1.
Oakland (Pittsburgh)
–
Oakland is the academic and healthcare center of Pittsburgh and one of the citys major cultural centers. The neighborhood is home to three universities, museums, and hospitals, as well as an abundance of shopping, restaurants and it is also home to the locally designated Oakland Square Historic District. The Pittsburgh Fire Bureau has Fire Station No.14 on McKee Place, Oakland is officially divided into four neighborhoods, North Oakland, West Oakland, Central Oakland, and South Oakland. Each section has an identity, and offers its own flavor of venues. Oakland is Pittsburghs second most populated neighborhood with 22,210 residents, North Oakland can be loosely defined as the area of Oakland between Neville and Bouquet Streets, encompassing all of Craig Street and running north to Polish Hill. The Cathedral of Learning, the engineering or midsection of the University of Pittsburgh campus, rANDs Pittsburgh center is located in North Oakland as well as the long time RIDC business incubator on Henry Street. North Oakland is also home to the Schenley Farms Historic District and many mid-rise condominium, Central Oakland is bordered by Schenley Park, the Boulevard of the Allies, Fifth Avenue, and Halket Street. Many students at the University of Pittsburgh who decide to live off-campus reside in this neighborhood, many of its homes are historic masonry structures dating from the turn of the century. The area is sometimes mistakenly called South Oakland and its Main Business District runs along Forbes and Fifth Avenue, and contains a diversity of restaurants, retailers, and financial services. These businesses are organized by the Oakland Business Improvement District, smaller business districts in Central Oakland provide additional dining options along Atwood Street and Semple Street. It is also the location of the isolated and historic neighborhood of Panther Hollow which runs along Boundary Street in Junction Hollow as well as the Oakland Square Historic District. South Oakland runs along the Monongahela River and forms a shape between the Monongahela River, the Boulevard of the Allies, and the western bank of Junction Hollow. Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC and the Pittsburgh Technology Center are major landmarks of this neighborhood, the neighborhood is split between a riverfront flood plain to the southwest and a plateau to the northeast. The plateau is divided into two residential areas which are separated from one another by Bates Street, which runs up a valley from the flood plain to the plateau. The residents of the neighborhood on the side of Bates Avenue self-identify their neighborhood as Oakcliffe. It is important to note that some residents of Central Oakland misidentify that neighborhood as being part of South Oakland, in other words, the border between Central Oakland and South Oakland is much further south than is believed by some residents. The area between Forbes Avenue and Boulevard of the Allies is officially part of Central Oakland. South Oakland can be reputed to be a student neighborhood, but in fact, South Oakland was the childhood home of Andy Warhol, and later the residence of fellow pop artist Keith Haring
2.
Pennsylvania
–
Pennsylvania /ˌpɛnsᵻlˈveɪnjə/, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle, Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest, the 5th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The states five most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, the state capital, and its ninth-largest city, is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie and the Delaware Estuary. The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States, it came into being in 1681 as a result of a land grant to William Penn. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden and it was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12,1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the states largest city of Philadelphia, during the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washingtons headquarters during the winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west, of a total 46,055 square miles,44,817 square miles are land,490 square miles are inland waters, and 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States, Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Cities include Philadelphia, Reading, Lebanon and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, the northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining communities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston City, and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest, the state has 5 regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and the Erie Plain. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the corner, has a humid continental climate. The largest city, Philadelphia, has characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware. Moving toward the interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increase. Western areas of the state, particularly locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, the Tuscarora Nation took up temporary residence in the central portion of Pennsylvania ca. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their lands in America
3.
