1.
Boot
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A boot is a type of footwear and a specific type of shoe. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle, while some also cover some part of the lower calf, some boots extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is distinguishable from the rest of the sole. Traditionally made of leather or rubber, modern boots are made from a variety of materials, in some cases, the wearing of boots may be required by laws or regulations, such as the regulations in some jurisdictions requiring workers on construction sites to wear steel-toed safety boots. Some uniforms include boots as the regulated footwear, Boots are recommended as well for motorcycle riders. High-top athletic shoes are not considered boots, even though they do cover the ankle. In Britain, the term may be used to refer to football cleats, early boots consisted of separate leggings, soles, and uppers worn together to provide greater ankle protection than shoes or sandals. Around 1000 BC, these components were more permanently joined to form a unit that covered the feet and lower leg. A type of soft leather boots were worn by nomads in eastern Asia. The Inuit and Aleut natives of Alaska developed traditional winter boots of skin or sealskin featuring decorative touches of seal intestine, dog hair. 17th century European boots were influenced by military styles, featuring thick soles, waterproof gumboots are made in different lengths of uppers. In extreme cases, thigh-boots called waders, worn by anglers, such boots may also be insulated for warmth. With the exception of gum boots, boots sold in retail stores may be considered water resistant, as they are not usually fully waterproof. Most work boots are made from leather. Formerly they were usually shod with hobnails and heel- and toe-plates, but now can usually be seen with a rubber sole. Boots are normally worn with socks to prevent chafes and blisters, to sweat, to improve the foots grip inside the boot. Before socks became widely available, footwraps were worn instead, specialty boots have been designed for many different types of sports, particularly riding, skiing, snowboarding, ice-skating, and sporting in wet/damp conditions. Bovver boots, Doc Martens boots and army boots were adopted by skinheads and punks as part of their dress and have migrated to more mainstream fashion
2.
Water
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Water is a transparent and nearly colorless chemical substance that is the main constituent of Earths streams, lakes, and oceans, and the fluids of most living organisms. Its chemical formula is H2O, meaning that its molecule contains one oxygen, Water strictly refers to the liquid state of that substance, that prevails at standard ambient temperature and pressure, but it often refers also to its solid state or its gaseous state. It also occurs in nature as snow, glaciers, ice packs and icebergs, clouds, fog, dew, aquifers, Water covers 71% of the Earths surface. It is vital for all forms of life. Only 2. 5% of this water is freshwater, and 98. 8% of that water is in ice and groundwater. Less than 0. 3% of all freshwater is in rivers, lakes, and the atmosphere, a greater quantity of water is found in the earths interior. Water on Earth moves continually through the cycle of evaporation and transpiration, condensation, precipitation. Evaporation and transpiration contribute to the precipitation over land, large amounts of water are also chemically combined or adsorbed in hydrated minerals. Safe drinking water is essential to humans and other even though it provides no calories or organic nutrients. There is a correlation between access to safe water and gross domestic product per capita. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the population will be facing water-based vulnerability. A report, issued in November 2009, suggests that by 2030, in developing regions of the world. Water plays an important role in the world economy, approximately 70% of the freshwater used by humans goes to agriculture. Fishing in salt and fresh water bodies is a source of food for many parts of the world. Much of long-distance trade of commodities and manufactured products is transported by boats through seas, rivers, lakes, large quantities of water, ice, and steam are used for cooling and heating, in industry and homes. Water is an excellent solvent for a variety of chemical substances, as such it is widely used in industrial processes. Water is also central to many sports and other forms of entertainment, such as swimming, pleasure boating, boat racing, surfing, sport fishing, Water is a liquid at the temperatures and pressures that are most adequate for life. Specifically, at atmospheric pressure of 1 bar, water is a liquid between the temperatures of 273.15 K and 373.15 K
3.
Soil
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Soil is a mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids, and countless organisms that together support life on Earth. Soil is called the Skin of the Earth and interfaces with the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the term pedolith, used commonly to refer to the soil, literally translates ground stone. Soil consists of a phase of minerals and organic matter, as well as a porous phase that holds gases. Accordingly, soils are often treated as a system of solids, liquids. Soil is a product of the influence of climate, relief, organisms, Soil continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness soil has been considered as an ecosystem by soil ecologists. Most soils have a dry bulk density between 1.1 and 1.6 g/cm3, while the particle density is much higher. Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, Soil science has two basic branches of study, edaphology and pedology. Edaphology is concerned with the influence of soils on living things, pedology is focused on the formation, description, and classification of soils in their natural environment. In engineering terms, soil is referred to as regolith, or loose material that lies above the solid geology. Soil is commonly referred to as earth or dirt, technically, as soil resources serve as a basis for food security, the international community advocates its sustainable and responsible use through different types of soil governance. Soil is a component of the Earths ecosystem. The worlds ecosystems are impacted in far-reaching ways by the carried out in the soil, from ozone depletion and global warming, to rainforest destruction. Following the atmosphere, the soil is the next largest carbon reservoir on Earth, as the planet warms, soils will add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere due to its increased biological activity at higher temperatures. Thus, soil carbon losses likely have a positive feedback response to global warming. Since soil has a range of available niches and habitats. A gram of soil can contain billions of organisms, belonging to thousands of species, mostly microbial, Soil has a mean prokaryotic density of roughly 108 organisms per gram, whereas the ocean has no more than 107 procaryotic organisms per milliliter of seawater. Since plant roots need oxygen, ventilation is an important characteristic of soil and this ventilation can be accomplished via networks of interconnected soil pores, which also absorb and hold rainwater making it readily available for plant uptake
4.
Silt
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Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay, whose mineral origin is quartz and feldspar. Silt may occur as a soil or as sediment mixed in suspension with water in a body of such as a river. It may also exist as soil deposited at the bottom of a water body, Silt has a moderate specific area with a typically non-sticky, plastic feel. Silt usually has a floury feel when dry, and a slippery feel when wet, Silt can be visually observed with a hand lens. Silt is created by a variety of physical processes capable of splitting the generally sand-sized quartz crystals of primary rocks by exploiting deficiencies in their lattice and these involve chemical weathering of rock and regolith, and a number of physical weathering processes such as frost shattering and haloclasty. The main process is abrasion through transport, including fluvial comminution, aeolian attrition and it is in semi-arid environments that substantial quantities of silt are produced. Silt is sometimes known as rock flour or stone dust, especially produced by glacial action. Mineralogically, silt is composed mainly of quartz and feldspar, sedimentary rock composed mainly of silt is known as siltstone. Liquefaction created by an earthquake is silt suspended in water that is hydrodynamically forced up from below ground level. In the Udden–Wentworth scale, silt particles range between 0.0039 and 0.0625 mm, larger than clay but smaller than sand particles, ISO14688 grades silts between 0.002 mm and 0.063 mm. In actuality, silt is chemically distinct from clay, and unlike clay, grains of silt are approximately the size in all dimensions, furthermore. Clays are formed from thin plate-shaped particles held together by electrostatic forces, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture Soil Texture Classification system, the sand-silt distinction is made at the 0.05 mm particle size. The USDA system has been adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organization, in the Unified Soil Classification System and the AASHTO Soil Classification system, the sand-silt distinction is made at the 0.075 mm particle size. Silts and clays are distinguished mechanically by their plasticity, Silt is easily transported in water or other liquid and is fine enough to be carried long distances by air in the form of dust. Thick deposits of silty material resulting from deposition by aeolian processes are called loess. Silt and clay contribute to turbidity in water, Silt is transported by streams or by water currents in the ocean. When silt appears as a pollutant in water the phenomenon is known as siltation, Silt, deposited by annual floods along the Nile River, created the rich, fertile soil that sustained the Ancient Egyptian civilization. In south east Bangladesh, in the Noakhali district, cross dams were built in the 1960s whereby silt gradually started forming new land called chars, the district of Noakhali has gained more than 28 square miles of land in the past 50 years
5.
Clay
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Clay is a fine-grained natural rock or soil material that combines one or more clay minerals with traces of metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure. Clays are plastic due to water content and become hard, brittle. Depending on the content in which it is found, clay can appear in various colours from white to dull grey or brown to deep orange-red. Although many naturally occurring deposits include both silts and clay, clays are distinguished from other fine-grained soils by differences in size, silts, which are fine-grained soils that do not include clay minerals, tend to have larger particle sizes than clays. There is, however, some overlap in size and other physical properties. The distinction between silt and clay varies by discipline, geologists and soil scientists usually consider the separation to occur at a particle size of 2 µm, sedimentologists often use 4–5 μm, and colloid chemists use 1 μm. Geotechnical engineers distinguish between silts and clays based on the plasticity properties of the soil, as measured by the soils Atterberg limits, ISO14688 grades clay particles as being smaller than 2 μm and silt particles as being larger. These solvents, usually acidic, migrate through the rock after leaching through upper weathered layers. In addition to the process, some clay minerals are formed through hydrothermal activity. There are two types of deposits, primary and secondary. Primary clays form as residual deposits in soil and remain at the site of formation, secondary clays are clays that have been transported from their original location by water erosion and deposited in a new sedimentary deposit. Clay deposits are associated with very low energy depositional environments such as large lakes. Depending on the source, there are three or four main groups of clays, kaolinite, montmorillonite-smectite, illite, and chlorite. Chlorites are not always considered to be a clay, sometimes being classified as a group within the phyllosilicates. There are approximately 30 different types of clays in these categories. Varve is clay with visible annual layers, which are formed by deposition of those layers and are marked by differences in erosion. This type of deposit is common in glacial lakes
6.
Shale
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Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable, shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering or bedding less than one centimeter in thickness, called fissility. Mudstones, on the hand, are similar in composition. Before the mid 19th century, the slate, shale. In the context of underground mining, shale was frequently referred to as slate well into the 20th century. Non-fissile rocks of similar composition but made of smaller than 0.06 mm are described as mudstones or claystone. Rocks with similar sizes but with less clay and therefore grittier are siltstones. Shale is the most common sedimentary rock, shales are typically composed of variable amounts of clay minerals and quartz grains and the typical color is gray. Addition of variable amounts of minor constituents alters the color of the rock, black shale results from the presence of greater than one percent carbonaceous material and indicates a reducing environment. Black shale can also be referred to as black metal, red, brown and green colors are indicative of ferric oxide, iron hydroxide, or micaceous minerals. Clays are the constituent of shales and other mudrocks. The clay minerals represented are largely kaolinite, montmorillonite and illite, clay minerals of Late Tertiary mudstones are expandable smectites whereas in older rocks especially in mid- to early Paleozoic shales illites predominate. The transformation of smectite to illite produces silica, sodium, calcium, magnesium, iron and these released elements form authigenic quartz, chert, calcite, dolomite, ankerite, hematite and albite, all trace to minor minerals found in shales and other mudrocks. Shales and mudrocks contain roughly 95 percent of the matter in all sedimentary rocks. However, this amounts to less than one percent by mass in an average shale, black shales, which form in anoxic conditions, contain reduced free carbon along with ferrous iron and sulfur. Pyrite and amorphous iron sulfide along with carbon produce the black coloration, the process in the rock cycle which forms shale is called compaction. The fine particles that compose shale can remain suspended in long after the larger particles of sand have deposited. Shales are typically deposited in very slow moving water and are found in lakes and lagoonal deposits, in river deltas, on floodplains
7.
