1.
Sneek
–
Sneek is a city southwest of Leeuwarden and seat of the former municipality of Sneek in the province of Friesland. As for 2011 it is part of the municipality Súdwest Fryslân, the city has approximately 33,000 inhabitants. Sneek is situated in Southwest-Friesland, close to the Sneekermeer and is known for its canals, the Waterpoort. Sneek is one of the Friese elf steden, the city is very important for the southwest area of Friesland. Sneek was founded in the 10th century on a peninsula at the crossing site of a dike with an important waterway. This waterway was dug when the former Middelzee silted up, the dike can still be traced in the current street pattern and street names like Hemdijk, Oude Dijk and Oosterdijk. Sneek received several city rights in the 13th century, which became official in 1456, Sneek was now one of the eleven Frisian cities. This was also the beginning of a period of blooming trade for the city that would last until about 1550, in 1492 construction of a moat and wall around the city began. In those days Sneek was the walled city in Friesland. The Waterpoort and the Bolwerk remain today, since September 10,1970, Sneek and the Japanese city Kurobe have been sister cities. In 1970, Mayor L. Rasterhoff of Sneek visited the city of Kurobe and was named an Honorary citizen, Mayor H. Terade of Kurobe made a visit to Sneek in 1972. In 2000 delegations of both cities visited each other again, the Japanese showed the citizens of Sneek a Sneekplein which was built in Kurobe. Sneek has its own dialect that dates back to the Dutch language before 1600, snekers is part of the city Frisian dialects. The famous clothingstore C&A started in 1841 with a store in Sneek, the Candyfactory Leaf produces Peppermint under the name KING as well as chewing gum and various other sweets. The name KING has nothing to do with the English word KING, also Sneek has a Steel, Machinery and a Rope factory. Since 1964 theres a factory of Yoshida YKK from Kurobe, besides that, the Supermarket branch Poiesz, Clothing brand Gaastra and Frisian gin called beerenburg from Weduwe Joustra are products that have their roots in Sneek. Sneek is well known as the center of watersports with over 130 watersport companies and 13 Marinas and it also it has a historic inner city replete with houses of old upper-class families. Watergate Town hall Martinichurch, with a carillon of 50 bells Sint-Martinuschurch Tonnema Candy Factory the Wooden bridges across the Rijksweg 7
2.
Leiden
–
Leiden is a city and municipality in the Dutch province of South Holland. Leiden is located on the Oude Rijn, at a distance of some 20 kilometres from The Hague to its south, the recreational area of the Kaag Lakes lies just to the northeast of Leiden. A university city since 1575, Leiden houses Leiden University, the oldest university of the Netherlands, Leiden is a city with a rich cultural heritage, not only in science, but also in the arts. One of the worlds most famous painters, Rembrandt, was born, other famous Leiden painters include Lucas van Leyden, Jan van Goyen and Jan van Steen. The city has one of Europes most prominent scientific centres for more than four centuries. Modern scientific medical research and teaching started in the early 18th century in Leiden with Boerhaave, many important scientific discoveries have been made here, giving rise to Leiden’s motto, ‘City of Discoveries’. It is twinned with Oxford, the location of the United Kingdoms oldest university, Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences together have around 35,000 students. Leiden is a university city, university buildings are scattered throughout the city. Leiden was formed on a hill at the confluence of the rivers Oude. In the oldest reference to this, from circa 860, the settlement was called Leithon, the name is said to be from Germanic *leitha- canal. Leiden has in the past erroneously been associated with the Roman outpost Lugdunum Batavorum and this particular castellum was thought to be located at the Burcht of Leiden, and the citys name was thought to be derived of the Latin name Lugdunum. However the castellum was in closer to the town of Katwijk. The landlord of Leiden, situated in a stronghold on the hill, was subject to the Bishop of Utrecht. This county got its name in 1101 from a domain near the stronghold, Leiden was sacked in 1047 by Emperor Henry III. Early 13th century, Ada, Countess of Holland took refuge here when she was fighting in a war against her uncle, William I. He besieged the stronghold and captured Ada, Leiden received city rights in 1266. In 1389, its population had grown to about 4,000 persons, burgrave Filips of Wassenaar and the other local noblemen of the Hook faction assumed that the duke would besiege Leiden first and send small units out to conquer the surrounding citadels. But John of Bavaria chose to attack the citadels first and he rolled the cannons with his army but one which was too heavy went by ship
3.
