Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd ) - 1492 Words

History Post traumatic stress disorder Post-traumatic stress disorders also none as PTSD. In 1980 the American psychiatric association added PTSD to the third edition of its diagnostic and statistical manual of mental diagnostic nosologic classification scheme although controversial when first introduced the PTSD diagnosis has filled an important gap in psychiatric theory and practice from an historical perspective the significant change ushered in by the PTSD concept was the stipulation that that the etiological agent was outside the individual traumatic event rather than an inherent individual weakness traumatic neurosis they key to understanding the scientific basis and clinical expression of PTSD is the concept of trauma. The formulation a traumatic event was conceptualized as catastrophic stressor that was outside the range of usual human experiences. The framers of the original PTSD diagnosis had in mind events such as war, torture, rape, natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcano eruptions and h uman made disaster such as airplanes crashes, and automobile accidents they considered traumatic events to be clearly different from the very painful stressors that constitute the normal vicissitudes of life such as divorce, failure, rejection, serious illness, financial reverses, and the like by the logic adverse psychological responses to such ordinary stressors would be characterized as adjustment disorders rather than PTSD this dichotomization betweenShow MoreRelatedPost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd )990 Words   |  4 PagesPost-Traumatic Stress Disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder is a common anxiety disorder characterized by chronic physical arousal, recurrent unwanted thoughts and images of the traumatic event, and avoidance of things that can call the traumatic event into mind (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, Nock, 2014). About 7 percent of Americans suffer from PTSD. Family members of victims can also develop PTSD and it can occur in people of any age. The diagnosis for PTSD requires one or more symptoms to beRead MorePost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd )1471 Words   |  6 PagesRunning head: POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER 1 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Student’s Name Course Title School Name April 12, 2017  Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental disorder that many people are facing every day, and it appears to become more prevalent. This disorder is mainly caused by going through or experiencing a traumatic event, and its risk of may be increased by issuesRead MorePost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd ) Essay1401 Words   |  6 PagesAccording to the Mayo-Clinic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, commonly known as PTSD is defined as â€Å"Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that s triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event† (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2014). Post Traumatic Stress disorder can prevent one from living a normal, healthy life. In 2014, Chris Kyle playedRead MorePost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd )1198 Words   |  5 Pages Post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) is a mental illness that is triggered by witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. â€Å"PTSD was first brought to public attention in relation to war veterans, but it can result from a variety of traumatic incidents, such as mugging, rape, torture, being kidnapped or held captive, child abuse, car accidents, train wrecks, plane crashes, bombings, or natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes(NIMH,2015).† PTSD is recognized as a psychobiological mentalRead MorePost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd )1423 Words   |  6 Pages Mental diseases and disorders have been around since humans have been inhabiting earth. The field of science tasked with diagnosing and treating these disorders is something that is always evolving. One of the most prevalent disorders in our society but has only recently been acknowledged is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Proper and professional diagnosis and definitions of PTSD was first introduced by the American Psychiatric Association(APA) in the third edition of the Diagnostic andRead MorePost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd ) Essay1162 Words   |  5 PagesSocial Identity, Groups, and PTSD In 1980, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD,) was officially categorized as a mental disorder even though after three decades it is still seen as controversial. The controversy is mainly founded around the relationship between post-traumatic stress (PTS) and politics. The author believes that a group level analysis will assist in understanding the contradictory positions in the debate of whether or not PTSD is a true disorder. The literature regarding this topicRead MorePost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd ) Essay1550 Words   |  7 PagesPost Traumatic Stress Disorder â€Å"PTSD is a disorder that develops in certain people who have experienced a shocking, traumatic, or dangerous event† (National Institute of Mental Health). Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has always existed, PTSD was once considered a psychological condition of combat veterans who were â€Å"shocked† by and unable to face their experiences on the battlefield. Much of the general public and many mental health professionals doubted whether PTSD was a true disorder (NIMH)Read MorePost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd )944 Words   |  4 Pageswith Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD Stats). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental disorder common found in veterans who came back from war. We can express our appreciation to our veterans by creating more support programs, help them go back to what they enjoy the most, and let them know we view them as a human not a disgrace. According to the National Care of PTSD, a government created program, published an article and provides the basic definition and common symptoms of PTSD. Post-traumaticRead MorePost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd )1780 Words   |  8 Pagesmental illnesses. One such illness is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental illness that affects a person’s sympathetic nervous system response. A more common name for this response is the fight or flight response. In a person not affected by post-traumatic stress disorder this response activates only in times of great stress or life threatening situations. â€Å"If the fight or flight is successful, the traumatic stress will usually be released or dissipatedRead MorePost Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd )1444 Words   |  6 PagesYim – Human Stress 2 December 2014 PTSD in War Veterans Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a condition that is fairly common with individuals that have experienced trauma, especially war veterans. One in five war veterans that have done service in the Iraq or Afghanistan war are diagnosed with PTSD. My group decided to focus on PTSD in war veterans because it is still a controversial part of stressful circumstances that needs further discussion. The lifetime prevalence of PTSD amongst war

African American Social And Political Thought Of Today

Sayfur R Shuyeb FP7735 AFS 2210-001 African-American Social and Political Thought of Today I might not be a person like Martin Luther King Jr., W.E.B Du Bois, Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Bell Hooks, and Jesse Jackson, or I might not be a part of organizations like the NAACP, SCLC, Afro American Unity, and Black Panther Party, but if I ever get an opportunity to make a difference these people and organizations made to the lives of African-Americans, I would never hesitate to take it. Although, these people adhered to the different ideologies, they all are unique, as they all had a significant role in fighting against the struggles of African-Americans in one way or the other. It’s true that, these people were able to achieve the equal†¦show more content†¦I believe this approach remains important in the struggle against racial inequality and injustice because it seems like a very effective way of solving the problem with desegregation. Negro citizenship had no value to the South or the whites, for which, they weren’t recognized. That is where the prob lem with desegregation came and in order to solve that problem, recognition is eventually the first step to solve this issue, â€Å"We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the pre-supposition of our faith, and the manner of our action† (371), is the mission statement of the organization Student Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that clearly portrays its philosophy of nonviolence in the struggle against racial injustice and inequality. Nonviolence is one of the most important philosophies that is most relevant today in many cases and also remains important in the struggle against the racial injustice and inequality. Organizations of African-Americans today still believe in nonviolence as the way of facing the racial injustice and inequality. They take their action against the racial injustice and inequality by following the rules and regulations rather committing any violent crime. And, IShow MoreRelatedRacial Leadership And The African American Political Thought From B Du Bois1260 Words   |  6 Pageshad different views of racial leadershi p in Afro American political thought from W.E.B Du Bois to Booker T. Washington to Marcus Garvey who sought to lead African-Americans from the oppression they face. All three of these historical figures had different views on racial leadership and politics as well as the vision and direction that racial emancipation should take. W.E.B Du Bois argued that African-Americans should political, economic, and social freedom and advancement. Booker T. Washington wasRead MoreAfrican American Struggles747 Words   |  3 PagesRUNNING HEAD: AFRICAN AMERICAN STRUGGLES 1 African American Struggles Shaneisa Smith Soc 308: Racial Ethnic Groups Risa Garelick November 23, 2011 AFRICAN AMERICAN STRUGGLES 2 African American Struggles African Americans are knows to face various issues throughout their lives. From being discriminated against, to trying to fit into society, African Americans still have problemsRead MoreMulticultural Vs. Pluralistic Theory Essay1749 Words   |  7 Pagesmany theories exposing the knowledge of different ethos and the affects in today society. One