Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan is currently governed by the Taliban, after the collapse of the internationally recognized Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on 15 August 2021. In early times people passed through it with animals and other goods as it connected China and India with Central Asia and the Middle East. More recently, Afghanistan has been damaged by many years of war. There not enough jobs.


title: Afghanistan

text: The country is around in size. There are 40.976 million people in Afghanistan. There are about 3 million Afghan refugees (people who had to leave the country) who are in Pakistan and Iran for some time. In 2011, its capital, Kabul, had about 3,691,400 people living in it.


title: Afghanistan

text: United Nations Human Rights Council decided in October to appoint (an independent expert, or) United Nations special rapporteur on "Afghanistan to [find out about, or] probe violations carried out by the Taliban and" others who are now part of a [big] conflict, media said.


title: Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan has many mountains. The mountains are called the Hindu Kush and Himalayas. The tallest mountain in Afghanistan is Mount Nowshak. There are plains (which have soil that is good for growing plants) and foothills. Parts of the country are also dry, especially the Registan Desert.


title: Afghanistan

text: The country has an abundance of a valuable stone called lapis lazuli, which was also used to decorate the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun.


title: Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan has a continental climate with hot summers and cold winters. Having no water sometimes causes problems for farmers. Sand storms happen a lot in the desert.


title: Afghanistan

text: Southern Afghanistan has not many plants because it is dry. There are more plants where there is more water. Mountains have forests of pine and fir, cedar, oak, walnut, alder, and ash trees.


title: Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan's wild animals live in the mountains. There are wolves, foxes, jackals, bears, and wild goats, gazelles, wild dogs, camels, and wild cats such as the snow leopard in the country. The birds are falcons, eagles and vultures. The Rhesus Macaque and the red flying squirrel are also in Afghanistan.


title: Afghanistan

text: Many years of war, hunting, and years of no water have killed animals in Afghanistan. There used to be tigers in Afghanistan, but now there aren't any. Bears and wolves are almost gone.


title: Afghanistan

text: Many people have moved through or invaded the land of Afghanistan. Today's people of Afghanistan are known as "Afghans". They have many traits passed down from these previous peoples.


title: Afghanistan

text: The largest group of people are the Pashtuns. These make up about half the population. Tajiks are the second-largest ethnic group, making up about one-fifth of the population. Before the 20th century, Tajiks were called Sarts and some come from the Iranian peoples. Most Pashtuns are also related to the Iranian peoples. Some Pashtuns and Tajiks marry each other but at the same time they are rivals. The third-largest group are the Hazaras. They are native to the Hazaristan area in central Afghanistan. The country's other groups include the Uzbek, Aimaq, Turkmen, Nuristani, Baloch, Pashayi and a few others.


title: Afghanistan

text: Dari-Persian and Pashto are the official languages of Afghanistan. Many people speak both languages. Both are Indo-European languages from the Iranian languages sub-family. They are usually written with the Arabic alphabet. Uzbek and Turkmen are widely spoken in the north and Nuristani and Pashai are spoken in the east. Around 99% of all Afghans follow the religion of Islam.


title: Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan is a largely rural country. This means there are only a few major cities. About one fifth of the population live in cities. Kabul, the capital, is the largest city. It is south of the Hindu Kush range and alongside the Kabul River. Other cities in Afghanistan include Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e Sharif, and Jalalabad. The rural population is made up of farmers and nomads. The farmers live mainly in small villages along the rivers. The nomads live in tents while moving from place to place with their animals and belongings. Some people live in the high central mountains. Some live in the deserts in the south and southwest. Millions of people left Afghanistan to get away from the wars that happened in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Most of them lived in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.


title: Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan is in the path of important trade routes that connect southern and eastern Asia to Europe and the Middle East. Because of this, many empire builders have decided to rule over the area. Signs that these emperors were near Afghanistan still exist in many parts of the country. Afghanistan is near what used to be the Silk Road, so it has many cultures. From up to 8,000 years ago, the peoples of Afghanistan helped develop (create) major world religions, traded and exchanged many products, and sometimes controlled politics and culture in Asia.


title: Afghanistan

text: Archaeologists digging a cave in what is now northeastern Afghanistan (in Badakhshan), discovered that people lived in the country as early as 100,000 years ago. They found the skull of a Neanderthal, or early human, as well as tools from about 30,000 years ago. In other parts of Afghanistan, archaeologists uncovered pottery and tools that are 4,000 to 11,000 years old—evidence that Afghans were among the first people in the world to grow crops and raise animals.


