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US History/World War II and Rise of Atomic Age

Formation of the Third Reich

In 1933, German president Paul von Hindenberg named Adolf Hitler chancellor. As Civil Liberties began being limited, and the Nazification of Germany began in earnest, the Weimar Republic collapsed and the "Third Reich" began (in German, Großdeutsches Reich). Hitler had outlined his aims years earlier, in his book Mein Kampf(My Struggle). Hitler claimed that Germany had lost its powerful economy, morality, raw materials, land, and resources needed to help it develop as a nation. Hitler blamed "sub-human" peoples such as the Jews for his country's defeat. The superior German people needed "living room," and had a right to claim it. The book called for the elimination of the Jews, and the elimination of homosexuals, the mentally ill, and other "undesirable" elements of German society. Hitler also used this supposed German superiority, as well as German mistreatment by its victors after World War I, to justify the termination of the Treaty of Versailles.

Military Buildup

Hitler began a buildup of the German military. In 1936, he tested German might by supporting the Fascists and German interests during the Spanish Civil War. Then Hitler and Benito Mussolini, the Fascist Dictator of Italy, created a coalition with the dictatorship which had come to power in Japan. The coalition of these three nations later came to be called the Axis.

Appeasement policy
Many of the borders drawn up in the wake of Versailles were fragile. There were German nationalists in many other countries, including the post-war nation of Czechs and Slavs known as Czechoslovakia. In 1938, Hitler used alleged mistreatment of a German minority in another German-speaking nation to annex or take over Austria. Other nations were reluctant to interfere because of Hitler's claim that the relation between Germany and Austria was an internal German concern which had nothing to do with the rest of Europe. Then Hitler took control of a section of Czechoslovakia partially populated by Germans. This time, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did interfere. In the wee hours of September 30, 1938, Chamberlain and Hitler signed an agreement ensuring that Germany would keep the territory it called the Sudetenland, but would go no further in the country, nor take any German-populated areas in other European nations. The policy which sought to prevent another World War at almost any cost, including the cost of allowing a tyrant to gain more power, became known as appeasement.

Chamberlain called the Munich Agreement "Peace in our time." Hitler had no intention of keeping his word. In 1939, he took over the remainder of Czechoslovakia and demanded Poland. Great Britain and France agreed to come to Poland's aid. Then Germany signed another agreement with the Soviet Union, the confederation of Russia and its supporters under a Communist government. The Nazi-Soviet Pact was an agreement that the two nations would not fight each other. Both countries agreed to take parts of Poland, the Soviet Union securing the Baltic Sea port cities. (It had been a long-term interest of the Soviets to gain ice-free ports for winter trade.) Yet in private, Hitler was already planning to take the Soviet Union over in its turn.

Blitzkrieg
On the first day of September, 1939, Germany declared war on Poland. The British and French responded by declaring war on Germany two days later.

The Germans used the tactic of Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") in Poland to defeat the Polish Army in as little as sixteen days as the British and French sat back in fear of a new World War. With little warning and no provocation, the German Air Force strafed Poland with top-speed planes and sent in tanks and racing artillery on the ground. The Polish had had no time to build the deep trenches seen in the First World War; the Germans had no need to use mustard gas. By the end of the first week of October, the Germans had gained control of half of Poland. The Soviets invaded from the East. With no time to defend themselves, the last Polish troops surrendered in early October.

In the spring of 1940, Hitler attacked the nations of Denmark and Norway. Denmark surrendered, but British and French troops came to Norway's aid.

Germany entered Belgium and the Netherlands on May Tenth, 1940. The Netherlands surrendered on May 15, though the province of Zeeland held out until the 18th. Belgium was overcome on May 28. On the same day, France recalled its troops from Norway, leaving Norway's fate to Germany.

On June Fifth the Germans began their attack on France. To make matters worse, Mussolini declared war on France and Britain on June 10. The French government, meanwhile was taken over by a new Premier, who signed an armistice with Germany on June 17. Germany gained control of the northern part of France, and the Vichy French Government (so called because of the new French capital at Vichy) retained the south. The Italians had a small zone of occupation near the Franco-Italian border.

Battle of Britain
Hitler's Germany was the supreme power on Continental Europe. Only the United Kingdom offered resistance. The Germans intended to invade the United Kingdom, but they first had to contend with the British Royal Air Force. The German Luftwaffe (Air Force) commenced the Battle of Britain in 1940. However, the British used the new technology of radar (Radio Detection and Ranging) to combat the Germans. In September, 1940, the Germans ended the Battle of Britain by indefinitely delaying all plans for invasion. Nonetheless, German airplanes continued to bomb several British cities until the middle of the next year.

Invading the Balkans
Hitler expanded the Axis in the winter of 1940-1941 with the additions of Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. In April, 1941, Germany and Italy then attacked Yugoslavia, which surrendered within one week of invasion. Then Hitler and Mussolini turned to Greece, which collapsed by the end of April. By the end of 1942, most of Europe was under control of the Nazis or the Italians.

Lend-Lease Act
In early 1941, the United States abandoned its neutrality and began to aid the British. The Lend-Lease Act allowed the President to lend or lease weapons worth over seven billion dollars to other nations. The first two years of the war overseas saw the American public broadly divided on the issue of potential involvement. Though the danger posed by Germany and Japan was generally recognized, millions of Americans felt that a strong, armed neutrality and oceanic defense without entering the war was the safest course. In contrast, President Roosevelt made it quite clear to those around him that he felt the United States would have to intervene on the Allied side, and planned and acted accordingly, initiating a war industrial buildup and proposing that the US become the "Arsenal of Democracy," supplying ammunition to Great Britain and its Allies.

Growing Tensions

On June 22, 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. The Pact between the two nations was dissolved, and the latter joined the Western Allies. Americans were very reluctant to start any conflict with Germany. Even in the fall of 1941, when shooting took place in the Atlantic between German U-boats and US ships, Roosevelt avoided escalation. After this, however, momentous events in the Pacific plunged the Americans into the war.

The Great Depression had affected Japan as much as it had the Western powers. In 1931 a group of Japanese nationalists had assassinated the current Prime Minister of Japan, leading to a military dictatorship. In the same year Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria. Although the government talked of nurturing international friendship, this was a take-over of Chinese national resources. In 1940 the Japanese marched into Indochina (present-day Southeast Asia), which had formerly belonged to the Dutch and to Vichy France. They now commanded the plantations responsible for the world's supply of rubber. The United States retaliated by attempting to prevent Japanese purchases of oil and steel. Tensions between Japan and the United States grew.

A Date which will live in infamy
To secure resources and sea lanes for the Japanese islands, the Empire of Japan desired to neutralize the American Pacific Fleet, which was stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On December Seven, 1941, the Japanese Air Force bombed the large American naval base, destroying or severely damaging over nineteen ships and 292 aircraft. The US Naval aircraft carriers, huge ships serving as mobile bases for airplanes, were then at sea and survived the attack. Yet its results were still dire: 2,403 American soldiers, sailors, and civilians were killed in the unprovoked strike. Japan made simultaneous strikes on Guam, Midway, and British bases. The next day, the United States Congress declared war on Japan, prompting Germany and Italy to in turn declare war on the United States.

Japan continued with its Pacific operations by taking the American colonies of the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island; the British colonies of Burma, Singapore, Malaya, and Borneo; and the Dutch colonies in the East Indies.

Battle of Midway
An emboldened Japanese navy blundered in June of 1942, attacking Midway Island in the Pacific. After several days of aerial attacks on naval ships, American carrier-based planes defeated the Japanese ships so badly that their navy never recovered. Starving and weakened by disease, they held on for another month before surrendering.

The Home Front
With the mass media of motion pictures and the radio, the American government was able to motivate and move individuals and groups more efficiently than ever before. The government had begun to draft eligible young men in 1940, and the draft was ramped up after Pearl Harbor. There was scattered opposition to this overwhelmingly popular measure among religious pacifists and the Nation of Islam, and among the American Communists until Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Under the streamlined system put in process during 1942, males eighteen years of age and older registered with the government. If the individual's name was drawn during an intermittent lottery, he received a postcard telling him to report to his local draft board, organized by the national Subscription Service. (In addition, many men, and some women, signed up without receiving a notice.) At the draft board men walked through the rooms of various doctors, psychiatrists, and military and civil authorities. An applicant could be refused if he was ill, even with such minor ailments as nearsightedness or flat feet. He might also apply for an exemption if he was the head of a family or in a steel or arms factory. There were also exemptions for pacifism, though the man had to have a letter from his priest or minister saying that he had a religious basis for his pacifism. Quakers and Seventh Day Adventists were both denominations known for non-violence. Conscientious objectors could become medics or work in some other peaceful operation in support of the war. Men who had no letter, and who were unwilling to support the War in peaceful ways, were often put in prison and derided by the public. From the draft board men went straight into Basic Training, from there to become soldiers, sailors or Marines, or airplane pilots. Women could become nurses or join various auxiliary forces such as the Woman's Army Corps (WACs). These were not permitted to fight, but in their capacity as communication and supervisory aides were often on the battlefield.

With many men being shipped overseas to fight in the war, many employment opportunities opened up for women. Thousands of women began to support the war efforts by getting employed in many different factories producing tanks and planes and other sorts of weaponry. Some factories which had been devoted to peacetime production of cars and bicycles were converted to armament factories, and the nascent television stations were shut down. Sales of these items were halted "for the duration." The start of World War II brought the end of the Great Depression due to the supplies and men it takes to win a war.

Part of the war effort was the incorporation of American civilians into efforts showing that they could also make a difference. Victory Gardens were even more abundant than in World War I. These supplemented food and gasoline rations, initiated with the aim of getting supplies to the troops. Public work sites, and even some schools and Boy and Girl Scouts, vied to round up paper, scrap metal, and other supplies. These scrap drives brought in a limited amount of useful material, but helped involve some people who would have felt useless in the big war drive. Some public citizens who had not been permitted to join the military were delegated as air raid wardens, making sure that homes were darkened at night. (Especially during the first few years of the war, there was a real fear that some enemy Axis plane might bomb the American mainland.) Hollywood, still reeling from the Depression, brought itself back with instructional films for the troops and propaganda for moviegoers at home.

