1.
The Erlenmeyer Flask
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The Erlenmeyer Flask is the 24th episode and the first season finale of the science fiction television series The X-Files. Written by executive producer Chris Carter, and directed by R. W. Goodwin, the episode first aired in the United States on May 13,1994 on the Fox network. With 8.3 million households turning in during its initial broadcast, the episode received an Edgar Award nomination in the Best Episode in a TV Series category, and has, since broadcast, received positive responses from both critics and crew members. The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, Mulder and Scully discover evidence of a secret government experimentation with alien DNA, the Erlenmeyer Flask introduced several new plot elements which would continue in later seasons and featured the death of recurring character Deep Throat. Carter described the inspiration for the episode as the result of a learning experience. In Ardis, Maryland, a police chase unfolds at a waterfront. The driver of the car, Dr. William Secare, is cornered by officers, Secare is shot as he runs up a gangplank and leaps off a ship into the water. The police fail to locate him but discover that his blood is green, soon afterwards, Deep Throat approaches Fox Mulder with Secares case, saying he is of major importance to revealing the truth. When investigating the case, Mulder and Dana Scully visit Dr. Terrance Berube and that night, Deep Throat meets a second time with Mulder and insists he continue, despite Mulders uncertainty on what he should be looking for. That night, Berube is confronted by the Crew Cut Man, while investigating the crime scene, Mulder finds an Erlenmeyer flask labeled Purity Control. Scully takes the flask to Georgetown University, where Dr. Anne Carpenter helps her analyze its contents, meanwhile, Mulder heads to Berubes home and finds keys for a storage facility. Secare calls Berubes home office and Mulder answers, pretending to be Berube, Secare tells who he believes to be Berube that hes been in the water for three days, and is hurt. Meanwhile, the Crew Cut Man eavesdrops on the conversation, Secare collapses due to blood loss before he can tell Mulder where he is. While he is away in an ambulance, a poisonous gas emits from Secares body when the paramedics perform a needle decompression. Secare recovers and flees from the ambulance, Mulder arrives at the storage facility and finds five men suspended in tanks, as well as a sixth empty tank. Mulder is pursued when he leaves the facility but escapes, Carpenter reveals that the Purity Control flask contains a sample of bacteria that doesnt exist anywhere in nature and can only be described as extraterrestrial. Upon revisiting the storage facility the day with Scully, Mulder discovers the room to be completely empty
2.
BrE
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British English is the English language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom or, more broadly, throughout the British Isles. Slight regional variations exist in formal, written English in the United Kingdom, for example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire, whereas little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom. The resident population at time was generally speaking Common Brittonic—the insular variety of continental Celtic. This group of languages cohabited alongside English into the modern period, initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate and these two invasions caused English to become mixed to some degree. The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins and this Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a language of great flexibility. Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of the United Kingdom, the major divisions are normally classified as English English, Welsh English, Irish English and Scottish English. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages, following its last major survey of English Dialects, the University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects, the BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnsons team both for content and for where it was reported, work by the team on this project is not expected to end before 2010. When discussing the award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated, the form of English most commonly associated with the upper class in the southern counties of England is called Received Pronunciation. It derives from a mixture of the Midland and Southern dialects spoken in London in the modern period and is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. Although speakers from elsewhere in England may not speak with an RP accent, about 2% of Britons speak RP, and it has evolved quite markedly over the last 40 years. In the South East there are significantly different accents, the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from RP, the Cockney rhyming slang can be difficult for outsiders to understand, although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades, it has features of RP. In London itself, the local accent is still changing
3.
Laboratory flask
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Laboratory flasks are vessels which fall into the category of laboratory equipment known as glassware. In laboratory and other settings, they are usually referred to simply as flasks. Laboratory flask sizes are specified by the volume they can hold, Laboratory flasks have traditionally been made of glass, but can also be made of plastic. At the opening at top of the neck of some glass flasks such as flasks, retorts, or sometimes volumetric flasks. Some flasks, especially volumetric flasks, come with a stopper or cap for capping the opening at the top of the neck, such stoppers can be made of glass or plastic. Glass stoppers typically have a tapered inner ground glass joint surface. Flasks which do not come with such stoppers or caps included may be capped with a bung or cork stopper. There are several types of laboratory flasks, all of which have different functions within the laboratory, schlenk flask is a spherical flask with a ground glass opening and a hose outlet with a vacuum stopcock. Similar to the flask, the distillation flasks usually have only one narrow neck. They are sometimes spherical, test tube shaped, or pear-shaped, also known as a Kjeldahl Flask, reagent flasks are usually a flat-bottomed flask, which can thus be conveniently placed on the table or in a cabinet. These flasks cannot withstand too much pressure or temperature differences, due to the stresses which arise in a flat bottom, the flasks are often long neck, sometimes they have the incision on the neck, which precisely defines the volume of flask. They can be used in distillations, or in the heating a product and these types of flask are alternatively called Florence flasks. Cassia flasks, for the analysis of essential oils and aldehyde determination,100 ml, neck graduated 0 -6,0,1 ml. It is a flask with an approximately pear-shaped body and a neck with a circumferential fill line. Dewar flask is a double-walled flask having a near-vacuum between the two walls and these come in a variety of shapes and sizes, some are large and tube-like, others are shaped like regular flasks. Evaporating flasks centered, pear shaped, with socket or with flange, powder flasks, for drying of powdered substances, pear shaped, with socket Retorts are simplified distillation apparatuses, with long, down turned necks, and round bases. They have largely replaced by condensers. Büchner flask or Sidearm flask or Suction flask - they are a flat-bottomed flask and they are usually a cone shape - similar to the shape of an Erlenmeyer flask, but also have side neck, usually affixed to the side,2 /3 up from the bottom
4.
Emil Erlenmeyer
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For his son sometimes known as Emil Jr. Erlenmeyer was born in Wehen, Duchy of Nassau, in 1825, the son of a Protestant minister. He enrolled in the University of Giessen to study medicine, in the summer of 1846 he went to Heidelberg for one year, and studied physics, botany and mineralogy, returning to Giessen in 1847. After serving as assistant to H, will and then to Carl Remigius Fresenius, Erlenmeyer decided to devote himself to pharmaceutical chemistry. For this purposes he studied in Nassau, where he passed the state pharmaceutical examination and he became dissatisfied with pharmacy and returned to chemistry, finishing his doctorate at Giessen in 1850. In 1855 he moved to Heidelberg to work on fertilizers in the laboratory of Robert Bunsen and he wished to teach, but Bunsens associates were not allowed to take private students. Therefore, with his wifes help, he converted a shed into a private laboratory and it was while at Heidelberg that Erlenmeyer was brought under the influence of August Kekulé, whose theoretical views he was one of the first to adopt. He was the first to suggest, in 1862, that double and triple bonds could form between atoms, and he made other important contributions to the development of theories of molecular structure. In 1863 he became professor at the University of Heidelberg. In 1868 he was hired as professor in Munich to take charge of the laboratories of the new Munich Polytechnic School. Erlenmeyer’s practical investigations were concerned mostly with aliphatic compounds, in 1859 he synthesised aminohexoic acid and proceeded to study the general behavior of albuminoids on hydrolysis. In the following year he studied the action of acid on glycerol. His investigations of the higher alcohols produced during fermentation yielded the important proof that these alcohols do not belong to the normal series and his investigations in the aromatic series include isomerism of the cinnamic acids and the synthesis of tyrosine from phenylalanine. In 1875, by nitrating benzoic acid, Erlenmeyer disproved the prevalent opinion that more than three nitrobenzoic acids exist, in 1860 he published a description of the conical flask that bears his name. This article incorporates text from Obituary notices, by Otto N. Witt, journal of the Chemical Society, Transactions
5.
Ground glass
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Ground glass is glass whose surface has been ground to produce a flat but rough finish. Ground glass surfaces have many applications, ranging from mere ornamentation on windows and table glassware to scientific uses in optics and this projects the scene on the ground glass upside down. The photographer focuses and composes using this image, sometimes with the aid of a magnifying glass. In order to see the better, a dark cloth is used to block out light. A ground glass is used in the reflex finder of an SLR or TLR camera. In motion picture cameras, the glass is a small. The ground glass usually contains precise markings to show the operator the boundaries of the frame or the center reticle. Ground glasses commonly serve as a reference for a desired aspect ratio. Ground glass is used as a weather- and heat-proof light diffuser in ambient lighting, namely on glass covers or enclosures for lamp fixtures. Ground glass surfaces are often found on the equipment of chemical laboratories. Glass flasks, stoppers, valves, funnels, and tubing are often connected together by ground glass joints, flasks and test tubes often have a small ground-glass label area on the side. Microscopes often include a ground-glass diffusing filter to generate an even illuminated field behind the specimen, microscope slides are often ground on the sides, thus softening the edges for safer handling. Popular belief for many centuries is that ground-up glass can kill if swallowed, in fact, this is a myth, as it is largely ineffective. The Guy de Maupassant short story La Confession concerns a girl who poisons her older sisters suitor by inserting ground-up glass into cake
6.
Vitreous enamel
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Vitreous enamel, also called porcelain enamel, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C. The powder melts, flows, and then hardens to a smooth, durable vitreous coating on metal, so in technical terms fired enamelware is an integrated layered composite of glass and metal. Enamelling is an old and widely adopted technology, for most of its history mainly used in jewelry, enamelled and enamelling are the preferred spellings in British English, while enameled and enameling are preferred in American English. The term enamel is most often restricted to work on metal, enamelled glass is also called painted, and overglaze decoration to pottery is often called enamelling. The word enamel comes from the Old High German word smelzan via the Old French esmail, or from a Latin word smaltum, used as a noun, an enamel is usually a small decorative object coated with enamel. Since the 19th century the term also to industrial materials and many metal consumer objects, such as some cooking vessels, dishwashers, laundry machines, sinks. The ancient Egyptians applied enamels to stone objects, pottery, and sometimes jewellery, the ancient Greeks, Celts, Georgians, and Chinese also used enamel on metal objects. Enamel powder could be produced in two ways, either by powdering coloured glass, or by mixing colourless glass powder with pigments such as a metallic oxide, designs were either painted freehand or over the top of outline incisions, and the technique probably originated in metalworking. Once painted, enamelled glass vessels needed to be fired at a high enough to melt the applied powder. Ancient Persians used this method for colouring and ornamenting the surface of metals by fusing over it brilliant colours that are decorated in an intricate design and called it Meenakari. Gold has been used traditionally for Meenakari Jewellery as it holds the enamel better, lasts longer, initially, the work of Meenakari often went unnoticed as this art was traditionally used as a backing for the famous kundan or stone-studded jewellery. This also allowed the wearer to reverse the jewellery as also promised a special joy in the secret of the hidden design, the Byzantine enamel style was widely adopted by the barbarian peoples of Migration Period northern Europe. The Byzantines then began to use cloisonné more freely to create images, the champlevé technique was considerably easier and very widely practiced in the Romanesque period. In Gothic art the finest work is in basse-taille and ronde-bosse techniques, from either Byzantium or the Islamic world, the cloisonné technique reached China in the 13-14th centuries. The first written reference to cloisonné is in a book from 1388, cloisonné remained very popular in China until the 19th century and is still produced today. Starting from the century, the Japanese also produced large quantities of very high technical quality. A resurgence in enamel-based art took place near the end of the 20th century in the Soviet Union, led by artists like Alexei Maximov, in Australia, abstract artist Bernard Hesling brought the style into prominence with his variously sized steel plates. Enamel was first applied commercially to sheet iron and steel in Austria, industrialization increased as the purity of raw materials increased and costs decreased
7.
