I was following along on a line of thought and following the leads of the information and I didn't think it was too interesting but it made me think of something and that seems compelling.
The memory provoked by that information about amber is from my memory, whether real or artificial, from that house I owned in Greer South Carolina.
The memory was of something Tracie said to me one time when her parents were visiting there at my house.
We were talking about the front door of the house that I had recently resurfaced.
When I bought the house the rain gutter above the front door had been apparently clogged for a long time and the rain had caused the surface to erode the bottom portion of the front door of the house. The door was still in good condition and all it needed was a new coat of varnish.
So I was there in the house and Tracie's parents were visiting and her father said the door looked real good and I commented about how hard I had to labor to resurface it with the belt sander I had used and Tracie asked if all that labor would have been necessary if I had used some kind of solvent to first strip off the old varnish. I agreed that using a belt sander instead of solvent was probably a bad decision and the reason I had to work so hard at it. I thought also the door looked better but it still didn't come out the way I wanted it to.
So anyway, I have to wonder about that now.
I had no idea that 'amber' was the source for the terms we use for electricity.
So then I think about those memories and about how that could be something symbolic because it has something to do with doors.
And so then I think about how I had just been earlier writing about that bench grinder and I wonder again about that.
I think I am missing something else here too. Or maybe this doesn't mean anything.
I think also about whether those memories are real or artificial. Those could be real memories and I could remember it for some other reason. Maybe that was something we had staged. But why? The door is symbolic so that would make sense. But why specifically would we do that in terms of an objective?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron
Electron
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton. The intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of the electron is a half-integer value in units of h, which means that it is a fermion. The antiparticle of the electron is called the positron; it is identical to the electron except that it carries electrical and other charges of the opposite sign. When an electron collides with a positron, both particles may either scatter off each other or be totally annihilated, producing a pair (or more) of gamma ray photons. Electrons, which belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, participate in gravitational, electromagnetic and weak interactions. Electrons, like all matter, have quantum mechanical properties of both particles and waves
In many physical phenomena, such as electricity, magnetism, and thermal conductivity, electrons play an essential role.
History
The ancient Greeks noticed that amber attracted small objects when rubbed with fur. Apart from lightning, this phenomenon is humanity's earliest recorded experience with electricity. In his 1600 treatise De Magnete, the English scientist William Gilbert coined the New Latin term electricus, to refer to this property of attracting small objects after being rubbed. Both electric and electricity are derived from the Latin ēlectrum (also the root of the alloy of the same name), which came from the Greek word for amber.
In 1737, C. F. du Fay and Hawksbee independently discovered what they believed to be two kinds of frictional electricity; one generated from rubbing glass, the other from rubbing resin. From this, Du Fay theorized that electricity consists of two electrical fluids, "vitreous" and "resinous", that are separated by friction and that neutralize each other when combined. A decade later Benjamin Franklin proposed that electricity was not from different types of electrical fluid, but the same electrical fluid under different pressures. He gave them the modern charge nomenclature of positive and negative respectively. Franklin thought that the charge carrier was positive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber
Amber
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Amber is fossilized tree resin (not sap), which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents. Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions.
History and etymology
The English word amber derives from the Arabic anbar, via Medieval Latin ambar and Old French ambre. The word originally referred to a precious oil derived from the Sperm whale (now called ambergris). The sense was extended to fossil resin circa 1400, and this became the main sense, as the use of ambergris waned. The two substances were confused, because they both were found washed up on beaches. Ambergris is less dense than water and floats, whereas amber is less dense than stone, but too dense to float. The word ambar was brought to Europe by the Crusaders. In French ambre gris (lit. gray amber), became used for ambergris, while ambre jaune (yellow amber), denoted the fossil resin we now call amber.
Amber is discussed by Theophrastus, possibly the first historical mention of the material, in the 4th century BC. The Greek name for amber was (elektron), "formed by the sun", and it was connected to the sun god (Helios), one of whose titles was Elector or the Awakener. According to the myth, when Helios' son Phaëton was killed, his mourning sisters became poplars, and their tears became the origin of elektron, amber.
Another early reference to Amber was Pytheas (330 BC) whose work "On the Ocean" is lost, but was referenced by Pliny. According to The Natural History" by Pliny the Elder:
Pytheas says that the Gutones, a people of Germany, inhabit the shores of an estuary of the Ocean called Mentonomon, their territory extending a distance of six thousand stadia; that, at one day's sail from this territory, is the Isle of Abalus, upon the shores of which, amber is thrown up by the waves in spring, it being an excretion of the sea in a concrete form; as, also, that the inhabitants use this amber by way of fuel, and sell it to their neighbors, the Teutones.
While amber is not actually named, it is called the concreti maris purgamentum, "the leavings of the frozen sea" after the spring melt. Diodorus uses ēlektron, the Greek word for amber, the object that gave its name to electricity through its ability to acquire a charge. Pliny is presenting an archaic view, as in his time amber was a precious stone brought from the Baltic at great expense, but the Germans, he says, use it for firewood, according to Pytheas.
Earlier Pliny says that a large island of three days' sail from the Scythian coast called Balcia by Xenophon of Lampsacus is called Basilia by Pytheas. It is generally understood to be the same as Abalus. Based on the amber, the island could have been Heligoland, Zealand, the shores of Bay of Gdansk, Sambia or the Curonian Lagoon, which were historically the richest sources of amber in northern Europe. This is the earliest use of Germania.
The modern terms "electricity" and "electron" derive from the Greek word for amber, and come from William Gilbert's research showing that amber could attract other substances. The word "electron" was coined in 1891 by the Irish physicist George Stoney whilst analyzing elementary charges for the first time.
The presence of insects in amber was noticed by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia, and led him to theorize correctly that, at some point, amber had to be in a liquid state to cover the bodies of insects. Hence he gave it the expressive name of succinum or gum-stone, a name that is still in use today to describe succinic acid as well as succinite, a term given to a particular type of amber by James Dwight Dana (see below under Baltic Amber).
Heating amber will soften it and eventually it will burn, which is why in Germanic languages the word for amber is a literal translation of burn-Stone (nl. barnsteen, de. Bernstein, the latter of which the Polish word bursztyn or the Hungarian borostyán derives from). Heated above 200 °C, amber suffers decomposition, yielding an "oil of amber", and leaving a black residue which is known as "amber colophony", or "amber pitch"; when dissolved in oil of turpentine or in linseed oil this forms "amber varnish"
1996 film "Star Trek: First Contact" DVD video: [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I don't have time for this.
Lily Sloane: Hey. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt your little quest. Captain Ahab has to go hunt his whale.
Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard: What?
Lily Sloane: You do have books in the 24th century?