theory to explore is the pluralistic or multicultural theory. Multicultural or Pluralistic theory is theory that interprets American culture to have many different sub-cultures that incorporates their values, beliefs and traditions and integrates them on to a bigger cultural scale such as subcultures like Hispanics and African Americans. Steets (2014) explains each human child experiences a pluralism of significantRead MoreThe Life and Writings of W.E.B. DuBois Essay1684 Words   |  7 Pagesas the valedictorian, being that he was the only black in his graduating class of 12. He was orphaned shortly after his graduation and was force d to fund his own college education. He was a pioneer in black political thoughts and known by many as a main figure in the history of African-American politics. W.E.B. DuBois attended Fisk University, where he was awarded a scholarship after he graduated high school. Fisk University was located in Nashville, Tennessee. While attending this University, thisRead MoreThe Three Core Philosophies Of The Black Nationalism Movement1220 Words   |  5 Pagesto come to self-realization and uplift themselves. In his speech, the noted civil rights leader presents the three core philosophies of Black Nationalism: political, economic and social. This essay will provide an in-depth analysis of the three core philosophies of the Black Nationalism Movement and assess how these same issues affect us today. Malcolm delivered his Ballot to the Bullet speech on the heels of Martin Luther King Jr’s famous I have a dream speech and the Supreme Court’s ratificationRead MoreA Brief Biography of W.E.B. Dubois1448 Words   |  6 Pagesas the valedictorian, being that he was the only black in his graduating class of 12. He was orphaned shortly after his graduation and was forced to fund his own college education. He was a pioneer in black political thoughts and known by many as a main figure in the history of African-American politics. W.E.B. DuBois attended Fisk University, where he was awarded a scholarship after he graduated high school. Fisk University was located in Nashville, Tennessee. While attending this University, thisRead MorePoverty Inequality : The United States1040 Words   |  5 PagesPoverty is one of the greatest problems in the United States today. Poverty is the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; a condition of being p oor.Many people, especially African Americans and children, live in poverty. People in poverty are left to face different social, cultural, physical and mental challenges.The American Dream is to have a well paying job and to be comfortable, but most Americans are forced to live a life of poverty. Although the United StatesRead MoreEssay about My Ideology1191 Words   |  5 PagesRyan Allen 300142322 Kwasi Densu American National Gov. Essay Assignment: My Ideology Questions to Consider: 1. Source of Views and Values- reflect on personalities, institutions and philosophies that inform your social, economic and political beliefs. Discuss how you were socialized (chapter 4) to accept this view of the world. Remember the concept of politcal socialization. Of the ideologies in Chapter 5 which do you identify with the most? Why? 2. Critique of Existing Order-Read MoreAlain Locke s The New Negro1400 Words   |  6 Pagesyears of the Harlem Renaissance. He spoke forward about how the ancestors of African American referred as the â€Å"Old Negros† and the newer generation referred to as the â€Å"New Negros† took different outlooks on life. American Negros goal in life at this point in time was to change their mentality. But how? Locke had introduced many readers to the vibrant wondrous world of African Americans. He opened the eyes to what American Negros can do and not what they cannot do, no one should be restricted by anyRead MoreRacial Segregation And The Civil Rights Movement1407 Words   |  6 Pageswere listening to funk and embracing their own racial identity rather than considering themselves American. In the eyes of many, the times of racial division had ended with the laws passed during the Civil Rights Movement. From this followed the belief that since everyone was allegedl y equal, any effort to differentiate on the basis of race, such as funk music, should be viewed as harmful to social progress. Therefore, artists like Parliament-Funkadelic that called for black education, business

Architecture free essay sample

Despite the clarity of the Losss definition, this contemporary question has a persistent quality that Is usually noticed In Its occlusion. In other words, the extent to which the link Is denied and architecture Is seen as no more than building and thus thought in terms of a differentiation of the economic from the cultural suggests that the possibility of architectures relation to culture is a question whose acuity cannot be readily escaped. What then is architectures relation to culture?In purely strategic terms, the question is relevant, since policy usually in terms of overspent policy and even architectural criticism often uses straightforwardly economic criteria to make decisions or draw conclusions. Approaching architecture as an Industry, while apposite In certain Instances, falls to allow for the role of the architectural in forming part of a nations, or a communitys, culture. Yet, it is clear that the presence of architecture in the daily lives of citizens underscores its