Japanese-Americans during WWII
In February 1942, the War Relocation Authority began to establish centers where Japanese-Americans, including those born in the United States and other citizens, were interned. Though this racial discrimination violated constitutional due process requirements, the Supreme Court ruled that such internment was lawful in 1944, when it decided Korematsu v. United States.

One potential factor in the decision to intern Japanese Americans was the results of the Niihau incident, where a few Japanese-Americans living on a Hawaiian island aided a downed Japanese pilot. Despite this, the vast majority of Japanese-American citizens, many of whom had never left America and grew up in America, were loyal to America. Additionally relatively few Japanese-Americans on Hawaii actually endured internment due to protests of local leaders on Hawaii that internment would cripple the economy of the islands.

Some Japanese Americans were allowed to leave the camps to study or work. The 442nd Infantry Regiment was composed almost entirely of second generation Japanese-Americans with family in the internment camps, yet they served with distinction in the European Theater, becoming one of the most decorated units in American history relative to it's size and service length. Their actions were responsible for saving the Lost Battalion, American troops trapped behind German lines.

Turning back the European Axis
During the summer and fall of 1941, the Germans kept up their amazing pace into the heart of Russia. By December they had reached Moscow, and Leningrad was under siege. The Soviets sent in reserve troops from Siberia, and launched a counter attack. It succeeded, and Moscow was saved.

In the spring of 1942, Hitler ordered an attack into the Caucus Mountains, and Stalingrad. As they had done before, the Germans quickly advanced, breaking through the Russian lines. In Stalingrad, there was street to street, and house to house fighting. The Germans controlled over 90% of the city, but the Russians refused to surrender. A Russian reserve division encircled the Germans into the city, and 250,000 German soldiers were captured. It was one of the bloodiest battles in history.

In 1943, the President of the United States for an unprecedented third term, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill held a Conference at Casablanca. The two nations then set up a plan of action for the next stages of the war. Meanwhile, the Russians continued to hold back the Germans, inflicting a crucial and massive defeat on Hitler's armies at the battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43. After a further major Russian victory at Kursk the following summer, the Germans were forced into retreat back towards Europe.

In Africa, Axis troops led by Erwin Rommel had pushed into Egypt, just 70 miles west of Alexandria. However, British troops led by General Montgomery decisively defeated the Italian and German troops at the Battle of El Alamein. They were pushed out of Egypt, all the way across Libya, and into Tunisia. In November 1942, the Americans launched operation Torch and drove the French troops out of Algeria and Morrocco. After a long battle with Axis troops in Tunisia, they were driven out of Africa in May 1943.

The Allies then decided to invade Sicily, in hope of knocking Italy out of the war. In early July the invasion began. For the next month, the British and Americans led a bloody campaign in which Sicily was finally taken in early August. During the invasion Mussolini was overthrown and arrested. Hitler had him rescued and put him in charge of the new Italian Social Republic. Following the Invasion of mainland Italy in early September, the Italian government signed an armistice with the Allies. The fall of Italy signaled the beginning of the end of World War II. However, Mussolini was rescued by the Germans and had established an Italian Social Republic. Near the end of the War, Germany tries to fight for a last stand with the Allies. It became to be Germany's only hope for turning the war around. The battle took place in a 60 mile deep 40 mile wide "Bulge". Therefore giving the name of the battle, battle of the Bulge. After weeks of fighting in the cold winters the Allied forces came out victorious. Months after this battle the Allied forces had the Germans pushed all the way back into Berlin.

Antisemitism and The Holocaust
The prejudice of racism in America -- though the term racist is a misnomer: we are all members of the human race -- was evident from the days of Christopher Columbus onward. Antisemitism was a powerful motivating force in American history. The limits on immigration set in the early 1920s was in part a reaction against [Jewish] immigrants from Eastern Europe. The prosecutors of "Red Summer" had a dread of Blacks, Jews, and atheists, and sometimes of a nightmare conglomeration of all three.

But some antisemitism was an alien import. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Russian: "Протоколы сионских мудрецов", or "Сионские протоколы", see also other titles) is an antisemitic and anti-Zionist plagiarism and literary hoax first published in 1903 in Russian, in Znamya; it alleges a Jewish and Masonic plot to achieve world domination. A translation, taken as the literal truth, was published and popularized by the American industrialist Henry Ford. In the 1930s, the American Bund attempted to increase Nazi German influence, and to amplify the antisemitic messages coming from Berlin.

President Roosevelt treated the topic with care. Ethnographers and other scientific experts were drafted into the War effort, emphasizing that Americans came from every ethnic background. Jews were in every branch of the service, and rabbis were among the chaplains brought to aid them. But what came to be known as The Final Solution -- Hitler's plan to eliminate what Mein Kampf had called "the Jewish Question" -- was unknown to the American public. American newspapers had printed accounts of German oppression of its Jewish citizens, from Kristallnacht in 1938 onward. They had occasionally mentioned persecution of its Gypsies, Slavs, and other "non-Aryans," and the dreadful punishments meted out to those who opposed the Nazi regime.

In January, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi Concentration Camps. On April Eleventh, 1945, Allies liberated the Death Camp at Buchenwald, near Weimar, Germany. On the 12th, several journalists arrived, including Edward R. Murrow, one of the most lauded journalists of the time. He sent out a broadcast for American audiences on the Fifteenth describing what he had seen and heard. "There surged around me an evil-smelling stink, men and boys reached out to touch me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms. Death already had marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes. I looked out over the mass of men to the green fields beyond, where well-fed Germans were ploughing..." On May third, Americans first saw newsreels of the camp. (Newsreels, film of weekly news reports shown in movie theaters, were major sources of information in the days before TV became popularized.) There they heard that the recent death rate had been about two hundred a day. They saw people in the last stages of malnutrition, disease, and "constant hard work, beatings, and torture." The camera also showed corpses of men stacked like cords of wood, and the crematoria where the dead had been burnt.

Now for the first time the majority of Americans could guess at the extent of The Holocaust, one of the most ghastly episodes in the modern history of mankind. In April of 1933, three months after Hitler took power, the Nazis issued a decree ordering the compulsory retirement of "non-Aryans" from the civil service. This is known as the spark of the Holocaust. Before Germany was defeated, there were some eleven million people that had been slaughtered in the name of Nazi racial purity. Although the Jews were the favored targets and are the victims we most hear about when talking about the Holocaust, they were not the only victims. There were also millions of Russians, Poles, gypsies and others that were also murdered. Although the deprivation of the Jews started in the years following 1933, the mass killings didn't begin until 1941.

The effect of this knowledge was augmented by the Nuremburg trials of 1945-1946. There many German officials, and some Concentration Camp governors, were put to trial for committing these murders, called crimes against humanity. American antisemitism has continued since that time, but it is at least officially frowned upon. The American eugenics movement also suffered a setback from which it has not yet recovered.

Operation Overlord
In November, 1943, Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt held another Conference at Tehran. Joseph Stalin, who held the title of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, but was actually a Dictator of the Soviet Union, joined them there. The three leaders agreed to a plan codenamed Operation Overlord, under which an attack would be launched on the northern coast of France from the English Channel. In preparation for an invasion of France, Hitler cut off all support for the German armies remaining in the Soviet Union. Thus disabled, the German Army was forced to withdraw from Russia in the winter of 1943-1944.

On June 6, 1944 ("D-Day,") in the early morning hours, American and British paratroopers were dropped into Normandy. Hours later, American, British, French and Canadian soldiers landed at Normandy on the north coast of France. The troops landed near Caen, but Hitler wrongly felt that they would attack at a location to the north of that city. The Allies took advantage of Hitler's miscalculation; by the end of the month, the Allies had over eight hundred thousand soldiers in Normandy.

Meanwhile, Russian troops, which had been on the defensive, began their offensive on German-controlled territories. In the middle of July, the Soviets won their first major victory by taking the territory of Belorussia. At this time, concern began to grow in the West about Soviet domination replacing German in eastern Europe, especially in Poland. Despite these worries, Roosevelt felt that he had little influence in that area over Stalin, whose armies were bearing a huge brunt of the fight.

By the end of July, the Allies expanded their base at Normandy by breaking out into the rest of France. Pushing through the nation, the Allies had gone far enough to liberate the city of Paris on August 25. On September 11, some Allied troops entered Germany, taking Antwerp, Belgium on the way. German resistance then hardened, however. British Field Marshall Montgomery attempt to "end the war by '44" with Operation Market Garden, a plan to liberate Holland and bypass the German border defenses, failed. The British and American armies would make little more progress for the rest of 1944.

Meanwhile, Russian troops pushed toward Germany, defeating Germany's Axis partners on the way. In August, Romania surrendered, followed by Bulgaria and Finland in September.

German Counteroffensive
Allied air bombing of German industries and cities had been ongoing and savage since 1943, but did not have the intended effect of crushing the German will to fight. Indeed, Hitler was able to field new advanced weapons in 1943-45, such as the world's first jet fighter aircraft, the V-1 flying bomb, the V-2 ballistic missile, and new types of tanks and submarines. The new weapons, however, proved of little use against Allied numbers and economic superiority, with American industrial production for the war effort massive and untouched by Axis attack. Germany forced millions of prisoners into slave labor, under the most brutal conditions, to keep its own war effort going.

In December 1944, Germany launched a massive counter-attack on the light defended American positions in Belgium. The Germans hoped to cut off the Allied supply lines, however, after reinforcements arrived, the "Bulge"(today it is know as the Battle of the Bulge) was flattened out. Meanwhile, the Soviets were on the verge of entering Germany from the east en masse, having taken control of Poland. Hitler's troops were exhausted, millions dead or captured, and with the fall of the Romanian oil fields, German armies were running out of gasoline. A final call-up began of old men and boys for a last-ditch defense of Germany. Many German civilians fled, fearing the revenge the Russians would put on them after what the Germans had done in Russia. Thousands of German noncombatants were raped, and many of these were then killed.

