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top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): city build house state design town Unite home service provide |
top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): century cut modern design time metal type allow style size |
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top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): station power store street line train signal radio locomotive church |
top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): wear horse church iron blade head steel woman handle term |
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times more probable under house 30 20 10 6 4 2.5 1.25 1 1.25 2.5 4 6 10 20 30 times more probable under refrigerator (words not in the model) | |
| A house'" generally refers to a or building that is a dwelling or place for habitation by humans. The term includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to high-rise apartment buildings. However, the word can also be used as a verb ("to house"), and can have adjectival formations as well. In some contexts, "house" may mean the same as dwelling, residence, home, abode, accommodation, housing, lodging, among other meanings. The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household. Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, though households can be other social groups, such as single persons, or groups of unrelated individuals. Settled agrarian and industrial societies are composed of household units living permanently in housing of various types, according to a variety of forms of land tenure. English-speaking people generally call any building they routinely occupy "home". Many people leave their houses during the day for work and recreation but typically return to them to sleep or for other activities. History. The oldest house in the world is approximately from 10,000 BC and was made of mammoth bones, found at Mezhirich near Kiev in Ukraine. It was probably covered with mammoth hides. The house was discovered in 1965 by a farmer digging a new basement six feet below the ground. Architect Norbert Schoenauer, in his book "6,000 Years of Housing", identifies three major categories of types of housing: the "Pre-Urban" house, the "Oriental Urban" house, and the "Acidental Urban" house. Types of Pre-Urban houses include temporary dwellings such as the Inuit igloo, semi-permanent dwellings such as the pueblo, and permanent dwellings such as the New England homestead. "Oriental Urban" houses include houses of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and traditional urban houses in China, India, and Islamic cities. "Occidental Urban" houses include medieval urban houses, the Renaissance town house, and the houses, tenements and apartments of the 19th and 20th centuries. Houses of that time were generally made of simple and raw materials. Structure. The developed world in general features three basic types of house that have their own ground-level entry and private open space, and usually on a separately titled parcel of land: In addition, there are various forms of attached housing where a number of dwelling units are co-located within the same structure, which share a ground-level entry and may or may not have any private open space, such as apartments (a.k.a. flats) of various scales. Another type of housing is movable, such as houseboats, caravans, and trailer homes. In the United Kingdom, 27% of the population live in terraced houses and 32% in semi-detached houses, as of 2002. In the United States as of 2000, 61.4% of people live in detached houses and 5.6% in semi-detached houses, 26% in row houses or apartments, and 7% in mobile homes. Shape. Archaeologists have a particular interest in house shape: they see the transition over time from round huts to rectangular houses as a significant advance in optimizing the use of space, and associate it with the growth of the idea of a personal area (see personal space). Function. Some houses transcend the basic functionality of providing "a roof over one's head" or of serving as a family "hearth and home". When a house becomes a display-case for wealth and or fashion and or conspicuous consumption, we may speak of a "great house". The residence of a feudal lord or of a ruler may require defensive structures and thus turn into a fort or a castle. The house of a monarch may come to house courtiers and officers as well as the royal family: this sort of house may become a palace. Moreover, in time the lord or monarch may wish to retreat to a more personal or simple space such as a villa, a hunting lodge or a dacha. Compare the popularity of the holiday house or cottage, also known as a crib. In contrast to a relatively upper class or modern trend to ownership of multiple houses, much of human history shows the importance of multi-purpose houses. Thus the house long served as the traditional place of work (the original cottage industry site or "in-house" small-scale manufacturing workshop) or of commerce (featuring, for example, a ground floor "shop-front" shop or counter or office, with living space above). During the Industrial Revolution there was a separation of manufacturing and banking from the house, though to this day some shopkeepers continue (or have returned) to live "over the shop". Layout. Ideally, architects of houses design rooms to meet the needs of the