inalienable cultural presence. We will write a custom essay sample on Architecture or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The task in this essay is to address this presence and to draw conclusions that might have relevance for policy directed decisions, as well s evaluative ones. This essay was prompted by the refusal of public money to the Australian pavilion at the recent Venice Biennial, but more Importantly, by the need to engage with the Issues that such a refusal raises. For the most part, these Issues do not pertain to the relative strength or weakness of Australian architecture, but rather to the way in which it defines itself.Architecture in this country does not define itself in any singular way, however, there is a prevailing perception. To counter that perception is to reopen the need to link architecture to the wider world of policy policy other than simple planning regulations and this involves reopening the question of architectures relation to culture. This essay uses culture In two senses. One relates to activities that are often understood as specific to architecture. The other is inextricably connected to the realm of human existence and demarcates the ways in which human life differentiates itself from nature.Taken in isolation each is potentially problematic holding to the exclusivity of the culture of architecture denies its presence as part of human society, while thinking of architecture as thing other than cultural precludes any consideration of, for example, the way different materials realize different effects within architectural practice. What matters is the way concerns of one understanding can perhaps should intrude into the other. Recognizing that these two different senses of culture are interrelated can provide a way through this complex set of considerations.Insisting this interrelation introduces another defining element into the equation. Indeed, it marks the point of relation: the public. Architecture is essentially public. This Is hardly a intermissions with the refusal of its consequences. A choice emerges. Architecture can define its sphere of operation as the construction of objects that are understood as only ever private, and which thus only open up the already circumscribed worlds of individual activity for example, the house. Or architecture can insist on its inherently public nature.Emphasizing the public does not mean that the construction of the house is, in some sense, a denial of architecture. Rather, the argument is that architectures continual opening onto the world an opening which an have an important role in the construction of that world is one of the main ways to generate a nexus between the culture of architecture and the inherently public nature of human sociality. The distinction between these two positions opening in or opening out is not a distinction between architecture as an academic activity on the one hand and as a worldly activity on the other.Instead, different conceptions of practice are at work here in both instances there can be a championing of materials over programmer; in both, a concern with the environmental consequences f building can be paramount; equally, issues pertaining to sustainability can drive each of them. Yet the distinction is crucial. It involves the extent to which there is an affirmation with all the difficulties and complexities that this term brings of the inherently public nature of architecture. OPENING IN.Architecture can be described as opening in when it defines itself as an activity of construction for individuals to suit individual needs. In working from the outside in, space is created that reproduces the desires of clients the world takes on the veneer of the private. This s a conception of the private in which the individual either singularly or as a unit has primacy. Moreover this generates a conception of the public as a collection of individuals all of whom aspire to create their own private world, which is the locus where their own unique desires are satisfied.Architecture begins to define itself in these terms when this conception of practice and world creation becomes the basis for future discussions and evaluations. Once the object is understood as having been created for the individual including a conception of the public as the totality f individuals it follows that architecture is the expression of personalities, and that the built object expresses the personality of the client. (Or at least that this would be the desired intent on both sides. Equally, because construction, understood in this ligh t, is always defined by a conception of individual taste, there cannot be a link to any conception of culture beyond the generalization of the individual. It is not difficult to imagine that once this is accepted as the definition of architecture and it is a self-definition that works at a range of different scales architecture will be inevitably understood as a series of produced (built, constructed, et cetera) objects that are created by individuals to serve individual ends.Since the public is always counterpoised to the individual and this is true even when the public is understood as the abstract presence of the totality of individuals architecture will be defined in terms of singular relations. The relation is will always be between architect and client, and architecture will remain enclosed within that relation. Once there is a turn towards the interior there is no need to think in terms of the registration of the exterior. Those elements at a minimum, the exterior to which architecture opens out pertain to culture understood as part of the public domain.The limit of this preoccupation of Australian architecture with domes tic housing only exacerbates the situation. The insistence on the interior and the associated definition of architecture in terms of individual concerns and reciprocally as only of concern for individuals make it a simple matter to locate architecture as no more than an economic activity. In this framework the house would have a bespoke suit as its correlate. The refusal of he public is, of course, a position taken in relation to the inherently public nature of architecture.This not only establishes the limit of architectures self-definition in terms opening in; it also indicates that the culture of architecture is, from the start, traversed by the complex matter of culture. The already present place of culture needs to be noted. Here, it concerns the capacity for an object to stage a relation. This may seem an overly complex point, but it is not. Staging a relation is not Just the presence of programmer, nor is it Just the use of one combination of materials rather Han another. Staging is the way that the internationalization of a programmer and materials works to present a specific conception of the programmer in question. The differences, for example, between two museums are to be found in terms of what they stage. That is, the way the understanding of the programmer, the geometry proper to its realization, and the materials once combined yield the object. However, it is an object as a site of activity. The activity is the way the building stages its presence. Two things need to be noted here. The first is that staging is integral to the way an object works as architecture. The second is that programmer, geometry, and the use of materials have both a historical and cultural dimension. This means that staging necessarily inscribes the architectural object with broader cultural considerations. Opening in, therefore, becomes an attempt to avoid defining architecture in terms of this inscription of wider public concerns. The counter position opening out becomes the way of acknowledging the presence of staging and of allowing this acknowledgment to play a pivotal role in establishing a definition of architecture.OPENING OUT. The move to the outside allowing the external to be stirred internally and the internal to have an external registration allows us to insist on the public nature of architecture precisely because here the two senses of culture interact. This is not a question of the house versus the public building. Rather, this particular definition provides the basis for more generalized understanding of architecture. It is important to note, however, that the culture that is registered is neither unified nor benign.Indeed, the interplay of dominance and opposition is fundamental to its schismatic and agnostic nature. This opens an area of discussion that cannot be pursued in this context. However, it indicates, nonetheless, that the registration of external elements will not be the registration of a unified culture precisely because the culture in question is not grounded in any sense of unity other than that of simple dominance or the identification with the totality of a culture with its most conservative instance, for example the identification of a culture with the national.This emphasis on the explicit acknowledgement of architectures public nature, and on architecture as staging, does not mean that henceforth architecture has to be either utilitarian that is merely functional or inst rumental or driven by some large social goal. Moreover, such an acknowledgment might be present in quite different ways. The complex surfaces of the Online example, opens up a potential urban field. This does not occur by locating the architecture on the surface, but by allowing the surface to help create a visual urbanism.What emerges, as a potential as well as what that is actually realized, are urban surfaces. The interest in the surface as evinced by Lyons and here there is an important affinity with some recent work by Herzog and De Neuron, in particular their library for the Brawled Polytechnic should be understood as coating the objects architecture as much in a sustained engagement with programmatic concerns, as it is in the construction of urban surfaces.The importance of the latter is that they take the creation of surfaces beyond any concern with the decorative. While a great deal has been written about ARMs National Museum of Australia (AMA) in Canberra, its singular importance lies in the specific way it stages a conception of the public and thus of community. While it enhances the site , to argue that a building complements Walter Burley Griffins mastering runs the risk of condemning it in advance. At the AMA identity becomes a site of endless negotiation and the symbols carry that positioning. Both work together to define the site. Rather than concentrate on the symbols per SE, what is fundamental is that they introduce a conception of time that is not determined by immediacy. The symbols stage a more complex and always-to-be-determined conception of identity. There is still a connection between symbols