The Yalta Conference

In early February 1945, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the three leaders of the anti-Nazi alliance, met at Yalta in the U.S.S.R. The leaders of the Allied powers, "The Big Three," were planning for the end of the war. This was a follow-up to the meeting of the three powers in November 1943 in the Tehran Conference.

At Yalta the countries contended on what to do with Germany. Churchill and Britain wanted to protect their colonial possessions and to keep the Soviet Union from having too much power. Stalin and the Soviet Union wanted Germany to pay them to help start the rebuilding of their country. Stalingrad, a byword for Soviet military resistance of Hitler, was now in ruins. Two wars of German aggression had been too much, and the country needed to be permanently restrained. The United States wanted to influence Germany toward democracy and to keep the peace. The Yalta conference decided the division of defeated Germany into zones for reconstruction. The leaders agreed to punish Nazis for war crimes, including the Holocaust. Other topics included Soviet Russia's entry into the war against Japan, composition of the post-war government of Germany, voting arrangements in the new United Nations organizations, and the future of the liberated governments of Eastern Europe. The Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe, which called for free elections and constitutional liberties in Eastern Europe, was the most controversial topic of the Yalta Conference.

Race to Berlin
The Allies first attempted to reach the Rhine River in their quest to take over Germany. In March, this goal accomplished, the Americans and British opposed the Soviets in the Race for Berlin. The Race determined who would control Berlin, a city that would prove important in the reconstruction of Germany. The Americans allowed the Soviets to win the Race for Berlin. Fierce fighting erupted in and around the city as motley German units made their last stand against the powerful army groups of Russian marshals Zhukov and Koniev. His capital surrounded and his loyal minions deserting him, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin command bunker on April 30, 1945. Benito Mussolini was executed by Italian Partisans on April 28. The new leader of Germany, Karl Doenitz, agreed to surrender. On May 8, Germany formally signed an unconditional surrender, dissolving the Axis and leaving only Japan to be defeated.

The End of the FDR Era
The public was never informed of the extent of President Roosevelt's paralysis. Though he admitted that he had suffered polio, no newsreels showed him pulling himself along with his crutches. At press conferences the photographers were led in when he was already in a chair or in his car seat. Compensation for the leg disability, and the physical activity the Roosevelts were known for, had made his upper arms strong and muscular. However, his physical strain combined with the burden of the Presidency to weary him. Speaking to Congress in the wake of Yalta, he made a rare admission of how much this affected him: "I hope that you will pardon me for this unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say, but . . . it makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs; and also . . . I have just completed a fourteen-thousand-mile trip."

Roosevelt was ill, and had been frail even before his re-election in 1944. The Republican party had objected to the President even running for a fourth term. The Republican Candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, accused him of running a corrupt autocracy and of feigning good health. In response to accusations of corruption, Roosevelt dropped former Vice President Henry A. Wallace and picked up newcomer Harry S. Truman, who had risen in a War anti-fraud committee in the Senate. He also campaigned vigorously in the cities, which may have hastened his death.

Roosevelt died of a stroke on April 12th, 1945. After FDR's death Harry Truman became president. The day after Roosevelt's death Truman sought out old friends to ask for their help in this "terrible job."

Island Hopping & Kamikaze
After the Battle of Midway the United States surely retook the Asian Pacific nations, fighting the Japanese empire island by island, by gun, by shell, and by flame thrower. Though the Japanese continued to fight, its armed forces were in a hopeless situation. Its armaments became fewer. Kamikaze (the Japanese word for "Sacred Wind"), pilots who hoped to destroy American ships by intentionally crashing their own planes into them, became more dominant in Japanese opposition.

The Manhattan Project
The United States had become involved in a competition with Nazi Germany to find technologies which would win the war. Among these technologies was nuclear fission, the splitting of a highly electronegative atom into smaller ones, which gives off ten times as much power. With cooperative or captive scientists and slave labor, the Nazis were attempting to use uranium to create an atomic bomb. During the same time, America had become the home for dissident German and Jewish scientists. Native-born and newly-emigrated American physicists were also talking about the possibilities of fission. One of the latter, Albert Einstein, sent a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 explaining the developments in the nuclear chain reactions which would result in an atomic explosion.

In 1942, a number of the top minds in physics were relocated to a secret location in New Mexico. These men volunteered to work at what was code-named the Manhattan Project, a secret attempt to bring to fruition what Einstein had posited in 1939. At its height the Manhattan Project employed more than 600,000 workers, the majority of them not realizing what they were really working for. After spending more than two billion dollars, the Project created the first atomic bomb. On July 16, 1945, this bomb was successfully tested in New Mexico.

In the interim, Germany had been defeated. President Roosevelt had died, and had been replaced in office by his Vice President, Harry S. Truman. President Truman listened to experts who forecast two more years of war against Japan, and the prospect of a bloody American invasion. Truman chose to use the atomic bomb instead of an invasion.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On August sixth, an A-bomb with the name Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, by a B-29 aircraft piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets. The explosion formed a mushroom cloud. Dust and debris shot into the sky and was seen miles away. Many people died instantly, but others fell sick a few days later from effects on the radiation on living tissue. The American press was told about the detonation of the bomb on a population of civilians, but not about its full effects. The Japanese government did not give in. On August ninth a bomb called Fat Man was dropped on the weapon-producing city of Nagasaki, again upon civilians. Together, the bombs killed over one hundred thousand people. Between the two bombings, meanwhile, the Soviet Union had joined in the war on Japan. The Americans threatened a third bombing on Tokyo, though they had not yet had time to create a new bomb. Now Japan unconditionally surrendered, officially ending World War II. Officials signed a treaty for surrender on September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri.

Death Toll
The death toll of the Second World War was greater than that of the First. At least sixty-one million people died from the Allied nations of the Soviet Union; the United States and its colonies; Great Britain, its colonies and Canada; France and its colonies; the Netherlands and its colonies; Belgium and its colonies; and Poland, Norway, and Greece. In contrast, the main Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan only suffered twelve million casualties.


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US History/Eisenhower Civil Rights Fifties

Civil Rights Movement under Eisenhower and Desegregation
The first events that would spark off the entire Civil Rights movement happened during the Eisenhower administration. In the south, there were many statewide laws that segregated many public facilities ranging from buses to water fountains. Southern African Americans now felt that their time had come to enjoy American democracy and they fought hard to end southern segregation policies.

Brown v. Board of Education
In 1952, seven year old Linda Brown, of Topeka, Kansas, wasn't permitted to attend a white-only elementary school that was only a few blocks from her house. In order to attend her coloreds-only school, Brown had to cross dangerous railroad tracks and take a bus for many miles. Her family sued the Topeka school board and lost, but appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas came to the Supreme Court in December 1952. In his arguments, head lawyer for the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, challenged the "Separate But Equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. He argued that schools could be separate, but never equal. On May 17, 1954, the Court gave its opinion. It ruled that it was unconstitutional to segregate schools, and ordered that schools integrate "with all deliberate speed."

Central High Confrontation
Integration would not be easy. Many school districts accepted the order without argument, but some, like the district of Little Rock, Arkansas, did not. On September 2, 1957, the day before the start of the school term the Arkansas Governor, Orval Faubus, instructed the National Guard to stop any black students entering the school. He claimed this was to protect the property against violence planned by integration protesters.

The federal authorities intervened and an injunction was granted preventing the National Guard from blocking the school and they were withdrawn on September 20. School restarted on 23 September, with the building surrounded by local police officers and nearly one thousand protesters. The police escorted nine black students, later known as the Little Rock Nine, into the school via a side door. When the crowd discovered the students had entered the building, they tried to storm the school and the black students were hurried out around lunch time.

Congressman Brooks Hays and the Little Rock mayor, Woodrow Mann, asked the federal government for more help. On September 24, Mann sent a message to President Eisenhower requesting troops. Eisenhower responded immediately and the 101st Airborne Division was sent to Arkansas. In addition, the President brought the Arkansas National Guard under federal control to prevent its further use by the Governor.

On September 25, 1957, the nine black students finally began their education properly, protected by 1,000 paratroopers.

Montgomery Bus Boycott
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama, the chapter of the NAACP, boarded a city bus with the intention of going home. She sat in the first row of seats in the "colored" section of the segregated bus. At the next stop, whites were among the passengers waiting to board but all seats in the "white" front dividing the black and white sections to accommodate the racial makeup of the passengers at any given moment. So he ordered the four blacks sitting in the first row of seats in the "colored" section to stand and move to the rear of the bus so the waiting whites could have those seats. Three of the passengers complied; Mrs. Parks did not. Warned again by the driver, she still refused to move, at which point the driver exited the bus and located a policeman, who came onto the bus, arrested Mrs. Parks, and took her to the city jail. She was booked for violating the segregation ordinance and was shortly released on bail posted by E. D. Nixon, the leading local civil rights activist. She was scheduled to appear in municipal court on December 5, 1955.

Mistreatment of African Americans on Montgomery's segregated buses was not uncommon, and several other women had been arrested in similar situations in the months preceding Parks's. However, Mrs. Parks was especially well-known and well-respected within the black community, and her arrest particularly angered the African Americans of Montgomery. In protest, community leaders quickly organized a one-day boycott of the buses to coincide with her December 5 court date. An organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association, was also created, and the new minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the 26-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr., was selected as the MIA's president. Word of the boycott spread effectively through the city over the weekend of December 3–4, aided by mimeographed fliers prepared the Women's Political Council, by announcements in black churches that Sunday morning, and by an article in the local newspaper about the pending boycott, which had been "leaked" to a reporter by E. D. Nixon.

On the morning of Mrs. Parks's trial, King, Nixon, and other leaders were pleasantly surprised to see that the boycott was almost 100 percent effective among blacks. And since African Americans made up 75% of Montgomery's bus riders, the impact was significant. In city court, Mrs. Parks was convicted and was fined $10. Her attorney, the 24-year-old Fred D. Gray, announced an appeal. That night, more than 5,000 blacks crowded into and around the Holt Street Baptist Church for a "mass meeting" to discuss the situation. For most in the church (and listening outside over loudspeakers), it was their first time to hear the oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr. He asked the crowd if they wanted to continue the boycott indefinitely, and the answer was a resounding yes. For the next 381 days, African Americans boycotted the buses, while the loss of their fares drove the Chicago-owned bus company into deeper and deeper losses. However, segregationist city officials prohibited the bus company from altering its seating policies, and negotiations between black leaders and city officials went nowhere.