title: Afghanistan

text: Farmers and herders settled in the plains surrounding the Hindu Kush as early as 7000 B.C. These people may have grown rich off the lapis lazuli they found along riverbeds, which they traded to early city sites to the west, across the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia. As farms and villages grew and thrived in Afghanistan, these ancient people eventually invented irrigation (digging ditches for water so it flows to crops) that allowed them to grow crops on the northern Afghanistan desert plains. This civilization (advanced state of organization) is today called BMAC (Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex), or the "Oxus civilization".


title: Afghanistan

text: The Oxus civilization expanded as far east as western edge of the Indus Valley during the period between 2200 and 1800 B.C. These people, who were the ancestors of the Indo-Aryans, used the term "Aryan" to identify their ethnicity, culture, and religion. Scholars know this when they read the ancient texts of these people; the Avesta of Iranic peoples and the Vedas of Indo-Aryans.


title: Afghanistan

text: Zoroaster, the founder of the Zoroastrian religion, the world's earliest monotheistic religion, (meaning a religion believing in one god) lived in the area (somewhere north of today's Afghanistan), around 1000 B.C.


title: Afghanistan

text: Then the Achaemenids took over control of the land and made it part of the Persian empire. Alexander the great defeated and conquered the Persian Empire in 330 BCE. He founded some cities in the area. The people used Macedonian culture and language. After Alexander, Greco-Bactrians, Scythians, Kushans, Parthians and Sassanians ruled the area.


title: Afghanistan

text: Kushans spread Buddhism from India in the 1st century BCE, and Buddhism remained an important religion in the area until the Islamic conquest in the 7th century CE.


title: Afghanistan

text: The Buddhas of Bamiyan were giant statues, a reminder of Buddhism in Afghanistan. They were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. There were international protests. The Taliban believe that the ancient statues were un-Islamic and that they had a right to destroy them.


title: Afghanistan

text: Arabs introduced Islam in the 7th century and slowly began spreading the new religion. In the 9th and 10th centuries, many local Islamic dynasties rose to power inside Afghanistan. One of the earliest was the Tahirids, whose kingdom included Balkh and Herat; they established independence from the Abbasids in 820. The Tahirids were succeeded in about 867 by the Saffarids of Zaranj in western Afghanistan. Local princes in the north soon became feudatories of the powerful Samanids, who ruled from Bukhara. From 872 to 999, north of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan enjoyed a golden age under Samanid rule.


title: Afghanistan

text: In the 10th century, the local Ghaznavids turned Ghazni into their capital and firmly established Islam throughout all areas of Afghanistan, except the Kafiristan region in the northeast. Mahmud of Ghazni, a great Ghaznavid sultan, conquered the Multan and Punjab region, and carried raids into the heart of India. Mohammed bin Abdul Jabbar Utbi (Al-Utbi), a historian from the 10th century, wrote that thousands of "Afghans" were in the Ghaznavid army. The Ghaznavid dynasty was replaced by the Ghorids of Ghor in the late 12th century, who reconquered Ghaznavid territory in the name of Islam and ruled it until 1206. The Ghorid army also included ethnic Afghans.


title: Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan was recognized as "Khorasan", meaning "land of the rising sun," which was a prosperous and independent geographic region reaching as far as the Indus River.


title: Afghanistan

text: All the major cities of modern Afghanistan were centers of science and culture in the past. The New Persian literature arose and flourished in the area. The early Persian poets such as Rudaki were from what is now Afghanistan. Moreover, Ferdowsi, the author of Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, and Rumi, the famous Sufi poet, were also from modern-day Afghanistan. It has produced scientists such as Avicenna, Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni, Omar Khayyám, Al-Khwarizmi, and many others who are widely known for their important contributions in areas such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, geography, and geology. It remained the cultural capital of Persia until the devastating Mongol invasion in the 13th century.


title: Afghanistan

text: Timur, the Turkic conqueror, took over in the end of the 14th century and began to rebuild cities in this region. Timur's successors, the Timurids (1405–1507), were great patrons of learning and the arts who enriched their capital city of Herat with fine buildings. Under their rule Afghanistan enjoyed peace and prosperity.


