IdeaWazaWiki - User contributions [en]

Archive:More about language

2008-08-13T18:07:05Z

219.95.16.89: /* Departments and divisions */

<center>'''
[[Portal:Humanities|F<small>ACULTY FOR</small> H<small>UMANITIES</small>]]'''
[[School:Art and Design|Art and Design]] ·
[[School:Classics|Classics]] ·
[[School:Comparative Mythology|Mythology]] ·
[[School:Law|Law]] ·
[[School:Language and Literature|Language and Literature]] ·
[[School:Music|Music]] ·
[[School:Philosophy|Philosophy]] ·
[[School:Theology|Theology]]

'''W<small>ELCOME TO THE</small> S<small>CHOOL OF</small><br>L<small>ANGUAGE AND</small> L<small>ITERATURE</small>
part of the Faculty for [[Portal:Humanities|Humanities]].
</center>

Hello and welcome to the Wikiversity School of Language and Literature. Here we share our knowledge of methods and ways of writing poetry and prose, and learn non US-English languages and explore their cultures, too. We also discuss many works of literature and literary epochs they belong to, as well as their historical development and the main characteristics by which they can be recognized.

Science that studies the structure of a language and its development is called ''[[w:linguistics|linguistics]]''. Wikiversity's [[School:Linguistics|School of Linguistics]] is part of the Faculty of [[Portal:Social Sciences|Social Sciences]].

==School news and current events==
[[Image:Nuvola apps date.png|right|44px|News]]
* Looking for contributors.
*'''12 April 2007:''' - A new school has been founded: '''[[Topic:Klingon|Klingon Language Department]]'''.

==School history==

The School of Literature and English Studies was founded within the Wikiversity's Department of Humanities on 15 July 2004, in the time when Wikiversity was still part of the [[:b:|Wikibooks]] project. Eventually, it became one of the most developed of Wikiversity's schools.

On 30 March 2005, the School of Foreign Language Learning was founded within the Department of Practical Arts and Sciences, though it failed to organize or function adequately.

Soon after the Wikiversity became a separate Wikimedia project, these two schools were merged together, creating the School of Language and Literature, as part of the Faculty of Humanities.

==Departments and divisions==
* [[School:Linguistics|School of Linguistics]]
* [[Topic:English Language|English language]]
* [[Topic:Literary Studies|Literary Studies Department]]
* [[Topic:English Language|English Studies Department]]
* [[Topic:Literary Studies|Literary Studies Department]]
* [[Topic:Foreign Language Learning|Foreign language learning]]
* [[Portal:Writing Center|Writing]]
* [[Topic:History of literature|History]]
* [[Portal:Slavistics|Slavic]]
* [[Brythonic Celtic Languages Division]]
** [[Topic:Breton|The Breton Language]]
** [[Topic:Cornish|The Cornish Language]]
* [[Topic:Klingon|Klingon]]
* [[Topic:Tolkien Languages|Tolkien]]
* [[Topic:Southeast Asian Languages|Southeast Asian Languages]]
* [[South American Languages Division]]
** [[Topic:Aymaran|The Aymara Language]]
** [[Topic:Quechua|The Quechua Language]]
* [[20th Century British Novel|British novel]]
* [[20th Century British Poetry|British poetry]]
* [[20th Century American Poetry|American poetry]]
* [[School:Language and Literature/Catalogue|List of all projects and courses offered]]
* [[Topic:Chinese]]
* [[Topic:Mandarin]]
* [[Topic:Korean]]
* [[Topic:Japanese]]
* [[Topic:German|German]]
* [[Topic:French|French]]
* [[Topic:Hebrew|Hebrew]]
* [[Topic:Arabic|Arabic]]
* [[Topic:Portuguese]]
* [[Topic:Italian|Italian]]
* [[Topic:Italian|Indonesian]]
* [[Topic:Spanish]]
* [[Topic:Turkish]]
* [[Department: Germanic Studies|Department of Germanic Studies]](under major construction)