Mudstone
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Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Grain size is up to 0.0625 mm with individual grains too small to be distinguished without a microscope, with increased pressure over time, the platey clay minerals may become aligned, with the appearance of fissility or parallel layering. This finely bedded material that splits readily into thin layers is called shale, the lack of fissility or layering in mudstone may be due to either original texture or the disruption of layering by burrowing organisms in the sediment prior to lithification. Mud rocks such as mudstone and shale comprise some 65% of all sedimentary rocks, mudstone looks like hardened clay and, depending upon the circumstances under which it was formed, it may show cracks or fissures, like a sun-baked clay deposit. Mudstone can be separated into categories, Siltstone – more than half of the composition is silt-sized particles. Claystone – more than half of the composition is clay-sized particles, mudstone – hardened mud, a mix of silt and clay sized particles. Mudstone can include, Shale – exhibits lamination or fissility, argillite – has undergone low-grade metamorphism. In the Dunham classification of limestones, a mudstone is a carbonate rock that contains less than 10% allochems in a carbonate mud matrix. As defined by the Dunham classification, a mudstone is more or less synonymous with calcilutite, on December 13,2016, NASA reported further evidence supporting habitability on the planet Mars as the Curiosity rover climbed higher, studying younger layers, on Mount Sharp. Also reported, the soluble element boron was detected for the first time on Mars. Since landing on Mars in August 2012, Curiosity has driven 15.0 km, mudstone on planet Mars Aeolis quadrangle Composition of Mars Timeline of Mars Science Laboratory Tonstein
8.
Estuary
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An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a zone between river environments and maritime environments. They are subject both to marine influences—such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water—and to riverine influences—such as flows of fresh water and sediment. The inflows of sea water and fresh water provide high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. Most existing estuaries formed during the Holocene epoch with the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea began to rise about 10. Estuaries are typically classified according to their geomorphological features or to water-circulation patterns, the banks of many estuaries are amongst the most heavily populated areas of the world, with about 60% of the worlds population living along estuaries and the coast. The word estuary is derived from the Latin word aestuarium meaning tidal inlet of the sea, there have been many definitions proposed to describe an estuary. However, this definition excludes a number of water bodies such as coastal lagoons. This broad definition also includes fjords, lagoons, river mouths, an estuary is a dynamic ecosystem having a connection to the open sea through which the sea water enters with the rhythm of the tides. The sea water entering the estuary is diluted by the water flowing from rivers. The pattern of dilution varies between different estuaries and depends on the volume of water, the tidal range. Drowned river valleys are known as coastal plain estuaries. In places where the sea level is rising relative to the land, sea water progressively penetrates into river valleys and this is the most common type of estuary in temperate climates. Well-studied estuaries include the Severn Estuary in the United Kingdom and the Ems Dollard along the Dutch-German border, the width-to-depth ratio of these estuaries is typically large, appearing wedge-shaped in the inner part and broadening and deepening seaward. Water depths rarely exceed 30 m, examples of this type of estuary in the U. S. are the Hudson River, Chesapeake Bay, and Delaware Bay along the Mid-Atlantic coast, and Galveston Bay and Tampa Bay along the Gulf Coast. They are relatively common in tropical and subtropical locations and these estuaries are semi-isolated from ocean waters by barrier beaches. Formation of barrier beaches partially encloses the estuary, with only narrow inlets allowing contact with the ocean waters, bar-built estuaries typically develop on gently sloping plains located along tectonically stable edges of continents and marginal sea coasts. They are extensive along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U. S. in areas with active coastal deposition of sediments, barrier beaches form in shallow water and are generally parallel to the shoreline, resulting in long, narrow estuaries
9.
Bay mud
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Bay mud manifests low shear strength, high compressibility and low permeability, making it hazardous to build upon in seismically active regions like the San Francisco Bay Area. Typical bulk density of bay mud is approximately 1.3 grams per cubic centimetre, Bay mud has its own official geological abbreviation. The designation for Quaternary older bay mud is Qobm and the acronym for Quaternary younger bay mud is Qybm, an alluvial layer is often found overlying the older bay mud. In relation to shipping channels, it is necessary to dredge bay bottoms. It is not uncommon to dredge the same channel repeatedly since further settling sediments are prone to redeposit on an open valley floor. Bay muds originate from two generalized sources, first alluvial deposits of clays, silts and sand occur from streams tributary to a given bay. The extent of these unconsolidated interglacial deposits typically ranges throughout a given bay to the extent of the historical perimeter marshlands, second, in periods of high glaciation, deposits of silts, sands and organic plus inorganic detritus may form a separate distinct layer. Thus bay muds are important time records of activity and streamflow throughout the Quaternary period. Some depositional formation is quite recent, such as in the case of Florida Bay, where much of the bay mud has accumulated since 2000 BC, and consists of primarily decayed organic material. In the case of the Bristol Channel in the United Kingdom bay, mud formation has been occurring at least since the Eemian Stage, in other cases such as with San Francisco Bay, deposition has been interrupted by sea-level changes, and strata of vastly different vintages are found. In the San Francisco Bay Area, these are called Young bay mud, human activities can also affect deposition, close to half of the Young Bay Mud in San Francisco Bay was placed in the period 1855–1865, as a result of placer mining in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Construction on bay mud sites is difficult because of the low strength. A number of buildings have been constructed over bay muds, typically employing special mitigation designs to withstand seismic risks. Complicating design issues, fill is sometimes deposited on the surface level. For example, the Dakin Building in Brisbane, California was designed in 1985 to sit on piles 150 feet deep, anchoring to the Franciscan formation, below the bay muds and through an upper fill layer. Furthermore, the entrance ramp has been set on a giant hinge to allow the surrounding land to settle, while the building absolute height remains constant. The Crowne Plaza high-rise hotel in Burlingame, California was also designed to sit over bay muds, as was the Westin Hotel in Millbrae, California, indeed, Bostons entire Back Bay district is named for the tidal bay that it now covers. Logan International Airport and the San Francisco International Airport are also constructed over bay mud, when the mud layer is exposed at the tidal fringe, mudflats result affording a unique ecotone that affords numerous shorebird species a safe feeding and resting habitat
10.
Arg e Bam
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The Arg-e Bam was the largest adobe building in the world, located in Bam, a city in Kerman Province of southeastern Iran. It is listed by UNESCO as part of the World Heritage Site Bam, the origin of this enormous citadel on the Silk Road can be traced back to the Achaemenid Empire and even beyond. The heyday of the citadel was from the seventh to eleventh centuries, being at the crossroads of important trade routes and known for the production of silk and cotton garments. The entire building was a large fortress containing the citadel, but because of the look of the citadel, which forms the highest point. On December 26,2003, the Citadel was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake, along much of the rest of Bam. A few days after the earthquake, the President of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, larger than nearby Rayen Castle, the area of Bam Citadel is approximately 180,000 square meters, and it is surrounded by gigantic walls 6–7 metres high and 1,815 metres long. The citadel features two of the towers for which Bam is famed - there are as many as 67 such towers scattered across the ancient city of Bam. The planning and architecture of the citadel are thought out from different points of view, from the present form of the citadel one can see that the planner had foreseen the entire final form of the building and city from the first steps in the planning process. During each phase of building development the already-built part enjoyed a complete figure, the citadel is situated in the center of the fortress-city, on the point with widest view for security. Among the houses, three different types are recognizable, Smaller houses with 2-3 rooms for the poor families, bigger houses with 3-4 rooms for the middle social class, some of which have also a veranda. The most luxurious houses with more rooms oriented in different directions suitable for different seasons of the year, together with a big court, there are few of this type of houses in the fortress. All buildings are made of non-baked clay bricks, i. e. adobes, Bam Citadel was probably, prior to the 2003 earthquake, the biggest adobe structure in the world. The Citadel was used as the location site for Valerio Zurlinis film. When the gate of the city was closed, no human or animal could enter, the inhabitants could continue living for a long period of time in isolation as they had access to a well, gardens, and domestic animals inside. When the fortress-city was besieged the inhabitants could remain in the city while the soldiers could defend it, protected by high walls, the wall has one blind spot. Besides the watch towers and ornamented tops of the walls on the skyline of the fortress. They are structures protruding from the buildings to catch the wind, sometimes the air is passed over a water basin in the building to cool it and remove dust. Different types of towers are utilized for different buildings
11.
Construction
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Construction is the process of constructing a building or infrastructure. Construction as an industry comprises six to nine percent of the domestic product of developed countries. Construction starts with planning, design, and financing, and continues until the project is built, large-scale construction requires collaboration across multiple disciplines. An architect normally manages the job, and a manager, design engineer. For the successful execution of a project, effective planning is essential, the largest construction projects are referred to as megaprojects. Construction is a term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations. Construction is used as a verb, the act of building, and a noun, how a building was built, in general, there are three sectors of construction, buildings, infrastructure and industrial. Building construction is further divided into residential and non-residential. Infrastructure is often called heavy/highway, heavy civil or heavy engineering and it includes large public works, dams, bridges, highways, water/wastewater and utility distribution. Industrial includes refineries, process chemical, power generation, mills, there are other ways to break the industry into sectors or markets. Engineering News-Record is a magazine for the construction industry. Each year, ENR compiles and reports on data about the size of design and they publish a list of the largest companies in the United States and also a list the largest global firms. In 2014, ENR compiled the data in nine market segments and it was divided as transportation, petroleum, buildings, power, industrial, water, manufacturing, sewer/waste, telecom, hazardous waste plus a tenth category for other projects. In their reporting on the Top 400, they used data on transportation, sewer, hazardous waste, the Standard Industrial Classification and the newer North American Industry Classification System have a classification system for companies that perform or otherwise engage in construction. To recognize the differences of companies in this sector, it is divided into three subsectors, building construction, heavy and civil engineering construction, and specialty trade contractors, there are also categories for construction service firms and construction managers. Building construction is the process of adding structure to real property or construction of buildings, the majority of building construction jobs are small renovations, such as addition of a room, or renovation of a bathroom. Often, the owner of the property acts as laborer, paymaster, for this reason, those with experience in the field make detailed plans and maintain careful oversight during the project to ensure a positive outcome. Residential construction practices, technologies, and resources must conform to local building authority regulations, materials readily available in the area generally dictate the construction materials used
12.
