1.
City
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A city is a large and permanent human settlement. Cities generally have complex systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing, a big city or metropolis usually has associated suburbs and exurbs. Such cities are associated with metropolitan areas and urban areas. Once a city expands far enough to another city, this region can be deemed a conurbation or megalopolis. Damascus is arguably the oldest city in the world, in terms of population, the largest city proper is Shanghai, while the fastest-growing is Dubai. There is not enough evidence to assert what conditions gave rise to the first cities, some theorists have speculated on what they consider suitable pre-conditions and basic mechanisms that might have been important driving forces. The conventional view holds that cities first formed after the Neolithic revolution, the Neolithic revolution brought agriculture, which made denser human populations possible, thereby supporting city development. The advent of farming encouraged hunter-gatherers to abandon nomadic lifestyles and to settle near others who lived by agricultural production, the increased population density encouraged by farming and the increased output of food per unit of land created conditions that seem more suitable for city-like activities. In his book, Cities and Economic Development, Paul Bairoch takes up position in his argument that agricultural activity appears necessary before true cities can form. According to Vere Gordon Childe, for a settlement to qualify as a city, it must have enough surplus of raw materials to support trade and a relatively large population. To illustrate this point, Bairoch offers an example, Western Europe during the pre-Neolithic, when the cost of transport is taken into account, the figure rises to 200,000 square kilometres. Bairoch noted that this is roughly the size of Great Britain, the urban theorist Jane Jacobs suggests that city formation preceded the birth of agriculture, but this view is not widely accepted. In his book City Economics, Brendan OFlaherty asserts Cities could persist—as they have for thousands of years—only if their advantages offset the disadvantages, OFlaherty illustrates two similar attracting advantages known as increasing returns to scale and economies of scale, which are concepts usually associated with businesses. Their applications are seen in more basic economic systems as well, increasing returns to scale occurs when doubling all inputs more than doubles the output an activity has economies of scale if doubling output less than doubles cost. To offer an example of these concepts, OFlaherty makes use of one of the oldest reasons why cities were built, in this example, the inputs are anything that would be used for protection and the output is the area protected and everything of value contained in it. OFlaherty then asks that we suppose the protected area is square, the advantage is expressed as, O = s 2, where O is the output and s stands for the length of a side. This equation shows that output is proportional to the square of the length of a side, the inputs depend on the length of the perimeter, I =4 s, where I stands for the quantity of inputs. So there are increasing returns to scale, O = I2 /16 and this equation shows that with twice the inputs, you produce quadruple the output
2.
Wisconsin
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Wisconsin is a U. S. state located in the north-central United States, in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, Wisconsin is the 23rd largest state by total area and the 20th most populous. The state capital is Madison, and its largest city is Milwaukee, the state is divided into 72 counties. Wisconsin is second to Michigan in the length of its Great Lakes coastline, Wisconsin is known as Americas Dairyland because it is one of the nations leading dairy producers, particularly famous for its cheese. Manufacturing, especially paper products, information technology, and tourism are major contributors to the states economy. The word Wisconsin originates from the given to the Wisconsin River by one of the Algonquian-speaking Native American groups living in the region at the time of European contact. French explorer Jacques Marquette was the first European to reach the Wisconsin River, arriving in 1673, subsequent French writers changed the spelling from Meskousing to Ouisconsin, and over time this became the name for both the Wisconsin River and the surrounding lands. English speakers anglicized the spelling from Ouisconsin to Wisconsin when they began to arrive in numbers during the early 19th century. The legislature of Wisconsin Territory made the current spelling official in 1845, the Algonquin word for Wisconsin and its original meaning have both grown obscure. Interpretations vary, but most implicate the river and the red sandstone that lines its banks, other theories include claims that the name originated from one of a variety of Ojibwa words meaning red stone place, where the waters gather, or great rock. Wisconsin has been home to a variety of cultures over the past 12,000 years. The first people arrived around 10,000 BCE during the Wisconsin Glaciation and these early inhabitants, called Paleo-Indians, hunted now-extinct ice age animals such as the Boaz mastodon, a prehistoric mastodon skeleton unearthed along with spear points in southwest Wisconsin. After the ice age ended around 8000 BCE, people in the subsequent Archaic period lived by hunting, fishing, agricultural societies emerged gradually over the Woodland period between 1000 BCE to 1000 CE. Toward the end of period, Wisconsin was the heartland of the Effigy Mound culture. Later, between 1000 and 1500 CE, the Mississippian and Oneota cultures built substantial settlements including the village at Aztalan in southeast Wisconsin. The Oneota may be the ancestors of the modern Ioway and Ho-Chunk tribes who shared the Wisconsin region with the Menominee at the time of European contact, the first European to visit what became Wisconsin was probably the French explorer Jean Nicolet. He canoed west from Georgian Bay through the Great Lakes in 1634, pierre Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers visited Green Bay again in 1654–1666 and Chequamegon Bay in 1659–1660, where they traded for fur with local Native Americans. In 1673, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet became the first to record a journey on the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway all the way to the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien
3.