and what is symbolized. However, what needs to be noted is that it is hard to establish the link as definitive.Indeed, that is the point. The public nature of the architecture, and its democratic impulse, are mound in the symbolism because the work attests to the complex and cosmopolitan nature of the public. Lab architecture studios Federation Square is a fundamentally different project. But it demands, among other things, a reconsideration of how, within the urban context, figure/ground relations have to be recast in terms of figure/ figure relations.The inscription of an implicit urbanism into The Ian Potter Centre: ENG Australia, the construction of the squares themselves as explicitly urban, the complex relation that both have to the urbanism created by the intersections of the rid and the lanes and fed by public transport hubs, means that each element becomes an important figure constructing the urban terrain. While this does not occur literally, Federation Square develops both externally and internally (within the ENG itself) the urbanism of its setting, while demanding a rethinking if how interventions of th is scale within a pre-existing fabric are to be understood.The significance of these projects cannot be understood in terms of the image they project. In other words, it is not as though subsequent work be it a large scale project or a domestic house has to have a Lyons surface, or to deploy complex homeboys, or to mime fractal geometries. The fact that they are significant does not mean that they set the measure for what architecture has to look like. It is not a question of appearance.Rather, what has to occur is a process of abstraction where what characterizes them and it will always be the interplay of the strictly architectural and the cultural, one figuring in the other is allowed to set the framework in which architectures definition of itself can continue to develop. Affirming the presence of the cultural by noting the inalienability of the public, hill allowing both to have a complex and contested status allows architecture to the merely cultural, it goes without saying that such a position is necessarily contestable.Moreover, this inherent conceivability may result in the refusal of the interplay of cultures and therefore in the championing of the interdependence of the private and the economic. The victory of one over the other reveals an essential truth. Namely, that the presence of the conflict the inescapable hold of conceivability is the first step in any argument for the inherently cultural nature of the architectural.

You Might Remember The Heroic Role That Newly-invented Radar Played In

You might remember the heroic role that newly-invented radar played in the Second World War. People hailed it then as "Our Miracle Ally". But even in its earliest years, as it was helping win the war, radar proved to be more than an expert enemy locator. Radar technicians, doodling away in their idle moments, found that they could focus a radar beam on a marshmallow and toast it. They also popped popcorn with it. Such was the beginning of microwave cooking. The very same energy that warned the British of the German Luftwaffe invasion and that policemen employ to pinch speeding motorists, is what many of us now have in our kitchens. It's the same as what carries long distance phone calls and cablevision. Hitler's army had its own version of radar, using radio waves. But the trouble with radio waves is that their long wavelength requires a large, cumbersome antenna to focus them into a narrow radar beam. The British showed that microwaves, with their short wavelength, could be focussed ina narrow beam with an antenna many times smaller. This enabled them to make more effective use of radar since an antenna could be carried on aircraft, ships and mobile ground stations. This characteristic of microwaves, the efficiency with which they are concentrated in a narrow beam, is one reason why they can be used in cooking. You can produce a high-powered microwave beam in a small oven, but you can't do the same with radio waves, which are simply too long. Microwaves and their Use The idea of cooking with radiation may seem like a fairly new one, but in fact it reaches back thousands of years. Ever since mastering fire, man has cooked with infrared radiation, a close kin of the microwave. Infrared rays are what give you that warm glow when you put your hand near a room radiator or a hotplate or a campfire. Infrared rays, flowing from the sun and striking the atmosphere, make the Earth warm and habitable. In a conventional gas or electric oven, infrared waves pour off the hot elements or burners and are converted to heat when they strike air inside and the food. Microwaves and infrared rays are related in that both are forms of electromagnetic energy. Both consist of electric and magnetic fields that rise and fall like waves on an ocean. Silently, invisibly and at the speed of light, they travel through space and matter. There are many forms of electromagnetic energy (see diagram). Ordinary light from the sun is one, and the only one you can actually see. X-rays are another. Each kind, moving at a separate wavelength, has a unique effect on any matter it touches. When you lie out in the summer sun, for example, it's the infrared rays that bring warmth, but ultraviolet radiation that tans your skin. If the Earth's protective