==Learning resources==
==Wikiversity language courses==
* [[Introduction to Russian]]
* [[Introduction to Sanskrit Language]] (stub)
* [[Introduction to Swedish]]
** [[Common phrases in Swedish]]
* [[Mandarin]]
* [[Latin stream]]
* [[Introduction to Latin]]
* [[Introduction to Arabic]]
* [[Introduction to Breton]]
* [[Introduction to Finnish]]
** [[Common phrases in Finnish]]
* [[Introduction to Filipino]]
* [[Hindi]]
* [[Introduction to Italian]]
* [[Introduction to the Dutch Language]]
* [[Introductory Ancient Greek Language]]
* [[Japanese_I/Vocabulary/Question_words|Japanese question words]]
* [[Portuguese Alphabet]]
* [[Rules of Esperanto grammar]]
* [[Russian language]]
* [[Spanish]]
* [[ESL for Primary School]]
* [[Introductory Esperanto]]
* [[Learning the Basics of French]]
* [[Introductory Korean]]
* [[Korean writing system]]
* [[Aztec language]]
* [[Maya language]]
* [[Kernewek Onan]]

===Wikibooks===
*[[b:Wikibooks:Language and literature bookshelf|Books about language and literature]]
*[[b:Wikibooks:Languages bookshelf|Textbooks for learning languages]]
*[[b:Wikibooks:Humanities bookshelf|Humanities bookshelf]]
*[[b:Wikibooks:Social sciences bookshelf|Social sciences bookshelf]]

==Did you know...==
*...that '''[[Old English]]''' is grammatically closer to modern German than to modern English?
*...that '''[[Topic:Slavistics|Slavonic languages]]''' are mutually more similar than the German dialects?
*...that '''[[John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]]''', author of ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''The Hobbit'', has highly influenced later fictional literature worldwide? And did you know that he was also a great expert in languages, and that he has created about twenty artificial languages himself?
*...that '''[[Esperanto]]''' is the most famous among many artificial languages? It is an auxiliary language created by Polish doctor Zamenhof, whose pseudonym was ''doctor Esperanto''.
*...that '''[[Tamil]]''' is the oldest surviving language in the world, still spoken in the state of Tamil Nadu, India.

==Selected biography==
[[Image:VukKaradzic.jpg|right|100px|Vuk Stefanović Karadžić]] '''Vuk Stefanović Karadžić''' (1787-1864) was one the most prominent Serbian linguists. He reformed the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet by applying the principles ''one letter per one sound'' and ''write as you speak'', and realized the idea of introducing the spoken language into the Serbian literature. He was collecting and publishing Serbian folk stories and poems. His major books were ''Serbian Dictionary'' and ''Serbian Grammar'', both published together in 1818, in which he for first time used the reformed alphabet. Although there were some opponents of Vuk's language reform, his principles were finally accepted and realized in Serbian literature and linguistics. Vuk's language was a base upon which the modern Serbian standard language was developed.

:'''[[:w:Vuk Stefanović Karadžić|read more...]]'''

==Notable quotes==
"Language is guardian of a nation. As long as the language exists, as long as we keep it, love it, and respect it, as long as we write in it and speak it; the nation exists as well, and it doesn't flow over into another one, nor it will disappear."<br>
— ''Vuk St. Karadzic, Serbian slavicist''

==See also==
*[[School:Linguistics|School of Linguistics]]
*[[School:Classics|School of Classics]]
*[[Portal:Humanities|Humanities Portal]]
*[[Portal:Social Sciences|Social Sciences Portal]]
*[[Portal:Writing Center|Wikiversity's Writing Center]]



[[Category:Language and Literature|*]]
[[Category:Wikiversity schools]]

[[ja:School:語学と文学]]

Stellar evolution

2008-07-26T04:33:27Z

219.95.211.130: /* Introduction */

[[Image:NGC6543.jpg|thumb|The [[w:Cat's Eye Nebula|Cat's Eye Nebula]], a [[w:planetary nebula|planetary nebula]] formed by the death of a star with about the same mass as the sun]]

==Introduction==

How do stars form, how do they burn for so long and how do they die? This lesson aims to explain the entire process of a star's evolution from formation to its sometimes violent death.

