Chemical Composition of Black Powder or Gunpowder

Black powder is the name given to the earliest known chemical explosive. It is used as a blasting powder and a propellant for firearms, rockets, and fireworks. The composition of black powder or gunpowder is not set. In fact, several different compositions have been used throughout history. Heres a look at some of the most notable or common compositions, plus the composition of modern black powder. Black Powder Basics Theres nothing complicated about the formulation of black powder. It consists of charcoal (carbon), saltpeter (potassium nitrate or sometimes sodium nitrate), and sulfur. Charcoal and sulfur act as the fuel for the explosion, while saltpeter acts as an oxidizer. Sulfur also lowers the ignition temperature, which increases the combustion rate. Charcoal is used instead of pure carbon because it contains incompletely decomposed cellulose. It has a much lower autoignition temperature. Black powder made using pure carbon will ignite, but it wont explode. In commercial black powder preparation, potassium nitrate or another nitrate (e.g., sodium nitrate) usually is coated with graphite (a form of carbon). This helps prevent electrostatic charge build-up, reducing the chance a stray spark will prematurely ignite the mixture. Sometimes black powder is tumbled with graphite dust after it is mixed to coat the grains. In addition to reducing static, the graphite reduces moisture absorption, which could prevent gunpowder from igniting. Notable Black Powder Compositions Typical modern gunpowder consists of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur in a 6:1:1 or 6:1.2:0.8 ratio. Historically significant formulations have been calculated on a percentage basis: Formula Saltpeter Charcoal Sulfur Bishop Watson, 1781 75.0 15.0 10.0 British Government, 1635 75.0 12.5 12.5 Bruxelles studies, 1560 75.0 15.62 9.38 Whitehorne, 1560 50.0 33.3 16.6 Arderne lab, 1350 66.6 22.2 11.1 Roger Bacon, c. 1252 37.50 31.25 31.25 Marcus Graecus, 8th century 69.22 23.07 7.69 Marcus Graecus, 8th century 66.66 22.22 11.11 Source: The Chemistry of Gun Powder and Explosives

Christianity The Best Way For Me - 1366 Words

Christianity I didn’t really know a valid definition for Christianity. The best way for me to understand Christianity is that it is a religion based on the miracles and teachings of Jesus. People say that Christianity is a relationship with the true and living God through the person of Jesus Christ, which who has forgiven us for our sins and escape the righteous judgment of God. To help me better understand and comprehend how glorious Christianity is, I had the enjoyment of interviewing my good friend William Wendell. The friendship that William and I have is a very strong. One thing that we find most joyful within our friendship is learning about each other’s religion. William is a practicing Christian that truly believes in his†¦show more content†¦For him, being Pentecostal means letting your heart and soul be filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. William believes that there is only one God and that God is Jesus. They also believe in repentin g of their sins and being baptized in the name of Jesus. In his opinion, not many other Christian’s faiths believe in that. William’s perception of Christianity is to love God above all, love others, abide by God’s rule and always try to win people to Christ. As a practicing Christian, William attends a church that is considered Pentecostal or non-denominational, which he attends every Sunday. His church does take place on Wednesday and Friday nights as well but he attends every Sunday in order to be with his family and believes that Sunday is the day for God. William stated in our interview that he was taught to always wear his â€Å"Sunday best† which means to wear to modest attire but to always look astonishing for God that day. Throughout his time at church, William learns a lot about his faith. I asked him a question that has always boggled me, â€Å"With all that you have learned from church and from being a Christian, do you believe in heaven and hell?† William expresses to me that he does believe in both heaven and hell. He believes that there will be a day when God will come back and judge all humans based on their