Slurry
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A slurry is a thin sloppy mud or cement or, in extended use, any fluid mixture of a pulverized solid with a liquid, often used as a convenient way of handling solids in bulk. Slurries behave in ways like thick fluids, flowing under gravity but are also capable of being pumped if not too thick. It contains large amount of catalyst, in form of sediments hence the denomination of slurry. C, a General Theory of the Hydraulic Transport of Solids in Full Suspension Ravelet, F. Bakir, F. Khelladi, S. Rey, R. Experimental study of transport of large particles in horizontal pipes. Ming, G. Ruixiang, L. Fusheng, N. Liqun, X. Hydraulic Transport of Coarse Gravel—A Laboratory Investigation Into Flow Resistance
13.
Mortar (masonry)
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In its broadest sense mortar includes pitch, asphalt, and soft mud or clay, such as used between mud bricks. Mortar comes from Latin mortarium meaning crushed, mortars are typically made from a mixture of sand, a binder, and water. The most common binder since the early 20th century is Portland cement, there are several types of cement mortars and additives. The first mortars were made of mud and clay, because of a lack of stone and an abundance of clay, Babylonian constructions were of baked brick, using lime or pitch for mortar. According to Roman Ghirshman, the first evidence of using a form of mortar was at the Mehrgarh of Baluchistan in Pakistan. The ancient sites of Harappan civilization of third millennium BCE are built with kiln-fired bricks, gypsum mortar, also called plaster of Paris, was used in the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and many other ancient structures. It is made from gypsum, which requires a firing temperature. It is therefore easier to make lime mortar and sets up much faster which may be a reason it was used as the typical mortar in ancient, brick arch. Gypsum mortar is not as durable as other mortars in damp conditions, in early Egyptian pyramids, which were constructed during the Old Kingdom, the limestone blocks were bound by mortar of mud and clay, or clay and sand. In later Egyptian pyramids, the mortar was made of gypsum or lime. Gypsum mortar was essentially a mixture of plaster and sand and was quite soft, in the Indian subcontinent, multiple cement types have been observed in the sites of the Indus Valley Civilization, such as the Mohenjo-daro city-settlement that dates to earlier than 2600 BCE. Bitumen mortar was used at a lower-frequency, including in the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro. Historically, building with concrete and mortar next appeared in Greece, the excavation of the underground aqueduct of Megara revealed that a reservoir was coated with a pozzolanic mortar 12 mm thick. This aqueduct dates back to c.500 BCE, pozzolanic mortar is a lime based mortar, but is made with an additive of volcanic ash that allows it to be hardened underwater, thus it is known as hydraulic cement. The Greeks obtained the volcanic ash from the Greek islands Thira and Nisiros, or from the then Greek colony of Dicaearchia near Naples, the Romans later improved the use and methods of making what became known as pozzolanic mortar and cement. Even later, the Romans used a mortar without pozzolana using crushed terra cotta, introducing aluminum oxide and this mortar was not as strong as pozzolanic mortar, but, because it was denser, it better resisted penetration by water. Hydraulic mortar was not available in ancient China, possibly due to a lack of volcanic ash, around 500 CE, sticky rice soup was mixed with slaked lime to make an inorganic−organic composite mortar that had more strength and water resistance than lime mortar. It is not understood how the art of making hydraulic mortar and cement, during the Middle Ages when the Gothic cathedrals were being built, the only active ingredient in the mortar was lime
14.
Plaster
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Plaster is a building material used for the protective and/or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English plaster usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, another imprecise term used for the material is stucco, which is also often used for plasterwork that is worked in some way to produce relief decoration, rather than flat surfaces. The most common types of plaster mainly contain either gypsum, lime, or cement, the plaster is manufactured as a dry powder and is mixed with water to form a stiff but workable paste immediately before it is applied to the surface. The reaction with water liberates heat through crystallization and the hydrated plaster then hardens, plaster can be relatively easily worked with metal tools or even sandpaper, and can be moulded, either on site or to make pre-formed sections in advance, which are put in place with adhesive. Plaster is not a material, it is suitable for finishing, rather than load-bearing. Forms of plaster have several other uses, in medicine plaster orthopedic casts are still often used for supporting set broken bones. In dentistry plaster is used to make dental models, various types of models and moulds are made with plaster. In art, lime plaster is the matrix for fresco painting. Gypsum plaster, or plaster of Paris, is produced by heating gypsum to about 300 °F, when the dry plaster powder is mixed with water, it re-forms into gypsum. The setting of unmodified plaster starts about 10 minutes after mixing and is complete in about 45 minutes, if plaster or gypsum is heated above 266 °F, hemihydrate is formed, which will also re-form as gypsum if mixed with water. On heating to 180 °C, the nearly water-free form, called γ-anhydrite is produced, γ-Anhydrite reacts slowly with water to return to the dihydrate state, a property exploited in some commercial desiccants. On heating above 250 °C, the anhydrous form called β-anhydrite or dead burned plaster is formed. A large gypsum deposit at Montmartre in Paris led calcined gypsum to be known as plaster of Paris. Plasterers often use gypsum to simulate the appearance of surfaces of wood, stone, or metal, on movie, nowadays, theatrical plasterers often use expanded polystyrene, although the job title remains unchanged. Plaster of Paris can be used to impregnate gauze bandages to make a material called plaster bandages. It is used similarly to clay, as it is shaped when wet, yet sets into a resilient. This is the material that was used to make classic plaster orthopedic casts to protect limbs with broken bones, set Modroc is an early example of a composite material. The hydration of plaster of Paris relies on the reaction of water with the dehydrated or partially hydrated calcium sulfate present in the plaster, lime plaster is a mixture of calcium hydroxide and sand
15.
Stucco
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Stucco or render is a material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a dense solid. It is used as coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural. Stucco may be used to cover less visually appealing construction materials such as metal, concrete, cinder block, or clay brick and adobe. In English, stucco usually means a coating for the outside of a building, and plaster one for interiors, as described below, but other European languages, importantly including Italian, do not have the same distinction, stucco means plaster in Italian and serves for both. This has led to English often using stucco for interior decorative plasterwork in relief, especially in art history, the difference in nomenclature between stucco, plaster, and mortar is based more on use than composition. Animal or plant fibers were often added for additional strength, in the latter nineteenth century, Portland cement was added with increasing frequency in an attempt to improve the durability of stucco. At the same time, traditional lime plasters were being replaced by gypsum plaster, traditional stucco is made of lime, sand, and water. Modern stucco is made of Portland cement, sand, and water, lime is added to increase the permeability and workability of modern stucco. Sometimes additives such as acrylics and glass fibers are added to improve the properties of the stucco. This is usually done with what is considered a one-coat stucco system, lime stucco is a relatively hard material that can be broken or chipped by hand without too much difficulty. The lime itself is white, color comes from the aggregate or any added pigments. Lime stucco has the property of being self-healing to a degree because of the slight water solubility of lime. Portland cement stucco is very hard and brittle and can easily crack if the base on which it is applied is not stable, typically its color was gray, from the innate color of most Portland cement, but white Portland cement is also used. Todays stucco manufacturers offer a wide range of colors that can be mixed integrally in the finish coat. As a building material, stucco is a durable, attractive and it was traditionally used as both an interior and exterior finish applied in one or two thin layers directly over a solid masonry, brick or stone surface. The finish coat usually contained a color and was typically textured for appearance. The lath added support for the wet plaster and tensile strength to the brittle, cured stucco, while the increased thickness, the traditional application of stucco and lath occurs in three coats — the scratch coat, the brown coat and the finish coat
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Concrete
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Concrete is a composite material composed of coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement that hardens over time. Most concretes used are lime-based concretes such as Portland cement concrete or concretes made with other hydraulic cements, when aggregate is mixed together with dry Portland cement and water, the mixture forms a fluid slurry that is easily poured and molded into shape. The cement reacts chemically with the water and other ingredients to form a matrix that binds the materials together into a durable stone-like material that has many uses. Often, additives are included in the mixture to improve the properties of the wet mix or the finished material. Most concrete is poured with reinforcing materials embedded to provide tensile strength, famous concrete structures include the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal, and the Roman Pantheon. The earliest large-scale users of technology were the ancient Romans. The Colosseum in Rome was built largely of concrete, and the dome of the Pantheon is the worlds largest unreinforced concrete dome. Today, large concrete structures are made with reinforced concrete. After the Roman Empire collapsed, use of concrete became rare until the technology was redeveloped in the mid-18th century, today, concrete is the most widely used man-made material. The word concrete comes from the Latin word concretus, the passive participle of concrescere, from con-. Perhaps the earliest known occurrence of cement was twelve years ago. A deposit of cement was formed after an occurrence of oil shale located adjacent to a bed of limestone burned due to natural causes and these ancient deposits were investigated in the 1960s and 1970s. On a human timescale, small usages of concrete go back for thousands of years and they discovered the advantages of hydraulic lime, with some self-cementing properties, by 700 BC. They built kilns to supply mortar for the construction of houses, concrete floors. The cisterns were kept secret and were one of the reasons the Nabataea were able to thrive in the desert, some of these structures survive to this day. In the Ancient Egyptian and later Roman eras, it was re-discovered that adding volcanic ash to the mix allowed it to set underwater, similarly, the Romans knew that adding horse hair made concrete less liable to crack while it hardened, and adding blood made it more frost-resistant. Crystallization of strätlingite and the introduction of pyroclastic clays creates further fracture resistance, german archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found concrete floors, which were made of lime and pebbles, in the royal palace of Tiryns, Greece, which dates roughly to 1400–1200 BC. Lime mortars were used in Greece, Crete, and Cyprus in 800 BC, the Assyrian Jerwan Aqueduct made use of waterproof concrete
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Cob (material)
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Cob, cobb or clom is a natural building material made from subsoil, water, some kind of fibrous organic material, and sometimes lime. The contents of subsoil naturally vary, and if it not contain the right mixture it can be modified with sand or clay. Cob is fireproof, resistant to seismic activity, and inexpensive and it can be used to create artistic, sculptural forms, and its use has been revived in recent years by the natural building and sustainability movements. In technical building and engineering such as the Uniform Building Code. Cob is an English term attested to around the year 1600 for an ancient building material that has used for building since prehistoric times. The etymology of cob and cobbing is unclear, but in several senses means to beat or strike, some of the oldest man-made structures in Afghanistan are composed of rammed earth and cob. Cobwork was used in the Maghreb and al-Andalus in the 11th and 12th centuries, Cob material is known by many names including adobe, lump clay, puddled clay, chalk mud, wichert, clay daubins, swish, torchis, bauge, bousille, and cat and clay. Cob structures can be found in a variety of climates across the globe, a number of cob cottages survive from mid-19th-century New Zealand. Traditionally, English cob was made by mixing the clay-based subsoil with sand, straw, English soils contain varying amounts of chalk, and cob made with significant amounts of chalk are called chalk cob or wychert. The earthen mixture was then ladled onto a foundation in courses. The construction would progress according to the time required for the course to dry. After drying, the walls would be trimmed and the next course built, with lintels for later such as doors. The walls of a cob house are generally about 24 inches thick, the thick walls provided excellent thermal mass which was easy to keep warm in winter and cool in summer. Walls with a thermal mass value act as a thermal buffer inside the home. The material has a long life-span even in rainy and/or humid climates, provided a tall foundation, Cob is fireproof, while fire cob is a refractory material, and historically, has been used to make chimneys, fireplaces, forges and crucibles. Without fiber, however, cob loses most of its tensile strength, when Kevin McCabe constructed a two-story, four bedroom cob house in England, UK in 1994, it was reputedly the first cob residence built in the country in 70 years. His techniques remained very traditional, the innovations he made were using a tractor to mix the cob and adding sand or shillet. From 2002 to 2004, sustainability enthusiast Rob Hopkins initiated the construction of a cob house for his family and it was a community project, but an unidentified arsonist destroyed it shortly before completion