people who will live in the house. Such designing, known as "interior design", has become a popular subject in universities. Feng shui, originally a Chinese method of situating houses according to such factors as sunlight and micro-climates, has recently expanded its scope to address the design of interior spaces with a view to promoting harmonious effects on the people living inside the house. Feng shui can also mean the 'aura' in or around a dwelling. Compare the real-estate sales concept of "indoor-outdoor flow". The square footage of a house in the United States reports the area of "living space", excluding the garage and other non-living spaces. The "square meters" figure of a house in Europe reports the area of the walls enclosing the home, and thus includes any attached garage and non-living spaces. Parts. Many houses have several rooms with specialized functions. These may include a living eating area, a sleeping area, and (if suitable facilities and services exist) washing and lavatory areas. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock (like cattle) often share part of the house with human beings. Most conventional modern houses will at least contain a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen (or kitchen area), and a living room. A typical "foursquare house" (as pictured) occurred commonly in the early history of the United States of America, with a staircase in the center of the house, surrounded by four rooms, and connected to other sections of the house (including in more recent eras a garage). The names of parts of a house often echo the names of parts of other buildings, but could typically include: Construction. In the United States, modern house-construction techniques include light-frame construction (in areas with access to supplies of wood) and adobe or sometimes rammed-earth construction (in arid regions with scarce wood-resources). Some areas use brick almost exclusively, and quarried stone has long provided walling. To some extent, aluminum and steel have displaced some traditional building materials. Increasingly popular alternative construction materials include insulating concrete forms (foam forms filled with concrete), structural insulated panels (foam panels faced with oriented strand board or fiber cement), and light-gauge steel framing and heavy-gauge steel framing. More generally, people often build houses out of the nearest available material, and often tradition and or culture govern construction-materials, so whole towns, areas, counties or even states countries may be built out of one main type of material. For example, a large fraction of American houses use wood, while most British and many European houses utilize stone or brick. In the 1900s, some house designers started using prefabrication. Sears, Roebuck & Co. first marketed their Houses by Mail to the general public in 1908. Prefab techniques became popular after World War II. First small inside rooms framing, then later, whole walls were prefabricated and carried to the construction site. The original impetus was to use the labor force inside a shelter during inclement weather. More recently builders have begun to collaborate with structural engineers who use computers and finite element analysis to design prefabricated steel-framed homes with known resistance to high wind-loads and seismic forces. These newer products provide labor savings, more consistent quality, and possibly accelerated construction processes. Lesser-used construction methods have gained (or regained) popularity in recent years. Though not in wide use, these methods frequently appeal to homeowners who may become actively involved in the construction process. They include: Energy-efficiency. In the developed world, energy-conservation has grown in importance in house-design. Housing produces a major proportion of carbon emissions (30% of the total in the UK, for example). Development of a number of types and techniques continues. They include the zero-energy house, the passive solar house, superinsulated and houses built to the "Passivhaus" standard. Earthquake protection. One tool of earthquake engineering is base isolation which is increasingly used for earthquake protection. Base isolation is a collection of structural elements of a building that should substantially decouple it from the shaking ground thus protecting the building's integrity and enhancing its seismic performance. This technology, which is a kind of seismic vibration control, can be applied both to a newly designed building and to seismic upgrading of existing structures. Normally, excavations are made around the building and the building is separated from the foundations. Steel or reinforced concrete beams replace the connections to the foundations, while under these, the isolating pads, or "base isolators", replace the material removed. While the "base isolation" tends to restrict transmission of the ground motion to the building, it also keeps the building positioned properly over the foundation. Careful attention to detail is required where the building interfaces with the ground, especially at entrances, stairways and ramps, to ensure sufficient relative motion of those structural elements. Legal issues. Buildings with historical importance have restrictions. United Kingdom. New houses in the UK are not covered by the Sale of Goods Act. When purchasing a new house the