1.
Brownsville, Pennsylvania
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This keeps Brownsville at the nexus of the transportation infrastructure which grew up during its history. While no longer a passenger depot, the town and cross-River West Brownsville share an important Railway bridge creating a loop allowing the turning of complete coal trains. Newest is the limited access toll road PA Route 43, which connects the town to strategic points, Brownsville became a major center for building steamboats through the 19th century, producing 3,000 boats by 1888. The borough developed in the late 19th century as a yard and coking center. It reached a peak of population of more than 8,000 in 1940, postwar development occurred in suburbs, as was typical of the time. The restructuring of the railroad and steel caused a severe loss of jobs and population in Brownsville. The borough had a population of 2,331 as of the 2010 census, Brownsville is located on the banks of the Monongahela River, a major tributary of the Ohio River, one of North Americas most important waterways. The Monongahela is fully navigable at Brownsville, and offers inexpensive barge transportation to Chicago, New Orleans, marks in Florida, Minneapolis, Tulsa, Kansas City, Houston, and Brownsville, Texas, on the border with Mexico. The shipyards of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, provided Captain Richard King of Brownsville, Texas, Brownsville is connected to the satellite community of West Brownsville by the Brownsville Bridge completed in 1914, which spans the Monongahela River. In 1960, the Lane Bane Bridge was constructed just downstream, when in the 17th century, the occasional Englishman, as provincial Virginian or Marylanders generated their observations the emptiness of the region was confirmed. Before the 1750s, the area was colonized by weakened remnant tribes such as the Delaware, the few Erie, during the Revolution, the Iroquois were divided whether to back the Colonies or the mother country, and mostly did neither, attempting to stay neutral. As a river crossing, the closest to the pass that reached the Monongahela, the fort was constructed during the French and Indian War on the bluff above the river near a prehistoric earthwork mound that was also the site of historic Native American burial grounds. In 1774, a force from the Colony of Virginia garrisoned and occupied the stockade during Lord Dunmores War against the Mingo and it commanded the important strategic river ford of Nemacolins Trail, the western path to the summit, this was later improved and called Burds Road. It was a route down to the Monongahela River valley from Braddocks Road. Entrepreneur Thomas Brown acquired the lands in what became Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Many travelers used the Ohio River and its tributary, the Monongahela, eventually the settlement became known as Brownsville after him. In the 1780s, Jacob Bowman bought the land on which he built Nemacolin Castle, he had a trading post and it was the first meeting of that illegal frontier insurrection. S. Route 40, one of the federal highways
2.
Elliott Cresson Medal
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The Elliott Cresson Medal, also known as the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal, was the highest award given by the Franklin Institute. The award was established by Elliott Cresson, life member of the Franklin Institute, the medal was first awarded in 1875,21 years after Cressons death. The Franklin Institute continued awarding the medal on a basis until 1998 when they reorganized their endowed awards under one umbrella. A total of 268 Elliott Cresson Medals were given out during the awards lifetime
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Astronomer
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An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who concentrates their studies on a specific question or field outside of the scope of Earth. They look at stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies, as well as other celestial objects — either in observational astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers work on include, planetary science, solar astronomy, there are also related but distinct subjects like physical cosmology which studies the Universe as a whole. Astronomers usually fit into two types, Observational astronomers make direct observations of planets, stars and galaxies, and analyze the data, theoretical astronomers create and investigate models of things that cannot be observed. They use this data to create models or simulations to theorize how different celestial bodies work, there are further subcategories inside these two main branches of astronomy such as planetary astronomy, galactic astronomy or physical cosmology. Today, that distinction has disappeared and the terms astronomer. Professional astronomers are highly educated individuals who typically have a Ph. D. in physics or astronomy and are employed by research institutions or universities. They spend the majority of their time working on research, although quite often have other duties such as teaching, building instruments. The number of astronomers in the United States is actually quite small. The American Astronomical Society, which is the organization of professional astronomers in North America, has approximately 7,000 members. This number includes scientists from other such as physics, geology. The International Astronomical Union comprises almost 10,145 members from 70 different countries who are involved in research at the Ph. D. level. Before CCDs, photographic plates were a method of observation. Modern astronomers spend relatively little time at telescopes usually just a few weeks per year, analysis of observed phenomena, along with making predictions as to the causes of what they observe, takes the majority of observational astronomers time. Astronomers who serve as faculty spend much of their time teaching undergraduate and graduate classes, most universities also have outreach programs including public telescope time and sometimes planetariums as a public service to encourage interest in the field. Those who become astronomers usually have a background in maths, sciences. Taking courses that teach how to research, write and present papers are also invaluable, in college/university most astronomers get a Ph. D. in astronomy or physics. Keeping in mind how few there are it is understood that graduate schools in this field are very competitive
5.
