An Analysis Of Chimes Of Slience Essays - Yoruba People, Literature

An Analysis Of Chimes Of Slience Essays - Yoruba People, Literature An Analysis Of Chimes Of Slience An Analysis of Chimes of Slience Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, and the author of the prose poem Chimes of Silence. In order to describe his experience in solitary confinement Soyinka uses descriptive language involving his vision to better enlighten the reader to his experience. The most dramatic passages in Chimes of Silence describe his limited vision, which expresses to the reader how difficult and horrible of an experience it must have been. Soyinkas efforts to see any sign of life through peepholes in order to have some way of connecting with the outside world, shows just how lonely he really is. The poem opens with Soyinka struggling to see through a peephole in the door of his cell. His interest in the boring details outside of his cell shows just how lonely he is, and how much he longs to have any kind of contact with reality. A little square hole cut in the door, enough for a goalers fist to passenough for me tosteal a quick look at the rare flash of a hand, a face, a gesture(140). Soyinka is desperate to see anything that he can relate to human life. Anything that assures him that even though he has no contact with humans that life is still going on. Anything that reminds him that theres the possibility that he could one day enter back into the life that he has been exiled from. Soyinka continues describing things he strains to see thorough the peephole including, more often a blur of khaki, the square planted rear of the guard on the other side (140). Not only does Soyinka strain to see any part of the human body itself, but also anything else that reminds him of human beings. Something we take for granted everyday Soyinka finds as a connection to the outside world. Its clear through his description of vision seeing through the peephole that Soyinka is desperate for human interaction and is clearly very lonely. Later in the essay Soyinka makes reference to the limited but present amount of sky that he is able to see in his cell; a sky the size of a napkin trapped by small spikes and broken bottles, but a sky (140). Through his describing the sky Soyinka finds another way of connecting to the outside world. The sky that he looks upon is the same one that people look upon everyday, and to him it makes the correlation to the human life he longs to be living. Soyinka knows that when he was once living and surrounded by human contact that he was covered by the same sky that he sees in his cell. It serves as a reminder to him that although trapped he can still carry a piece of his old life within him. His memories of his old life can help make up for the emptiness inside of him in his time of being alone. Soyinka also describes the birds he can see from his cell, Vultures perch on a roof just visible from another yard. And crows. Egrets overfly my crypt and bats swarm at sunset (140). Through his description of the birds Soyinka once again describes something living in order to make up for the fact that he feels so alone, and in a sense dead. It seems that in Soyinkas description of the birds that he almost longs to be them, to be able to fly and be free. Soyinka envies the birds for they arent trapped alone and they have access to the world unlike him. Soyinka eventually discovers a new peephole in his cell and once again he strains to see anything he can to keep himself from being so lonely. Soyinka talks of counting feet walking by in order to keep some kind of reality And now feetthe procession goes by and I count (141). By counting the feet Soyinka can establish the slightest relationship to any kind of outside life. Its almost as if by counting the feet Soyinka can relate to the prisoners and make up for the emptiness he is feeling, and not seem to be so alone. Although they arent trapped there with him the

What Astronomers Mean By Thermal Radiation

What Astronomers Mean By Thermal Radiation Thermal radiation sounds like one a geeky term youd see on a physics test. Actually, its a process that everyone experiences when an object gives off heat. It is also called heat transfer in engineering and black-body radiation in physics. Everything in the universe radiates heat. Some things radiate much MORE heat than others. If an object or process is above absolute zero, its giving off heat. Given that space itself can be only 2 or 3 degrees Kelvin (which is pretty darned cold!), calling it heat radiation seems odd, but its an actual physical process.   Measuring Heat Thermal radiation can be measured by very sensitive instruments - essentially high-tech thermometers. The specific wavelength of radiation will entirely depend on the exact temperature of the object. In most cases ,the emitted radiation isnt something you can see (what we call optical light). For example, a very hot and energetic object might radiate very strongly in x-ray or ultraviolet, but perhaps not look so bright in visible (optical) light. An extremely energetic object might emit gamma rays, which we definitely cant see, followed by visible or x-ray light.    The most common example of heat transfer in the field of astronomy what stars do, particularly our Sun. They shine and give off prodigious amounts of heat. The surface temperature of our central star (roughly 6,000 degrees Celsius) is responsible for the production of the white visible light that reaches Earth. (The Sun appears yellow due to atmospheric effects.) Other objects also emit light and radiation, including solar system objects (mostly infrared), galaxies, the regions around black holes, and nebulae (interstellar clouds of gas and dust).   Other common examples of thermal radiation in our everyday lives include the coils on a stove top when they are heated, the heated surface of an iron, the motor of a car, and even the infrared emission from the human body. How it Works As matter is heated, kinetic energy is imparted to the charged particles that make up the structure of that matter. The average kinetic energy of the particles is known as the thermal energy of the system. This imparted thermal energy will cause the particles to oscillate and accelerate, which creates electromagnetic radiation (which is sometimes referred to as  light). In some fields, the term heat transfer is used when describing the production of electromagnetic energy (i.e. radiation/light) by the process of heating. But this is simply looking at the concept of thermal radiation from a slightly different perspective and the terms really interchangeable. Thermal Radiation and Black-body Systems Black body objects are those that exhibit the specific properties of perfectly absorbing every wavelength of electromagnetic radiation (meaning that they would not reflect light of any wavelength, hence the term black body) and they also will perfectly emit light when they are heated. The specific peak wavelength of light that is emitted is determined from Wiens Law which states that the wavelength of light emitted is inversely proportional to the temperature of the object. In the specific cases of black body objects, the thermal radiation is the sole source of light from the object. Objects like our Sun, while not perfect blackbody emitters, do exhibit such characteristics. The hot plasma near the surface of the Sun generates the thermal radiation that eventually makes it to Earth as heat and light.   In astronomy, black-body radiation helps astronomers understand an objects internal processes, as well as its interaction with the local environment. One of the most interesting examples is that given off by the cosmic microwave background.   This is a remnant glow from the energies expended during the Big Bang, which occurred some 13.7 billion years ago. It marks the point when the young universe had cooled enough for protons and electrons in the early primordial soup to combine to form neutral atoms of hydrogen. That radiation from that early material is visible to us as a glow in the microwave region of the spectrum. Edited and expanded by Carolyn Collins Petersen