buyer has less legal protection than when buying a new car. New houses in the UK may be covered by a NHBC guarantee but some people feel that it would be more useful to put new houses on the same legal footing as other products. United States and Canada. In the US and Canada, many new houses are built in housing tracts, which provide homeowners a sense of "belonging" and the feeling they have "made the best use" of their money. However, these houses are often built as cheaply and quickly as possible by large builders seeking to maximize profits. Many environmental health issues are ignored or minimized in the construction of these structures. In one case in Benicia, California, a housing tract was built over an old landfill. Home buyers were never told, and only found out when some began having reactions to high levels of lead and chromium. Identifying houses. With the growth of dense settlement, humans designed ways of identifying houses and or parcels of land. Individual houses sometimes acquire proper names; and those names may acquire in their turn considerable emotional connotations: see for example the house of "Howards End" or the castle of "Brideshead Revisited". A more systematic and general approach to identifying houses may use various methods of house numbering. Animal houses. Humans often build "houses" for domestic or wild animals, often resembling smaller versions of human domiciles. Familiar animal houses built by humans include bird-houses, hen-houses chicken-coops and doghouses (kennels); while housed agricultural animals more often live in barns and stables. However, human interest in building houses for animals does not stop at the domestic pet. People build bat-houses, nesting-sites for wild ducks and other birds, bee houses, giraffe houses, kangaroo houses, worm houses, hermit crab houses, as well as shelters for many other animals. Shelter. Forms of (relatively) simple shelter may include: Houses and symbolism. Houses may express the circumstances or opinions of their builders or their inhabitants. Thus a vast and elaborate house may serve as a sign of conspicuous wealth, whereas a low-profile house built of recycled materials may indicate support of energy conservation. Houses of particular historical significance (former residences of the famous, for example, or even just very old houses) may gain a protected status in town planning as examples of built heritage and or of streetscape values. Plaques may mark such structures. House-ownership provides a common measure of prosperity in economics. Contrast the importance of house-destruction, tent dwelling and house rebuilding in the wake of many natural disasters. Peter Olshavsky's provides a 'pataphysical variation on the house. Heraldry. The house occurs as a rare charge in heraldry. | A refrigerator'" (often called a "'fridge'" for short) is a cooling appliance comprising a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump: a mechanism to transfer heat from it to the external environment, cooling the contents to a temperature below ambient. Refrigerators are extensively used to store foods which deteriorate at ambient temperatures; spoilage from bacterial growth and other processes is much slower at low temperatures. A device described as a "refrigerator" maintains a temperature a few degrees above the freezing point of water; a similar device which maintains a temperature below the freezing point of water is called a "'freezer'". The refrigerator is a relatively modern invention among kitchen appliances. It replaced the icebox, which had been a common household appliance for almost a century and a half prior. For this reason, a refrigerator is sometimes referred to as an "icebox". Freezers keep their contents frozen. They are used both in households and for commercial use. Most freezers operate around minus 18 °C (0 °F). Domestic freezers can be included as a compartment in a refrigerator, sharing the same mechanism or with a separate mechanism, or can be standalone units. Domestic freezers are generally upright units, resembling refrigerators, or chests, resembling upright units laid on their backs. Many modern freezers come with an icemaker. Commercial fridge and freezer units, which go by many other names, were in use for almost 40 years prior to the common home models. They used toxic ammonia gas systems, making them unsafe for home use. Practical household refrigerators were introduced in 1915 and gained wider acceptance in the United States in the 1930s as prices fell and non-toxic, non-flammable synthetic refrigerants such as Freon or R-12 were introduced. It is notable that while 60% of households in the US owned a refrigerator by the 1930s, it was not until 40 years later, in the 1970s, that the refrigerator achieved a similar level of penetration in the United Kingdom. History. Before the invention of the refrigerator, icehouses were used to provide cool storage for most of the year. Placed near freshwater lakes or packed with snow and ice during the winter, they were once very common. Using the environment to cool foodstuffs is still common today. On mountainsides, runoff from melting snow higher up is a convenient way to cool drinks, and during the winter months simply placing milk outside is sufficient to greatly extend its useful life. In the 11th century, the Persian physicist and chemist, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), invented