The funny thing about what everyone knows is that everyone can be wrong. For instance, everybody thinks that the America’s Cup is an ocean-sailing race, and yet the Swiss managed to win the Cup. For those readers who are geographically-challenged, Switzerland is a land-locked country comprised entirely of mountains.

What does this have to do with ball bearings. Very little, I suspect, but balls have very little to do with ball bearings, either. Ball bearings look more like hula hoops. But don’t try using them for that – you will find them inconveniently heavy and painfully small.

You can view a picture of a ball bearing in the middle of this ball bearing supplier’s page.

So what are those stunted metal tube donuts called ball bearings for anyway? Are they used as a spare wheel? Do they hold in evil shop-floor spirits? No, they help things move more efficiently. In an early demonstration of bearing usage, three ladies pulled a locomotive (It was just a demonstration, not a career development).

Many bearings look very similar, whether they are ball bearings, roller bearings or other bearings. What?! Other bearings?

What is a ball bearing, anyway?

Ball bearings are formed with an outer ring, an inner ring, a cage or a retainer inside, and a rolling element inside, typically a ball (which is why they are called ball bearings). Roller bearings are formed using a roller instead of a ball, which is why they are called roller bearings (Yes, finally something that makes sense!). Other bearings look just like metal tubes, called plain bearings or bush bearings. They look like sawed off pipe or tube (something my metal tube bending client would be turning into architecturally glamorous structural supports).

The principle of bearings is the same principle behind the wheel: things move better by rolling than by sliding. They are called “bearings” because they bear the weight of the object, such as an inline skate or the head of dentist’s drill, allowing the object to glide over them with incredible ease and speed. Unlike wheels, they don’t turn on an axel; they turn on themselves.

You can see this in action with some great cut-away pictures of bearings.

The balls or rollers spin on themselves inside the bearing, reducing friction for the machine parts attached to them. It’s much neater than using a bucket of oil, especially in dental equipment, and significantly more reliable than hamsters on a wheel.

Once upon a time, all bearings were metal – like a metal tube or pipe with metal balls stuck inside. These days, more and more are made of ceramic or even plastic (like everything else in this world!).

If you are still confused about why ball bearings are not shaped like balls, just remember that you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway. And you can even try sailing your sea-craft through the Swiss Alps. But don’t try playing a game of one-on one basketbearing.

Ball Bearings Are Flat – Another Myth Crushed is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips

In the 1960’s a psychological theorist named Katharine Briggs had many of the same questions you do. She wondered why some of her family members had such logical, linear thinking processes, when she herself was more likely to take values and feelings into account when considering an issue. In her research with her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, she looked into this question and others, and discovered four central aspects of personality. Each one of us can be classified as either:

• Extroverted/Introverted—Do you get your energy from being with people, or being alone?
• Sensing/Intuitive—Do you see what’s actual, or what’s possible?
• Thinking/Feeling—Do you make decisions with your head or your heart?
• Judging/Perceiving—Do you like to make decisions, or keep your options open?

Our classifications on each of the scales is combined to make a four-letter type, for instance, ENTP, or ISFJ. There are sixteen types in all, encompassing all possible combinations.

With so many possibilities, you can imagine how much potential for misunderstanding there is with those around us! If we marry, or parent, or even work with someone who is very different from us, we can become increasingly baffled as to how their minds work. The key to unlocking the mystery and understanding those around us is to first understand yourself.

Where do you think you fall on the scales listed above? It can be difficult to decide, but fortunately the creators of this theory have also created a scientifically validated assessment that can tell you where you fall. This personality test is called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and is the most accurate and efficient way to identify your own type. Most recently it has become available in an online format, which allows convenient access to anyone wishing to discover more about themselves. The official Myers-Briggs Type Indicator can be used to produce several different types of reports, from basic to detailed, all of which you can refer to as you learn more about your own Type.

Once you have discovered your Type, you can begin to think about how others may differ. If you are an extrovert, you may be surprised when others want to leave a social gathering or end a conversation before you do. It doesn’t mean they’re unfriendly or not having a good time; it’s just that introverts rely on their alone time to recharge. As another example, if you’re a Thinker, you may mistrust people who seem to make decisions based on their “gut” or their feelings rather than logic. But turn this around and you’ll realize that your own decisions may seem cold and uncaring to someone who is a Feeling type. There is no right or wrong; only individual preferences.

The world is made up of many types, and this is for the best! We need people who are gregarious, and those that are content to live much of their lives independently. We need visionaries with their heads in the clouds, and people who will take care of all the details. We need planners, and people who fly by the seat of their pants; when making decisions we need both someone to remind us of the logic of the situation and someone to help us do a “gut check.” Learning more about personality types can help you appreciate all the variation you’ll see around you. Most importantly, it will help you use your differences to everyone’s benefit.

Discover the Secrets of Personality Type is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips

When darkness turns to day, the sun moves over the horizon and touches everything in sight. This movement across the landscape brightens everything. Such an illumination awakens us all. We rise with energy moving in and through us allowing us to create a new day. A day unique from all the rest and creatively woven into our soul.

This is the landscape of our soul. As you can see, nature has a way of showing us just how powerful we are. The same power that created the moon and the stars and the movement of all space and time lies within the human heart. It is the heart of creation itself, and perhaps, the heart of our Creator.

Human beings are fortunate to be able to be aware of our awareness. This awareness gives us an opportunity to reflect on our soul and find blessing in being alive. Our consciousness of a creative force inside us guiding us into this world, through it, and eventually to our eternal home allows us to fulfill a purpose on this earth.