With bikes, carpools, and hitchhiking, African Americans were able to minimize the impact of the boycott on their daily lives. Meanwhile, whites in Montgomery responded with continued intransigence and rising anger. Several black churches and the homes of local leaders and ministers, including those of Nixon and King, were bombed, and there were numerous assaults by white thugs on African Americans. Some 88 local black leaders were also arrested for violating an old anti-boycott law.

Faced with the lack of success of negotiations, attorney Gray soon filed a separate lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the segregated seating laws. The case was assigned to and testimony was heard by a three-judge panel, and the young Frank M. Johnson, Jr., newly appointed to the federal bench by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was given the responsibility for writing the opinion in the case. Johnson essentially ruled that in light of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, there was no way to justify legally the segregation policies, and the district court ruling overturned the local segregation ordinance under which Mrs. Parks and others had been arrested. The city appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the lower court ruling, and in December 1956, city officials had no choice but to comply. The year-long boycott thus came to an end.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott made Mrs. Parks famous and it launched the civil rights careers of King and his friend and fellow local minister, Ralph Abernathy. The successful boycott is regarded by many historians as the effective beginning of the twentieth-century civil rights movement in the U.S.

Foreign Policy
In addition to his desire to halt the advance of “creeping socialism” in U.S. domestic policy, Eisenhower also wanted to “roll back” the advances of Communism abroad. After taking office in 1953, he devised a new foreign policy tactic to contain the Soviet Union and even win back territory that had already been lost. Devised primarily by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, this so-called New Look at foreign policy proposed the use of nuclear weapons and new technology rather than ground troops and conventional bombs, all in an effort to threaten “massive retaliation” against the USSR for Communist advances abroad.

In addition to intimidating the Soviet Union, this emphasis on new and cheaper weapons would also drastically reduce military spending, which had escalated rapidly during the Truman years. As a result, Eisenhower managed to stabilize defense spending, keeping it at roughly half the congressional budget during most of his eight years in office.

The doctrine of massive retaliation proved to be dangerously flawed, however, because it effectively left Eisenhower without any options other than nuclear war to combat Soviet aggression. This dilemma surfaced in 1956, for instance, when the Soviet Union brutally crushed a popular democratic uprising in Hungary. Despite Hungary’s request for American recognition and military assistance, Eisenhower’s hands were tied because he knew that the USSR would stop at nothing to maintain control of Eastern Europe. He could not risk turning the Cold War into a nuclear war over the interests of a small nation such as Hungary.

The Warsaw Pact and NATO
1955 saw the division of Europe into two rival camps. The westernized countries of the free world had signed NATO 1949 and the eastern European countries signed the Warsaw pact.

NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created as a response to the crisis in Berlin. The United States, Britain, Canada, France, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and the Netherlands founded NATO in April 1949, and Greece, Turkey and West Germany had joined by 1955. The countries agreed that "an armed attack against one or more of [the member states] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all," and was created so that if the Soviet Union eventually did invade Europe, the invaded countries would have the most powerful army in the world (the United States' Army) come to their defense. When the Korean War broke out, NATO drastically raised its threat level because of the idea that all the communist countries were working together. As the number of communist countries grew and grew, so did the NATO forces. Greece and Turkey eventually joined NATO in 1952. The USSR eventually decided to join NATO so that there would be peace, but NATO declined them because they thought that the USSR would try to weaken them from the inside.

The Warsaw Pact
The Soviet Union responded in to the addition of West Germany to NATO 1955 with its own set of treaties, which were collectively known as the Warsaw Pact. Warsaw Pact was also known as “The Treaty of Friendship”. The Warsaw Pact allowed East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria to function in the same way as the NATO countries did. The Soviet Union used this Warsaw Pact to combine the military forces unified under it. The Pact was supposed to make all the countries in it, equal. However, the Soviet Union took a little advantage of this by using the allied countries military wherever they wanted. Unlike NATO, Warsaw forces were used occasionally.

CIA
As an alternative, Eisenhower employed the CIA to tackle the specter of Communism in developing countries outside the Soviet Union’s immediate sphere of influence. Newly appointed CIA director Allen Dulles (the secretary of state’s brother) took enormous liberties in conducting a variety of covert operations. Thousands of CIA operatives were assigned to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and attempted to launch coups, assassinate heads of state, arm anti-Communist revolutionaries, spread propaganda, and support despotic pro-American regimes. Eisenhower began to favor using the CIA instead of the military because covert operations didn’t attract as much attention and cost much less money.

A CIA-sponsored coup in Iran in 1953, however, did attract attention and heavy criticism from liberals both at home and in the international community. Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers authorized the coup in Iran when the Iranian government seized control of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Afraid that the popular, nationalist, Soviet-friendly prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, would then cut off oil exports to the United States, CIA operatives convinced military leaders to overthrow Mossadegh and restore Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi as head of state in 1953. Pahlavi returned control of Anglo-Iranian Oil to the British and then signed agreements to supply the United States with almost half of all the oil drilled in Iran.

The following year, a similar coup in Guatemala over agricultural land rights also drew international criticism and severely damaged U.S.–Latin American relations.

Vietnam

"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

In 1945 many colonies, including French Indochina, hoped for independence following the War. When Japan surrendered to the allies a Vietnamese man, Ho Chi Minh, declared independence for Vietnam in Hanoi, quoting America's own Declaration of Independence in the very first lines of his speech in hopes of gaining American support for a Vietnam free from French rule. However, with containing communism in Europe being seen as a more important issue, America took a stance of neutrality from 1946 to 1950.

In the early 50's, Vietnam was rebelling against French rule. America saw Vietnam as a potential source of trouble, as rebels (known as the Việt Minh) led by Communist leader Ho Chi Minh were gaining strength. America loaned France billions of dollars to aid in the war against the Vietnamese rebels, but despite the aid, France found itself on the verge of defeat, and appealed to America for troops, but America refused, fearing entanglement in another costly Korean War, or even a war with all of communist Asia.

France surrendered, and the VietMinh and France met in Geneva, Switzerland to negotiate a treaty. Vietnam was divided into two countries: the Vietminh in control of the North and the French-friendly Vietnamese in control of the South. In 1956, the two countries would be reunited with free elections.

Eisenhower worried about South Vietnam. He believed that if it also fell to the Communists, many other Southeast Asian countries would follow, in what he called the domino theory. He aided the Southern government and set up the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in 1954. The nations included in the alliance were America, Great Britain, France, Australia, Pakistan, the Philippines, New Zealand and Thailand, and they all pledged to fight against "Communist aggressors".

Cuban Revolution
In 1958 and 1959, anti-American feeling became a part of the growing Cuban revolution. In January 1959, the dictator of Cuba, Fulgenicio Batista, was overthrown by the rebel leader Fidel Castro, who promptly became the leader of Cuba.

At first, America supported Castro because of his promises of democratic and economic reforms. But relations between the two countries became strained when Cuba began seizing foreign-owned land (which was mostly U.S. owned) as a part of its reforms. Soon, Castro's government was a dictatorship, and was being backed by the Soviet Union. In 1961, Eisenhower cut diplomatic ties with Cuba, and relations with the island nation have been difficult ever since.

Suez Canal
Back in 1948, Israel was created as a sanctuary of sorts for the displaced Jews of the Holocaust. At the same time, many Arabs living in the area were displaced. Tensions had been high in the Middle East ever since Israel had been attacked just after its founding. The stage was set for superpower involvement in 1956; the United States backed Israel, the Soviet Union backed the Arabs, and the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized, or brought under Egypt's control, the Suez Canal, which had previously belonged to Britain.

France and Britain worried that Egypt would decide cut off oil shipments between the oil-rich Middle East and western Europe, so that October they invaded Egypt, hoping to overthrow Nasser and seize the canal. Israel, upset by earlier attacks by Arab states, agreed to help in the invasion.

U.S. and Soviet reactions to the invasions were almost immediate. The Soviets threatened to launch rocket attacks on British and French cities, and the United States sponsored a United Nations resolution for British and French withdrawal. Facing pressures from the two powers, the three invaders pulled out of Egypt. To ensure stability in the area, United Nations troops were sent to patrol the Egypt-Israel border.

Space Race
The Space Race has its origins in an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in September 1949, the fear of nuclear war began to spread. The ensuing arms race led to the creation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), long-range rockets designed to deliver nuclear warheads from land- or submarine-based launch sites. The first successful ICBM test flight was on August 21, 1957, when the USSR launched an ICBM with a dummy payload over 4,000 miles to an isolated peninsula on Russia’s east coast that had been declared a military zone (Kamchatka Peninsula, which remained closed to civilians from 1945–1989).

On October 4, 1957, the Soviets successfully put the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. Americans were horrified. They feared that the Soviets were using the satellite to spy on Americans, or even worse, that the Soviet Union might attack America with nuclear weapons from space. America responded with the launch of its own satellite, Vanguard. Hundreds of spectators gathered, only to watch the satellite rise only a few feet off the launch pad, and then explode.

The failure spurred the government to create a space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA succeeded in launching the Explorer in 1958, and thus, the Space Race was initiated. With the creation of Project Mercury, a program to put an astronaut in space, America was pulling ahead. Nonetheless, the USSR was the first to put a man in space, when Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit in 1961. For the next 14 years, the U.S and the Soviet Union would continue to compete in space.

Many Americans were frightened during the start of the space race because this gave the Soviet Union a better ability to launch a surprise attack on the states. The United States of course immediately jumped on the bandwagon and did its best to become the first country to land on the moon.

Domestic Policies

Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as states during the Eisenhower administration.

Eisenhower established the Interstate Highway System in 1956 to bolster the economy, and to facilitate rapid mobilization of defense forces in the event of an emergency.

At the end of his administration, Eisenhower warned of the dangers of a Military Industrial Complex, fearing undemocratic influence from a rapidly growing defense sector.