Stellar evolution can be described as the birth, life, and death of a star. A period that can last from ten billion to a few hundred million years depending on its size. Our Sun is about 4.5 billion years old and should last us another six billion years, making our Sun an average star amongst the bounty and variety of stellar masses in our galaxy, the Milkyway.
Throughout a star's life, the star fiercely consumes its hydrogen through the process of nuclear fusion in its core, creating new and heavier elements until the star has exhausted all of its fuel. The end of a star's life again depends on the star's size; for example, our sun will most likely become a red giant and then slowly shrink for another few million years and become a dark cinder called a brown dwarf. Yet other stars with much larger masses, of about ten times that of our Sun's, have an increased chance that they may burst and eject all of their stellar material into the surrounding space leaving behind a super-dense object called a neutron star.

Students should have a good grasp of classical physics and calculus.

Structure of the course:

*'''Initial Conditions'''
**Collapsing Gas Clouds
**The Virial Theorem
**Jeans Mass
**Kelvin-Helmholz Contraction

*'''Nuclear Fusion in Stars'''
**The proton-proton chain

Students will understand the following:
1.The stages of evolution a star goes through are determined by the size of the star.

==Materials required==

For this lesson, you will need:

Research materials about stars and the evolution of stars

==Lesson==
#Review what you have learned about stars so far. In the course of discussion, determine how much you know about star evolution.
#Do you fully understand the terms red giant, white dwarf, neutron star, supernova, and black hole? If not, become acquainted with the terms and understand how they relate to the evolution of stars of different sizes.
#Before continuing the activity, you should understand the following three facts:
##A star the size of our sun will burn steadily for 10 billion years, then expand to a red giant, and finally collapse into a white dwarf about the size of Earth.
##A star three or four times the sun’s mass will burn steadily for a shorter time, then expand into a red giant, and finally collapse, ending up as a neutron star—a super-dense star about the size of a large city.
##A star 50 times the sun’s mass will burn for an even shorter time and may blow up as a supernova before collapsing and eventually shrinking to infinity, becoming a black hole.
#Divide into three groups, each group should focus on one of the three types of stars just mentioned: a star the size of our sun, a star three or four times the sun’s mass, and a star 50 times the sun’s mass.
#Each student should use her or his prior knowledge and information from research to draw a carefully labeled set of diagrams illustrating the stages in the evolution of the type of star assigned to them.
#Display students’ diagrams below so that the class can use them to compare the stages of evolution of the three different types of stars.

Draw a set of diagrams for all three types of stars.

Example diagram:
[[w:Image:Sun Life.png]]

==Discussion Questions==

#Discuss why some scientists were uneasy about the idea of an expanding universe?
#Astronomer Wendy Freedman's observations of Cepheid variable stars in another galaxy indicated that the age of the universe is about eight-twelve billion years. Why did her discovery cause such a debate among astronomers? What elements of her discovery still lend themselves to argument?
#What do scientists learn by observing parts of the universe in other than the visible parts of the spectrum?
#What materials are believed to compose dark matter, and what can we learn about the universe by examining it?

==Evaluation==

Evaluations of the diagrams are as follows:

Three points: diagrams carefully prepared; labels clear and correct; diagrams accurately illustrate the star’s stages of evolution

Two points: diagrams adequately prepared; some labels unclear or incorrect; diagrams accurately illustrate the star’s stages of evolution

One point: diagrams carelessly prepared; labels unclear and/or incorrect; diagrams reflect some inaccurate information about the star’s stages of evolution

Students can contribute to the assessment by determining how many diagrams will be required to illustrate the stages of evolution for each type of star.

==Extra==
*Cepheid variables, supernovae, dark matter, cosmic background radiation, black holes, red shift.

==Readings==
*[[w:Astronomy]]
**[[w:Star]]
***[[w:Stellar evolution]]
etc...

[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Learning activities]]