Pencil
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Pencils create marks by physical abrasion, leaving behind a trail of solid core material that adheres to a sheet of paper or other surface. They are distinct from pens, which instead disperse a trail of liquid or gel ink that stains the light colour of the paper, most pencil cores are made of graphite mixed with a clay binder which leaves grey or black marks that can be easily erased. Other types of core are less widely used, such as charcoal pencils. Grease pencils have a softer, crayon-like waxy core that can leave marks on smooth surfaces such as glass or porcelain, the most common type of pencil casing is of thin wood, usually hexagonal in section but sometimes cylindrical, permanently bonded to the core. Similar permanent casings may be constructed of materials such as plastic or paper. To use the pencil, the casing must be carved or peeled off to expose the working end of the core as a sharp point, mechanical pencils have more elaborate casings which support mobile pieces of pigment core that can be extended or retracted through the casing tip as needed. Pencil, from Old French pincel, from Latin penicillus a little tail originally referred to a fine brush of camel hair. Though the archetypal pencil was a brush, the stylus, a thin metal stick used for scratching in papyrus or wax tablets, was used extensively by the Romans. The meaning of writing implement apparently evolved late in the 16th century. Prior to 1565, a deposit of graphite was discovered on the approach to Grey Knotts from the hamlet of Seathwaite in Borrowdale parish, Cumbria. This particular deposit of graphite was pure and solid. This remains the only deposit of graphite ever found in this solid form. Chemistry was in its infancy and the substance was thought to be a form of lead. Many people have the misconception that the graphite in the pencil is lead, the words for pencil in German, Irish, Arabic, and other languages literally mean lead pen. The value of graphite was soon realised to be enormous, mainly because it could be used to line the moulds for cannonballs, when sufficient stores of graphite had been accumulated, the mines were flooded to prevent theft until more was required. Graphite had to be smuggled out for use in pencils, because graphite is soft, it requires some form of encasement. Graphite sticks were initially wrapped in string or sheepskin for stability, the news of the usefulness of these early pencils spread far and wide, attracting the attention of artists all over the known world. England continued to enjoy a monopoly on the production of pencils until a method of reconstituting the graphite powder was found, the distinctively square English pencils continued to be made with sticks cut from natural graphite into the 1860s
8.
Beaker (glassware)
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A beaker is a simple container for stirring, mixing and heating liquids commonly used in many laboratories. Beakers are generally cylindrical in shape, with a flat bottom, most also have a small spout to aid pouring as shown in the picture. Beakers are available in a range of sizes, from one millilitre up to several litres. Standard or low-form beakers typically have a height about 1.4 times the diameter, the common low form with a spout was devised by John Joseph Griffin and is therefore sometimes called a Griffin beaker. In short, low form beakers are likely to be used in some way when performing just about any chemical experiment, tall-form beakers have a height about twice their diameter. These are sometimes called Berzelius beakers and are used for titration. Flat beakers are often called crystallizers because most are used to perform crystallization and these beakers usually do not have a flat scale. A beaker is distinguished from a flask by having straight rather than sloping sides, the exception to this definition is a slightly conical-sided beaker called a Philips beaker. Beakers are commonly made of glass, but can also be in metal or certain plastics, a common use for polypropylene beakers is gamma spectral analysis of liquid and solid samples. Beakers are often graduated, that is, marked on the side with lines indicating the volume contained, most beakers are accurate to within ~10%. The presence of a means that the beaker cannot have a lid. However, when in use, beakers may be covered by a glass to prevent contamination or loss of the contents. Alternatively, a beaker may be covered with another larger beaker that has been inverted, though a watch glass is preferable
9.
Bung
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A bung, stopper or cork is a truncated cylindrical or conical closure to seal a container, such as a bottle, tube or barrel. Unlike a lid, which encloses a container from the outside without displacing the inner volume, a glass stopper is often called a ground glass joint, a rubber stopper is sometimes called a rubber bung, and a cork stopper is called simply a cork. Bung stoppers used for wine bottles are referred to as corks, a common every-day example of a bung is the cork of a wine bottle. Bungs are used to seal the bunghole of barrels, other bungs, particularly those used in chemical barrels, may be made of metal and be screwed into place via threading. Ground glass joint are commonly used with laboratory glassware, mainly because of their nonreactivity, some stoppers used in labs have holes in them to allow the insertion of glass or rubber tubing. This is often used when a reaction is taking place in the flask or test tube, for instance, if one were to boil water in a test tube and wanted to collect the water vapor, one could seal the test tube with a stopper with holes in it. With tubing inserted into the hole, when the tube is heated, water vapor will rise through the hole, make its way through the tubing, and into the collection chamber of choice. The water vapor would not be able to escape into the air, because the stopper, in chemistry, bungs made of hardened rubber are frequently used in high school level demonstrations, or in small-scale experimental set-ups involving non-corrosive gases. Some chemistry bungs may also one or more holes so a glass tube or laboratory funnel may be inserted through the bung. In all cases, the keeps the experimentation environment sealed so that liquids or gases cannot escape. For applications that place higher demand on the bung in terms of temperature and mechanical stability or solvent resistance, silicone bungs are the standard for wine barrels and come in a number of varieties
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