Everyday life in the 1950's
With the rise of television ownership came the rise of television shows. Emerging genres like Sitcoms (Situational comodies), talk shows, and game shows enjoyed widespread popularity. Easy to cook, ready made meals called TV dinners were introduced during this time

The construction of the interstate system firmly established a car culture in America. Fast Food had existed prior to the 1950's, but the 1950's were when it really became a phenomenon, when franchising locations of popular restaurants became common, eventually leading to the formation of chains with uniform quality and items nationwide.

In the 1950's Pizza became an common staple outside of the Italian-American community, spurred by American troops returning from Italy, references to pizza in popular culture, and the establishment of chain pizza restaurants.

Rise of the Middle Class
In the late 1940s and 1950’s led to a rise of the middle class in the United States. With troops coming home from the war soldiers were quick to start families. The GI bill allowed for upward mobility for veterans. With free college and over four billion dollars given to trips the economy continued to succeed. With war savings and a host of new consumer goods on the market, America quickly turned into a consumer market. The best example of this would be automobiles and the television. In 1955, $65 billion was spent on automobiles. This represented 20% of the Gross National Product. In 1950 50% of American homes had a television. By 1960 this number was raised to 90%.

Rock and Roll
The term “rock and roll” was originally a nautical phrase referring to the motion of a ship at sea. In the early 20th century, it gained a religious connotation (referring to the sense of rapture felt by worshippers) and was used in spirituals. After this, “rocking and rolling” increasingly became used as a metaphor for sex in blues and jazz songs.

The origins of rock and roll lie primarily in electric blues from Chicago in the late 1940s, which was distinguished by amplification of the guitar, bass, and drums. Electric blues was played by artists like Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Buddy Guy, who were recorded by Leonard and Phil Chess at Chess Records in Chicago. They inspired electric blues artists in Memphis like Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King, who were recorded by a Memphis-based record producer named Sam Phillips, also the owner of Sun Records. He later discovered Elvis Presley in 1954, and he also recorded early songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Carl Perkins.

Rhythm and blues artists such as Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Ray Charles incorporated electric blues as well as gospel music. In the early 50s, R&B was more commonly known by the blanket term “race music”, which was also used to describe other African-American music of the era such as jazz and blues. Billboard didn’t replace the “race records” category with “rhythm and blues” until 1958. Doo-wop was a mainstream style of R&B, with arrangements favoring vocal harmonies. Other types of music that contributed to early rock and roll include African-American spirituals, also known as gospel music, and country/folk, which was primarily made by poor whites in the South.

Arguably, the first rock and roll song ever made is “Rocket 88”, recorded at Sam Phillip’s studio in Memphis in March 1951. It was credited to “Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats,” a band that didn’t actually exist—the song was put together by Ike Turner and his band, the Kings of Rhythm. Jackie Brenston was the vocalist on the song, who also played saxophone in the band. What really sets “Rocket 88” apart is the distorted guitar sound: it was one of the first examples of fuzz guitar ever recorded. The amplifier they used to record the song was damaged on the way from Mississippi to Memphis. They tried to hold the cone in place by stuffing the amplifier with newspaper, which created the distortion. Sam Phillips liked the sound and decided to keep it in the song. Although “Rocket 88” was recorded by Sam Phillips, it wasn’t released by Sun Records, which didn’t exist until 1952. From 1950-1952, Phillips ran the Memphis Recording Service, where he would let amateurs perform and then sell the recordings to large record labels. He sold “Rocket 88” to Chess Records, which released predominately blues, gospel, and R&B. The Chess brothers started Checker Records in 1952, because radio stations would only play a certain number of tracks from each label.

Alan Freed (also known as “Moondog”) was a radio DJ who started playing R&B records on WJW in Cleveland in 1951. He is credited with introducing rock and roll to a wide audience for the first time, as well as being the first to use the phrase “rock and roll” as the name of the genre. He also promoted and helped organize the first major rock and roll concert, The Moondog Coronation Ball, which occurred on March 21, 1952. The concert was so successful that it became massively overcrowded – there was a near-riot and it had to be shut down early. Freed’s popularity soared, and he was immediately given more airtime by the radio station. His promotion of rock ‘n’ roll is one of the main reasons it became successful, and in recognition of his contributions to the genre, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was built in Cleveland.

“Payola” refers to the practice of record company promoters paying radio DJs to play their recordings in order to boost their sales. Payola had been commonplace since the Vaudeville era in the 1920s, but it became a scandal in the 1950s due to a conflict between the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and radio stations. Prior to 1940, ASCAP had made huge amounts of money from the sales of sheet music, but when radio started gaining popularity, recorded music became more profitable than sheet music. ASCAP demanded large royalty payments from radio stations that played their recordings. Instead, stations boycotted ASCAP recordings and created their own publishing company called Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI). ASCAP tended to ignore music composed by black musicians or “hillbillies”, which gave BMI control of these areas. When rock ‘n’ roll became more and more popular, BMI became more and more successful. ASCAP (in addition to many others) believed that rock ‘n’ roll was the music of the devil, that it was brainwashing teenagers, and that it would never have been successful without payola. This was just after the quiz show scandal (when it was found that certain shows were rigged), and ASCAP urged the House Legislative Committee which had investigated that scandal to look into payola. The hearings that followed destroyed Alan Freed’s career, although it didn’t eliminate rock ‘n’ roll altogether as ASCAP had hoped.

Several factors contributed to the decline of early rock and roll. Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis were both prosecuted in scandals involving young women. Elvis Presley was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1958, and after training at Fort Hood, he joined the 3rd Armored Division in Germany, where he would remain until 1960. Three rock and roll musicians –- Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” –- died in a plane crash on February 3, 1959 (“The Day the Music Died”). Little Richard retired from secular music after a religious experience. He ran a ministry in Los Angeles, preached across the country, and recorded gospel music exclusively until 1962.

Rock and roll music is associated with the emergence of a teen subculture among baby boomers. Teenagers bought records and were exposed to rock and roll via radio, jukeboxes, and television shows like American Bandstand, which featured teenagers dancing to popular music. It also affected movies, fashion trends, and language. The combination of white and black music in rock and roll –- at a time when racial tensions were high and the civil rights movement was in full-swing –- provoked strong reactions among the older generation, many of whom worried that rock and roll would contribute to social delinquency among teenagers. However, it actually encouraged racial cooperation and understanding to some extent—rock and roll was a combination of diverse styles of music made by different races, and it was enjoyed by both African-American and Caucasian teens.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Geometry/Topology

A topological space is a set X, and a collection of subsets of X, C such that both the empty set and X are contained in C and the union of any subcollection of sets in C and the intersection of any finite subcollection of sets in C are also contained within C. The sets in C are called open sets. Their complements relative to X are called closed sets.

Given two topological spaces, X and Y, a map f from X to Y is continuous if for every open set U of Y, f−1(U) is an open set of X.

title: Geometry/Topology


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Linear Algebra/Vectors

Vectors are commonly used in physics and other fields to express quantities that cannot be accurately described by a scalar. Scalars are simply the value of something in a single dimension - a real number. For example, one might say that they have driven 5 kilometers, that an hour has elapsed, or that something's mass is 20 kilograms. In every one of these cases, there has been exactly one value stated.

However, we might have more information we wish to give. Take the example of driving 5 kilometers. In this case, it may be useful to know how far you drove, but it might also be equally important which direction you drove, such as 5 kilometers due east. Now, given your starting point, exactly where you drove can be determined.

Definitions
Vectors can be described mathematically by using trigonometry. We can define a vector to be an ordered pair consisting of a magnitude and a direction. In this diagram, r is the magnitude of this vector and θ is the direction. Notice, now, that we have moved horizontally r cos(θ) and vertically r sin(θ). These are called the x-component and the y-component, respectively.

We can also write a vector conveniently in terms of the x and y component. We write $$\begin{pmatrix} x \\ y\end{pmatrix}$$ for vectors. In some texts, you may see the vector written sideways, like (x, y), but when you write it will help greatly to write them downwards in columns. In print we commonly use bold vectors, but since you probably don't have a pen that writes in bold print, underline your vectors, i.e. write v, or put a tilde underneath your vectors. Occasionally in Physics, you may see vectors written with an arrow pointing right.

Notice that vectors need not have two components. We can have 2 or 3 or n or an infinite number of components.

We write the set of all vectors with 2 real number components as R2; likewise for 3, n, or infinite number of components. For components with complex numbers, we write C. Polynomials are "vectors" too - we'll look at notation for the set of polynomials later. For a reason why we do this, see Set theory for an explanation.

Stretching and shrinking
We can define some actions on vectors. What will happen if we extend the vector? Or what will happen if we shrink the vector? The vector's direction doesn't change, only its length -- its magnitude. The action we perform to stretch or shrink a vector is that we multiply its magnitude by some amount. We refer to doing this as scalar multiplication: we multiply the vector by a scalar real number.

Scalar multiplication
For scalar multiplication, we simply multiply each component by the scalar. We commonly use Greek letters for scalars, and English letters for vectors.

So for a scalar value of λ and a vector v defined by r and θ, the new vector is now λr and θ. Notice how the direction does not change.

Example
Say we have $$\begin{pmatrix} 2 \\ 3 \end{pmatrix}$$ and we wish to double the magnitude. So, $$2 \begin{pmatrix} 2 \\ 3 \end{pmatrix} = \begin{pmatrix} 4 \\ 6 \end{pmatrix}$$.

Addition of vectors
Simply, to add two vectors, you must add the respective x-components together to obtain the new x-component, and likewise add the two y-components together to obtain the new y-component.

Example
Say we have $$\mathbf{v_1}=\begin{pmatrix} 2 \\ 3 \end{pmatrix}, \mathbf{v_2}=\begin{pmatrix} 4 \\ 6 \end{pmatrix}$$ and we wish to add these. So, $$\mathbf{v_1}+\mathbf{v_2}=\begin{pmatrix} 6 \\ 9 \end{pmatrix}$$.

Subtraction of vectors
The operation of subtraction on two vectors, a and b, a-b, can also be written as a+(-1)b. Therefore, we can use scalar multiplication to find the value of (-1)b, then use vector addition to find our solution.