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Repression and self-pres

Question: Describe about the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology for Repression and self-presentation? Answer: Introduction In this assignment, a research is conducted based on the effect of the audience, co action, role and group. The research is conducted based on literature review. Different literatures relevant to the topic are reviewed and discussed in this assignment. Then a report is presented on a group presentation and effect of the audience, co action, role and group on the preparation of the presentation. Discussion: Effect of audience: Audience play an important role in any performance as the success of a performance depends on them. various studies on psychology have discussed the effect of audience on a performance. According to a research carried out by Bozzolan, Cho and Michelon (2013) on the role of audience, a successful presentation should have an approach that is centered to the audience. As per the studies carried out by Baumeister and Cairns (1992), while conducting or planning a performance or presentation, one should consider the interest and the preferences of the people who would act as the audience. Again Jain and Roy (2015) showed that the presence of audience sometimes leads to better performance by the performers and in some cases the performance can be worse. Some studies (Aiello and Douthitt, 2001) have shown that the passive audience sometimes positively influences the performers to perform better, whereas some other studies (Travis, 1925) have shown the inhibitory effect of the audience in the performance of a task that is less practiced due to the psychological factor, called stress. According to the Yerkes- Dodson law, proposed by the two eminent psychologists, Robert M. Yerkes and John Dodson in the year 1908, with the mental or psychological arousal, the performance increases up to a certain point and when the arousal increases to a very high level, there is a decrease in the performance. The reason behind the negative impact of audience is beautifully discussed by Mero, Guidice and Brownlee (2007), who showed that when a person tries to perform a task that is difficult and complex or not properly familiar to the person, the level of accuracy in the performance decreased with the presence of other persons. Robert Zajonc, in 1956, coined the term social inhibition while describing the negative impact of audience. Effect of co-action: According to NELSON (2006), co action effect can be defined as the increase in the level of performance which is caused by the presence of other persons who are also involved in same type of tasks. Norman Triplett first coined the term in the year 1898, who found in his experiment that the speed of a cyclist increases when he races with others. According to the studies by Sellaro et al. (2013), when a person work alone, the level of creativity is high, but the level of productivity is low, but when a person works with others, the level of creativity is highest and the level of productivity is also very high. According to the distraction-conflict theory proposed by Baron (1986), in the presence of other persons while performing a task, generates a conflict that involves concentrating on the other persona and simultaneous concentrating on the task. This conflict leads to the increase in arousal which in turn causes social facilitation. According to Soma and Hasegawa (2004), the social facilitation/inhibition (SFI) effect sometimes facilitates the performance by a person in the presence of co actors and in other times it inhibits the performance. Effect of roles and groups: In case of group work, the effects of the role of individual on the group are very crucial. According to Curseu (2015), when individual team member will carry out their responsibility properly, the whole team will perform better. As per the studies carried out by Simon, Sturmer and Steffens (2000), the individual members of a group can positively or negatively influence the performance of a group. Stewart and Powell (2004) showed that while working in a group various problems may arise and successful addressing of these problems is necessary in order to successfully carry out a group performance. As per the views of Grebosz and Bakalarczyk (2011), in a group work, each and every member had to perform their role properly in order to make the group work effective. Report on group presentation: Last year I was a part of a group presentation, which consisted of 10 members. The presentation was based on a topic of psychology, namely, influence of attitude on human behavior. It was a 15 minute presentation, where each of the 10 members of the group discussed a part of the topic. The audience consisted of primarily the psychology students of our college and the respected professors. Last year I was a part of a group presentation, which consisted of 10 members. The presentation was based on a topic of psychology, namely, influence of attitude on human behavior. It was a 15 minute presentation, where each of the 10 members of the group discussed a part of the topic. The audience consisted of primarily the psychology students of our college and the respected professors. As, the audience included the students and professors of psychology, we had to assume that they already had got some idea regarding the topic. So, while developing the presentation we were concerned regarding the p lanning of our presentation in order to make the already known topic interesting and acceptable to the audience. Co- action is a part of group work. The work of one group member influences the others to work hard, in order to make the presentation a success. We jointly discussed the topic of the presentation and the responsibilities that each of the group members would share. Throughout the preparation phase we maintained active communication between the team members and helped each other in order to complete the presentation within time. From the beginning of the preparation for the presentation, we divided our responsibility and we carried out the responsibilities actively, which helped us to perform in a coordinated fashion while presenting the topic. References: Aiello, J. and Douthitt, E. (2001). Social facilitation from Triplett to electronic performance monitoring. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 5(3), pp.163-180. Baumeister, R. and Cairns, K. (1992). Repression and self-presentation: When audiences interfere with self-deceptive strategies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(5), pp.851-862. Bozzolan, S., Cho, C. and Michelon, G. (2013). Impression Management and Organizational Audiences: The Fiat Group Case. Journal of Business Ethics, 126(1), pp.143-165. Curseu, P. (2015). Team Performance Management 2014. Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 21(1/2). Grebosz, M. and Bakalarczyk, S. (2011). Team Management Organization in Co-branding Projects. Hum. Factors Man., 23(4), pp.306-310. Groff, B., Baron, R. and Moore, D. (1983). Distraction, attentional conflict, and drivelike behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19(4), pp.359-380. Jain, V. and Roy, S. (2015). Effect of Audience Personality Traits on Reality Show Watching Motives. Media Watch, 6(2), p.157. Mero, N., Guidice, R. and Brownlee, A. (2007). Accountability in a Performance Appraisal Context: The Effect of Audience and Form of Accounting on Rater Response and Behavior. Journal of Management, 33(2), pp.223-252. NELSON, R. (2006). Social Facilitation. BioScience, 56(7), p.620. Sellaro, R., Treccani, B., Rubichi, S. and Cubelli, R. (2013). When co-action eliminates the Simon effect: disentangling the impact of co-actor's presence and task sharing on joint-task performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. Simon, B., Sturmer, S. and Steffens, K. (2000). Helping Individuals or Group Members? The Role of Individual and Collective Identification in AIDS Volunteerism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(4), pp.497-506. Soma, M. and Hasegawa, T. (2004). The Effect of Social Facilitation and Social Dominance on Foraging Success of Budgerigars in an Unfamiliar Environment. Behaviour, 141(9), pp.1121-1134. Stewart, B. and Powell, S. (2004). Team building and team working. Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 10(1/2), pp.35-38. Travis, L. (1925). The effect of a small audience upon eye-hand coordination. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 20(2), pp.142-146.