Pittsburgh
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Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, and is the county seat of Allegheny County. The city proper has a population of 304,391. The metropolitan population of 2,353,045 is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the 26th-largest in the U. S. The city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclines, a fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, glass, shipbuilding, petroleum, foods, sports, transportation, computing, autos, and electronics. For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment, Americas 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out. The area has served also as the federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, robotics, energy research. The area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University, the region is a hub for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, sustainable energy, and energy extraction. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. The current pronunciation, which is unusual in English speaking countries, is almost certainly a result of a printing error in some copies of the City Charter of March 18,1816. The error was repeated commonly enough throughout the rest of the 19th century that the pronunciation was lost. After a public campaign the original spelling was restored by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1911. The area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee, the first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers, primarily Dutch, followed in the early 18th century, Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, and later that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers, during 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off. The French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalles 1669 claims, the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne, the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddocks Field. General John Forbes finally took the forks in 1758, Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named Pittsborough
6.
Monongahela River
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The Monongahela joins the Allegheny River to form the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. The Native American word Monongahela means falling banks, in reference to the instability of the rivers banks. The Lenape Language Project renders the word as Mënaonkihëla, translated where banks cave in or erode, from the verbs mënaonkihële the dirt caves off and mënaonke, it has a loose bank. Monongalia County and the town of Monongah, both in West Virginia, are named for the river, as is Monongahela in Pennsylvania, the river is navigable its entire length with a series of locks and dams that maintain a minimum depth of 9 feet to accommodate coal-laden barges. In Pennsylvania, the Monongahela is met by two tributaries, the Cheat River, which joins at Point Marion, and the Youghiogheny River. The upper drainage area of the basin is renowned for its whitewater kayaking opportunities. The land here is of a rugged plateau type which allows streams to gather sufficient water volume before they fall off the plateau. An ice dam created a vast lake—known as Lake Monongahela—stretching from its outlet at present-day Beaver, Pennsylvania for 200 miles south to at least Weston, West Virginia. It was as much as 100 miles wide at its maximum, hundreds of feet deep in places, its western and southern overflow gradually created the present-day upper Ohio River Valley. The Monongahela River valley was the site of a famous, if small, battle that was one of the first in the French and it resulted in a sharp defeat for British and Colonial forces against those of the French and their Native American allies. Originally planned to run as far south as the Cheat River, the system was extended to Fairmont, in 1897, the federal government took possession of the Monongahela Navigation through condemnation proceedings. Later, the combinations were increased in size and reduced in number. In 2006, the system, operated by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, had nine dam-locks along 128.7 miles of waterway. The locks overcame a change in elevation of about 147 feet, briefly linked to the Monongahela Navigation was the Youghiogheny Navigation, a slack water system of 18.5 miles between McKeesport and West Newton. It had two dam-locks overcoming a change in elevation of about 27 feet, opening in 1850, it was destroyed by a flood in 1865. During the 19th century, the Monongahela was heavily used by industry, three ships in the United States Navy have been named Monongahela after the river. In the 1930s, severe drought caused the river to run dry, the river was the site of a famous airplane crash that has become the subject of numerous urban legends and conspiracy theories. All six crewmen survived the crash, but two later succumbed to exposure and drowned, despite the relative shallowness of the water, the aircraft was never recovered
7.