Complex numbers as vectors
^ ../Complex numbers/ can be represented in the form $$r(cos(\theta) + isin(\theta))$$ or equivalently $$re^{i\theta}$$, or in other words, a vector with magnitude $$r$$ and direction $$\theta$$. On the complex plane, this vector has a real x-component and an imaginary y-component. See ../Complex numbers/ for more information.

Lines and planes
We can form the equations of lines and planes using vectors. Let's see how we can do this.

Vector equation of the line
Consider a vector $$\mathbf{v}=\begin{pmatrix} 1 \\ 2 \end{pmatrix}$$. Let's consider the following:
 * $$2\mathbf{v}=\begin{pmatrix} 2 \\ 4 \end{pmatrix}$$
 * $$-\mathbf{v}=\begin{pmatrix} -1 \\ -2 \end{pmatrix}$$
 * $$3\mathbf{v}=\begin{pmatrix} 3 \\ 6 \end{pmatrix}$$

If we have the equation λv, it is clear that for each choice of λ we choose, we get a different point on the line y=2x.

We can now generalize this idea into the vector equation of the line (and it is not restricted to 2 dimensions either).

The vector equation of a line is given by
 * x=λv (for a scalar λ)

where v is a vector parallel (which then, could lie) on the line. λ then, is the unknown in the equation. x is then the dependent vector variable.

Vector equation of the plane
Now consider a plane. If we have two nonparallel vectors lying on the plane and we add them, we can add a linear combination (that is, add the two vectors, which are multiplied only by scalars) to choose some other vector. The set of all vectors under linear combinations of these two vectors form a plane.

More simply, if we have two nonparallel vectors a and b we can form any other vector parallel to a and b by:
 * λ1a+λ2b=x

where λ1 and λ2 are both scalars.

Further algebra and geometry of vectors
There are other operations on vectors which we can perform. These operations we will consider have very real and significant geometric meanings.

Magnitude
The magnitude of a vector is its length in R+

The dot product
The dot product of two vectors is defined as the sum of the products of the components. Symbolically we write
 * $$\begin{pmatrix} a_1 \\ a_2 \\ \vdots \\ a_n \end{pmatrix}\cdot\begin{pmatrix}b_1 \\ b_2 \\ \vdots \\b_n \end{pmatrix} = a_1b_1 + a_2b_2 + \ldots + a_nb_n$$

For example,
 * $$\begin{pmatrix} 3 \\ 5 \end{pmatrix}\cdot\begin{pmatrix} 1 \\ -2 \end{pmatrix}=3-10=-7$$

Properties of the dot product
If we have a and b as vectors,
 * a · b = b · a
 * c(a · b) = ca·b = a·cb

where c is a scalar.

Geometry of the dot product
The dot product of two vectors has an alternate form:
 * $$ \mathbf{a}\cdot\mathbf{b}=|\mathbf{a}||\mathbf{b}|\cos{\theta}$$

If we pick a vector c=a-b to form a triangle, we can show that these two forms are indeed equivalent by trigonometry.

The angle θ then is important, as it shows that the dot product of two vectors is related to the angle between them. More specifically, we can calculate the dot product of two vectors - if the dot product is zero we can then say that the two vectors are perpendicular.

For example, consider simply
 * $$\begin{pmatrix} 1 \\ 1 \end{pmatrix}\cdot\begin{pmatrix}1 \\ -1\end{pmatrix}=1-1=0$$

Plot these vectors on the plane and verify for yourself that these vectors are perpendicular.

Cross product
The cross product is a more complicated product to define, but has a nice geometric property. We will only look at the cross product in three dimensions, since it is the most commonly used in three dimensions and it is difficult to define in greater dimensions.

For a vector with three components, the cross product is defined as
 * $$\begin{pmatrix} a_1 \\ a_2 \\ a_3 \end{pmatrix}\times\begin{pmatrix}b_1 \\ b_2 \\ b_3 \end{pmatrix} =

\begin{vmatrix} \mathbf{i} & \mathbf{j} & \mathbf{k} \\ a_1 & a_2 & a_3 \\ b_1 & b_2 & b_3 \\ \end{vmatrix}$$

where
 * $$\mathbf{i}=\begin{pmatrix} 1 \\ 0 \\ 0 \end{pmatrix}, \mathbf{j}=\begin{pmatrix} 0 \\ 1 \\ 0 \end{pmatrix}, \mathbf{k}=\begin{pmatrix} 0 \\ 0 \\ 1 \end{pmatrix}$$

If you have not done Matricies before, here is a formula to work out from above...

= i $$(a_2 b_3 - a_3 b_2)$$  - j$$ (a_1 b_3 - a_3 b_1)$$+ k $$(a_1 b_2 - a_2 b_1)$$

Properties of the cross product
The cross product has some properties
 * a×b = -b×a

which is easily verified from the above definition, and
 * c×(a+b) = c×a+c×b

Geometric properties of the cross product
The cross product has some interesting geometric properties.

If a and b are two vectors, a×b is the vector perpendicular to both. Now if we have two vectors, we have two choices of vector perpendicular to a and b - if we switch the order of the cross product we obtain the other vector.

The magnitude of the cross product of two vectors is the area of the parallelogram formed by these two vectors.

The scalar triple product, a·(b×c) is the volume of the paralleliped formed by these three vectors.

title: Linear Algebra/Vectors


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Organic Chemistry/Introduction to reactions/Review of nucleophilic substitution

Remember, SN1 and SN2 are the same reaction just undergoing a different mechanism.


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Organic Chemistry/Alcohols

Alcohols are the family of compounds that contain one or more hydroxyl (-OH) groups attached to a single bonded alkane. Alcohols are represented by the general formula -OH. Alcohols are important in organic chemistry because they can be converted to and from many other types of compounds. Reactions with alcohols fall into two different categories. Reactions can cleave the R-O bond or they can cleave the O-H bond.

Ethanol (ethyl alcohol, or grain alcohol) is found in alcoholic beverages, CH3CH2OH.

=Preparation=

In the Alkenes section, we already covered a few methods for synthesizing alcohols. One is the hydroboration-oxidation of alkenes and the other is the oxymercuration-reduction of alkenes. But there are a great many other ways of creating alcohols as well.

A common source for producing alcohols is from carbonyl compounds. The choice of carbonyl type (ketone, aldehyde, ester, etc.) and the type of reaction (Grignard addition or Reduction), will determine the product(s) you will get. Fortunately, there are a number of variations of carbonyls, leading to a number of choices in product.

There are primarily two types of reactions used to create alcohols from carbonyls: Grignard Addition reactions and Reduction reactions. We'll look at each type of reaction for each type of carbonyl.

Grignard Addition Reactions
As we learned previously, Grignard reagents are created by reacting magnesium metal with an alkyl halide (aka haloalkanes). The magnesium atom then gets between the alkyl group and the halogen atom with the general reaction:

R-X + Mg → R-Mg-X

In our examples, we'll be using bromine in our Grignard reagents because it's a common Grignard halogen and it will keep our examples a little clearer without the need for X.

The general mechanism of a Grignard reagent reacting with a carbonyl (except esters) involves the creation of a 6-membered ring transition state. The pi bond of the oxygen attacks a neighboring magnesium bromide which in turn, releases from its R group leaving a carbocation. At the same time, the magnesium bromide ion from another Grignard molecule is attacked by the carbocation and has its magnesium bromide ion stolen (restoring it to its original state as a Grignard reagent). The second molecule's carbocation is then free to attack the carbanion resulting from the vacating pi bond, attaching the R group to the carbonyl.

According to youtube, see Grignard reagent, the carbanion (R:-) from the R-MgBr attacks the partially positive carbonyl carbon, displacing the pi electrons onto the O, which takes a proton, forming the alcohol.

At this point, there is a magnesium bromide on the oxygen of what was a carbonyl. The proton from the acidic solvent easily displaces this magnesium bromide ion and protonates the oxygen, creating a primary alcohol with formaldehyde, a secondary alcohol with an aldehyde and a tertiary alcohol with a ketone.

With esters, the mechanism is slightly different. Two moles of Grignard are required for each mole of the ester. Initially, the pi bond on the carbonyl oxygen attacks the magnesium bromide ion. This opens up the carbon for attack from the R group of the Grignard. This part of the reaction is slow because of the dual oxygens off of the carbon providing some resonance stabilization. The oxygen's pi bond then re-forms, expelling the O-R group of the ester which then joins with the magnesium bromide, leaving R-O-MgBr and a ketone. The R-O-MgBr is quickly protonated from the acidic solution and the ketone is then attacked by Grignard reagent via the mechanism described earlier.

Synthesis from Formaldehyde

The image above shows the synthesis of an alcohol from formaldehyde reacted with a Grignard reagent. When a formaldehyde is the target of the Grignard's attack, the result is a primary alcohol.

Synthesis from an Aldehyde

The image above shows the synthesis of an alcohol from an aldehyde reacted with a Grignard reagent. When an aldehyde is the target of the Grignard's attack, the result is a secondary alcohol.

Synthesis from a Ketone

The image above shows the synthesis of an alcohol from a ketone reacted with a Grignard reagent. When a ketone is the target of the Grignard's attack, the result is a tertiary alcohol.

Synthesis from an Ester

The image above shows the synthesis of an alcohol from an ester reacted with a Grignard reagent. When an ester is the target of the Grignard's attack, the result is a tertiary alcohol and a primary alcohol. The primary alcohol is always from the -O-R portion of the ester and the tertiary alcohol is the other R groups of the ester combined with the R group from the Grignard reagent.

Synthesis from an Epoxide

We will discuss reactions with Epoxides later when we cover epoxides, but for now, we'll briefly discuss the synthesis of an alcohol from an epoxide. The nature of the reaction is different than with the carbonyls, as might be expected. The reaction of Grignard reagents with epoxides is regioselective. The Grignard reagent attacks at the least substituted side of the carbon-oxygen bonds, if there is one. In this case, one carbon has 2 hydrogens and the other has 1, so the R group attacks the carbon with 2 hydrogens, breaking the bond with oxygen which is then protonated by the acidic solution. leaving a secondary alcohol and a concatenated carbon chain. The R group can be alkyl or aryl.

