refrigerator |
hammer |
top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): century time modern style refer type hold allow design life |
top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): muscle form human bone structure time animal allow produce speed |
top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): church wear horse bishop woman term clothe roman pope body |
top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): cell church vehicle body wheel bishop gear brain car tissue |
times more probable under refrigerator 30 20 10 6 4 2.5 1.25 1 1.25 2.5 4 6 10 20 30 times more probable under hammer (words not in the model) | |
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 | A hammer'" is a tool meant to deliver an impact to an object. The most common uses are for driving nails, fitting parts, and breaking up objects. Hammers are often designed for a specific purpose, and vary widely in their shape and structure. Usual features are a handle and a head, with most of the weight in the head. The basic design is hand-operated, but there are also many mechanically operated models for heavier uses. The hammer is a basic tool of many professions, and can also be used as a weapon. By analogy, the name "'hammer'" has also been used for devices that are designed to deliver blows, e.g. in the caplock mechanism of firearms. History. The use of simple tools dates to about 2,400,000 BCE when various shaped stones were used to strike wood, bone, or other stones to break them apart and shape them. Stones attached to sticks with strips of leather or animal sinew were being used as hammers by about 30,000 BCE during the middle of the Paleolithic Stone Age. Its archeological record means it is perhaps the oldest human tool known. Designs and variations. The essential part of a hammer is the head, a compact solid mass that is able to deliver the blow to the intended target without itself deforming. The opposite side of a ball as in the ball-peen hammer and the cow hammer. Some upholstery hammers have a magnetized appendage, to pick up tacks. In the hatchet the hammer head is secondary to the cutting edge of the tool. In recent years the handles have been made of durable plastic or rubber. The hammer varies at the top, some are larger than others giving a larger surface area to hit different sized nails and such, Mechanically-powered hammers often look quite different from the hand tools, but nevertheless most of them work on the same principle. They include: In professional framing carpentry, the hammer has almost been completely replaced by the nail gun. In professional upholstery, its chief competitor is the staple gun. Hammer as a force amplifier. A hammer is basically a force amplifier that works by converting mechanical work into kinetic energy and back. In the swing that precedes each blow, a certain amount of kinetic energy gets stored in the hammer's head, equal to the length "D" of the swing times the force "f" produced by the muscles of the arm and by gravity. When the hammer strikes, the head gets stopped by an opposite force coming from the target; which is equal and opposite to the force applied by the head to the target. If the target is a hard and heavy object, or if it is resting on some sort of anvil, the head can travel only a very short distance "d" before stopping. Since the stopping force "F" times that distance must be equal to the head's kinetic energy, it follows that "F" will be much greater than the original driving force "f" — roughly, by a factor "D" "d". In this way, great strength is not needed to produce a force strong enough to bend steel, or crack the hardest stone. Effect of the head's mass. The amount of energy delivered to the target by the hammer-blow is equivalent to one half the mass of the head times the square of the head's speed at the time of impact ([Formula 1]). While the energy delivered to the target increases linearly with mass, it increases geometrically with the speed (see the effect of the handle, below). High tech titanium heads are lighter and allow for longer handles, thus increasing velocity and delivering more energy with less arm fatigue than that of a steel head hammer of the same weight. As hammers must be used in many circumstances, where the position of the person using them cannot be taken for granted, trade-offs are made for the sake of practicality. In areas where one has plenty of room, a long handle with a heavy head (like a sledge hammer) can deliver the maximum amount of energy to the target. But clearly, it's unreasonable to use a sledge hammer to drive upholstery tacks. Thus, the overall design has been modified repeatedly to achieve the optimum utility in a wide variety of situations. Effect of the handle. The handle of the hammer helps in several ways. It keeps the user's hands away from the point of impact. It provides a broad area that is better-suited for gripping by the hand. Most importantly, it allows the user to maximize the speed of the head on each blow. The primary constraint on additional handle length is the lack of space in which to swing the hammer. This is why sledge hammers, largely used in open spaces, can have handles that are much longer than a standard carpenter's hammer. The second most important constraint is more subtle. Even without considering the effects of fatigue, the longer the handle, the harder it is to guide the head of the hammer to its target at full speed. Most designs are a compromise between practicality and energy efficiency. Too long a handle: the hammer is inefficient because it delivers force to the wrong place, off-target. Too short a handle: the hammer is inefficient because it doesn't deliver enough force, requiring more blows to complete a given task. Recently, modifications have also been made with respect to the effect of the hammer on the user. A titanium head has about 3% recoil and can result in greater efficiency and less fatigue when compared to a steel head with about 27% recoil. Handles made of shock-absorbing materials or varying angles attempt to make it easier for the user to continue to wield this age-old device, even as nail guns and other powered drivers encroach on its traditional field of use. War hammers. The concept of putting a handle on a weight to make it more convenient to use may well have led to the very first weapons ever invented. The club is basically a variant of a hammer. In the Middle Ages, the war hammer became popular when edged weapons could no longer easily penetrate some forms of armour. Symbolic hammers. The hammer, being one of the most used tools by "Homo sapiens", has been used very much in symbols and arms. In the Middle Ages it was used often in blacksmith guild logos, as well as in many family symbols. The most recognised symbol with a hammer in it is the Hammer and Sickle, which was the symbol of the former Soviet Union. The hammer in this symbol represents the industrial working class (and the sickle the agricultural working class). The hammer is used in some coat of arms in (former) socialist countries like East Germany. In Norse Mythology, Thor, the god of thunder and lightning, wields a hammer named Mjolnir. Many artifacts of decorative hammers have been found leading many modern practitioners of this religion to often wear reproductions as a sign of their faith. |