the refrigerated coil, which condenses aromatic vapours. This was a breakthrough in distillation technology and he made use of it in his steam distillation process, which requires refrigerated tubing, to produce essential oils. The first known artificial refrigeration was demonstrated by William Cullen at the University of Glasgow in 1748. Between 1805, when Oliver Evans designed the first refrigeration machine that used vapor instead of liquid, and 1902 when Willis Haviland Carrier demonstrated the first air conditioner, scores of inventors contributed many small advances in cooling machinery. In 1850 or 1851, Dr. John Gorrie demonstrated an ice maker. In 1857, Australian James Harrison introduced vapor-compression refrigeration to the brewing and meat packing industries. Ferdinand Carré of France developed a somewhat more complex system in 1859. Unlike earlier compression-compression machines, which used air as a coolant, Carré's equipment contained rapidly expanding ammonia. The absorption refrigerator was invented by Baltzar von Platen and Carl Munters in 1922, while they were still students at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. It became a worldwide success and was commercialized by Electrolux. Other pioneers included Charles Tellier, David Boyle, and Raoul Pictet. At the start of the 20th Century, about half of households in the United States relied on melting ice (in an icebox) to keep food cold, while the remaining half had no cooled storage at all. The ice used for household storage was expensive because ice had to be cut from winter ponds (or mechanically produced), stored centrally until needed, and delivered regularly. In a few exceptional cases, mechanical refrigeration systems had been adapted by the start of the 20th century for use in the homes of the very wealthy, and might be used for cooling both living and food storage areas. One early system was installed at the mansion of Walter Pierce, an oil company executive. Marcel Audiffren of France championed the idea of a refrigerating machine for cooling and preserving foods at home. His U.S. patents, issued in 1895 and 1908, were purchased by the American Audiffren Refrigerating Machine Company. Machines based on Audiffren's sulfur dioxide process were manufactured by General Electric in Fort Wayne, Indiana and marketed by the Johns-Manville company. The first unit was sold in 1911. Audiffren machines were expensive, selling for about $1,000 — about twice as much as the cost of an automobile at that time. General Electric sought to develop refrigerators of its own, and in 1915 the first "Guardian" unit was assembled in a back yard wash house as a predecessor to the Frigidaire. In 1916 Kelvinator and Servel introduced two units among a field of competing models. This number increased to 200 by 1920. In 1918, Kelvinator had a model with automatic controls. These home units usually required the installation of the mechanical parts, motor and compressor, in the basement or an adjacent room while the cold box was located in the kitchen. There was a 1922 model that consisted of a wooden cold box, water-cooled compressor, an ice cube tray and a 9 cubic foot compartment for $714. (A 1922 Model-T Ford cost about $450.) In 1923 Frigidaire introduced the first self-contained unit. About this same time porcelain covered metal cabinets began to appear. Ice cube trays were introduced more and more during the 1920s; up to this time freezing was not a function of the modern refrigerator. The first refrigerator to see widespread use was the General Electric "Monitor-Top" refrigerator introduced in 1927. The compressor assembly, which emitted a substantial amount of heat, was placed above the cabinet, and surrounded with a decorative ring. Over 1,000,000 units were produced. As the refrigerating medium, these refrigerators used either sulfur dioxide, which is corrosive to the eyes and may cause loss of vision, painful skin burns and lesions, or methyl formate, which is highly flammable, harmful to the eyes, and toxic if inhaled or ingested. Many of these units are still functional today. These cooling systems cannot be recharged with the hazardous original refrigerants if they leak or break down. The introduction of freon expanded the refrigerator market during the 1930s, and freezer units became more common during the 1940s. Home units did not go into mass production until after WWII. The 1950s and 1960s saw technical advances like automatic defrosting and automatic ice making. Developments of the 1970s and 80s brought about more efficient refrigerators, and environmental issues banned the use of CFC (freon) refrigerants used in sealed systems. Early refrigerator models (1916 and on) featured a cold compartment for ice cube trays. Successful processing of fresh vegetables through freezing began in the late 1920s by the Postum Company (the forerunner of General Foods) which had acquired the technology when it bought the rights to Clarence Birdseye's successful fresh freezing methods. The first successful example of the benefits of frozen foods occurred when General Foods heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post (then wife of Joseph E. Davies, United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union) deployed commercial-grade freezers to Spaso House, the US Embassy in Moscow in advance of the Davies’ arrival. Post, fearful