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Adobe
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Adobe is a building material made from earth and often organic material. Adobe is among the earliest building materials, and is used throughout the world, modern methods of construction allow the pouring of whole adobe walls that are reinforced with steel. In dry climates, adobe structures are extremely durable, and account for some of the oldest existing buildings in the world. Adobe buildings offer significant advantages due to their greater thermal mass, cases where adobe structures were widely damaged during earthquakes include the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, the 2003 Bam earthquake and the 2010 Chile earthquake. Puebloan peoples built their structures with handfuls or basketfuls of adobe. Adobe bricks were used in Spain from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages and its wide use can be attributed to its simplicity of design and manufacture, and economics. A distinction is made between the smaller adobes, which are about the size of ordinary baked bricks, and the larger adobines. The word adobe /əˈdoʊbiː/ has existed for around 4000 years with little change in either pronunciation or meaning. The word can be traced from the Middle Egyptian word ɟbt mudbrick, Middle Egyptian evolved into Late Egyptian, Demotic or pre-Coptic, and finally to Coptic, where it appeared as τωωβε tōʾpə. This was borrowed into Arabic as الطوب aṭ-ṭawbu or aṭ-ṭūbu, with the definite article al- attached, tuba, English borrowed the word from Spanish in the early 18th century. In more modern English usage, the adobe has come to include a style of architecture popular in the desert climates of North America. An adobe brick is a material made of earth mixed with water. The soil composition typically contains sand, silt and clay, straw is useful in binding the brick together and allowing the brick to dry evenly, thereby preventing cracking due to uneven shrinkage rates through the brick. The most desirable soil texture for producing the mud of adobe is 15% clay, 10–30% silt, another source quotes 15–25% clay and the remainder sand and coarser particles up to cobbles 50 to 250 mm with no deleterious effect. Modern adobe is stabilized with either emulsified asphalt or Portland cement up to 10% by weight, no more than half the clay content should be expansive clays with the remainder non-expansive illite or kaolinite. Too much expansive clay results in uneven drying through the resulting in cracking. Typically the soils of the Southwest United States, where construction is in use, are an adequate composition. Adobe walls are bearing, i. e. they carry their own weight into the foundation rather than by another structure
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Subsoil
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Subsoil is the layer of soil under the topsoil on the surface of the ground. Like topsoil it is composed of a mixture of small particles such as sand, silt and/or clay. Below the subsoil is the substratum, which can be residual bedrock, sediments, as it is lacking in dark humus, subsoil is usually paler in colour than the overlying topsoil. It may contain the deeper roots of plants, such as trees. Clay-based subsoil has been the source of material for adobe, cob, rammed earth, wattle and daub. Subsoil compaction by vehicles with high axle load—extent, persistence and crop response, chemical Factors Affecting Root Growth in Subsoil Horizons of Coastal Plain Soils. Soil Science Society of America Journal
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Mudbrick
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A mudbrick is a brick, made of a mixture of loam, mud, sand and water mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw. In warm regions with little timber available to fuel a kiln. In some cases brickmakers extended the life of mud bricks by putting fired bricks on top or covering them with stucco, the Great Mosque of Djenné, in central Mali, is the worlds largest mudbrick structure. This plaster must be reapplied annually, the South Asian inhabitants of Mehrgarh constructed, and lived in, mud brick houses between 7000–3300 BC. Mud bricks used at more than 15 reported sites in 3rd millennium BC are attributed as major cultural trait in the ancient Indus valley civilization, mudbricks were in use in the Middle East during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. The Mesopotamians used sun-dried bricks in their city construction, typically these bricks were flat on the bottom and curved on the top, some bricks were formed in a square mould and rounded so that the middle was thicker than the ends. In Ancient Egypt, workers gathered mud from the Nile river, workers then tramped on the mud while straw was added to solidify the mold. In Minoan Crete at the Knossos site there is evidence that sun-dried bricks were used in the Neolithic period. Mudbricks were used to some extent in pre-Roman Egypt, and mudbrick use increased at the time of Roman influence, adobe – Often used in the making of mudbricks. Cob Earth structure Loam Rammed earth Possehl, Gregory L. Mehrgarh in Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Earth Architecture, website whose focus is contemporary issues in earth architecture. Very experienced experts are contactable and there are regular demonstrations in the area, video showing mud brick making, mud brick building and biolytic sewerage in South Africa. CRAterre, Centre de recherche architectural en terre, French university research organisation dedicated to unfired earth construction
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Wattle and daub
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Wattle and daub has been used for at least 6,000 years and is still an important construction material in many parts of the world. Many historic buildings include wattle and daub construction, and the technique is becoming popular again in developed areas as a low-impact sustainable building technique. The wattle is made by weaving thin branches or slats between upright stakes, the wattle may be made as loose panels, slotted between timber framing to make infill panels, or it may be made in place to form the whole of a wall. Daub is usually created from a mixture of ingredients from three categories, binders, aggregates and reinforcement. Binders hold the mix together and can include clay, lime, chalk dust, aggregates give the mix its bulk and dimensional stability through materials such as earth, sand, crushed chalk and crushed stone. Reinforcement is provided by straw, hair, hay or other fibrous materials, the daub may be mixed by hand, or by treading – either by humans or livestock. It is then applied to the wattle and allowed to dry, in some regions this building method has itself been overtaken by drywall construction using plasterboard sheets. The wattle and daub technique was used already in the Neolithic period and it was common for houses of a Linear pottery and Rössen cultures of Central Europe, but is also found in Western Asia as well as in North America and South America. In Africa it is common in the architecture of houses such as those of the Ashanti people. Its usage dates back at least 6000 years, there are suggestions that construction techniques such as lath and plaster and even cob may have evolved from wattle and daub. Fragments from prehistoric wattle and daub buildings have found in Africa, Europe, Mesoamerica. A review of English architecture especially reveals that the sophistication of this craft is dependent on the styles of timber frame housing. As discussed earlier, there were two choices for wattle and daub paneling, square paneling and close-studded paneling. Close-studding panels create a more narrow space between the timbers, anywhere from 7 to 16 inches. For this style of panel, weaving is too difficult, so the wattles run horizontally and are known as ledgers, the ledgers are sprung into each upright timber through a system of augered holes on one side and short chiseled grooves along the other. The holes are drilled at an angle towards the outer face of each stud. This allows room for upright hazels to be tied to ledgers from the inside of the building, the horizontal ledgers are placed every two to three feet with whole hazel rods positioned upright top to bottom and lashed to the ledgers. These hazel rods are generally tied a finger widths apart with 6-8 rods each with a 16-inch width, gaps allow key formation for drying
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Rammed earth
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It is an ancient method that has been revived recently as a sustainable building material used in a technique of natural building. Rammed earth is simple to manufacture, non-combustible, thermally massive, strong, edifices formed of rammed earth are on every continent except Antarctica, in a range of environments including temperate, wet, semiarid desert, montane, and tropical regions. The availability of soil and a building design appropriate for local climatic conditions are the factors that favour its use. Historically, additives such as lime or animal blood were used to stabilize it, while modern construction adds lime, cement, to add variety, some modern builders also add coloured oxides or other materials, e. g. bottles, tires, or pieces of timber. The form must be durable and well braced, and the two opposing faces must be clamped together to prevent bulging or deformation caused by the large compressing forces. Damp material is poured into the formwork to a depth of 10 to 25 cm, the material is compressed iteratively, in batches or courses, so as to gradually erect the wall up to the top of the formwork. Tamping was historically manual with a ramming pole, and was very laborious. After a wall is complete, it is strong to immediately remove the formwork. This is necessary if a surface texture is to be applied, e. g. by wire brushing, carving, or mould impression, Construction is optimally done in warm weather so that the walls can dry and harden. The compression strength of the earth increases as it cures, some time is necessary for it to dry. Exposed walls must be sealed to prevent water damage, in modern variations of the technique, rammed-earth walls are constructed on top of conventional footings or a reinforced concrete slab base. Where blocks made of rammed earth are used, they are stacked like regular blocks and are bonded together with a thin mud slurry instead of cement. Special machines, usually powered by engines and often portable, are used to compress the material into blocks. Presently more than 30% of the population uses earth as a building material. Rammed earth has been used globally in a range of climatic conditions. Rammed-earth housing may resolve homelessness caused by otherwise expensive construction techniques, the compressive strength of rammed earth is a maximum of 4.3 MPa. This is less than that of concrete but more than sufficiently strong for domestic edifices, indeed, properly constructed rammed earth endures for thousands of years, as many ancient structures that are still standing around the world demonstrate. See 1960 Agadir earthquake for an example of the destruction which may be inflicted on such structures by an earthquake
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Yemen
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Yemen, officially known as the Republic of Yemen, is an Arab country in Western Asia, occupying South Arabia, the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen is the second-largest country in the peninsula, occupying 527,970 km2, the coastline stretches for about 2,000 km. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea to the south, although Yemens constitutionally stated capital is the city of Sanaa, the city has been under rebel control since February 2015. Because of this, Yemens capital has been relocated to the port city of Aden. Yemens territory includes more than 200 islands, the largest of these is Socotra, Yemen was the home of the Sabaeans, a trading state that flourished for over a thousand years and probably also included parts of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. In 275 AD, the region came under the rule of the later Jewish-influenced Himyarite Kingdom, Christianity arrived in the fourth century, whereas Judaism and local paganism were already established. Islam spread quickly in the century and Yemenite troops were crucial in the expansion of the early Islamic conquests. Administration of Yemen has long been notoriously difficult, several dynasties emerged from the ninth to 16th centuries, the Rasulid dynasty being the strongest and most prosperous. The country was divided between the Ottoman and British empires in the twentieth century. The Zaydi Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen was established after World War I in North Yemen before the creation of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962, South Yemen remained a British protectorate known as the Aden Protectorate until 1967 when it became an independent state and later, a Marxist state. The two Yemeni states united to form the modern republic of Yemen in 1990, Yemen is a developing country, and the poorest country in the Middle East. Under the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen was described as a kleptocracy, according to the 2009 international corruption Perception Index by Transparency International, Yemen ranked 164 out of 182 countries surveyed. President Saleh stepped down and the powers of the presidency were transferred to Vice President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, the transitional process was disrupted by conflicts between the Houthis and al-Islah, as well as the al-Qaeda insurgency. In September 2014, the Houthis took over Sanaa, later declaring themselves in control of the government in a coup détat, since then, a Saudi-led intervention has taken place, however, it could not stop the civil war. Instead, the Saudis and the others have destroyed some hospitals, schools and homes, Yemen was mentioned in Old South Arabian inscriptions as Yamnat. In Arabic literature, the term includes much greater territory than that of the republic of Yemen. It stretches from the northern Asir Region in southwestern Saudi Arabia to Dhofar Governorate in southern Oman, one etymology derives Yemen from yumn, meaning felicity, as much of the country is fertile. The Romans called it Arabia Felix, as opposed to Arabia Deserta, al-Yaman significantly plays on the notion of the land to the right, when in Mecca facing the dawn, complementary to Al-Sham, the Land to the Left, referring to the Levant