Netherlands
–
The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
4.
University of Groningen
–
The University of Groningen is a public research university in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1614 and is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands as well as one of its largest, since its inception more than 200,000 students have graduated. It is a member of the distinguished international Coimbra Group of European universities, in April 2013, according to the results of the International Student Barometer, the University of Groningen, for the third time in a row, has been voted the best university of the Netherlands. In 2014 the university celebrated its 400th anniversary, the University of Groningen has ten faculties, nine graduate schools,27 research centres and institutes, and more than 175 degree programmes. There were four faculties – Theology, Law, Medicine, the coat of arms of the university was confirmed by the States of the City and County of Groningen in 1615. It consists of the arms, charged with an open book inscribed with the abbreviated words VER/BVM/DNI LV/CER/NA. The shield is surmounted by a crown of five leaves. The first 75 years of its existence were very fruitful for the University with about 100 students enrolling every year, on average two to three hundred students were registered with the University at any one time during this period. Opportunities and threats followed on each other’s heels during the nineteenth century, in 1815, at the same time as Leiden and Utrecht, the University gained recognition as a national college of higher education, but this was followed by discussions about closure. The situation improved markedly when a new university building, the Academiegebouw, was constructed in 1850. This made the fire completely destroyed this building in 1906 even more poignant. In the meantime, the Higher Education Act of 1876 had radically improved the position of the University, teaching now took place in Dutch as well as in Latin and the University was given a research as well as an educational duty. This laid the foundations for the present research university, the University of Groningen developed apace during the first decades of the twentieth century. The number of faculties and courses grew steadily while the number of students showed an explosive growth, when the University celebrated its first 300 years in 1914 there were 611 registered students, this had already grown to 1000 by 1924. After a drop back during the Depression, and in particular during the Second World War, in 2016 the Dutch chemist Ben Feringa, who worked most of his career at the university, won the Nobel prize for his work on molecular motors. Other strong research groups are in, Nanoscience, Physics, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Medical Sciences, Neurosciences, Sociology, Philosophy, Theology, Archaeology and Arts. Every year more than 5,000 research publications go to print, the University of Groningen is a member of the so-called Excellence Group of the best universities in Europe. The Excellence Group has 56 members, which is 1.3 percent of the approximately 4,500 European institutions of higher education, the University of Groningen belongs to the top 100 large comprehensive research universities in the world
5.
Physics
–
Physics is the natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion and behavior through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. One of the most fundamental disciplines, the main goal of physics is to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy, Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the mechanisms of other sciences while opening new avenues of research in areas such as mathematics. Physics also makes significant contributions through advances in new technologies that arise from theoretical breakthroughs, the United Nations named 2005 the World Year of Physics. Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, the stars and planets were often a target of worship, believed to represent their gods. While the explanations for these phenomena were often unscientific and lacking in evidence, according to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, and all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy. The most notable innovations were in the field of optics and vision, which came from the works of many scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna. The most notable work was The Book of Optics, written by Ibn Al-Haitham, in which he was not only the first to disprove the ancient Greek idea about vision, but also came up with a new theory. In the book, he was also the first to study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera, many later European scholars and fellow polymaths, from Robert Grosseteste and Leonardo da Vinci to René Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, were in his debt. Indeed, the influence of Ibn al-Haythams Optics ranks alongside that of Newtons work of the same title, the translation of The Book of Optics had a huge impact on Europe. From it, later European scholars were able to build the devices as what Ibn al-Haytham did. From this, such important things as eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, Physics became a separate science when early modern Europeans used experimental and quantitative methods to discover what are now considered to be the laws of physics. Newton also developed calculus, the study of change, which provided new mathematical methods for solving physical problems. The discovery of new laws in thermodynamics, chemistry, and electromagnetics resulted from greater research efforts during the Industrial Revolution as energy needs increased, however, inaccuracies in classical mechanics for very small objects and very high velocities led to the development of modern physics in the 20th century. Modern physics began in the early 20th century with the work of Max Planck in quantum theory, both of these theories came about due to inaccuracies in classical mechanics in certain situations. Quantum mechanics would come to be pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, from this early work, and work in related fields, the Standard Model of particle physics was derived. Areas of mathematics in general are important to this field, such as the study of probabilities, in many ways, physics stems from ancient Greek philosophy
6.