Organolithium Alternative
As an alternative to Grignard reagents, organolithium reagents can be used as well. Organolithium reagents are slightly more reactive, but produce the same general results as Grignard reagents, including the synthesis from epoxides. IT IS KNOWN AS Organolithium Alternative.

Synthesis from an Aldehyde

The image above shows the synthesis of an alcohol from an aldehyde by reduction.

Synthesis from a Ketone

The image above shows the synthesis of an alcohol from a ketone by reduction.

Synthesis from an Ester

The image above shows the synthesis of an alcohol from an ester by reduction. Esters can be hydrolysed to form an alcohol and a carboxylic acid.

Synthesis from a Carboxylic Acid

The image above shows the synthesis of an alcohol from a carboxylic acid reacted by reduction.

=Properties=

Naming alcohols
Follow these rules to name alcohols the IUPAC way:

 * 1) find the longest carbon chain containing at least one OH group, this is the parent
 * 2) if there are multiple OH groups, look for the chain with the most of them, and the way to count as many carbons in that chain
 * 3) name as an alcohol, alkane diol, triol, etc.
 * 4) number the OH groups, giving each group the lowest number possible when different numbering possibilities exist
 * 5) treat all other groups as lower priority substituents (alcohol / hydroxy groups are the highest priority group for naming)

Acidity
In an O-H bond, the O steals the H's electron due to its electronegativity, and O can carry a negative charge (R-O-). This leads to deprotonation in which the nucleus of the H, a proton, leaves completely. This makes the -OH group (and alcohols) Bronsted acids. Alcohols are weak acids, even weaker than water. Ethanol has a pKa of 15.9 compared to water's pKa of 15.7. The larger the alcohol molecule, the weaker an acid it is.

On the other hand, alcohols are also weakly basic. This may seem to be contradictory--how can a substance be both an acid and a base? However, substances exist that can be an acid or a base depending on the circumstances. Such a compound is said to be amphoteric or amphiprotic. As a Bronsted base, the oxygen atom in the -OH group can accept a proton (hydrogen ion.) This results in a positively-charged species known as an oxonium ion. Oxonium ions have the general formula ROH2+, where R is any alkyl group that is a carbon containing species that ranges from -CH3.

Alkoxides
When O becomes deprotonated, the result is an alkoxide. Alkoxides are anions. The names of alkoxides are based on the original molecule. (Ethanol=ethoxide, butanol=butoxide, etc.) Alkoxides are good nucleophiles due to the negative charge on the oxygen atom.

Producing an alkoxide
R-OH -> H+ + R-O-

In this equation, R-O- is the alkoxide produced and is the conjugate base of R-OH

Alcohols can be converted into alkoxides by reaction with a strong base (must be stronger than OH-) or reaction with metallic sodium or potassium. Alkoxides themselves are basic. The larger an alkoxide molecule is, the more basic it is.

=Reactions=

Conversion of alcohols to haloalkanes
Recall that haloalkanes can be converted to alcohols through nucleophilic substitution.

This reaction proceeds because X (a halogen) is a good leaving group and OH- is a good nucleophile. OH, however, is a poor leaving group. To make the reverse reaction proceed, OH must become a good leaving group. This is done by protonating the OH, turning it into H2O+, which is a good leaving group. H+ must be present to do this. Therefore, the compounds that can react with alcohols to form haloalkanes are HBr, HCl, and HI. Just like the reverse reaction, this process can occur through SN2 (backside attack) or SN1 (carbocation intermediate) mechanisms.

As stated in the haloalkane chapter, the two mechanisms look similar but the mechanism affects the rate of reaction and the stereochemistry of the product.

Oxidation of alcohols
Oxidation in organic chemistry always involves either the addition of oxygen atoms (or other highly electronegative elements like sulphur or nitrogen) or the removal of hydrogen atoms. Whenever a molecule is oxidized, another molecule must be reduced. Therefore, these reactions require a compound that can be reduced. These compounds are usually inorganic. They are referred to as oxidizing reagents.

With regards to alcohol, oxidizing reagents can be strong or weak. Weak reagents are able to oxidize a primary alcohol group into a aldehyde group and a secondary alcohol into a ketone. Thus, the R-OH (alcohol) functional group becomes R=O (carbonyl) after a hydrogen atom is removed. Strong reagents will further oxidize the aldehyde into a carboxylic acid (COOH). Tertiary alcohols cannot be oxidized.

An example of a strong oxidizing reagent is chromic acid (H2CrO4). Some examples of a weak oxidizing reagents are pyridinium chlorochromate (PCC) (C5H6NCrO3Cl) and pyridinium dichromate (PDC).

<< Haloalkanes | Alcohols | Alkenes >>

Kimia Organik/Alkohol

title: Organic Chemistry/Alcohols


text:
Organic Chemistry/Introduction to reactions/Free-radical halogenation

Free-radical halogenation
Free-radical halogenation is "a way to do a substitution other than by nucleophilic substitution."

or, simplified:

H's come off as H+ not H-, making nucleophilic substitution impossible.

We must first remove a H+ to perform the reaction.

Free radicals as a rule violate the octet rule and are highly reactive, reacting even with strong bonds.

then

The reaction continues happening in a chain mechanism called a free radical chain reaction.

Free radical chain reaction
This has three steps:

 * 1) Initiation step: this generates radicals
 * 2) Propagation step: this is where the bulk of the action lies. Chain carriers generate reaction products.
 * 3) Termination step: anything that consumes the free radicals.

Running free radical chain reactions with Chlorine and Bromine yield their respective end products in different proportions, a quality that can be useful in the laboratory.

(insert image here)


text:
Organic Chemistry/Introduction to reactions/Radicals

Radical stability
Alkyl groups vary in stability. CH3° is quite reactive as it violates the octet rule. However, CH3+ is also a charged moiety and is therefore even less stable and harder to form.

(Multiple images follow)


text:
Organic Chemistry/Introduction to reactions/Alkenes

Alkenes
Alkenes are organic molecules that contain at least one carbon-carbon double bond, which is referred to as unsaturation. Saturation is when all of the carbons have all single bonds. If the double bonds are just next to each other, they are called cummulated dienes. If there is only one C-C bond between two double bonds, it is called a conjugated diene. If more than one single bond intervenes it is an isolated diene.

The double bonds in alkenes are higher in energy than single bonds and are more reactive. Molecules will favor single bonds over double or triple ones when given a chance.

Bond dissociation energy is the energy needed to break a bond.

Ethene is the smallest, simplest alkene. It is planar and the angle between its bonds is approximately 120°.

The C-H bonds are stronger in ethene than in ethane because the π bond draws electron density away from from the carbon, which draws electron density away from the hydrogens. This makes ethene unreactive and gives the carbons sp2 character, which is more s-like and lower in energy.

IUPAC alkene nomenclature

 * 1) find the longest chain of carbons containing both carbons of the double bond
 * 2) number this chain left to right and right to left and choose the method that gives the double bond the lowest numbers
 * 3) using the smallest of the two numbers identifying the double bond as prefix, followed by a hyphen without spaces, name the chain as for an alkane changing the -ane to -ene

Then follow the rest of the rules for naming halogenoalkanes

Alkenols
Alkenols are compounds containing both a double bond and an OH group.

To name, find the longest carbon chain that contains both the C=C and the OH-. The OH group gets the higher priority (lower number). Oxygen takes precedence over carbon.

The "2" refers to the double bond and can go at the beginning of the name or right before the "en".

Preparation of alkenes, or how to make double bonds.
1°, 2°, 3° all work for E2 reactions (remember that the methyl group doesnt have a second carbon for an elimination to function).

(pictures)

E1 reactions
Elimination reactions are one way to produce alkenes. Learn more about them here.

Elimination vs Substitution ?
There are ways to predict if a reaction will follow an elimination or a substitution mechanism or pathway.

Tertiary halides favor E1, SN1.

Bromine
Electrophilic addition reaction between Bromine and Ethene gas:

Complete Combustion
Like other hydrocarbons alkenes will combust in excess air or oxygen provided that there is sufficient activation energy for the combustion reaction. The following reaction is the complete combustion of ethene with oxygen:

Hydrogen Bromide
Electrophilic addition reaction between concentrated Hydrogen Bromide and Ethene gas:

The general formula for the reaction of any alkene with HBr is:

For asymmetrical alkenes such as But-1-ene the following reaction is also feasible:

Where R and R' are alkyl groups e.g. CH3 or CH3CH2

Sulphuric Acid
Electrophilic addition reaction between cold concentrated Sulphuric Acid and Ethene gas:

Ethyl Hydrogensulphate is hydrolysed if warmed with water:

Overall reaction for the two steps:

<< Alcohols | Alkenes | Alkynes >>


text:
Organic Chemistry/Introduction to reactions/Electrophilic additions

Electrophilic additions are also referred to as addition reactions.

Electrophilic additions are essentially the reverse of an E1 elimination reaction, sometimes exactly the microscopic reverse.

Addition reactions involve carbocations. This intermediate carbocation can rearrange.

Addition reactions follow Markovnikov's rule. (The higher priority substituent adds to the more highly substituted carbon of the carbon-carbon double bond).

(Series of sample reactions here)


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User:Doopdoop~enwikibooks

Hi

my name is Rene. I´m interested in math, puzzles and computer science.

title: User:Doopdoop~enwikibooks


text:
User talk:141.44.27.135

Hi :) Just a hint: You're not logged in - or you haven't made a new account. Thanks Dysprosia 05:48, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:141.44.27.135


text:
Spanish/Contents

Páginas generales

 * Introduction to the course
 * The rules of pronunciation
 * Contributors to the Wikibook

Punto de partida
"A starting point" — the basics of conversation and grammar.
 * ¿Cómo te llamas? — Greetings, names, the Spanish alphabet.
 * ¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños? — Numbers, ages, dates, birthdays.
 * Introducción a la gramática — Articles, regular verbs, questions and exclamations.

¿Qué opinas?
"What do you think?" — a world of opinions and viewpoints.
 * ¿Dónde vives? — Countries, Habitations, "O" and "A" Adjectives, City and Countryside.
 * ¿Qué te gusta hacer? — Sports and Activities, UE Verbs, Complex sentences, Negatives, Opinions.
 * ¿Qué comes? — Food and Drink, In the Shop, "E" and Consonant Adjectives, Colours.

¿Cuándo se hará?
"When will it be done?" — The busy world of time.
 * ¿Qué hora es? — Telling the Time, Times of Day, Time-related Adverbs, Reflexive verbs.
 * ¿Adónde vas a ir? — Simple Future, Holidays, Accommodation, IE verbs.
 * ¿Cuál es tu trabajo? — Jobs and Occupations, Little Words, Workplaces, Future Tense.

Vocabulary

 * Thesaurus of Spanish cognates
 * Common false cognates
 * Everyday vocabulary
 * 100+ High-Frequency Words
 * Conversational forms
 * Loan Words
 * Translation Reference (archived)
 * Common words (archived)
 * Idioms (archived)
 * Slang words (archived) from different countries
 * Spanish phrasebook on Wikivoyage

Grammar

 * Grammar Index (Archived) is a former section of the Spanish book, with information in pages on Spanish grammar.

Verbs

 * Spanish/Tenses is a grammar appendix which outlines all possible verb conjugations for regular Spanish verbs. Verbs are first divided by mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), then by aspect (simple, perfect, continuous, perfect continuous), and finally by tense (present, preterite, imperfect, conditional, future). This appendix can be used as a reference for any and all regular verb conjugations.
 * Spanish/Verbs (archived) is a guide to verbs, with some other pages in it too.

Nouns

 * /Valuable noun-related phrases/ (perfect for the beginner). Will prove valuable for also learning present tense and past tense. Can be used to learn the sentence structure.

Pronouns

 * Spanish/Pronouns An introduction to pronouns.

Other materials
The materials below are mostly miscellaneous or incomplete.

Incomplete lessons

 * Las personas — Describing people and opinions about them.
 * La escuela — School, ser versus estar.
 * El tiempo pasado — The past tense- All about the past tense in Spanish: Preterito, Imperfecto, Differences between the two.

Learning

 * Ask questions at the Question and Answer page.
 * Request for improvement to the Wikibook at the request page.
 * Archived materials have more lessons which you can use.
 * How to Study Spanish is an archived guide to the proper way to learn the language.
 * Web Resources is a page with links to other websites you can go to to learn Spanish.

Alternative methods of learning

 * The Wrong Way To Learn Spanish: An alternative and fun method of learning Spanish
 * Dictionary: A dictionary related to the alternative method.
 * Part 2: Translation of sample paragraphs.

Contributing to this Wikibook
This is a Wikibook—please feel free to edit, enhance, update and add to it, in any way that will make it a better teaching resource! Especially if you are a native Spanish speaker, please consider recording sound files for any of the dialogue or vocabulary. It seriously improves the learning potential of the book if you can listen as you read! A list of the people who have contributed to this featured book is here.

The book already has all of the most basic information allowing you to construct a simple sentence, and say a few things in Spanish. However, do try to help by adding some more information on other topics that are not here. As you write, remember that people reading this book can be totally new to the language. Do not write as if you are writing for another Spanish speaker, but keep in mind to explain things in great detail to enable learners to use this book easily.

Contribute to this book to make it a good way for new learners to learn the Spanish language!

title: Spanish/Contents


text:
Spanish/Grammar Index

 * ../Parts of Speech/
 * Personal pronouns
 * ../Gender of nouns/
 * ../Formation of the feminine in nouns/
 * ../Formation of the feminine in adjectives/
 * Matching adjectives
 * ../Word Order/
 * ../Diminutives/
 * Tener que ...
 * Tener ganas de ...

title: Spanish/Grammar Index


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French/Lessons/Recreation

Formation
Most French verbs fall into the category of -er verbs. To conjugate, drop the -er to find the stem or root. Add endings to the root based on the subject and tense.

Pronunciation, elision and liaison
The -e, -es, and -ent endings all have the same silent pronunciation. The -er and -ez endings are pronounced, and the -ons ending is pronounced.

In all conjugations, je changes to j ' when followed by a vowel or silent h:

In all plural forms, the s at the end of each subject pronoun, normally unpronounced, becomes a z sound and the n of on becomes pronounced when followed by a vowel.

The direct object pronoun, meaning it or him, replaces masculine singular direct objects:

, meaning it or her, replaces feminine singular direct objects:

, meaning them, replaces plural direct objects:

Le and la become l '  before a vowel:

Le, la, and les can replace either people or things:

The verb is a regular -er verb meaning to play. It can be used to refer to sports, games, and instruments.

When referring to sports or games, jouer à … is used; recall that replaces à le, and  replaces à les:

When referring to instruments, jouer de … is used; recall that replaces de le, and  replaces de les:

The indirect object pronoun  means to him or to her:

Likewise, the indirect object pronoun means to them:

Lui replaces à [person]:

Likewise, leur replaces à [people]:

Lui and leur usually only refer to people; they will sometimes also be used in reference to things.

Like in English, some verbs can be followed by infinitives. Three -er verbs used in this manner are aimer, adorer, and détester:

The verb s'amuser means to have fun in English. It is a type of pronominal verb (a verb that includes a pronoun as part of it) called a reflexive verb, which means that the action of the verb is reflected back onto the subject. Literally translated, the verb means To amuse oneself.

title: French/Lessons/Recreation


text:
Puzzles/Logic puzzles

Puzzles | Logic puzzles

 * 3 Hats in a Circle
 * 5 Houses
 * 10 Hats
 * False Execution
 * Getting out of Prison
 * Gold Coins
 * Hats
 * Infinite Hats
 * Island on Fire
 * Knights, Knaves & Spies
 * Knights, Knaves & Spies II
 * Lying about your Age
 * Pair of Socks
 * Pizzas
 * Scales and Weights
 * Three Knights
 * Two Boys and a River
 * Two Cities
 * Two Cities - Same Response

Puzzles involving algorithms

 * Niki the Robot
 * Parachuted Robots

title: Puzzles/Logic puzzles


text:
Puzzles/Logic puzzles/Knights, Knaves & Spies

Puzzles | Logic puzzles | Knights, Knaves & Spies

On the fabled Island of Knights and Knaves, we meet three people, A, B, and C, one of whom is a knight, one a knave, and one a spy. The knight always tells the truth, the knave always lies, and the spy can either lie or tell the truth.

A says: "C is a knave." B says: "A is a knight." C says: "I am the spy."

Who is the knight, who the knave, and who the spy?

Solution


text:
Talk:Puzzles/Logic puzzles/Knights, Knaves & Spies

For Knights Knaves and spies we can split the problem into two. C is the spy or C is not the spy

Senario 1 C is the spy.
 * C is a spy and is telling the truth.
 * therefore A is lying so must be the Knave
 * So B must be the knight.

However B says that A is the knight, which is a lie. This is a contradiction since the knight neber lies so the spy cannot be telling the truth.

Senario 2 C is not the spy

 * C is not the spy
 * Therfore C must be the Knave because they are telling lies
 * This leaves two further possibilities A knight B spy or A spy B knight

The first possiblity is consistant. The second would isn't because B would be a knight who was lying.

 * So A = knight
 * B = spy
 * C =knave

is the only consistant solution Theresa knott 10:08, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

 * Excellent, Theresa! Couldn't have said it better... Thomas

Hope this is the place for question : in the consistant solution, the spy (B) is not lying anymore !


text:
Puzzles/Logic puzzles/Knights, Knaves & Spies II

Puzzles | Logic puzzles | Knights, Knaves & Spies II

We have three people one of whom is a knight, one a knave, and one a spy. The knight always tells the truth, the knave always lies, and the spy can either lie or tell the truth. The three persons are brought before a judge who wants to identify the spy.

A says: "I am not a spy." B says: "I am a spy." Now C is in fact the spy. The judge asks him: "Is B really a spy?"

Can C give an answer so that he doesn't convict himself as a spy?

Solution


text:
Talk:Puzzles/Logic puzzles/Knights, Knaves & Spies II

If C answers, "No", then there is no contradiction in saying that A is the spy, B is the knave, and C is the knight. Therefore, it will not be possible to prove C is the spy.

If, however, C answers, "Yes," C can be proved the spy:

If C is telling the truth, then B is the spy. Then A and C would have to both be the knight, since they both tell the truth. But only one can be the knight. So C must then be lying.

B cannot in any case be the knight, since he would be lying. Since C is lying, too, B is not the spy, and so B is the knave. Thus C herself cannot be the knave, but neither can she be the knight, since she is lying. Therefore, if C answers, "Yes", C is the spy.

Am I right?

Eric119 22:33, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

 * Perfect, Eric! Great explantation. Thomas

Almost. Unfortunately, those are not the only two possible answers. C knows that he/she is the spy. The knight and knave do not necessarily know which of the others is. Therefore, C may answer "I don't know," and the judge will be unsure whether A or C is the spy. Avery

Another possibility would be A: Knight, B: Spy, C: Knave. Cyp 13:59, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This is incorrect, as is the given answer to this logic problem.

The statement above says "Then A and C would have to both be the knight, since they both tell the truth." You forgot that the spy can tell the truth or lie. Look at it this way:

A: I am not the spy.

B: I am the spy.

C: I am not the spy.

We know that B is the knave, because the knave will always say he is the spy (he must lie). We cannot distinguish A from C, since a truth-telling knight, in this instance, looks exactly like a lying spy.

Now, let's try the other:

A: I am not the spy.

B: I am the spy.

C: I am the spy.

In this instance, we know that A is the knight, since the knight must always say he is not the spy (he must tell the truth), We cannot distinguish B from C, since a lying knave, in this instance, looks exactly like a truth-telling spy.

Eric B.

 * I think the puzzle intends C to answer either "yes" or "no", not "I am the spy" or "I am not the spy". In this case, "yes" or "no" is a statement of whether or not B is the spy, not C, and the given solution remains correct.  If C can say whatever he wants, he could say something like "I don't know" or "Go jump in the lake" or just remain silent and whether or not he was the spy would be trivially undecidable...  Perhaps the puzzle could be revised to reflect this?
 * Joe Lee 19:27, 31 May 2005 (UTC)