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Molding (process)
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Molding or moulding is the process of manufacturing by shaping liquid or pliable raw material using a rigid frame called a mold or matrix. This itself may have made using a pattern or model of the final object. A mold or mould is a block that is filled with a liquid or pliable material such as plastic, glass, metal. The liquid hardens or sets inside the mold, adopting its shape, a mold is the counterpart to a cast. The very common bi-valve molding process uses two molds, one for half of the object. Piece-molding uses a number of different molds, each creating a section of a complicated object and this is generally only used for larger and more valuable objects. The manufacturer who makes the molds is called the moldmaker, a release agent is typically used to make removal of the hardened/set substance from the mold easier. Typical uses for molded plastics include molded furniture, molded household goods, molded cases, and structural materials
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Puddling (civil engineering)
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The technique of puddling and its use was developed by early canal engineer James Brindley, it is considered his greatest contribution to engineering. This processed material was used extensively in UK canal construction in the period starting circa 1780, starting about 1840 puddle clay was used more widely as the water-retaining element within earthfill dams, particularly in the Pennines. Its usage in UK dams was superseded about 1960 by the use of rolled clay in the core, a considerable number of early notable dams were built in that era and they are now sometimes referred to as the Pennines embankment type. These dams are characterized by a vertical puddle clay core supported on both sides by earthfill shoulders of more heterogeneous material. To control under-seepage through the foundation below the dam, the Pennines embankments generally constructed a puddle clay-filled cutoff trench in rock directly below the central core. Later construction often used concrete to fill the cutoff trench, to make puddle, clay or heavy loam is chopped with a spade and mixed into a plastic state with water and sometimes coarse sand or grit to discourage excavation by moles or water voles. The puddle is laid about 10 inches thick at the sides and nearly 3 ft thick at the bottom of a canal, puddle has to be kept wet in order to remain waterproof so it is important for canals to be kept filled with water. The clay is laid down with a called a punner, or pun. Puddle clay or puddle adobe is often called cob, cob has added ingredients of a fibrous material to act as a mechanical binder
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Pueblo
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Pueblos are modern and old communities of Native Americans in the Southwestern United States. The first Spanish explorers of the Southwest used this term to describe the communities housed in apartment structures built of stone, adobe mud and these structures were usually multi-storied buildings surrounding an open plaza. The rooms were only through ladders lowered by the inhabitants, thus protecting them from break-ins. Larger pueblos were occupied by hundreds to thousands of Pueblo people, several different federally recognized tribes have traditionally resided in pueblos of such design. The word pueblo is the Spanish word for town or village and it comes from the Latin root word populus meaning people. The demands of agrarian routine and the need for defense, the desire for human society in the vast solitude of. Nowadays the pueblo might have a running into thousands. Doubtless they were smaller in the early middle ages. There are 21 federally recognized Pueblos that are home to Pueblo people and their official federal names are as follows, Pre-Columbian towns and villages in the Southwest, such as Acoma, were located in defensible positions, for example, on high steep mesas. Anthropologists and official documents refer to ancient residents of the area as pueblo cultures. For example, the National Park Service states, The Late Puebloan cultures built the large, the people of some pueblos, such as Taos Pueblo, still inhabit centuries-old adobe pueblo buildings. Contemporary residents often maintain other homes outside the historic pueblos, adobe and light construction methods resembling adobe now dominate architecture at the many pueblos of the area, in nearby towns or cities, and in much of the American Southwest. In addition to contemporary pueblos, numerous ruins of archeological interest are located throughout the Southwest, some are of relatively recent origin
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Ceramic
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A ceramic is an inorganic, non-metallic, solid material comprising metal, non-metal or metalloid atoms primarily held in ionic and covalent bonds. This article gives an overview of ceramic materials from the point of view of materials science, the crystallinity of ceramic materials ranges from highly oriented to semi-crystalline, vitrified, and often completely amorphous. Most often, fired ceramics are either vitrified or semi-vitrified as is the case with earthenware, stoneware, varying crystallinity and electron consumption in the ionic and covalent bonds cause most ceramic materials to be good thermal and electrical insulators. With such a range of possible options for the composition/structure of a ceramic, the breadth of the subject is vast. Many composites, such as fiberglass and carbon fiber, while containing ceramic materials, are not considered to be part of the ceramic family. The earliest ceramics made by humans were pottery objects or figurines made from clay, either by itself or mixed with materials like silica, hardened, sintered. Later ceramics were glazed and fired to create smooth, colored surfaces, decreasing porosity through the use of glassy, ceramics now include domestic, industrial and building products, as well as a wide range of ceramic art. In the 20th century, new materials were developed for use in advanced ceramic engineering. The word ceramic comes from the Greek word κεραμικός, of pottery or for pottery, from κέραμος, potters clay, tile, the earliest known mention of the root ceram- is the Mycenaean Greek ke-ra-me-we, workers of ceramics, written in Linear B syllabic script. The word ceramic may be used as an adjective to describe a material, product or process, or it may be used as a noun, either singular, or, more commonly, as the plural noun ceramics. A ceramic material is an inorganic, non-metallic, often crystalline oxide, nitride or carbide material, some elements, such as carbon or silicon, may be considered ceramics. Ceramic materials are brittle, hard, strong in compression, weak in shearing and they withstand chemical erosion that occurs in other materials subjected to acidic or caustic environments. Ceramics generally can withstand high temperatures, such as temperatures that range from 1,000 °C to 1,600 °C. Glass is often not considered a ceramic because of its amorphous character. However, glassmaking involves several steps of the process and its mechanical properties are similar to ceramic materials. Traditional ceramic raw materials include minerals such as kaolinite, whereas more recent materials include aluminium oxide. The modern ceramic materials, which are classified as advanced ceramics, include silicon carbide, both are valued for their abrasion resistance, and hence find use in applications such as the wear plates of crushing equipment in mining operations. Advanced ceramics are used in the medicine, electrical, electronics industries. Crystalline ceramic materials are not amenable to a range of processing
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Brick
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A brick is building material used to make walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Traditionally, the term referred to a unit composed of clay. A brick can be composed of clay-bearing soil, sand, and lime, Bricks are produced in numerous classes, types, materials, and sizes which vary with region and time period, and are produced in bulk quantities. Two basic categories of bricks are fired and non-fired bricks, block is a similar term referring to a rectangular building unit composed of similar materials, but is usually larger than a brick. Lightweight bricks are made from expanded clay aggregate, fired bricks are one of the longest-lasting and strongest building materials, sometimes referred to as artificial stone, and have been used since circa 5000 BC. Air-dried bricks, also known as mudbricks, have an older than fired bricks. Bricks are laid in courses and numerous patterns known as bonds, collectively known as brickwork, the earliest bricks were dried brick, meaning that they were formed from clay-bearing earth or mud and dried until they were strong enough for use. The oldest discovered bricks, originally made from shaped mud and dating before 7500 BC, were found at Tell Aswad, in the upper Tigris region, ceramic, or fired brick was used as early as 3000 BC in early Indus Valley cities. In pre-modern China, bricks were being used from the 2nd millennium BCE at a site near Xian, the carpenters manual Yingzao Fashi, published in 1103 at the time of the Song dynasty described the brick making process and glazing techniques then in use. He also had to know when to quench the kiln with water so as to produce the surface glaze, Early civilisations around the Mediterranean adopted the use of fired bricks, including the Ancient Greeks and Romans. The Roman legions operated mobile kilns, and built large brick structures throughout the Roman Empire, during the Early Middle Ages the use of bricks in construction became popular in Northern Europe, after being introduced there from Northern-Western Italy. An independent style of architecture, known as brick Gothic flourished in places that lacked indigenous sources of rocks. Examples of this style can be found in modern-day Denmark, Germany, Poland. A clear distinction between the two styles developed at the transition to Baroque architecture. In Lübeck, for example, Brick Renaissance is clearly recognisable in buildings equipped with terracotta reliefs by the artist Statius von Düren, production of bricks increased massively with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the rise in factory building in England. For reasons of speed and economy, bricks were increasingly preferred as building material to stone and it was at this time in London, that bright red brick was chosen for construction to make the buildings more visible in the heavy fog and to help prevent traffic accidents. The transition from the method of production known as hand-moulding to a mechanised form of mass-production slowly took place during the first half of the nineteenth century. His mechanical apparatus soon achieved widespread attention after it was adopted for use by the South Eastern Railway Company for brick-making at their factory near Folkestone, the Bradley & Craven Ltd ‘Stiff-Plastic Brickmaking Machine’ was patented in 1853, apparently predating Clayton
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Pottery
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Pottery is the craft of making ceramic material into pots or potterywares using mud. Major types of potterywares include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain, the place where such wares are made by a potter is also called a pottery. Early Neolithic pottery have found in places such as Jomon Japan. A clay body can be decorated before or after firing, however, prior to shaping processes. Kneading helps to ensure an even moisture content throughout the body, air trapped within the clay body needs to be removed. This is called de-airing and can be accomplished either by a called a vacuum pug or manually by wedging. Wedging can also produce an even moisture content. Once a clay body has been kneaded and de-aired or wedged, after shaping, it is dried and then fired. Clay ware takes on varying physical characteristics during the making of pottery, at sufficient moisture content, bodies at this stage are in their most plastic form. Leather-hard refers to a body that has been dried partially. At this stage the clay object has approximately 15% moisture content, clay bodies at this stage are very firm and only slightly pliable. Trimming and handle attachment often occurs at the leather-hard state, bone-dry refers to clay bodies when they reach a moisture content at or near 0%. It is now ready to be bisque fired, bisque refers to the clay after the object is shaped to the desired form and fired in the kiln for the first time, known as bisque fired or biscuit fired. This firing changes the body in several ways. Mineral components of the body will undergo chemical changes that will change the colour of the clay. Glaze fired is the stage of some pottery making. A glaze may be applied to the form and the object can be decorated in several ways. After this the object is glazed fired, which causes the material to melt