ZIP Code
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ZIP Codes are a system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service since 1963. The term ZIP, an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan, was chosen to suggest that the travels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly. The basic format consists of five numerical digits, an extended ZIP+4 code, introduced in 1983, includes the five digits of the ZIP Code, a hyphen, and four additional digits that determine a more specific location within a given ZIP Code. The term ZIP Code was originally registered as a servicemark by the U. S. Postal Service, USPS style for ZIP is all caps and the c in code is also capitalized, although style sheets for some publications use sentence case or lowercase. The early history and context of postal codes began with postal district/zone numbers, the United States Post Office Department implemented postal zones for numerous large cities in 1943. For example, Mr. John Smith 3256 Epiphenomenal Avenue Minneapolis 16, by the early 1960s a more organized system was needed, and on July 1,1963, non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide. Three months later, on October 1,1963, the U. S, an earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with one exception, according to the historian of the U. S. Robert Moon, an employee of the post office, is considered the father of the ZIP Code, he submitted his proposal in 1944 while working as a postal inspector. The post office gives credit to Moon only for the first three digits of the ZIP Code, which describe the sectional center facility or sec center, an SCF is a central mail processing facility with those three digits. The SCF sorts mail to all post offices with those first three digits in their ZIP Codes, the mail is sorted according to the final two digits of the ZIP Code and sent to the corresponding post offices in the early morning. Sectional centers do not deliver mail and are not open to the public, Mail picked up at post offices is sent to their own SCF in the afternoon, where the mail is sorted overnight. The United States Post Office used a character, which it called Mr. ZIP. He was often depicted with a such as USE ZIP CODE in the selvage of panes of stamps or on labels contained in, or the covers of. In 1983, the U. S. Postal Service introduced an expanded ZIP Code system that it called ZIP+4, often called plus-four codes, add-on codes, or add ons. But initial attempts to promote use of the new format met with public resistance. For Post Office Boxes, the rule is that each box has its own ZIP+4 code. However, there is no rule, so the ZIP+4 Code must be looked up individually for each box. It is common to use add-on code 9998 for mail addressed to the postmaster,9999 for general delivery, for a unique ZIP Code, the add-on code is typically 0001
4.
Supercomputer
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A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of computing performance compared to a general-purpose computer. Performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second instead of instructions per second. As of 2015, there are supercomputers which can perform up to quadrillions of FLOPS and it tops the rankings in the TOP500 supercomputer list. Sunway TaihuLights emergence is also notable for its use of indigenous chips, as of June 2016, China, for the first time, had more computers on the TOP500 list than the United States. However, U. S. built computers held ten of the top 20 positions, in November 2016 the U. S. has five of the top 10, throughout their history, they have been essential in the field of cryptanalysis. The use of multi-core processors combined with centralization is an emerging trend, the history of supercomputing goes back to the 1960s, with the Atlas at the University of Manchester and a series of computers at Control Data Corporation, designed by Seymour Cray. These used innovative designs and parallelism to achieve superior computational peak performance, Cray left CDC in 1972 to form his own company, Cray Research. Four years after leaving CDC, Cray delivered the 80 MHz Cray 1 in 1976, the Cray-2 released in 1985 was an 8 processor liquid cooled computer and Fluorinert was pumped through it as it operated. It performed at 1.9 gigaflops and was the second fastest after M-13 supercomputer in Moscow. Fujitsus Numerical Wind Tunnel supercomputer used 166 vector processors to gain the top spot in 1994 with a speed of 1.7 gigaFLOPS per processor. The Hitachi SR2201 obtained a performance of 600 GFLOPS in 1996 by using 2048 processors connected via a fast three-dimensional crossbar network. The Intel Paragon could have 1000 to 4000 Intel i860 processors in various configurations, the Paragon was a MIMD machine which connected processors via a high speed two dimensional mesh, allowing processes to execute on separate nodes, communicating via the Message Passing Interface. Approaches to supercomputer architecture have taken dramatic turns since the earliest systems were introduced in the 1960s, early supercomputer architectures pioneered by Seymour Cray relied on compact innovative designs and local parallelism to achieve superior computational peak performance. However, in time the demand for increased computational power ushered in the age of massively parallel systems, supercomputers of the 21st century can use over 100,000 processors connected by fast connections. The Connection Machine CM-5 supercomputer is a parallel processing computer capable of many billions of arithmetic operations per second. Throughout the decades, the management of heat density has remained a key issue for most centralized supercomputers, the large amount of heat generated by a system may also have other effects, e. g. reducing the lifetime of other system components. There have been diverse approaches to management, from pumping Fluorinert through the system. Systems with a number of processors generally take one of two paths
5.