title: Afghanistan

text: Between south of the Hindu Kush and the Indus River (today's Pakistan) was the native land of the Afghan tribes. They called this land "Afghanistan" (meaning "land of the Afghans"). The Afghans ruled the rich northern Indian subcontinent with their capital at Delhi. From the 16th to the early 18th century, Afghanistan was disputed between the Safavids of Isfahan and the Mughals of Agra who had replaced the Lodi and Suri Afghan rulers in India. The Safavids and Mughals occasionally oppressed the native Afghans but at the same time the Afghans used each empire to punish the other. In 1709, the Hotaki Afghans rose to power and completely defeated the Persian Empire. Then they marched towards the Mughals of India and nominally defeated them with the help of the Afsharid forces under Nader Shah Afshar.


title: Afghanistan

text: In 1747, after Nader Shah of Persia was killed, a great leader named Ahmad Shah Durrani united all the different Muslim tribes and established the Afghan Empire (Durrani Empire). He is considered the founding father of the modern state of Afghanistan while Mirwais Hotak is the grandfather of the nation.


title: Afghanistan

text: During the 1800s, Afghanistan became a buffer zone between two powerful empires, the British Indian Empire and the Russian Empire. As British India advanced into Afghanistan, Russia felt threatened and expanded southward across Central Asia. To stop the Russian advance, Britain tried to make Afghanistan part of its empire but the Afghans fought wars with British-led Indians from 1839 to 1842 and from 1878 to 1880. After the third war in 1919, Afghanistan under King Amanullah gained respect and recognition as a completely independent state.


title: Afghanistan

text: The Kingdom of Afghanistan was a constitutional monarchy established in 1926. It was the successor state to the Emirate of Afghanistan. On 27 September 1934, during the reign of Zahir Shah, the Kingdom of Afghanistan joined the League of Nations. During World War II, Afghanistan remained neutral. It pursued a diplomatic policy of non-alignment.


title: Afghanistan

text: The creation of Pakistan in 1947 as its eastern neighbor created problems. In 1973, political crises led to the overthrow of the king. The country's new leader ended the monarchy and made Afghanistan a republic. In 1978, a Communist political party supported by the Soviet Union seized control of Afghanistan's government. This move sparked rebellions throughout the country. The government asked the Soviet Union for military assistance. The Soviets took advantage of the situation and invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.


title: Afghanistan

text: Most people in Afghanistan opposed the sudden Soviet presence in their country. For nearly a decade, anti-Communist Islamic forces known as "Mujahideen" were trained inside neighboring Pakistan to fight the Soviets and the Afghan government. The United States and other anti-Soviet countries supported the Mujahideen. In the long war, over one million Afghan civilians were killed. The Soviet Army also lost more than 15,000 soldiers in that war. Millions of Afghans left their country to stay safe in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. In 1989 the Soviet Army withdrew the last of its troops.


title: Afghanistan

text: After the Soviets left in 1989, the Afghan Civil War started; different Afghan warlords began fighting for control of the country. The warlords received support from other countries, including neighboring Pakistan and Iran. A very conservative Islamic group known as the Taliban emerged in an attempt to end the civil war. By the late 1990s the Taliban had gained control over 95% of Afghanistan. A group known as the Northern Alliance, based in northern Afghanistan near the border with Tajikistan, continued to fight against the Taliban.


title: Afghanistan

text: The Taliban ruled Afghanistan according to their strict version of Islamic law. People whom the Taliban believed violated these laws were given cruel punishments. In addition, the Taliban completely restricted the rights of women. Because of such policies, most countries refused to recognize the Taliban government. Only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) accepted them as the official government.


title: Afghanistan

text: The Taliban also angered other countries by allowing suspected terrorists to live freely in Afghanistan. Among them were Osama bin Laden and members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network. In September 2001, the United States blamed bin Laden for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. The Taliban refused to hand him over to the United States. In response, the United States and its allies launched a bombing campaign against al-Qaeda in October 2001. Within months the Taliban abandoned Kabul, and a new government led by Hamid Karzai came to power, but fighting between the Taliban and US-led armies continued. Taliban fighters have gone into Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan. Afghans accuse Pakistan's military of being behind the Taliban militants but Pakistan has rejected this and stated that a stable Afghanistan is in Pakistan's own interest.


title: Afghanistan

text: In December 2004, Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. NATO began rebuilding Afghanistan, including its military and government institutions. Many schools and colleges were built. Freedom for women has improved. Women can study, work, drive, and run for office. Many Afghan women work as politicians, some are ministers while at least one is a mayor. Others have opened businesses, or joined the military or police. Afghanistan's economy has also improved dramatically, and NATO agreed in 2012 to help the country for at least another 10 years after 2014. In the meantime, Afghanistan improved diplomatic ties with many countries in the world and continues.