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Kiln
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A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects made from clay into pottery, tiles, various industries use rotary kilns for pyroprocessing—to calcinate ores, to calcinate limestone to lime for cement, and to transform many other materials. The word kiln descends from the Old English cylene (/ˈkylene/, which was adapted from the Latin culīna kitchen, cooking-stove, burning-place. During the Middle English Period, the n was not pronounced, as evidenced by kiln having frequently been spelled without the n, Another word, miln, a place where wheat is ground, also had a silent n. Whereas the spelling of miln was changed to mill to match its pronunciation, kiln maintained its spelling, which most likely led to a common mispronunciation, however, there are small bastions where the original pronunciation has endured. Kiln, Mississippi, a town known for its wood drying kilns that once served the timber industry, is still referred to as the Kill by locals. Unwittingly adding the n sound at the end of kiln is due to people being introduced to the word through the language before ever hearing the actual pronunciation. Phonetically, the ln in kiln is categorized as a digraph, from English Words as Spoken and Written for Upper Grades by James A. Bowen 1900, The digraph ln, n silent, occurs in kiln. A fall down the kiln can kill you, Bowen was pointing out the humorous fact that kill and kiln are homophones. A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning, the earliest known kiln dates to around 6000 BC, and was found at the Yarim Tepe site in modern Iraq. Neolithic kilns were able to produce greater than 900 °C. Ceramics require heat at high temperatures so chemical and physical reactions will occur to permanently alter the unfired body, in the case of pottery, clay materials are shaped, dried and then fired in a kiln. The final characteristics are determined by the composition and preparation of the clay body, after a first firing glazes may be used and the ware is fired a second time to fuse the glaze into the body. A third firing at a lower temperature may be required to fix overglaze decoration, modern kilns often have sophisticated electrical control systems to firing regime, although pyrometric devices are often also used. Clay consists of fine-grained particles, that are weak and porous. Clay is combined with other minerals to create a clay body. Part of the process includes sintering. This heats the clay until the particles partially melt and flow together, creating a strong, single mass, composed of a glassy phase interspersed with pores, through firing, the pores are reduced in size, causing the material to shrink slightly
31.
Slip (ceramics)
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A slip is a liquid mixture or slurry of clay and/or other materials suspended in water. It has many uses in the production of pottery, and other ceramics ware, in pottery the two most important uses of slip are, firstly, to create the basic shape by slipcasting with moulds, and secondly, to decorate the pottery, which is discussed below. Engobe, from the French word for slip, is in English an American term for similar to a slip. Some American sources say it is synonymous with slip, and use it in preference to slip, while others draw distinctions, mainly in terms of engobe using materials other than clay. On one definition engobe, as compared to slip, has somewhat lower clay content, higher proportion of flux, and added filler and it is mostly used in relation to contemporary pottery, but sometimes for slip in historical contexts. Slipware is pottery decorated by slip placed onto a wet or leather-hard clay body surface by dipping, painting or splashing, decorative slips may be a different colour than the underlying clay body or offer other decorative qualities. Selectively applying layers of colored slips can create the effect of a painted ceramic, slip decoration is an ancient technique in Chinese pottery also, used to cover whole vessels over 4,000 years ago. Chinese pottery also used techniques where patterns, images or calligraphy were created as part-dried slip was cut away to reveal a lower layer of slip or the clay body in a contrasting colour. The latter of these is called the cut-glaze technique, slipware may be carved or burnished to change the surface appearance of the ware. Specialized slip recipes may be applied to biscuit ware and then refired, a slip may be made for various other purposes in the production and decoration of ceramics. Slip can be used, As a means of mixing the constituents of a clay body, to join sections of unfired ware or greenware, such as handles and spouts. To fix into place pieces of relief decoration produced separately, for example by moulding and this technique is known as sprigging, an example is Jasperware. An additive with deflocculant properties, such as silicate, can be added to the slip to disperse the raw material particles. This allows a higher solids content to be used, or allows a fluid slip to be produced with the a minimum of water so that shrinkage is minimised. Usually the mixing of slip is undertaken in a blunger although it can be using other types of mixers or even by hand. Chinese Pottery and Porcelain,1991, British Museum Press,9780714114705
32.
Worm
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Worms /ˈwɜːrm/ are many different distantly related animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body and no limbs. Various types of worm occupy a variety of parasitic niches. Free-living worm species do not live on land, but instead live in marine or freshwater environments, in biology, worm refers to an obsolete taxon, vermes, used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals, now seen to be paraphyletic. The name stems from the Old English word wyrm, most animals called worms are invertebrates, but the term is also used for the amphibian caecilians and the slow worm Anguis, a legless burrowing lizard. Invertebrate animals commonly called worms include annelids, nematodes, platyhelminthes, marine worms, marine Chaetognatha, priapulid worms. Worms may also be called helminths, particularly in medical terminology when referring to parasitic worms, when an animal or human is said to have worms, it means that it is infested with parasitic worms, typically roundworms or tapeworms. Lungworm is also a parasitic worm found in various animal species such as fish. Worms can be divided into groups, but are still technically decomposers. The first of these, Platyhelminthes, includes the flatworms, tapeworms and they have a flat, ribbon- or leaf-shaped body with a pair of eyes at the front. The second group contains the threadworms, roundworms, and hookworms, threadworms may be microscopic, such as the vinegar eelworm, or more than 1 metre long. They are found in earth, moss, decaying substances, fresh water. The Guinea worm, for example, gets under the skin of the feet, the third group consists of the segmented worms, with bodies divided into segments, or rings. Among these are the earthworms and the worms of the sea. In earlier taxonomic classification, all the above were included in the now obsolete group Vermes, familiar worms include the earthworms, members of phylum Annelida. Other invertebrate groups may be called worms, especially colloquially, in particular, many unrelated insect larvae are called worms, such as the railroad worm, woodworm, glowworm, bloodworm, inchworm, mealworm, silkworm, and wooly bear worm. Worms may also be called helminths, particularly in medical terminology when referring to parasitic worms, hence helminthology is the study of parasitic worms. When a human or an animal, such as a dog or horse, is said to have worms, it means that it is infested with parasitic worms, deworming is a method to kill off the worms that have infected a human or animal by giving anthelmintic drugs. Ringworm is not a worm at all, but a skin fungus, wurm, or wyrm was the Old English term for carnivorous reptiles, and mythical dragons
33.
Frog
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A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura. The oldest fossil proto-frog appeared in the early Triassic of Madagascar, Frogs are widely distributed, ranging from the tropics to subarctic regions, but the greatest concentration of species diversity is in tropical rainforests. There are approximately 4,800 recorded species, accounting for over 85% of extant amphibian species and they are also one of the five most diverse vertebrate orders. The body plan of a frog is generally characterized by a stout body, protruding eyes, cleft tongue, limbs folded underneath. Besides living in water and on dry land, the adults of some species are adapted for living underground or in trees. The skin of the frog is glandular, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic, Frogs skins vary in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to advertise toxicity and warn off predators. Frogs typically lay their eggs in water, the eggs hatch into aquatic larvae called tadpoles that have tails and internal gills. They have highly specialized rasping mouth parts suitable for herbivorous, omnivorous or planktivorous diets, the life cycle is completed when they metamorphose into adults. A few species deposit eggs on land or bypass the tadpole stage, adult frogs generally have a carnivorous diet consisting of small invertebrates, but omnivorous species exist and a few feed on fruit. Frogs are extremely efficient at converting what they eat into body mass and they are an important food source for predators and part of the food web dynamics of many of the worlds ecosystems. The skin is semi-permeable, making them susceptible to dehydration, so they live in moist places or have special adaptations to deal with dry habitats. Frogs are valued as food by humans and also have many roles in literature, symbolism. Frog populations have declined significantly since the 1950s, more than one third of species are considered to be threatened with extinction and over one hundred and twenty are believed to have become extinct since the 1980s. The number of malformations among frogs is on the rise and a fungal disease. Conservation biologists are working to understand the causes of these problems, the name frog derives from Old English frogga, abbreviated to frox, forsc, and frosc, probably deriving from Proto-Indo-European preu = to jump. About 88% of amphibian species are classified in the order Anura and these include around 4,810 species in 33 families, of which the Leptodactylidae, Hylidae and Ranidae are the richest in species. The use of the common frog and toad has no taxonomic justification. From a classification perspective, all members of the order Anura are frogs, there are numerous exceptions to this rule
34.
Snail
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Snail is a common name that is applied most often to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name snail is also applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word snail is used in this most general sense, it not just land snails but also thousands of species of sea snails. Occasionally a few other molluscs that are not actually gastropods, such as the Monoplacophora, snail-like animals that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell are often called semi-slugs. Even a few species have lungs. Snails can be found in a wide range of environments, including ditches, deserts. Although land snails may be familiar to laymen, marine snails constitute the majority of snail species, and have much greater diversity. Numerous kinds of snail can also be found in fresh water, most snails have thousands of microscopic tooth-like structures located on a banded ribbon-like tongue called a radula. The radula works like a file, ripping food into small pieces, many snails are herbivorous, eating plants or rasping algae from surfaces with their radulae, though a few land species and many marine species are omnivores or predatory carnivores. Several species of the genus Achatina and related genera are known as giant African land snails, some grow to 15 in from snout to tail, and weigh 1 kg. The largest living species of sea snail is Syrinx aruanus, its shell can measure up to 90 cm in length, and the whole animal with the shell can weigh up to 18 kg. The snail Lymnaea makes decisions by using two types of neuron, one deciding whether the snail is hungry, and the other deciding whether there is food in the vicinity. Named Gee Geronimo, this snail was owned by Christopher Hudson of Hove, East Sussex, UK, gastropods that lack a conspicuous shell are commonly called slugs rather than snails. Some species of slug have a red shell, some have only a vestige that serves mainly as a calcium repository. Other than that there is little difference between slugs and snails. There are however important differences in habitats and behavior, slugs squeeze themselves into confined spaces such as under loose bark on trees or under stone slabs, logs or wooden boards lying on the ground. In such retreats they are in danger from either predators or desiccation. Slugs as a group are far from monophyletic, biologically speaking slug is a term of convenience with little taxonomic significance, the reduction or loss of the shell has evolved many times independently within several very different lineages of gastropods
35.