Saturn
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Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with a radius about nine times that of Earth. Although it has only one-eighth the average density of Earth, with its larger volume Saturn is just over 95 times more massive, Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture, its astronomical symbol represents the gods sickle. Saturns interior is composed of a core of iron–nickel and rock. This core is surrounded by a layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium. Saturn has a yellow hue due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. Saturns magnetic field strength is around one-twentieth of Jupiters, the outer atmosphere is generally bland and lacking in contrast, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h, higher than on Jupiter, sixty-two moons are known to orbit Saturn, of which fifty-three are officially named. This does not include the hundreds of moonlets comprising the rings, Saturn is a gas giant because it is predominantly composed of hydrogen and helium. It lacks a definite surface, though it may have a solid core, Saturns rotation causes it to have the shape of an oblate spheroid, that is, it is flattened at the poles and bulges at its equator. Its equatorial and polar radii differ by almost 10%,60,268 km versus 54,364 km, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, the other giant planets in the Solar System, are also oblate but to a lesser extent. Saturn is the planet of the Solar System that is less dense than water—about 30% less. Although Saturns core is considerably denser than water, the specific density of the planet is 0.69 g/cm3 due to the atmosphere. Jupiter has 318 times the Earths mass, while Saturn is 95 times the mass of the Earth, together, Jupiter and Saturn hold 92% of the total planetary mass in the Solar System. On 8 January 2015, NASA reported determining the center of the planet Saturn, the temperature, pressure, and density inside Saturn all rise steadily toward the core, which causes hydrogen to transition into a metal in the deeper layers. Standard planetary models suggest that the interior of Saturn is similar to that of Jupiter, having a rocky core surrounded by hydrogen. This core is similar in composition to the Earth, but more dense, in 2004, they estimated that the core must be 9–22 times the mass of the Earth, which corresponds to a diameter of about 25,000 km. This is surrounded by a liquid metallic hydrogen layer, followed by a liquid layer of helium-saturated molecular hydrogen that gradually transitions to a gas with increasing altitude
8.
Astronomy
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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros
9.
Telescope
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A telescope is an optical instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation. The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s and they found use in both terrestrial applications and astronomy. Within a few decades, the telescope was invented, which used mirrors to collect. In the 20th century many new types of telescopes were invented, including radio telescopes in the 1930s, the word telescope now refers to a wide range of instruments capable of detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors. The word telescope was coined in 1611 by the Greek mathematician Giovanni Demisiani for one of Galileo Galileis instruments presented at a banquet at the Accademia dei Lincei, in the Starry Messenger, Galileo had used the term perspicillum. The earliest recorded working telescopes were the telescopes that appeared in the Netherlands in 1608. Their development is credited to three individuals, Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, who were spectacle makers in Middelburg, Galileo heard about the Dutch telescope in June 1609, built his own within a month, and improved upon the design in the following year. Also in 1609, Thomas Harriot became the first person known to point a telescope skyward in order to make observations of a celestial object. The idea that the objective, or light-gathering element, could be a mirror instead of a lens was being investigated soon after the invention of the refracting telescope. The potential advantages of using parabolic mirrors—reduction of spherical aberration and no chromatic aberration—led to many proposed designs, in 1668, Isaac Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope, of a design which now bears his name, the Newtonian reflector. The invention of the lens in 1733 partially corrected color aberrations present in the simple lens and enabled the construction of shorter. The largest reflecting telescopes currently have objectives larger than 10 m, the 20th century also saw the development of telescopes that worked in a wide range of wavelengths from radio to gamma-rays. The first purpose built radio telescope went into operation in 1937, since then, a tremendous variety of complex astronomical instruments have been developed. The name telescope covers a range of instruments. Most detect electromagnetic radiation, but there are differences in how astronomers must go about collecting light in different frequency bands. The near-infrared can be collected much like light, however in the far-infrared and submillimetre range. For example, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope observes from wavelengths from 3 μm to 2000 μm, on the other hand, the Spitzer Space Telescope, observing from about 3 μm to 180 μm uses a mirror. Also using reflecting optics, the Hubble Space Telescope with Wide Field Camera 3 can observe in the range from about 0.2 μm to 1.7 μm