Ice
–
Ice is water frozen into a solid state. Depending on the presence of such as particles of soil or bubbles of air. In the Solar System, ice is abundant and occurs naturally from as close to the Sun as Mercury to as far as away the Oort cloud objects, beyond the Solar System, it occurs as interstellar ice. It falls as snowflakes and hail or occurs as frost, icicles or ice spikes, Ice molecules can exhibit up to sixteen different phases that depend on temperature and pressure. When water is cooled rapidly, up to three different types of ice can form depending on the history of its pressure and temperature. When cooled slowly correlated proton tunneling occurs below 20 K giving rise to macroscopic quantum phenomena, virtually all the ice on Earths surface and in its atmosphere is of a hexagonal crystalline structure denoted as ice Ih with minute traces of cubic ice denoted as ice Ic. The most common phase transition to ice Ih occurs when water is cooled below 0°C at standard atmospheric pressure. It may also be deposited directly by water vapor, as happens in the formation of frost, the transition from ice to water is melting and from ice directly to water vapor is sublimation. Ice is used in a variety of ways, including cooling, winter sports, as a naturally occurring crystalline inorganic solid with an ordered structure, ice is considered a mineral. It possesses a regular crystalline structure based on the molecule of water, an unusual property of ice frozen at atmospheric pressure is that the solid is approximately 8. 3% less dense than liquid water. The density of ice is 0.9167 g/cm3 at 0 °C, liquid water is densest, essentially 1.00 g/cm³, at 4 °C and becomes less dense as the water molecules begin to form the hexagonal crystals of ice as the freezing point is reached. This is due to hydrogen bonding dominating the intermolecular forces, which results in a packing of molecules less compact in the solid, density of ice increases slightly with decreasing temperature and has a value of 0.9340 g/cm³ at −180 °C. When water freezes, it increases in volume and it is also a common cause of the flooding of houses when water pipes burst due to the pressure of expanding water when it freezes. The result of this process is that ice floats on liquid water, sufficiently thin ice sheets allow light to pass through while protecting the underside from short-term weather extremes such as wind chill. This creates an environment for bacterial and algal colonies. When ice melts, it absorbs as much energy as it would take to heat an equivalent mass of water by 80 °C, during the melting process, the temperature remains constant at 0 °C. While melting, any energy added breaks the bonds between ice molecules. Energy becomes available to increase the thermal energy only after enough hydrogen bonds are broken that the ice can be considered liquid water, the amount of energy consumed in breaking hydrogen bonds in the transition from ice to water is known as the heat of fusion
4.
Concrete
–
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
5.
Marble
–
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Geologists use the marble to refer to metamorphosed limestone, however. Marble is commonly used for sculpture and as a building material and this stem is also the basis for the English word marmoreal, meaning marble-like. In Hungarian it is called márvány, Marble is a rock resulting from metamorphism of sedimentary carbonate rocks, most commonly limestone or dolomite rock. Metamorphism causes variable recrystallization of the carbonate mineral grains. The resulting marble rock is composed of an interlocking mosaic of carbonate crystals. Primary sedimentary textures and structures of the carbonate rock have typically been modified or destroyed. Pure white marble is the result of metamorphism of a very pure limestone or dolomite protolith, green coloration is often due to serpentine resulting from originally magnesium-rich limestone or dolostone with silica impurities. These various impurities have been mobilized and recrystallized by the intense pressure, examples of historically notable marble varieties and locations, White marble has been prized for its use in sculptures since classical times. This preference has to do with its softness, which made it easier to carve, relative isotropy and homogeneity, construction marble is a stone which is composed of calcite, dolomite or serpentine which is capable of taking a polish. More generally in construction, specifically the dimension stone trade, the marble is used for any crystalline calcitic rock useful as building stone. For example, Tennessee marble is really a dense granular fossiliferous gray to pink to maroon Ordovician limestone that geologists call the Holston Formation. Ashgabat, the city of Turkmenistan, was recorded in the 2013 Guinness Book of Records as having the worlds highest concentration of white marble buildings. According to the United States Geological Survey, U. S. domestic marble production in 2006 was 46,400 tons valued at about $18.1 million, compared to 72,300 tons valued at $18.9 million in 2005. Crushed marble production in 2006 was 11.8 million tons valued at $116 million, of which 6.5 million tons was finely ground calcium carbonate and the rest was construction aggregate. For comparison,2005 crushed marble production was 7.76 million tons valued at $58.7 million, of which 4.8 million tons was finely ground calcium carbonate, U. S. dimension marble demand is about 1.3 million tons. The DSAN World Demand for Marble Index has shown a growth of 12% annually for the 2000–2006 period, the largest dimension marble application is tile. In 1998, marble production was dominated by 4 countries that accounted for almost half of production of marble
6.