of the food processing safety observed in the USSR, then fully stocked the freezers with products from General Foods' Birdseye unit. The frozen food stores allowed the Davies to lavishly entertain and serve fresh frozen foods that would otherwise be out of season. Upon returning from Moscow, Post (who resumed her maiden name after divorcing Davies) directed General Foods to market frozen product to upscale restaurants. Introduction of home freezer units occurred in the United States in 1940, and frozen foods began to make the transition from luxury to necessity. Design. Refrigerators work by the use of heat pumps operating in a refrigeration cycle. An industrial refrigerator is simply a refrigerator used in an industrial setting, usually in a restaurant or supermarket. It may consist of either a cooling compartment only (a larger refrigerator) or a freezing compartment only (a freezer) or both. The industry sometimes refers to such units as a “cold box” or a “walk-in.” The dual compartment was introduced commercially by General Electric in 1939. The vapor compression cycle is used in most household refrigerators. In this cycle, a circulating refrigerant such as R134a enters the compressor as a low-pressure vapor at its boiling point. The vapor is compressed and exits the compressor as a superheated high-pressure vapor. The superheated vapor travels through part of the condenser which removes the superheat by cooling the vapor. The vapor travels through the remainder of the condenser and is condensed into a liquid at its boiling point. Before the refrigerant leaves the condenser it will have been subcooled (i.e. below its boiling point). The subcooled liquid refrigerant passes through the metering (or throttling) device where its pressure abruptly decreases. The decrease in pressure results in the flash evaporation and auto-refrigeration of a portion of the liquid (typically, less than half of the liquid flashes). The cold and partially vaporized refrigerant travels through the coil or tubes in the evaporator. There, a fan circulates room air across the coil or tubes, and the refrigerant is totally vaporized, extracting heat from the air which is then returned to the food compartment. The refrigerant vapor, now slightly superheated, returns to the compressor inlet to continue the thermodynamic cycle. An absorption refrigerator works differently from a compressor refrigerator, using a source of heat, such as combustion of liquefied petroleum gas, or solar thermal energy. These heat sources are much quieter than the compressor motor in a typical refrigerator. The Peltier effect uses electricity directly to pump heat; refrigerators using this effect are sometimes used for camping, or where noise is not acceptable. They are totally silent, but less energy-efficient than other methods. Other uses of an absorption refrigerator (or "chiller") would include large systems used in office buildings or complexes such as hospitals and universities. These large systems are used to chill a brine solution that is circulated through the building. Other alternatives to the vapor-compression cycle but not in current use include thermionic, vortex tube, air cycle, magnetic cooling, Stirling cycle, Malone refrigeration, acoustic cooling, pulse tube and water cycle systems. Features. Early freezer units accumulated ice crystals around the freezing units. This was a result of humidity introduced into the units when the doors to the freezer were opened. This frost buildup required periodic thawing ("defrosting") of the units to maintain their efficiency. Advances in automatic defrosting eliminating the thawing task were introduced in the 1950s. Also, early units featured freezer compartments located within the larger refrigerator, and accessed by opening the refrigerator door, and then the smaller internal freezer door; units featuring entirely separate freezer compartment were introduced in the early 1960s, becoming the industry standard by the middle of that decade. Later advances included automatic ice units and self compartmentalized freezing units. An increasingly important environmental concern is the disposal of old refrigerators- initially because of the freon coolant damaging the ozone layer, but as the older generation of refrigerators disappears it is the destruction of CFC-bearing insulation which causes concern. Modern refrigerators usually use a refrigerant called HFC-134a (1,2,2,2-tetrafluoroethane), which has no ozone layer depleting properties, in place of freon. Disposal of discarded refrigerators is regulated, often mandating the removal of doors: children playing hide-and-seek have been asphyxiated while hiding inside a discarded refrigerator. This was particularly true for the older models that had latching doors. More modern units use a magnetic door gasket to hold the door sealed but can be pushed open from the inside. This gasket was invented by a man named Herman C. Ells Sr. Who didn't want children to lose their lives. He never gained recognition for his work, being a humble man only wanting to save lives. However, children can be unwittingly harmed by hiding inside any discarded refrigerator. Types of domestic refrigerators. Domestic refrigerators and freezers for food storage are made in a range of sizes. Among the smallest is a 4 L Peltier fridge advertised as being able to hold 6 cans of beer. A large domestic fridge stands