Lumber
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Lumber, or timber is wood that has been processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber may also refer to currently un-needed furniture, as in Lumber room, or an awkward gait, ultimately derived from the look of unfashionable, Lumber may be supplied either rough-sawn, or surfaced on one or more of its faces. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and it is available in many species, usually hardwoods, but it is also readily available in softwoods, such as white pine and red pine, because of their low cost. Lumber is mainly used for structural purposes but has other uses as well. It is classified more commonly as a softwood than as a hardwood, in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Britain, the term timber describes sawn wood products, such as floor boards. In the United States and Canada, generally timber describes standing or felled trees, before they are milled into boards, Timber there also describes sawn lumber not less than 5 inches in its smallest dimension. The latter includes the often partly finished lumber used in timber-frame construction, remanufactured lumber is the result of secondary or tertiary processing/cutting of previously milled lumber. Specifically, it is cut for industrial or wood-packaging use. Lumber is cut by ripsaw or resaw to create dimensions that are not usually processed by a primary sawmill, resawing is the splitting of 1-inch through 12-inch hardwood or softwood lumber into two or more thinner pieces of full-length boards. For example, splitting a ten-foot 2×4 into two ten-foot 1×4s is considered resawing, structural lumber may also be produced from recycled plastic and new plastic stock. Its introduction has been opposed by the forestry industry. Blending fiberglass in plastic lumber enhances its strength, durability, logs are converted into timber by being sawn, hewn, or split. Sawing with a rip saw is the most common method, because sawing allows logs of lower quality, with grain and large knots. There are various types of sawing, Plain sawn —A log sawn through without adjusting the position of the log, quarter sawn and rift sawn—These terms have been confused in history but generally mean lumber sawn so the annual rings are reasonably perpendicular to the sides of the lumber. Boxed heart—The pith remains within the piece with some allowance for exposure, heart center—the center core of a log. Free of heart center —A side-cut timber without any pith, free of knots —No knots are present. Dimensional lumber is lumber that is cut to standardized width and depth, carpenters extensively use dimensional lumber in framing wooden buildings. Common sizes include 2×4, 2×6, and 4×4, the length of a board is usually specified separately from the width and depth
6.
Rail transport
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Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, also known as tracks. It is also referred to as train transport. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles run on a flat surface. Tracks usually consist of rails, installed on ties and ballast, on which the rolling stock, usually fitted with metal wheels. Other variations are possible, such as slab track, where the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface. Rolling stock in a transport system generally encounters lower frictional resistance than road vehicles, so passenger. The operation is carried out by a company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facilities. Power is provided by locomotives which either draw electric power from a railway system or produce their own power. Most tracks are accompanied by a signalling system, Railways are a safe land transport system when compared to other forms of transport. The oldest, man-hauled railways date back to the 6th century BC, with Periander, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Rail transport blossomed after the British development of the steam locomotive as a viable source of power in the 19th centuries. With steam engines, one could construct mainline railways, which were a key component of the Industrial Revolution, also, railways reduced the costs of shipping, and allowed for fewer lost goods, compared with water transport, which faced occasional sinking of ships. The change from canals to railways allowed for markets in which prices varied very little from city to city. In the 1880s, electrified trains were introduced, and also the first tramways, starting during the 1940s, the non-electrified railways in most countries had their steam locomotives replaced by diesel-electric locomotives, with the process being almost complete by 2000. During the 1960s, electrified high-speed railway systems were introduced in Japan, other forms of guided ground transport outside the traditional railway definitions, such as monorail or maglev, have been tried but have seen limited use. The history of the growth, decline and restoration to use of transport can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of motive power used. The earliest evidence of a railway was a 6-kilometre Diolkos wagonway, trucks pushed by slaves ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element. The Diolkos operated for over 600 years, Railways began reappearing in Europe after the Dark Ages. The earliest known record of a railway in Europe from this period is a window in the Minster of Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany
7.
