Joshua and Dulcinea: A Conflict Between Country and Family

This research paper analyzes the struggle that Confederate soldier Joshua Callaway had in balancing his loyalty to his state and to his family in the context of what was expected of Southern men both before and during the Civil War

A History of the Early Fairfield Town Lots

In 1732 Charles Carroll of Maryland received a grant of 5000 acres of land in present Adams County, Pennsylvania, from the authorities of Maryland. Soon after, a survey of that land, known as “Carroll’s Tract” or “Carroll’s Delight,” was conducted. At that point in time there was still some dispute over the location of the boundary between the two states. A temporary line was agreed upon in 1739, and a more permanent line (very near that temporary boundary) was surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon during the 1760s. And even though it was established that Carroll’s Tract was in Pennsylvania, an agreement was made that Marylanders would retain their rights to the lands previously granted to them. But it is important to note that at an early date the people settling in this area knew they were in Pennsylvania. According to Charles H. Glatfelter, the most respected of local historians, “the widely held and long persisting notion that until many years later people did not know where the boundary line was and that it shifted from time to time has no basis whatsoever in fact.” [excerpt

Thermodynamics of the Harmonic Oscillator: Wien's Displacement Law and the Planck Spectrum

A thermodynamic analysis of the harmonic oscillator is presented. Motivation for the study is provided by the blackbody radiation spectrum; when blackbody radiation is regarded as a system of noninteracting harmonic oscillator modes, the thermodynamics follows from that of the harmonic oscillators. Using the behavior of a harmonic oscillator thermodynamic system under a quasi-static change of oscillator frequency w, we show that the thermodynamic functions can all be derived from a single function of w/T, analogous to Wien's displacement theorem. The high- and low-frequency energy limits allow asymptotic energy forms involving T alone or w alone, corresponding to energy equipartition and zero-point energy. It is noted that the Planck spectrum with zero-point radiation corresponds to the function satisfying the Wien displacement result which provides the smoothest possible interpolation between energy equipartition at low frequency and zero-point energy at high frequency.Comment: 10 page