as tall as a person and may be about 1 m wide with a capacity of 600 L. Some models for small households fit under kitchen work surfaces, usually about 86 cm high. Fridges may be combined with freezers, either stacked with fridge or freezer above, below, or side by side. A fridge without a true freezer may have a small compartment to make ice. Freezers may have drawers to store food in, or they may have no divisions (chest freezers). Fridges and freezers may be free-standing, or built into a kitchen. Refrigeration units for commercial and industrial applications can be made any size, shape or style to fit customer needs. Energy efficiency. An auto-defrost unit uses a blower fan to keep moisture out of the unit. It also has a heating coil beneath the evaporator that periodically heats the freezer compartment and melts any ice buildup. Some units also have heaters in the side of the door to keep the unit from "weeping." Manual defrost units are available in used-appliance shops or by special order. Refrigerators used to consume more energy than any other home appliance, but in the last twenty years great strides have been made to make refrigerators more energy efficient. In the early 1990s a competition was held among the major manufacturers to encourage energy efficiency. Current models that are Energy Star qualified use 50 percent less energy than models made before 1993. The most energy-efficient unit made in the US is designed to run on 12 or 110 volts, and consumes about half a kilowatt-hour per day. But even ordinary units are quite efficient; some smaller units use little more than one kilowatt-hour per day. Larger units, especially those with large freezers and icemakers, may use as much as 4 kWh per day. Among the different styles of refrigerators, top-freezer models are more efficient than bottom-freezer models of the same capacity, which are in turn more efficient than side-freezer models. Models with through-the-door ice units are less efficient than those without. Dr. Tom Chalko in Australia has developed an external thermostat to convert any chest freezer into a chest fridge using only about 0.1kWh per day--the amount of energy used by a 100 watt light bulb in one hour. Scientists at Oxford University have reconstructed a refrigerator invented in 1930 by Albert Einstein in their efforts to replace current technologies with energy efficient green technology. The Einstein refrigerator operates without electricity and uses no moving parts or greenhouse gases. Impact on lifestyle. The invention of the refrigerator has allowed the modern family to purchase, store, freeze, prepare and preserve food products in a fresh state for much longer periods of time than was previously possible. For the majority of families without a sizeable garden in which to grow vegetables and raise animals, the advent of the refrigerator along with the modern supermarket led to a vastly more varied diet and improved health resulting from improved nutrition. Dairy products, meats, fish, poultry and vegetables can be kept refrigerated in the same space within the kitchen (although raw meat should be kept separate from other foodstuffs for reasons of hygiene). The refrigerator allows families to consume more salads, fresh fruits and vegetables during meals without having to own a garden or an orchard. Exotic foodstuffs from far-off countries that have been imported by means of refrigeration can be enjoyed in the home because of the availability of domestic refrigeration. The luxury of freezing allows households to purchase more foods in bulk that can be eaten at leisure while the bulk purchase provides cost savings (see economies of scale). Ice cream, a popular commodity of the 20th century, was previously only available by traveling long distances to where the product was made fresh and had to be eaten on the spot. Now it is a common food item. Ice on-demand not only adds to the enjoyment of cold drinks, but is useful in first-aid applications, not to mention cold packs that can be kept frozen for picnics or in case of emergency. Temperature zones and ratings. Some refrigerators are now divided into four zones to store different types of food: The capacity of a refrigerator is measured in either litres or cubic feet (US). Typically the volume of a combined fridge-freezer is split to 100 litres (3.53 cubic feet) for the freezer and 140 litres (4.94 cubic feet) for the refrigerator, although these values are highly variable. Temperature settings for refrigerator and freezer compartments are often given arbitrary numbers (for example, 1 through 9, warmest to coldest) by manufacturers, but generally 2 to 8 °C (36 to 46 °F) is ideal for the refrigerator compartment and -18 °C (0 °F) for the freezer. Some refrigerators require a certain external temperature (60 °F) to run properly. This can be an issue when placing a refrigerator in an unfinished area such as a garage. European freezers, and refrigerators with a freezer compartment, have a four star rating system to grade freezers. Although both the three and four star ratings specify the same minimum temperature of -18°C, only a four star freezer is intended to be used for freezing fresh food. Three (or fewer) stars are used for frozen food compartments which are only suitable for storing frozen food; introducing fresh food into such a compartment is likely to result in unacceptable temperature rises. |