Physical cosmology
–
Physical cosmology is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the Universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its origin, structure, evolution, and ultimate fate. These advances made it possible to speculate about the origin of the universe, a few researchers still advocate a handful of alternative cosmologies, however, most cosmologists agree that the Big Bang theory explains the observations better. Cosmology draws heavily on the work of many areas of research in theoretical. Areas relevant to include particle physics experiments and theory, theoretical and observational astrophysics, general relativity, quantum mechanics. Modern cosmology developed along tandem tracks of theory and observation, in 1916, Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity, which provided a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time. At the time, Einstein believed in a universe. This is because masses distributed throughout the universe gravitationally attract, however, he realized that his equations permitted the introduction of a constant term which could counteract the attractive force of gravity on the cosmic scale. Einstein published his first paper on relativistic cosmology in 1917, in which he added this cosmological constant to his equations in order to force them to model a static universe. However, this so-called Einstein model is unstable to small perturbations—it will eventually start to expand or contract, the Einstein model describes a static universe, space is finite and unbounded. It was later realized that Einsteins model was just one of a set of possibilities, all of which were consistent with general relativity. The cosmological solutions of general relativity were found by Alexander Friedmann in the early 1920s and his equations describe the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker universe, which may expand or contract, and whose geometry may be open, flat, or closed. In the 1910s, Vesto Slipher interpreted the red shift of spiral nebulae as a Doppler shift that indicated they were receding from Earth, however, it is difficult to determine the distance to astronomical objects. One way is to compare the size of an object to its angular size. Another method is to measure the brightness of an object and assume an intrinsic luminosity, due to the difficulty of using these methods, they did not realize that the nebulae were actually galaxies outside our own Milky Way, nor did they speculate about the cosmological implications. In 1929, Edwin Hubble provided a basis for Lemaîtres theory. Hubble showed that the nebulae were galaxies by determining their distances using measurements of the brightness of Cepheid variable stars. He discovered a relationship between the redshift of a galaxy and its distance and he interpreted this as evidence that the galaxies are receding from Earth in every direction at speeds proportional to their distance. Given the cosmological principle, Hubbles law suggested that the universe was expanding, two primary explanations were proposed for the expansion
7.