United States dollar
–
The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
7.
University of Pittsburgh
–
The University of Pittsburgh is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1787 after the American Revolutionary War, it was founded on the edge of the American frontier as the Pittsburgh Academy and it developed and was renamed as Western University of Pennsylvania by a change to its charter in 1819. For most of its history, Pitt was a private institution, the university also includes four undergraduate schools located at campuses within Western Pennsylvania, Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown, and Titusville. The 132-acre Pittsburgh campus has multiple contributing historic buildings of the Schenley Farms Historic District, most notably its 42-story Gothic revival centerpiece, the university has an annual operating budget of approximately $2 billion, which includes nearly $900 million in research and development expenditures. It is the second-largest non-government employer in the Pittsburgh region behind UPMC, Pitt is ranked among the top public universities in the United States in both domestic and international rankings, and has been listed as a best value in higher education by several publications. Pitt students have access to arts programs throughout the campus and city. Pitts varsity athletic teams, collectively known as the Pittsburgh Panthers, compete in Division I of the NCAA, primarily as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Founded by Hugh Henry Brackenridge as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787, the University of Pittsburgh is one of the few universities and colleges established in the 18th century in the United States. It is the oldest continuously chartered institution of learning in the U. S. west of the Allegheny Mountains, the school began as a preparatory school, presumably in a log cabin, possibly as early as 1770 in Western Pennsylvania, then a frontier. A brick building was erected in 1790 on the side of Third Street. The small two-story brick building, with a gable facing the alley, within a short period, more advanced education in the area was needed, so in 1819 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania amended the schools 1787 charter to confer university status. The school took the name the Western University of Pennsylvania, or WUP, by the 1830s, the university faced severe financial pressure to abandon its traditional liberal education in favor of the state legislatures desire for it to provide more vocational training. The decision to remain committed to liberal education nearly killed the university and it was also during this era that the founder of Mellon Bank, Thomas Mellon, graduated and later taught at WUP. The universitys buildings, along with most of its records and files, were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1845 that wiped out 20 square blocks of Pittsburgh, classes were temporarily held in Trinity Church until a new building was constructed on Duquesne Way. Only four years later, in 1849, this also was destroyed by fire. Due to the nature of these fires, operations were suspended for a few years to allow the university time to regroup. By 1854, WUP had erected a new building on the corner of Ross and Diamond streets, langley was professor of astronomy and physics and remained at WUP until 1891, when he was succeeded by another prominent astronomer, James Keeler. Growing quickly during this period, WUP outgrew its downtown facilities, the university eventually found itself on a 10-acre site on the North Sides Observatory Hill at the location of its Allegheny Observatory
8.
Pittsburgh
–
Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, and is the county seat of Allegheny County. The city proper has a population of 304,391. The metropolitan population of 2,353,045 is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the 26th-largest in the U. S. The city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclines, a fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, glass, shipbuilding, petroleum, foods, sports, transportation, computing, autos, and electronics. For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment, Americas 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out. The area has served also as the federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, robotics, energy research. The area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University, the region is a hub for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, sustainable energy, and energy extraction. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. The current pronunciation, which is unusual in English speaking countries, is almost certainly a result of a printing error in some copies of the City Charter of March 18,1816. The error was repeated commonly enough throughout the rest of the 19th century that the pronunciation was lost. After a public campaign the original spelling was restored by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1911. The area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee, the first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers, primarily Dutch, followed in the early 18th century, Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, and later that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers, during 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off. The French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalles 1669 claims, the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne, the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddocks Field. General John Forbes finally took the forks in 1758, Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named Pittsborough
9.
Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
–
Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens is a botanical garden set in Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is a City of Pittsburgh historic landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the gardens were founded in 1893 by steel and real-estate magnate Henry Phipps as a gift to the City of Pittsburgh. Its purpose is to educate and entertain the people of Pittsburgh with formal gardens, currently, the facilities house elaborate gardens within the fourteen room conservatory itself and on the adjoining grounds. In addition to its primary flora exhibits, the sophisticated glass, Phipps is one of the greenest facilities in the world. The entrance pavilion of the Phipps Conservatory has silver-level LEED certification and its greenhouse production facility has received Platinum certification, the first and only greenhouse to be so certified. Moreover, the Center for Sustainable Landscapes, designed to be as environmentally sustainable as possible, is also LEED Platinum certified, the Phipps Conservatory was founded in 1893 as a gift from Henry Phipps, Jr. to the City of Pittsburgh. The Conservatory was designed by Lord & Burnham, for a fee of $100,000, the glasshouse, then consisting of nine display rooms, was completed in August 1893, one year after construction began. On December 7,1893, the Phipps Conservatory was opened to the public, sometime after 1910, the first of the Aquatic Gardens was built. A second pool would be installed in 1939, in 1970, the Conservatory was declared a Historic Landmark by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. In 1976, the Phipps Conservatory was added to the National Register of Historic Places, in 1993, the Phipps Conservatory, which had been run by the City of Pittsburgh since 1893, became a privately managed, while city owned, non-profit organization. In October 2003, Phipps announced an expansion project, the first phase, a green engineered Welcome Center topped by a neo-Victorian dome, was designed by IKM Incorporated, and completed in 2005. The Production Greenhouses and a Tropical Forest Conservatory were completed in 2006, the Tropical Forest conservatory has a different theme every three years, beginning with the country of Thailand. The second theme is Headwaters of the Amazon, which opened in early 2009, in 2007, Phipps teamed with glass artist Dale Chihuly and his Tacoma-based team of glass blowers. They worked together to create a marriage of hand-blown glass and living plants, the total Chihuly collection is valued at $1.2 million. In 2009, Phipps teamed with glass artist Hans Godo Frabel to create another stunning exhibit titled Gardens. Unlike the Chihuly pieces, Frabels work is realistic, although still whimsical at times. Highlights of this exhibit include Longfellows, intricate glass orchid and lotus plants, the Palm Court is the first room visitors see after entering the Conservatory through the main entrance. The Victorian-inspired room contains many species of palm trees, the room contains the original dated plaque from the Conservatorys opening as well as numerous glass installations by Dale Chihuly
10.
Schenley Bridge
–
Schenley Bridge connects Schenley Plaza to Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It carries Schenley Drive over Junction Hollow to Frew Street and Flagstaff Hill and this bridge in the citys Oakland district is one element of a grand main entrance into the park. Its span is 620 feet and it arches 120 feet above the hollow, erected in 1897, it replaced a temporary structure by the same name dating from 1890, a year after the park opened. In 1890, the year after the City of Pittsburgh received the land for Schenley Park, the present Schenley Bridge replaced this structure in 1897. One of the plans was to remove the temporary trestle. It has been speculated that the fire destroyed the Schenley Park Casino near the temporary bridge was also a factor leading to the erection of a wholly new bridge at Panther Hollow. As built, the Schenley Bridge and the Panther Hollow Bridge are near twins—built concurrently, recently, several love padlocks have started appearing on the bridge. Pittsburghs Landmark Architecture, The Historic Buildings of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. Schenley Bridge at pghbridges. com Schenley Bridge at pghbridges. com Schenley Park website Bridges of Schenley Park
.svg)