title: Afghanistan

text: In August 2021, the Cabinet of Afghanistan lost its power. Most of the country fell to the Taliban on 15 August 2021 with President Ashraf Ghani escaping the country. As of 18 August 2021, the former government's last remaining holdout is the Panjshir Valley.


title: Afghanistan

text: Since the Taliban captured Kabul on 15 August 2021, the governance of Afghanistan is disputed between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.


title: Afghanistan

text: As of 2004, there are thirty-four provinces. Each province is divided into districts. (For cities see List of cities in Afghanistan.)


title: Insect

text: Insects are a class in the phylum Arthropoda. They are small terrestrial invertebrates which have a hard exoskeleton.


title: Insect

text: Insects are the largest group of animals on Earth by far: about 926,400 different species have been described. They are more than half of all known living species. They may be over 90% of animal species on Earth.


title: Insect

text: New species of insects are continually being found. Estimates of the total number of species range from 2 million to 30 million.


title: Insect

text: All adult insects have six legs; and most have wings. Insects were the first animals capable of flight.


title: Insect

text: As they develop from eggs, insects undergo metamorphosis. Insects live all over the planet: almost all are terrestrial (live on land). Few insects live in the oceans or in very cold places, such as Antarctica. The most species live in tropical areas.


title: Insect

text: Some people call all insects "bugs", but this is not correct. Only some insects are true bugs, which is a particular order of insects. People who study insects are called entomologists.


title: Insect

text: Insects have exoskeletons (skeletons on the outside). Their skeletons are made out of thin, hard pieces or plates, like armour, made of chitin. All together, these pieces make a hard layer around the insect's body. The exoskeleton protects the insect.


title: Insect

text: The body of an insect has three main parts: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. On the head are an insect's compound eyes, its two antennae (they feel and smell things), and its mouth.


title: Insect

text: On the thorax, insects have wings and legs. All insects have six legs (three pairs of jointed legs) and usually four wings (two pairs).


title: Insect

text: The abdomen is the back part of the insect. Inside the abdomen is the stomach, the heart, and the excretory system where body wastes pass out of the insect. Bees also have a stinger at the back of the abdomen.


title: Insect

text: Just like our muscles connect to our bones to make us walk and stand up, the muscles of an insect connect to the exoskeleton to make it walk and move. Their muscles are on the "inside" of their skeleton.


title: Insect

text: Insects are cold-blooded, which means that they cannot control their body temperature. This means that insects are not good at surviving the cold, at any rate out in the open. In the winter, many insects go into something called diapause, which is the insect version of hibernation. Some insects, like cockroaches, cannot go into diapause and they will die if it gets too cold outside. This is why cockroaches love living in people's warm houses.


title: Insect

text: Insect respiration happens without lungs. There is a system of internal tubes and sacs through which gases diffuse or are actively pumped. Air is taken in through openings on the sides of the abdomen called spiracles. Oxygen gets to tissues that need it through their trachea (element 8 in diagram).


title: Insect

text: Many insect larvae live in water. Many of those have gills that can extract oxygen dissolved in water. Others must rise to the water surface to get air which may be held or trapped in special parts of their body.


title: Insect

text: Adult insects use oxygen at a high rate when they fly. They need it for the flight muscles, the most active tissue known in biology. The flight muscles use oxygen at a huge rate: 100 ccs of oxygen for every single cc of tissue per hour. With this system, the greatest diameter a muscle could have (and still consume oxygen at this rate) is about 0.5 cm. Even with special extra arrangements, insects cannot get larger than about 11 cm long. The largest insect bodies are about as big as a mouse.


title: Insect

text: Some insects also use a molecule called haemocyanin, which does the same job as haemoglobin does in vertebrates (but less efficiently). The insect circulatory system has no veins or arteries. The 'blood' is called haemolymph, and moves around in the space called the haemocoel. The organs sit in the haemocoel and are bathed in the haemolymph. The 'heart' is little more than a single tube which pulses (squeezes).


title: Insect

text: Insects start life as an egg. Usually a female (mother) insect lays eggs, but a few species have live birth (the eggs develop inside the mother). The eggs are small; but they can usually be seen with the naked eye.