Big Bang
–
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution. If the known laws of physics are extrapolated to the highest density regime, detailed measurements of the expansion rate of the universe place this moment at approximately 13.8 billion years ago, which is thus considered the age of the universe. After the initial expansion, the universe cooled sufficiently to allow the formation of subatomic particles, giant clouds of these primordial elements later coalesced through gravity in halos of dark matter, eventually forming the stars and galaxies visible today. Since Georges Lemaître first noted in 1927 that a universe could be traced back in time to an originating single point. More recently, measurements of the redshifts of supernovae indicate that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, the known physical laws of nature can be used to calculate the characteristics of the universe in detail back in time to an initial state of extreme density and temperature. American astronomer Edwin Hubble observed that the distances to faraway galaxies were strongly correlated with their redshifts, assuming the Copernican principle, the only remaining interpretation is that all observable regions of the universe are receding from all others. Since we know that the distance between galaxies increases today, it must mean that in the past galaxies were closer together, the continuous expansion of the universe implies that the universe was denser and hotter in the past. Large particle accelerators can replicate the conditions that prevailed after the early moments of the universe, resulting in confirmation, however, these accelerators can only probe so far into high energy regimes. Consequently, the state of the universe in the earliest instants of the Big Bang expansion is still poorly understood, the first subatomic particles to be formed included protons, neutrons, and electrons. Though simple atomic nuclei formed within the first three minutes after the Big Bang, thousands of years passed before the first electrically neutral atoms formed, the majority of atoms produced by the Big Bang were hydrogen, along with helium and traces of lithium. Giant clouds of primordial elements later coalesced through gravity to form stars and galaxies. The framework for the Big Bang model relies on Albert Einsteins theory of relativity and on simplifying assumptions such as homogeneity. The governing equations were formulated by Alexander Friedmann, and similar solutions were worked on by Willem de Sitter, extrapolation of the expansion of the universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity indicates that general relativity is not a description of the laws of physics in this regime. How closely models based on general relativity alone can be used to extrapolate toward the singularity is debated—certainly no closer than the end of the Planck epoch. This primordial singularity is itself called the Big Bang, but the term can also refer to a more generic early hot. The agreement of independent measurements of this age supports the model that describes in detail the characteristics of the universe. The earliest phases of the Big Bang are subject to much speculation, in the most common models the universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with a very high energy density and huge temperatures and pressures and was very rapidly expanding and cooling
8.
Universe
–
The Universe is all of time and space and its contents. It includes planets, moons, minor planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the size of the entire Universe is unknown. The earliest scientific models of the Universe were developed by ancient Greek and Indian philosophers and were geocentric, over the centuries, more precise astronomical observations led Nicolaus Copernicus to develop the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of the Solar System. In developing the law of gravitation, Sir Isaac Newton built upon Copernicuss work as well as observations by Tycho Brahe. Further observational improvements led to the realization that our Solar System is located in the Milky Way galaxy and it is assumed that galaxies are distributed uniformly and the same in all directions, meaning that the Universe has neither an edge nor a center. Discoveries in the early 20th century have suggested that the Universe had a beginning, the majority of mass in the Universe appears to exist in an unknown form called dark matter. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the Universe, under this theory, space and time emerged together 13. 799±0.021 billion years ago with a fixed amount of energy and matter that has become less dense as the Universe has expanded. After the initial expansion, the Universe cooled, allowing the first subatomic particles to form, giant clouds later merged through gravity to form galaxies, stars, and everything else seen today. Some physicists have suggested various multiverse hypotheses, in which the Universe might be one among many universes that likewise exist, the Universe can be defined as everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist. According to our current understanding, the Universe consists of spacetime, forms of energy, the Universe encompasses all of life, all of history, and some philosophers and scientists suggest that it even encompasses ideas such as mathematics and logic. The word universe derives from the Old French word univers, which in turn derives from the Latin word universum, the Latin word was used by Cicero and later Latin authors in many of the same senses as the modern English word is used. Another synonym was ὁ κόσμος ho kósmos, synonyms are also found in Latin authors and survive in modern languages, e. g. the German words Das All, Weltall, and Natur for Universe. The same synonyms are found in English, such as everything, the cosmos, the world, the prevailing model for the evolution of the Universe is the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang model states that the earliest state of the Universe was extremely hot and dense, the model is based on general relativity and on simplifying assumptions such as homogeneity and isotropy of space. The Big Bang model accounts for such as the correlation of distance and redshift of galaxies, the ratio of the number of hydrogen to helium atoms. The initial hot, dense state is called the Planck epoch, after the Planck epoch and inflation came the quark, hadron, and lepton epochs. Together, these epochs encompassed less than 10 seconds of time following the Big Bang, the observed abundance of the elements can be explained by combining the overall expansion of space with nuclear and atomic physics. As the Universe expands, the density of electromagnetic radiation decreases more quickly than does that of matter because the energy of a photon decreases with its wavelength
