Reena’s Phrases Part Two

Yesterday I made a post covering the first four phrases in Reena’s Exploration Challenge and now I will write about the remaining phrases.
1. pockets of stillness
2. question your maps
3. cynical assertions
4. lost alphabet
5. was that really me?
6. crumbling thoughts
7. undulating patterns
8. free-flowing bonds
9. pregnant pause
10. potential of emptiness
I went to a party at my best friend’s house that was an outdoor barbecue.  Billy and I played bocce ball in his back yard which we both enjoyed and then we sat on his back porch to enjoy some beers.  My wife always got along really well with his wife, which made things nice.  The folding chair that I was sitting in collapsed and I fell over, but I didn’t get hurt.  I was embarrassed and I spilled my beer.  Billy got me another chair and another beer, but that chair also broke under my weight.  I’m a big guy, I wear triple extra-large shirts and I need a sturdy chair to sit in.  The gravity of the Earth makes up a person’s static weight and there is also the force used in sitting down that needs to be considered when determining how much of a load a chair can take and this is the dynamic weight.  All folding chairs have a maximum weight capacity which should equate to the amount of pressure that can be put on that chair before it collapses, but this only refers to the static weight.  The dynamic weight comes into consideration when someone plops their butt down into the chair, re-adjusts in it to feel more comfortable, or leans back on the chair.  Billy got me a third chair and I felt bad when I broke that one also.  I had to sit on his steps for the rest of the party, because I did not want to break any more of his cheap chairs.  I did not think it was my fault, but I did wonder was that really me?

Chairs can collapse and cookies can crumble, as sometimes things just don’t work out.  The world has a way of throwing many things at us, and often it can feel like everything is crumbling around you.  When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling sad, I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad.  I am usually in the mood to write and I try not to tie myself down into any specific structure, but every now and then I have crumbling thoughts.

Our solar system isn’t fixed in one position, it travels through space and our Sun eventually aligns with the center of the Milky Way galaxy.  All the stars in our galaxy rotate around a galactic center, but this happens at varying time periods because they are at different distances from the center and they are moving at different speeds.  It takes our solar system which is moving at a speed of about 155 miles per second or 486,000 miles per hour approximately 226 million years to orbit the Milky Way galaxy.  The Galactic Center of the Milky Way is it’s rotational center, this is the place where the super massive black hole is located which is estimated to be 2.6 to 3 million times more massive than the size of our Sun.  Earth appears to be located about 25,000 to 28,000 light years away from the from the Galactic Center.  This orbit of the Galactic Center has no negative effects on the Earth.  Our galaxy consists of undulating groupings of mass and intricate gravitational fields, so our orbit through the Milky Way is not a perfect circle or an ellipse.  The Milky Way galaxy is like a milkshake undulating up and down, and nobody knows why.  It is thought that the undulating patterns may be a lingering effect from a galaxy that smashed into ours in the past.

The way that atoms bond together affects the electrical properties of the materials they form.  Copper has the highest conductivity of any non-precious metal, it is highly ductal, it resists corrosion, and this makes copper the first choice as a conductor for electrical applications.  Current flow is the movement of electric charges along a conductor.  Copper has an atomic number of 29, meaning that the copper atom has 29 protons and 29 electrons.  The protons are concentrated in the nucleus while the electrons are distributed in the K, L, M, and N shells as 2 in K, 8 in L, 18 in M, leaving 1 electron in the outermost shell N of a copper atom, but this shell has room for 8 electrons.  The outermost electrons of atoms in the copper wire are not sure which atom they belong to.  They can move easily from one atom to the other in a random fashion.  Such electrons which can move easily from one atom to the other in a random fashion are called free electrons.  It is the movement of free electrons in a material like copper that constitutes flow of current.  As more free-flowing bonds develop between other atoms, more electrons will move along a conductor.

Setting the stage is a phrase used to mean that conditions have been made right for something to happen, or that something is likely to happen.  I never saw the play Hamilton, but it contains a song ‘Wait For It’ which is about the rivalry between Burr and Alexander Hamilton, and Theodosia choses Burr, but he doesn’t believe that he has won, so he has a pregnant pause wondering why she chose him.  Aaron Burr married Theodosia and they had a daughter who they named Theodosia.  A pregnant pause occurs when something that requires a sarcastic response happens, but no one quite knows what to say or do and an awkward silence follows.  On July 10, 1804, Aaron sat down at his desk and wrote his daughter Theodosia a goodbye letter saying “I am indebted to you, my dearest Theodosia, for a very great portion of the happiness which I have enjoyed in this life.  You have completely satisfied all that my heart and affections had hoped for or even wished.”  The next day, Aaron who was the Vice President of the United States killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.

The universe is a pretty empty place, as all of the matter contained in the it would fit into about 1 billion cubic light years, meaning that only about 0.0000000000000000000042 percent of the universe contains any matter.  All the stars, planets and galaxies that can be seen today make up just 4 percent of the universe.  The other 96 percent is made of stuff astronomers can’t see, detect or even comprehend.  These mysterious substances are called dark energy and dark matter. Vera Rubin an American astronomer pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates uncovered a discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves.  Rubin’s observations differed from what Newtonian physics predicted, that stars on the outskirts of a galaxy would orbit more slowly than stars at the center and this led scientists to conclude that there must be much more matter in galaxies than what we can see.  We know that dark matter doesn’t interact with regular matter, or even light, and so it is invisible.  Yet it has mass that exerts a gravitational pull, just like normal matter, which is why the velocities of stars and other phenomena in the universe are affected.  It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy.  Dark matter makes up about 27%.  The rest of everything is referred to as normal matter, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, and this adds up to less than 5% of the universe.  Albert Einstein was the first person to realize that empty space is not nothing.  We see gravity every day, but we still don’t really understand this force, as it has a potential of emptiness to it.

Written for Reena’s Exploration Challenge #112 where the prompt is a list of phrases.