Clam
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Clam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve molluscs. The word is applied only to those that live as infauna. In particular, edible infaunal bivalves are often called clams, clams have two shells of equal size connected by two adductor muscles and have a powerful burrowing foot. Clams in the culinary sense do not live attached to a substrate, in culinary usage, clams are commonly eaten marine bivalves, as in clam digging and the resulting soup, clam chowder. Many edible clams such as palourde clams are oval or triangular, however, razor clams have an elongated parallel-sided shell, some clams have life cycles of only one year, while at least one may be over 500 years old. All clams have two shells or valves joined near a hinge with a flexible ligament, and all are filter feeders. A clams shell consists of two valves, which are connected by a joint and a ligament that can be external or internal. The ligament provides tension to bring the valves apart, while one or two muscles can contract to close the valves. Clams also have kidneys, a heart, a mouth, a stomach, a nervous system, in culinary use, within the eastern coast of the United States, the term clam most often refers to the hard clam Mercenaria mercenaria. It may also refer to a few other common species, such as the soft-shell clam, Mya arenaria. Another species commercially exploited on the Atlantic Coast of the United States is the surf clam Spisula solidissima, scallops are also used for food. Clams can be raw, steamed, boiled, baked or fried. They can also be made into clam chowder or they can be cooked using hot rocks, in Japan, clams are often an ingredient of mixed seafood dishes. They can also be made into hot pot, miso soup or Tsukudani, the more commonly used varieties of clams in Japanese cooking are the Shijimi, the Asari and the Hamaguri. In Italy, clams are often an ingredient of mixed seafood dishes or are eaten together with pasta, the more commonly used varieties of clams in Italian cooking are the Vongola, the Cozza and the Tellina. Clams are eaten more in the regions of India, especially in the Konkan, Kerala, Bengal. In Kerala clams are used to make curries and fried with coconut, in Malabar region it is known as elambakka and in middle kerala it is known as kakka. Clams curry made with coconut is a delicious dish from malabar especially in Telicherry region
36.
Crayfish
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Some species are found in brooks and streams where there is running fresh water, while others thrive in swamps, ditches, and rice paddies. Most crayfish cannot tolerate polluted water, although species such as Procambarus clarkii are hardier. Crayfish feed on living and dead animals and plants, the name crayfish comes from the Old French word escrevisse. The word has been modified to crayfish by association with fish, the largely American variant crawfish is similarly derived. Some kinds of crayfish are known locally as lobsters, crawdads, mudbugs, the study of crayfish is called astacology. Exceptions include western rock lobster found on the west coast of Australia, the Tasmanian giant freshwater crayfish found only in Tasmania, in Singapore, the term crayfish typically refers to Thenus orientalis, a seawater crustacean from the slipper lobster family. True crayfish are not native to Singapore, but are found as pets, or as an invasive species in the many water catchment areas. The body of a crustacean, such as a crab, lobster. Each segment may possess one pair of appendages, although in various groups these may be reduced or missing, on average, crayfish grow to 17.5 centimetres in length, but some grow larger. Walking legs have a claw at the end. There are three families of crayfish, two in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere family Parastacidae lives in South America, Madagascar and Australasia, and is distinguished by the lack of the first pair of pleopods. Of the other two families, members of the Astacidae live in western Eurasia and western North America and members of the family Cambaridae live in eastern Asia, Madagascar has an endemic genus, Astacoides, containing seven species. Europe is home to seven species of crayfish in the genera Astacus and Austropotamobius, cambaroides is native to Japan and eastern mainland Asia. The greatest diversity of species is found in southeastern North America, with over 330 species in nine genera. A further genus of crayfish is found in the Pacific Northwest. Many crayfish are found in lowland areas where the water is abundant in calcium. Crayfish were introduced purposely into a few Arizona reservoirs and other bodies of water decades ago and they have since dispersed beyond those original sites. Australia has over 100 species in a dozen genera, in Australia, many of the better-known crayfish are of the genus Cherax, and include the marron from Western Australia, red-claw crayfish, common yabby and western yabby
37.
Hippopotamus
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The common hippopotamus, or hippo, is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae, the other being the pygmy hippopotamus. The name comes from the ancient Greek for river horse, after the elephant and rhinoceros, the common hippopotamus is the third-largest type of land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. The common ancestor of whales and hippos split from other even-toed ungulates around 60 million years ago, the earliest known hippopotamus fossils, belonging to the genus Kenyapotamus in Africa, date to around 16 million years ago. Despite its stocky shape and short legs, it is capable of running 30 km/h over short distances, the hippopotamus is a highly aggressive and unpredictable animal and is ranked among the most dangerous animals in Africa. Nevertheless, they are threatened by habitat loss and poaching for their meat. The common hippopotamus is semiaquatic, inhabiting rivers, lakes and mangrove swamps, during the day, they remain cool by staying in the water or mud, reproduction and childbirth both occur in water. They emerge at dusk to graze on grasses, while hippopotamuses rest near each other in the water, grazing is a solitary activity and hippos are not territorial on land. The Latin word hippopotamus is derived from the ancient Greek ἱπποπόταμος, hippopotamos, from ἵππος, hippos, horse, in English, the plural is hippopotamuses, but hippopotami is also used, hippos can be used as a short plural. Hippopotamuses are gregarious, living in groups of up to thirty animals, a group is called a pod, herd, dale, or bloat. The hippopotamus is the genus of the family Hippopotamidae. The pygmy hippopotamus belongs to a different genus in Hippopotamidae, either Choeropsis or Hexaprotodon, Hippopotamidae are sometimes known as hippopotamids. Sometimes, the subfamily Hippopotaminae is used, further, some taxonomists group hippopotamuses and anthracotheres in the superfamily Anthracotheroidea. Hippopotamidae are classified along with other even-toed ungulates in the order Artiodactyla, other artiodactyls include camels, cattle, deer and pigs, although hippopotamuses are not closely related to these groups. Genetic analyses have tested the existence of three of these putative subspecies, a study examining mitochondrial DNA from skin biopsies taken from 13 sampling locations, considered genetic diversity and structure among hippo populations across the continent. The authors found low, but significant, genetic differentiation among H. a. amphibius, H. a. capensis, neither H. a. tschadensis nor H. a. constrictus has been tested. Until 1909, naturalists grouped hippos with pigs, based on molar patterns, the common ancestor of hippos and whales branched off from Ruminantia and the rest of the even-toed ungulates, the cetacean and hippo lineages split soon afterwards. The most recent theory of the origins of Hippopotamidae suggests that hippos and this hypothesized ancestral group likely split into two branches around 54 million years ago. All branches of the anthracotheres, except that which evolved into Hippopotamidae, merycopotamus, Libycosaurus and all hippopotamids can be considered to form a clade, with Libycosaurus being more closely related to hippos
38.
Pig
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A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig and its ancestor, the common Eurasian wild boar, along with species, related creatures outside the genus include the peccary, the babirusa. Pigs, like all suids, are native to the Eurasian and African continents, juvenile pigs are known as piglets. Pigs are highly social and intelligent animals, with around 1 billion individuals alive at any time, the domesticated pig is one of the most numerous large mammals on the planet. Pigs are omnivores and can consume a range of food. Pigs can harbour a range of parasites and diseases that can be transmitted to humans, because of the similarities between pigs and humans, pigs are used for human medical research. The Online Etymology Dictionary provides anecdotal evidence as well as linguistic, saying that the term derives probably from Old English *picg, found in compounds, apparently related to Low German bigge, Dutch big. Another Old English word for pig was fearh, related to furh furrow, from PIE *perk- dig and this reflects a widespread IE tendency to name animals from typical attributes or activities. Synonyms grunter, porker are from sailors and fishermens euphemistic avoidance of uttering the word pig at sea, a superstition perhaps based on the fate of the Gadarene swine and it is entirely likely that the word to call pigs, soo-ie, is similarly derived. A typical pig has a head with a long snout which is strengthened by a special prenasal bone. The snout is used to dig into the soil to find food and is an acute sense organ. There are four hoofed toes on each trotter, with the two larger central toes bearing most of the weight, but the two also being used in soft ground. The dental formula of adult pigs is 3.1.4.33.1.4.3, the rear teeth are adapted for crushing. In the male, the teeth form tusks, which grow continuously and are sharpened by constantly being ground against each other. Occasionally, captive mother pigs may savage their own piglets, often if they become severely stressed, some attacks on newborn piglets are non-fatal. Others may cause the death of the piglets and sometimes, the mother may eat the piglets and it is estimated that 50% of piglet fatalities are due to the mother attacking, or unintentionally crushing, the newborn pre-weaned animals. Scientists have recently discovered that pigs can exhibit a bias and are optimists or pessimests. In a study by the University of Lincoln,36 pigs were tested and they were placed in a room with two food bowls at each end of the room
39.