atmosphere weren't there, intense cosmic radiation from space would kill you. So why do microwaves cook faster than infrared rays? Well, suppose you're roasting a chicken in a radar range. What happens is t hat when you switch on the microwaves, they're absorbed only by water molecules in the chicken. Water is what chemists call a polar molecule. It has a slightly positive charge at one end and a slightly negative charge at the opposite end. This peculiar orientation provides a sort of handle for the microwaves to grab onto. The microwaves agitate the water molecules billions of times a second, and this rapid movement generates heat and cooks the food. Since microwaves agitate only water molecules, they pass through all other molecules and penetrate deep into the chicken. They reach right inside the food. Ordinary ovens, by contrast, fail to have the same penetrating power because their infrared waves agitate all molecules. Most of the infarred radiation is spent heating the air inside the oven, and any remaining rays are absorbed by the outer layer of the chicken. Food cooks in an ordinary oven as the heat from the air and the outer layer of the food slowly seeps down to the inner layers. In short, oven microwaves cook the outside of the chicken at the same time as they cook the You Might Remember The Heroic Role That Newly-invented Radar Played In You might remember the heroic role that newly-invented radar played in the Second World War. People hailed it then as "Our Miracle Ally". But even in its earliest years, as it was helping win the war, radar proved to be more than an expert enemy locator. Radar technicians, doodling away in their idle moments, found that they could focus a radar beam on a marshmallow and toast it. They also popped popcorn with it. Such was the beginning of microwave cooking. The very same energy that warned the British of the German Luftwaffe invasion and that policemen employ to pinch speeding motorists, is what many of us now have in our kitchens. It's the same as what carries long distance phone calls and cablevision. Hitler's army had its own version of radar, using radio waves. But the trouble with radio waves is that their long wavelength requires a large, cumbersome antenna to focus them into a narrow radar beam. The British showed that microwaves, with their short wavelength, could be focussed ina narrow beam with an antenna many times smaller. This enabled them to make more effective use of radar since an antenna could be carried on aircraft, ships and mobile ground stations. This characteristic of microwaves, the efficiency with which they are concentrated in a narrow beam, is one reason why they can be used in cooking. You can produce a high-powered microwave beam in a small oven, but you can't do the same with radio waves, which are simply too long. Microwaves and their Use The idea of cooking with radiation may seem like a fairly new one, but in fact it reaches back thousands of years. Ever since mastering fire, man has cooked with infrared radiation, a close kin of the microwave. Infrared rays are what give you that warm glow when you put your hand near a room radiator or a hotplate or a campfire. Infrared rays, flowing from the sun and striking the atmosphere, make the Earth warm and habitable. In a conventional gas or electric oven, infrared waves pour off the hot elements or burners and are converted to heat when they strike air inside and the food. Microwaves and infrared rays are related in that both are forms of electromagnetic energy. Both consist of electric and magnetic fields that rise and fall like waves on an ocean. Silently, invisibly and at the speed of light, they travel through space and matter. There are many forms of electromagnetic energy (see diagram). Ordinary light from the sun is one, and the only one you can actually see. X-rays are another. Each kind, moving at a separate wavelength, has a unique effect on any matter it touches. When you lie out in the summer sun, for example, it's the infrared rays that bring warmth, but ultraviolet radiation that tans your skin. If the Earth's protective atmosphere weren't there, intense cosmic radiation from space would kill you. So why do microwaves cook faster than infrared rays? Well, suppose you're roasting a chicken in a radar range. What happens is t hat when you switch on the microwaves, they're absorbed only by water molecules in the chicken. Water is what chemists call a polar molecule. It has a slightly positive charge at one end and a slightly negative charge at the opposite end. This peculiar orientation provides a sort of handle for the microwaves to grab onto. The microwaves agitate the water molecules billions of times a second, and this rapid movement generates heat and cooks the food. Since microwaves agitate only water molecules, they pass through all other molecules and penetrate deep into the chicken. They reach right inside the food. Ordinary ovens, by contrast, fail to have the same penetrating power because their infrared waves agitate all molecules. Most of the infarred radiation is spent heating the air inside the oven, and any remaining rays are absorbed by the outer layer of the chicken. Food cooks in an ordinary oven as the heat from the air and the outer layer of the food slowly seeps down to the inner layers. In short, oven microwaves cook the outside of the chicken at the same time as they cook the