Platinum :: essays research papers

Platinum is a relatively rare, chemically inert, metallic element. It symbol is Pt, atomic number is 78, and its atomic weight is 195.09. Platinum is one of the heaviest substances known. One cubic foot of Platinum weighs 21 times as much as a cubic foot of water. A grayish-white metal, Platinum has a melting point of 1772 degrees C and a realatively high boiling point of 3827 degrees C. It has a high fusing point, is ductile and malleable, expands slightly upon heating, and has high electrical resistance. Platinum is seldom used in its pure stage because it is too soft. The third most ductile metal, it can be drawn into a thread one twenty thousandth part of an inch in thickness. It is extremely resistant to attack by air, water, single acids and ordinary reagents, but does dissolve in hot aqua regia, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids. Platinum has the unusual property of being able to absorb large amounts of hydrogen at ordinary temperatures and resist it at high temperatures. The first mention of Platinum occurs in the writings of an Italian physician and poet named Julius Caesar Salinger in 1557. A hieroglypic character made froma grain of Platinum dated back to the 7th century. Credit for discovery of Platinum has been given to Don Antonio de Ulloa, a young lieutenant in the Spanish Navy. The metal was referred to as the "platina de Pinto", meaning the siver like metal from the Pinto River. The first thorough study of Platinum was conductd in1750 by the English physician William Brownrigg. Brownrigg noted that Platinum was heavier and even more chemically inert than Gold was. Platinum forms useful alloys with many other metals, including Iridium, Palladium, Rhodium, Ruthenium, Osmium, Gold, Nickel, Cobalt, and Tungsten. At high temperatures Platinum also reacts with Chlorine, Fluorine, Phosphorus, Arsenic and Sulfur. Among the transition metals, Platinum has the greatest tendencies to bond directly with Carbon. Platinum is used extensively in modern industrial society because of its chemical inertness, high melting point, and extraordinary catalytic properties. platinum is valuable for laboratory apparatus, such as tongs, combustion boats, crucibles and evaoporating dishes. It is also used for thermometers in furnaces, for electrodes in making quantitative chemical analyses, and for corrosion and heat-resistant instruments.

Distripute Innovation

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in the new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market.In contrast to disruptive innovation, a sustaining innovation does not create new markets or value networks but rather only evolves existing ones with better value, allowing the firms within to compete against each other's sustaining improvements. Sustaining innovations may be either â€Å"discontinuous†[1] (i. e. â€Å"transformational† or â€Å"revolutionary†) or â€Å"continuous† (i. e. â€Å"evolutionary†). The term â€Å"disruptive technolo gy† has been widely used as a synonym of â€Å"disruptive innovation†, but the latter is now preferred, because market disruption has been found to be a function usually not of technology itself but rather of its changing application.Sustaining innovations are typically innovations in technology, whereas disruptive innovations change entire markets. For example, the automobile was a revolutionary technological innovation, but it was not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower priced Ford Model T in 1908. [2] The mass-produced automobile was a disruptive innovation, because it changed the transportation market. The automobile, by itself, was not.The current theoretical understanding of disruptive innovation is different from what might be expected by default, an idea that Clayton M. Christe nsen called the â€Å"technology mudslide hypothesis†. This is the simplistic idea that an established firm fails because it doesn't â€Å"keep up technologically† with other firms. In this hypothesis, firms are like climbers scrambling upward on crumbling footing, where it takes constant upward-climbing effort just to stay still, and any break from the effort (such as complacency born of profitability) causes a rapid downhill slide.Christensen and colleagues have shown that this simplistic hypothesis is wrong; it doesn't model reality. What they have shown is that good firms are usually aware of the innovations, but their business environment does not allow them to pursue them when they first arise, because they are not profitable enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away from that of sustaining innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition). In Christensen's terms, a firm's existing value networks place insuff icient value on the disruptive innovation to allow its pursuit by that firm.Meanwhile, start-up firms inhabit different value networks, at least until the day that their disruptive innovation is able to invade the older value network. At that time, the established firm in that network can at best only fend off the market share attack with a me-too entry, for which survival (not thriving) is the only reward. [3] The work of Christensen and others during the 2000s has addressed the question of what firms can do to avoid oblivion brought on by technological disruption.

Disneyfication of Confucianism as Prersented in Mulan

Disneyfiying Confucious’ Filial Piety as seen in Disney’s Mulan (1998) Filial Piety in the Ballad of Mulan compared to Disney’s version The legend of Mulan, the Chinese woman warrior, was first presented in an annonomous poem called â€Å"the Ballad of Mulan† which dated back the 6th sentury Tang Dynansty. The poem was written in five segments; each one represents Mulan’s origin, experience in the battlefield, and also sense of obedience to her family. The legend lives on as it is passed from one generation to other generation through diverse versions such as storytelling, poem, and movies. Ultimately, the ballad takes on a new form when it was adapted into a 1998 Disney animated feature. This is the first time Disney has drawn on an Asian†¦show more content†¦We need to understand that the filial piety presented in the movie with the one in the original legend is different, because in the movie Disney portrayed back the filial piety based on American people’s understanding and stereotypes on Confucianism. In this way Mulan described as a free individual who does not want to be bounded by the strict rules of Confucianism. Although, most of the time Mulan expresses her refusal to Confucianism, she still represents the value of filial piety to her father by disguising herself as a man warrior and taking her father’s duty in a war. In this sense, Disney tried to show Mulan’s dutiful character by bringing out Mulan’s â€Å"manly† and rebellious personality. However, in order to strengthen Mulan’s head-strong personality, Disney deliberately lessened the value of obedience and replaced it with Mulan’s pursuit of identity. In this sense, Mulan is described as being confused of her real identity. She is given two difficult choices between fulfilling her role as a potential wife or listening to her own calling (She wants to find her own love without the interference of other people, including her parents). Moreover, the Ballad never explicitly tell the relationship between Mulan and her parents; but everyone can assume that Mulan does not have â€Å"a close relationship† with her parents unlike the one depicted in the Disney’s version. Because in filial