Investigation of Aluminum Equation of State Generation

There are many forms and methods to construct equations of state, EOSs. These methods are usually tailored for the particular problem of interest. Here, the EOSs of interest are those used in modeling shock responses. These EOSs cover a wide range of physical characteristics such as detonation and explosions, armor and anti-armor materials, and space structures protection. Aluminum will be the primary focus of this work. Aluminum was chosen because it has been studied in great length in the shock regime and is a common component in shock experiments and space type vehicles

Science Learning Museums as an Extension of the Elementary Classroom

The lack of good science education in the American school is a problem that will affect the future of the United States. Not only is the decline of science-based teaching of elementary school students due to lack of funds and increase of class size, it is caused by a deficiency of creative teaching methods. One possible method that has and can be cultivated and developed is the use of Science Learning Museums (SLM) as effective teaching tools. The integration of classrooms and science museums can bring about positive, creative, fun, and exciting ways to learn, bringing an unenthusiastic textbook example to the interesting possibility of the real world in which students live. The cooperation that a classroom and a science museum must attain is difficult work, involving many hours and many intricacies. The museum\u27s ability to provide the right experience for the student is a crucial component of an integrative and creative learning system. This thesis will deal with the development of SLMs, students\u27 learning in museums, how teachers can make use of museums, how museums can help teachers to provide an excellent education, examples of existing and working school/museum partnerships, and the importance of independent, lifelong learning

Pathetic Beauty: Mono no Aware in Hollywood Cinema –To Family and Friends in These Estranged Times–

Mono no aware is considered to be one of the central-most Japanese aesthetics and distinctive to Japanese identity (Keene 1995; Miller 2011). This aesthetic standpoint finds wistful beauty in the transient, and is most often translated to ‘beauty in pathos’ or ‘the ah-ness of things’ (Hume 1995), as exemplified in the Heian-era classic, The Tale of Genji (Murasaki 1981). To the outside world, mono no aware is most commonly associated with cherry-blossom viewing, where the short-lived existence of the falling cherry blossom is seen as a metonym for contemplation of the beauty in the transience of life itself. Although this mode of aestheticization shares disinterested and contemplative characteristics with the Kantian pure aesthetic gaze (Hughes 2010), its focus on pathos would seem to be at odds with commonly understood platonic Western ideals of beauty and art (c.f. Clark 1972; Saito 2007). However, the current paper aims to elucidate how perceptions of beauty of the pathetic have also been an aspect of Western thought and aestheticization practices, since early Christian times, more prominently in the Romantic era and even in Hollywood cinema. This is of particular significance to the current paper as Hollywood is often seen as a global metonym for glamour–the apparent antithesis of Japanese traditional aesthetics, such as mono no aware. To this end, an examination will be made of expressions of pathetic beauty in Tom Ford’s (2009) award-winning Hollywood film, A Single Man, and how this relates to parallels in the development of aesthetic thought in the occident and Japan

Sugimoto’s Middle Brow and the Collective Horizon

Is art for everyone? Although attendance at art galleries has risen rapidly at the start of the 21st century, so too has the price of art, and the perception that art is an object of conspicuous consumption. The current paper presents a discussion of the possibilities that the photography of Hiroshi Sugimoto offers an artistic oeuvre that countenances the current state of the art market and is open to the aesthetic appreciation of a broader audience. As middlebrow mode of cultural production (Bourdieu 1996), photography is an artistic form that most people are familiar with, rendering it a medium that is broadly appreciable as a form of representation of common and cross-cultural experience. At the same time, photography can also satisfy the demands of highbrow cultural interpretation, meaning that it can act as a locus of community that provides access for a range of people to other forms of artistic culture. In particular, it is argued that Sugimoto’s Seascapes present a particular body of work of a subject matter and style that can be appreciated by people of any sociocultural background. Further, the often-made comparisons between these images and Mark Rothko’s multiform, colour-field paintings may offer viewers a bridge between middlebrow and highbrow culture, which has become, since Rothko’s death, more conceptually and economically challenging for audiences to engage with and understand

The Aesthetic Society and Its Gatekeepers

The current study draws on Saito’s (2007) application to western context of the Japanese practice of appreciating the aesthetic and ethical aspects of everyday objects, examined through the complexity of aesthetic evaluation. Bourdieu’s (1984a) moderating variable cultural capital is used to advance an understanding of perceptual and linguistic complexity in daily aesthetic consumption. By engaging participants in a quasi-experiment of multi-sensory trials of everyday products (lemon squeezers), an examination was made of how language use reveals embodied knowledge of daily consumption practice. As the participants’ volumes of cultural capital increased, there was a greater tendency to categorize the stimuli according to their formal aspects and use more complex language derived from decorative, ethical and artistic schema. Thus, the logic of everyday aesthetic practice appears to be contingent on contextualized interaction. This research is followed with a discussion of how such inclinations relate to Japanese aesthetic practices in everyday life, by considering the influence of intercultural exchanges and the actions of cultural gatekeepers in Japan and abroad during the development of aestheticized Japanese cultural metonymy in the post-Meiji Restoration era. Further, some discussion is made of the parallel development of the aestheticization of daily practices in Japan and European contexts, and how this likely influenced the cultural context of the research is made. Finally, some of the challenges of instituting an everyday aesthetic as an antidote to the problems generated by mass-consumption society are discussed