Eau Claire, Wisconsin
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Eau Claire is a city in Chippewa and Eau Claire counties in the west-central part of the U. S. state of Wisconsin. Located almost entirely in Eau Claire County, for which it is the county seat, Eau Claire is the principal city of the Eau Claire, Wisconsin Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is a part of the Eau Claire-Menomonie Combined Statistical Area. Eau Claire took its name from Eau Claire County, Eau Claire is the singular form of the original French name, Eaux Claires, meaning Clear Waters, for the Eau Claire River. The city motto, which appears on the city seal, the name is pronounced as if it were spelled OClare. Eau Claire is located at 44°49′N 91°30′W, approximately 90 miles east of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the city is located on the northern fringes of the Driftless Zone. The city was founded near the confluence of the Eau Claire, the main section of downtown is on the site of the original village, where Stephen McCann, in partnership with J. C. Thomas, put up three buildings in 1845, although these structures were erected to establish a claim to the land they stood on, the McCann family moved into one of them and became the first permanent settlers. West Eau Claire, founded in 1856, was across the river near the county courthouse. Between a mile and a half and two miles downstream, the Daniel Shaw & Co. lumber company founded Shawtown, which was annexed by the 1930s, by the 1950s, the entire city had spread far enough to the east to adjoin Altoona. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 34.14 square miles. The terrain of the city is characterized by the river valleys, the lands into which the urban area is currently expanding are increasingly hilly. There are two lakes in the city, Dells Pond, and Half Moon Lake, Dells Pond is a reservoir created by a hydroelectric dam, and was formerly used as a holding pool for logs. Half Moon Lake is a lake created as part of the former course of the Chippewa River. As of 2000, the income for a household in the city was $36,399. Males had an income of $32,503 versus $23,418 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,230, about 5. 5% of families and 13. 6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 10. 4% of those under age 18 and 7. 4% of those age 65 or over. As of the most recent census, the Eau Claire County portion had a population of 63,902 inhabitants, as of the census of 2010, there were 65,883 people,26,803 households, and 14,293 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,056.3 inhabitants per square mile, there were 28,134 housing units at an average density of 878.1 per square mile
8.
Saint Paul, Minnesota
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Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U. S. state of Minnesota. As of 2015, the estimated population was 300,851. Saint Paul is the county seat of Ramsey County, the smallest and most densely populated county in Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the states largest city. Known as the Twin Cities, the two form the core of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, with about 3.52 million residents. Founded near historic Native American settlements as a trading and transportation center, the Dakota name for Saint Paul is Imnizaska. Though Minneapolis is better-known nationally, Saint Paul contains the state government, regionally, the city is known for the Xcel Energy Center, home of the Minnesota Wild, and for the Science Museum of Minnesota. As a business hub of the Upper Midwest, it is the headquarters of such as Ecolab. Saint Paul, along with its Twin City, Minneapolis, is known for its literacy rate. It was the city in the United States with a population of 250,000 or more to see an increase in circulation of Sunday newspapers in 2007. The settlement originally began at present-day Lamberts Landing, but was known as Pigs Eye after Pierre Pigs Eye Parrant established a tavern there. Burial mounds in present-day Indian Mounds Park suggest that the area was inhabited by the Hopewell Native Americans about two thousand years ago. From the early 17th century until 1837, the Mdewakanton Dakota and they called the area I-mni-za ska dan for its exposed white sandstone cliffs. Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, a U. S. Army officer named Zebulon Pike negotiated approximately 100,000 acres of land from the local Dakota tribes in 1805 in order to establish a fort. The negotiated territory was located on banks of the Mississippi River, starting from Saint Anthony Falls in present-day Minneapolis, to its confluence with the Saint Croix River. Fort Snelling was built on the territory in 1819 at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, the 1837 Treaty with the Sioux ceded all local tribal land east of the Mississippi to the U. S. Government. Taoyateduta moved his band at Kaposia across the river to the south, fur traders, explorers, and missionaries came to the area for the forts protection. Many of the settlers were French-Canadians who lived nearby, however, as a whiskey trade flourished, military officers banned settlers from the fort-controlled lands
9.