Rhinoceros
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A rhinoceros, often abbreviated to rhino, is one of any five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae, as well as any of the numerous extinct species. Two of these extant species are native to Africa and three to Southern Asia and they generally eat leafy material, although their ability to ferment food in their hindgut allows them to subsist on more fibrous plant matter, if necessary. Unlike other perissodactyls, the two African species of rhinoceros lack teeth at the front of their mouths, relying instead on their lips to pluck food. Rhinoceros are killed by humans for their horns, which are bought and sold on the market. East Asia, specifically Vietnam, is the largest market for rhino horns, by weight, rhino horns cost as much as gold on the black market. People grind up the horns and then consume them believing the dust has therapeutic properties, the horns are made of keratin, the same type of protein that makes up hair and fingernails. Both African species and the Sumatran rhinoceros have two horns, while the Indian and Javan rhinoceros have a single horn, the IUCN Red List identifies three of the species as critically endangered. The word rhinoceros is derived through Latin from the Ancient Greek, ῥῑνόκερως, the plural in English is rhinoceros or rhinoceroses. The collective noun for a group of rhinoceroses is crash or herd, the name has been in use since the 14th century. The family Rhinocerotidae consists of four extant genera, Ceratotherium, Dicerorhinus. The living species fall into three categories, the two African species, the white rhinoceros and the black rhinoceros, belong to the tribe Dicerotini, which originated in the middle Miocene, about 14.2 million years ago. The species diverged during the early Pliocene, the main difference between black and white rhinos is the shape of their mouths – white rhinos have broad flat lips for grazing, whereas black rhinos have long pointed lips for eating foliage. There are two living Rhinocerotini species, the Indian rhinoceros and the Javan rhinoceros, which diverged from one another about 10 million years ago, the Sumatran rhinoceros is the only surviving representative of the most primitive group, the Dicerorhinini, which emerged in the Miocene. A subspecific hybrid white rhino was bred at the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic in 1977, interspecific hybridisation of black and white rhinoceros has also been confirmed. While the black rhinoceros has 84 chromosomes, all other species have 82 chromosomes. However, chromosomal polymorphism might lead to varying chromosome counts, for instance, in a study there were three northern white rhinoceroses with 81 chromosomes. There are two subspecies of rhinoceros, the southern white rhinoceros and the northern white rhinoceros. As of 2013, the subspecies has a wild population of 20,405 – making them the most abundant rhino subspecies in the world
40.
Water buffalo
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The water buffalo or domestic Asian water buffalo is a large bovid originating in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. Today, it is found in Europe, Australia, South America. The wild water buffalo native to Southeast Asia is considered a different species, Water buffalo were traded from the Indus Valley Civilisation to Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq,2500 BC by the Meluhhas. The seal of a scribe employed by an Akkadian king shows the sacrifice of water buffalo, at least 130 million domestic water buffalo exist, and more people depend on them than on any other domestic animal. They are especially suitable for tilling rice fields, and their milk is richer in fat, the large feral population of northern Australia became established in the late 19th century, and smaller feral herds are in New Guinea, Tunisia, and northeastern Argentina. Feral herds are present in New Britain, New Ireland, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, Brazil. The skin of buffalo is black, but some specimens may have dark. Swamp buffalo have a skin at birth, but become slate blue later. Albinoids are present in some populations, River buffalo have comparatively longer faces, smaller girths, and bigger limbs than swamp buffalo. Their dorsal ridges extend further back and taper off more gradually and their horns grow downward and backward, then curve upward in a spiral. Swamp buffalo are heavy-bodied and stockily built, the body is short, the forehead is flat, the eyes prominent, the face short, and the muzzle wide. The neck is long, and the withers and croup are prominent. A dorsal ridge extends backward and ends abruptly just before the end of the chest and their horns grow outward, and curve in a semicircle, but always remain more or less on the plane of the forehead. The tail is short, reaching only to the hocks, height at withers is 129–133 cm for males, and 120–127 cm for females. They range in weight from 300–550 kg, but weights of over 1,000 kg have also been observed, Tedong bonga is a black pied buffalo featuring a unique black and white colouration that is favoured by the Toraja of Sulawesi. The swamp buffalo has 48 chromosomes, the buffalo has 50 chromosomes. The two types do not readily interbreed, but fertile offspring can occur, buffalo-cattle hybrids have not been observed to occur, but the embryos of such hybrids reach maturity in laboratory experiments, albeit at lower rates than non-hybrids. The rumen of the buffalo has important differences from that of other ruminants
41.
Elephant
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Elephants are large mammals of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea. Three species are recognised, the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, Elephants are scattered throughout sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Elephantidae is the surviving family of the order Proboscidea, other, now extinct, members of the order include deinotheres, gomphotheres, mammoths. Male African elephants are the largest extant terrestrial animals and can reach a height of 4 m, all elephants have several distinctive features, the most notable of which is a long trunk or proboscis, used for many purposes, particularly breathing, lifting water, and grasping objects. Their incisors grow into tusks, which can serve as weapons and as tools for moving objects, Elephants large ear flaps help to control their body temperature. Their pillar-like legs can carry their great weight, African elephants have larger ears and concave backs while Asian elephants have smaller ears and convex or level backs. Elephants are herbivorous and can be found in different habitats including savannahs, forests, deserts and they prefer to stay near water. They are considered to be keystone species due to their impact on their environments, other animals tend to keep their distance from elephants while predators, such as lions, tigers, hyenas, and wild dogs, usually target only young elephants. Females tend to live in groups, which can consist of one female with her calves or several related females with offspring. The groups are led by a known as the matriarch. Elephants have a society in which multiple family groups come together to socialise. Males leave their family groups when they reach puberty and may live alone or with other males, calves are the centre of attention in their family groups and rely on their mothers for as long as three years. Elephants can live up to 70 years in the wild and they communicate by touch, sight, smell, and sound, elephants use infrasound, and seismic communication over long distances. Elephant intelligence has been compared with that of primates and cetaceans and they appear to have self-awareness and show empathy for dying or dead individuals of their kind. African elephants are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature while the Asian elephant is classed as endangered, one of the biggest threats to elephant populations is the ivory trade, as the animals are poached for their ivory tusks. Other threats to elephants include habitat destruction and conflicts with local people. Elephants are used as working animals in Asia, in the past, they were used in war, today, they are often controversially put on display in zoos, or exploited for entertainment in circuses. Elephants are highly recognisable and have featured in art, folklore, religion, literature
42.
Sun
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The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99. 86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Suns mass consists of hydrogen, the rest is mostly helium, with smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon. The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star based on its spectral class and it formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into a disk that became the Solar System. The central mass became so hot and dense that it eventually initiated nuclear fusion in its core and it is thought that almost all stars form by this process. The Sun is roughly middle-aged, it has not changed dramatically for more than four billion years and it is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large enough to engulf the current orbits of Mercury, Venus, and probably Earth. The enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, the synodic rotation of Earth and its orbit around the Sun are the basis of the solar calendar, which is the predominant calendar in use today. The English proper name Sun developed from Old English sunne and may be related to south, all Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *sunnōn. The English weekday name Sunday stems from Old English and is ultimately a result of a Germanic interpretation of Latin dies solis, the Latin name for the Sun, Sol, is not common in general English language use, the adjectival form is the related word solar. The term sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet. A mean Earth solar day is approximately 24 hours, whereas a mean Martian sol is 24 hours,39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. From at least the 4th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the Sun was worshipped as the god Ra, portrayed as a falcon-headed divinity surmounted by the solar disk, and surrounded by a serpent. In the New Empire period, the Sun became identified with the dung beetle, in the form of the Sun disc Aten, the Sun had a brief resurgence during the Amarna Period when it again became the preeminent, if not only, divinity for the Pharaoh Akhenaton. The Sun is viewed as a goddess in Germanic paganism, Sól/Sunna, in ancient Roman culture, Sunday was the day of the Sun god. It was adopted as the Sabbath day by Christians who did not have a Jewish background, the symbol of light was a pagan device adopted by Christians, and perhaps the most important one that did not come from Jewish traditions
43.
Larva
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A larva is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a phase of their life cycle. The larvas appearance is very different from the adult form. A larva often has unique structures and organs that do not occur in the adult form and their diet may also be considerably different. Larvae are frequently adapted to separate from adults. For example, some such as tadpoles live almost exclusively in aquatic environments. By living in an environment, larvae may be given shelter from predators. Animals in the stage will consume food to fuel their transition into the adult form. In some species like barnacles, adults are immobile but their larvae are mobile, some larvae are dependent on adults to feed them. In many eusocial Hymenoptera species, the larvae are fed by female workers, in Ropalidia marginata the males are also capable of feeding larvae but they are much less efficient, spending more time and getting less food to the larvae. The larvae of species can become pubescent and do not develop further into the adult form. This is a type of neoteny and it is a misunderstanding that the larval form always reflects the groups evolutionary history. This could be the case, but often the stage has evolved secondarily. In these cases the form may differ more than the adult form from the groups common origin. Within Insects, only Endopterygotes show different types of larvae, several classifications have been suggested by many entomologists, and following classification is based on Antonio Berlese classification in 1913. There are four types of endopterygote larvae types, Apodous larvae - no legs at all and are poorly sclerotized. Based on sclerotization, three forms are recognized. Eucephalous - with well sclerotized head capsule, found in Nematocera, Buprestidae and Cerambycidae families
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Insect
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Insects are a class of hexapod invertebrates within the arthropod phylum that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body, three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. They are the most diverse group of animals on the planet, including more than a million described species, the number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million, and potentially represent over 90% of the differing animal life forms on Earth. Insects may be found in all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans. The life cycles of insects vary but most hatch from eggs, insect growth is constrained by the inelastic exoskeleton and development involves a series of molts. The immature stages can differ from the adults in structure, habit and habitat, Insects that undergo 3-stage metamorphosis lack a pupal stage and adults develop through a series of nymphal stages. The higher level relationship of the Hexapoda is unclear, fossilized insects of enormous size have been found from the Paleozoic Era, including giant dragonflies with wingspans of 55 to 70 cm. The most diverse insect groups appear to have coevolved with flowering plants, adult insects typically move about by walking, flying or sometimes swimming. As it allows for rapid yet stable movement, many insects adopt a tripedal gait in which they walk with their legs touching the ground in alternating triangles, Insects are the only invertebrates to have evolved flight. Many insects spend at least part of their lives under water, with adaptations that include gills. Some species, such as water striders, are capable of walking on the surface of water, Insects are mostly solitary, but some, such as certain bees, ants and termites, are social and live in large, well-organized colonies. Some insects, such as earwigs, show maternal care, guarding their eggs, Insects can communicate with each other in a variety of ways. Male moths can sense the pheromones of female moths over great distances, other species communicate with sounds, crickets stridulate, or rub their wings together, to attract a mate and repel other males. Lampyridae in the beetle order communicate with light, humans regard certain insects as pests, and attempt to control them using insecticides and a host of other techniques. Some insects damage crops by feeding on sap, leaves or fruits, a few parasitic species are pathogenic. Some insects perform complex ecological roles, blow-flies, for example, help consume carrion, Many other insects are considered ecologically beneficial as predators and a few provide direct economic benefit. Silkworms and bees have been used extensively by humans for the production of silk and honey, in some cultures, people eat the larvae or adults of certain insects. Insect first appears documented in English in 1601 in Hollands translation of Pliny, translations of Aristotles term also form the usual word for insect in Welsh, Serbo-Croatian, Russian, etc. The evolutionary relationship of insects to other animal groups remains unclear, in the Pancrustacea theory, insects, together with Entognatha, Remipedia, and Cephalocarida, make up a natural clade labeled Miracrustacea
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