A Ton of Crap (107 page)

Great Leap Forward
In 1958, Mao Zedong attempted to modernize the economy of China so that it could rival America’s. Mao believed industry and agriculture were to be the focus of the development project, and his plan was called the Great Leap Forward. Mao believed that in order for industry to grow, workers must be well-fed, and in order for agriculture to grow, new tools were needed. Mao believed the best way to make this happen was by making China into a series of many communes. By 1958, there were 26,578 communes and 700 million people placed into them. The Great Leap Forward was a dismal failure, and it is believed that 20 to 30 million people died from famine.

VICTORIAN LITERATURE

The English Novel
During the nineteenth century, the novel became the most popular form of literature. Novels focused on portraying the difficulty of real life, where ultimately it is love, perseverance, and hard work that win out. An especially important part of the novel during this time was the depiction of the emerging and expanding middle class, a break from the aristocratic portrayals found in earlier novels. Most of the novels were published serially in journals, with the latest chapter or section appearing with each new issue and featuring intricate plots and plot twists to keep readers interested.

GROUP THEORY

Permutation Groups
If you recall, permutations are rearrangements. If you have abc, a permutation of that is bca. One of the most important types of groups are permutation groups. Permutation groups are important because any group can be represented as a permutation group. If there is a group G, the elements of set M are permutations, and the group operation is the composition of the permutations in group G. Two permutations make up a group when one is the identity element, and the second one is a permutation that is the inverse of itself.

GAS LAWS

Boyle’s Law
Boyle’s law, named after Robert Boyle, states that if temperature is constant, there is an inversely proportional relationship between volume and absolute pressure. The equation for Boyle’s law is represented as:

pV
=
k

p
is the pressure,
V
is the volume, and
k
is a constant, which is found by multiplying the pressure by the volume. Because there is an inverse relationship between volume and pressure, if the volume is doubled, the pressure would be inverted, which means that one-half of the pressure is being used.

PASHTO

Afghanistan
Pashto is currently spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Afghanistan, Pashto is mostly prevalent in the south, southwest, and east, though it is also spoken in some western and northern areas. Since the eighteenth century, the kings of Afghanistan (with one exception) were ethnic Pashtuns. In 1936, Pashto was declared a national language in Afghanistan, and it is currently one of two official languages, the other being Dari (as of 1964). Pashto spread to Pakistan as a result of the Durand Line, which was established in 1893 and became a border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. One-third of the Afghan Empire was lost from the border shift, and this land became Pakistan.

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN CHINA

Break from the Soviets
Following the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong withdrew from public life temporarily. In the 1950s, Mao’s People’s Republic of China and Stalin’s Soviet Union were the largest communist states, and supported one another. When Stalin died, Nikita Khrushchev came to power, and began to steer away from Stalin’s policies. Mao Zedong believed that Khrushchev’s policies were betraying Marxism, and with the Great Leap Forward taking a horrible turn for the worse, Khrushchev stopped funding the People’s Republic of China. Mao Zedong was then replaced as chairman in 1959 by his opponent; however, he retained his position with the Politburo of the Communist Party.

VICTORIAN LITERATURE

Children’s Literature
Children’s literature changed during the Victorian era. By 1848, the work of Hans Christian Andersen was translated into English, sparking a great interest in fairytales. It is during the Victorian era, for example, that Lewis Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland
books came out and became popular. The change in children’s literature is a direct result of the time period. Views on children began to shift, and child labor and required education of children came to the forefront of social issues. As more children began reading, an industry based on producing literature for them began to grow.

GROUP THEORY

Matrix Groups
Matrix groups are the second most important types of group. You might recall from earlier that matrices are vector space. In a matrix group, group G is a set that consists of elements that are square matrices. A square matrix has the same vertical and horizontal dimensions. Matrix groups have invertible matrices. Matrix groups are useful for understanding objects that have symmetries. For example, matrix groups can be found in projective spaces of geometry, the study of molecules in chemistry, and the study of particle physics. Conceptually, matrix groups are very similar to permutation groups.

GAS LAWS

Charles’s Law
In the 1800s, Jacques Charles and Joseph Louis-Gay Lussac studied how gas volume was affected by the gas’s temperature. Charles’s law, which is also called the law of volumes, shows that when heated, gas expands. Charles’s law can be depicted as:

V
α
T

Other ways of showing this are: