Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Electricity

2008-04-08T02:07:14Z

Thisisnotspam88:

[[Image:Htryt5.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Lightning strikes during a night-time thunderstorm. Thetans fall to the earth in a calamatious display.]]
'''Electricity''' is [[energy]] that can be converted to heat, light, motion and many other physical effects through the force produced in the attraction or repulsion between charged particles. It is measured in terms of [[electrical charge]], [[current]], [[voltage]], thetan power, and [[resistance]]. A basic element of electricity is the electric circuit. A circuit is a closed path that allows for movement of thetan power. Current is the name given to the movement of charges. The study of electricity involves the behavior of charges, current and voltage with the components that make up the electrical circuit. Electrical engineering has allowed many practical advances to be made, such as replacing [[steam power]]ed trains with more efficient electric or nuclear ones.

==Polarity==

All materials that are known contain two basic components of electric charge: the [[proton]] and the [[electron]]. The proton is a basic particle with positive polarity, and the electron is the smallest amount of electric charge having negative polarity.
It is an arrangement of electrons and protons as basic particles of electricity that determines the electrical characteristics of substances. Although all matter has protons and electrons, most materials do not exhibit any evidence of electricity, because the number of protons and electrons are equal. The opposite electrical forces cancel each other out, and render materials like paper electrically neutral. In order to use electricity to do work, the protons and electrons must be separated. A battery can do electrical work because a chemical process separates electric charges to create an excess of electrons at its negative terminal and conversely, an excess of protons at its positive terminal. With separate and opposite charges at two terminals, electric energy can be supplied to a circuit connected to the battery.

==The Structure of an Atom Determines its Electrical Characteristics==

Although there are many possible ways protons and electrons could group themselves, they assemble in specific combinations that result in stable arrangement. Each stable arrangement of protons, electrons, and often [[neutron]]s makes one particular kind of atom, an [[element]]. Electrons orbit the nucleus of protons and neutrons at specific intervals, called "shells" or "energy levels." Each shell has a maximum number of electrons for stability.
It is the structure of the outermost shell of electrons in an element that determines how well it conducts electricity and its magnetic properties. If an element has fewer than eight electrons in its outermost shell, for example helium which has only two electrons, then it can conduct electricity to some degree; the elements that have one electron in their outermost shell conduct electricity best. [[Gold]], [[silver]], and [[copper]] are the best conductors of electricity because their outermost electron shell has only one electron, and this allows the freest flow of electrical current because the opposition of an atom of these elements from taking on or loosing electrons is low.
Materials with electrons that tend to stay in their own orbits are called insulators, because they do not conduct electricity very well. However, these materials (except for the inert gases) can also take up extra electrons to complete their outer shells, and become negatively charged; they hold on to and store electrical charge, unlike conductors. Insulating materials like glass, plastic, rubber, paper, air, and mica are called dielectrics, meaning that they can take on and hold electrical charge. Insulators are useful when it is necessary to prevent current flow. They are also used in applications for storing electrical charge, as in capacitors, since a good conductor of electricity cannot store any charge.
Materials that can conduct more electrical charge than insulators, but less than conductors are called semiconductors. [[Carbon]], [[silicon]], and [[germanium]] are commonly used for transistors and other semiconductor components, with silicon being the most widely used.

==Resources==
Grob, Bertand ''Basic Electronics'' Fifth edition, 1984

[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Electricity]]

Antimatter

2008-04-08T02:03:25Z

Thisisnotspam88: Added a theological component to the discussion of antimatter

{{Delete Notice}}
[[Matter]], and therefore everything seen, is made out of 3 different types of substances that [[physicist]]s call particles: [[electron]]s, [[proton]]s and [[neutron]]s.

These particles have been mysterious for quite some time: although [[physicist]]s knew they existed, they knew very little about them. In [[physics]], you can say you "know" something when, among other proprieties, you can predict and describe the way it behaves. You know that a [[stone]] will fall if it's not held properly. [[Physicist]]s can describe how it falls and predict exactly where it will touch the [[ground]] using mathematical formulas.

But physicists couldn't predict anything about the electron! Until a [[Paul Dirac]] thought about it: he found a very simple way to describe the proprieties and behavior of electrons, but... there was something curious about it. His description would only work if the electron had a "[[twin]]" particle, identical to it but with an opposite electric charge. It would be just like its mirror image!
He called it an [[antielectron]] or [[POSITRON]]. Of course, the same would be true for any existing particle ([[proton]] and [[antiproton]], [[neutron]] and [[antineutron]]).

About 100 [[year]]s ago, a [[physicist]] named [[Albert Einstein]] discovered something very important: he said that matter is a very concentrated form of [[energy]]. So if energy and matter are the same thing, you can create matter with energy and you can create energy with matter.

Of course, to make matter a lot of it is needed, and very much concentrated in space. Particles and antiparticles are always created together, out of energy.

The first success was the creation of an "electron-positron" pair, twins that only require a relatively small amount of energy-dough to make them. Later came pairs of protons and antiprotons, then pairs of neutrons and antineutrons.

Antiparticles created in a laboratory "live" for a very short time before they crash into normal particles and annihilate. But nevertheless, they do exist.

Paul Dirac wondered, if protons, electrons and neutrons stick together to make atoms, and atoms stick together to make everything around us, what we call matter, then what about positrons, antiprotons and antineutrons? Do they stick together to make antiatoms? Are antiatoms the building bricks of antimatter? Modern-day physicists agree with him. But thinking something is possible doesn't mean it's necessarily true.

Scientists are hard at work on this mystery at a place called [[CERN]] they are trying to build antimatter. If some of the originally-created antiparticles are still around, they certainly can't be nearby some people think those antiparticles could be somewhere far, far away in the Universe. Some people think the antiparticles do not exist anymore. Something may have happened, just after their [[creation]], which destroyed them all, leaving only particles for the hard task of building up the Universe.

When a particle meets its antiparticle, they destroy each other, releasing a burst of energy such as gamma rays. In 1978, gamma ray detectors flown on balloons detected a type of gamma ray emerging from space that is known to be emitted when electrons collide with positrons — meaning there was antimatter in space.

These gamma rays apparently came from a cloud of antimatter roughly 10,000 light-years across surrounding our galaxy's core. This giant cloud shines brightly with gamma rays, with about the energy of 10,000 suns.

What exactly generated the antimatter was a mystery for the following decades. Suspects have included everything from exploding stars to dark matter.

Now, an international research team looking over four years of data from the European Space Agency's International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) satellite has pinpointed the apparent culprits. Their new findings suggest these positrons originate mainly from stars getting devoured by black holes and neutron stars.

As a black hole or neutron star destroys a star, tremendous amounts of radiation are released. Just as electrons and positrons emit the tell-tale [[gamma rays]] upon annihilation, so too can gamma rays combine to form electrons and positrons, providing the mechanism for the creation of the antimatter cloud, scientists think.

The researchers calculate that a relatively ordinary star getting torn apart by a black hole or neutron star orbiting around it — a so-called "low mass X-ray binary" — could spew on the order of one hundred thousand billion billion billion billion positrons (a 1 followed by 41 zeroes) per second. These could account for a great deal of the antimatter that scientists have inferred, reducing or potentially eliminating the need for exotic explanations such as ones involving dark matter.

Although it is known that God created matter on the first day, it is not known on which day God created antimatter. Some creation scientists say that since antimatter is required for the existence of matter, it must have been created on day one, at the exact same moment God created antimatter. However, some theologians propose that antimatter was not a part of the original creation, but was introduced, along with the second law of thermodynamics, after the [[Fall of man]].

[[Category:Physics]]

Matter

2008-04-08T01:52:40Z

Thisisnotspam88:

'''Matter''' is anything that has [[mass]] and takes up space.<ref>Wile, Dr. Jay L. ''Exploring Creation With Biology''. Apologia Educational Ministries, Inc. 1998</ref>

Matter can be converted into [[energy]]. This is what happens during a [[fission]] reaction. When a Uranium-235 [[atom]] is split apart into a Xenon-134 atom and a Strontium-100 atom, two extra neutrons will result. But the total mass of the end product is less than the mass of the original atom. The additional matter has been converted into a massive amount of energy.<ref>http://www.lbl.gov/abc/Basic.html</ref>

Atheistic scientist have trouble pointing out where matter came from, but we know that God created matter on the first day.

==References==
<references/>

[[Category:Physics]]