Milwaukee
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Milwaukee is the largest city in the state of Wisconsin and the fifth-largest city in the Midwestern United States. The county seat of Milwaukee County, it is on Lake Michigans western shore, Milwaukees estimated population in 2015 was 600,155. Milwaukee is the cultural and economic center of the Milwaukee–Racine–Waukesha Metropolitan Area with an estimated population of 2,046,692 as of 2015. Ranked by estimated 2014 population, Milwaukee is the 31st largest city in the United States, the first Europeans to pass through the area were French Catholic missionaries and fur traders. In 1818, the French Canadian explorer Solomon Juneau settled in the area, large numbers of German immigrants helped increase the citys population during the 1840s, with Poles and other immigrants arriving in the following decades. Known for its traditions, Milwaukee is currently experiencing its largest construction boom since the 1960s. In addition, many new skyscrapers, condos, lofts and apartments have been built in neighborhoods on and near the lakefront, the word Milwaukee may come from the Potawatomi language minwaking, or Ojibwe language ominowakiing, Gathering place. The first recorded inhabitants of the Milwaukee area are the Menominee, Fox, Mascouten, Sauk, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, many of these people had lived around Green Bay before migrating to the Milwaukee area around the time of European contact. In the second half of the 18th century, the Indians at Milwaukee played a role in all the wars on the American continent. During the French and Indian War, a group of Ojibwas, in the American Revolutionary War, the Indians around Milwaukee were some of the few Indians who remained loyal to the American cause throughout the Revolution. After American independence, the Indians fought the United States in the Northwest Indian War as part of the Council of Three Fires, during the War of 1812, Indians held a council in Milwaukee in June 1812, which resulted in their decision to attack Chicago. This resulted in the Battle of Fort Dearborn on August 15,1812, the War of 1812 did not end well for the Indians, and after the Black Hawk War in 1832, the Indians in Milwaukee signed their final treaty with the United States in Chicago in 1833. This paved the way for American settlement, Europeans had arrived in the Milwaukee area prior to the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. French missionaries and traders first passed through the area in the late 17th and 18th centuries, alexis Laframboise, in 1785, coming from Michilimackinac settled a trading post, therefore, he is the first European descent resident of the Milwaukee region. Early explorers called the Milwaukee River and surrounding lands various names, Melleorki, Milwacky, Mahn-a-waukie, Milwarck, for many years, printed records gave the name as Milwaukie. One story of Milwaukees name says, ne day during the thirties of the last century a newspaper calmly changed the name to Milwaukee, the spelling Milwaukie lives on in Milwaukie, Oregon, named after the Wisconsin city in 1847, before the current spelling was universally accepted. Milwaukee has three founding fathers, Solomon Juneau, Byron Kilbourn, and George H. Walker, Solomon Juneau was the first of the three to come to the area, in 1818. He was not the first European settler but founded a town called Juneaus Side, or Juneautown, in competition with Juneau, Byron Kilbourn established Kilbourntown west of the Milwaukee River and made sure the streets running toward the river did not join with those on the east side
10.
Abbotsford, Wisconsin
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Abbotsford is a city in Clark and Marathon counties in the U. S. state of Wisconsin. It is part of the Wausau, Wisconsin Metropolitan Statistical Area, the population was 2,310 at the 2010 census. Of this,1,616 were in Clark County, and 694 were in Marathon County, Abbotsford is nicknamed Wisconsins First City due to its alphabetical place on a list of Wisconsin cities. In 1872, the Wisconsin Central Railroad cleared its right of way through the forest which would become Abbotsford, rails were built through the town site in 1874. In 1879 the directors of the Wisconsin Central decided to build west from Colby to Chippewa Falls, to there with the Chippewa Falls & Western. However, they found that Colby Hill was not a site for a junction and rail yard. The place was called Colby Junction from 1879 to 1880, then renamed for Edwin H. Abbott of the Wisconsin Central, the city was incorporated in 1965. Abbotsford is located at 44°56′48″N 90°19′6″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.71 square miles, all of it land. In 2010 Abbotsford had a population of 2,310. The racial and ethnic composition was 73. 7% non-Hispanic white,0. 1% black or African American,0. 3% Native American,0. 7% Asian,0. 5% reporting two or more races and 25. 0% Hispanic or Latino. As of the census of 2010, there were 2,310 people,864 households, the population density was 852.4 inhabitants per square mile. There were 941 housing units at a density of 347.2 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 81. 9% White,0. 1% African American,0. 3% Native American,0. 7% Asian,16. 4% from other races, Hispanic or Latino of any race were 25. 0% of the population. 27. 9% of all households were made up of individuals and 14. 3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.57 and the average family size was 3.14. The median age in the city was 36.7 years. 25. 8% of residents were under the age of 18,8. 7% were between the ages of 18 and 24,24. 8% were from 25 to 44,20. 9% were from 45 to 64, and 19. 9% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 50. 2% male and 49. 8% female, as of the census of 2000, there were 1,956 people,817 households, and 516 families residing in the city. The population density was 641.1 people per square mile, there were 870 housing units at an average density of 285.1 per square mile
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin travel guide from Wikivoyage