Such a purpose is beyond our own ability to really know. Yet, we can open our heart enough to allow our purpose to find us. This is done by recognizing that the things in life that really matter ARE the things in life that isn’t matter.

Yes, it is our soul’s longing to fulfill the purpose for which we came to earth for. No one really knows how a baby is conceived totally. Science and human understanding still hasn’t been able to fully comprehend such a force of nature. We can only embrace what is beyond us and find a way to bring into being forces of nature such as a tiny child.

When a child is born, we are in awe. The miracle of birth creates something inside us all. It is the remembrance that life does not come from us. Instead, life comes through us. As such, we are living in a dream come true. All of us are probably living our soul’s purpose more than we know, and even, can know. It is the mystery of all mysteries.

This does not explain why some of us find peace and other’s find pain. But, such a philosophy will enable us all to find grace in knowing our lives create in our world facets of ourselves we all are a part of. An understanding of such grace gives every one of us a chance to find mercy and grace and the same unconditional love we came into the world with when we were born.

Samuel Oliver, author of, “What the Dying Teach Us: Lessons on Living”
For more on this author; http://www.soulandspirit.org

When the Morning Dawns is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips

Don’t get carried away with the flashy campaigns that some lawyers use for advertising. Before settling for a lawyer, try to find out their success rate and whether he or she is personally willing to fight your case for you. This is extremely important because ultimately, it is the insurance companies that are going to pay. If they know that your lawyer is not going to compromise, they wont use any sort of pressure tactics.

Atlanta accident lawyers can be found through a referral service provided by Georgia State Bar Association, the county bar association and other professional law associations. Information is also available in the yellow pages or through search engines like Google and Yahoo on the Internet. You can check advertisements of law firms in magazines and newspapers. Friends and family members are also excellent sources of information.

Atlanta Accident Lawyers is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips

Million people are learning business English through business english course. Since English is also the main language in the internet, so you have to capture English very well. You can’t just use google translate to know the meaning of certain sentences since this way really takes time. Although you are non-native speaker, you have a high chance to be as good as native speaker. This way is able to be realized when you have good English. When making friends or do business with foreign people, you will need to use good English. Otherwise, there will be a miscommunication since the recipients do not understand what you are talking about.

Most of programming language is using English. If you are in IT department, you can avoid this language since it is your daily ‘meal’. Perhaps, you find uncommon term like what you have learnt in the university. Thus, you need to follow certain course which gives lesson of English for specific purpose.

Why You Need English Business Course is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips

1. Choose a Spanish course that offers interactive learning, where you actually participate and use your voice to repeat words and phrases out loud. This is important because it will help to reinforce the learning in your brain, and help you learn Spanish faster.

2. Choose a course that has Spanish learning games included. If you are doing something fun such as playing a game, you are much more likely to learn Spanish faster and easier because you are having fun. Anything is easier to learn when you’re having fun doing it!

3. Make sure the course has enough material and is complete. There are many courses that fall short in this area. You want to make sure there are enough exercises and lessons in the course to enable you to learn Spanish thoroughly enough to carry on conversations. Ideally, you want to find a course that offers beginner through advanced Spanish.

4. Look for a course that helps you learn Spanish with audio lessons, to help your ear get used to the sound of the language and help you pick up the accent faster.

5. Find a course developed by a native speaker. The chances are better that the course will include more “street lingo” of the language, which is much better for you. While it is ok to learn proper grammatical Spanish, you also want to learn Spanish that native speakers actually speak. After all, that is why you are learning Spanish in the first place, to be able to converse with native Spanish speaking people.

6. Compare prices for the type of content offered. Many times you can find Spanish courses that offer about the same information, but the prices fluctuate greatly. Many Spanish courses that cost several hundred or even thousands of dollars sometimes just aren’t worth it. You can find a good Spanish course for less than $300. If it costs any more than that, don’t bother. Just because you spend more money doesn’t mean you will necessarily learn Spanish any better or faster. Concentrate on the quality of the course first, and then consider price.

Copyright 2006, ReviewsOnTheWeb.com.

Finding The Best Course To Learn Spanish is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips

The Baltimore schools held a series of community meetings, where they released a list of possible options they were considering. The options included schools to close, some to renovate, and where to build new ones. The options also were listed at their web site, where parents and community voted on which options they thought were best.

All options would close several Baltimore schools middle schools with consistently low test scores and high rates of violence. Some of these targeted schools are on the state’s “persistently dangerous” schools list, while others are being watched closely for inclusion to the list. The troubled Thurgood Marshall High School, site of a shooting in the 2004-2005 school year, also is included in all options. A new building will replace the current middle school, located at the same site, and be a K-8 school.

The Baltimore schools are dealing with deteriorating buildings, declining enrollment, and state demands that they operate the school system more efficiently. The Baltimore schools’ chief executive officer Bonnie S. Copeland stated that community committees, which used public input gathered earlier last fall, developed the options.

Copeland believed that much of the community shared her vision to expand the K-8 schools, which have been outperforming the traditional middle schools. Many parents, as well as community activist groups, were outraged and vehemently opposed several proposed options and school closings.

Many do not wish to see K-8 schools, unhappy with older children who set bad examples being mixed in with younger children. They believe the low test scores of several middle schools is more complex than just integrating the students with the elementary schools. Additionally, some high-performing schools could be closed, due to building conditions and capacity.

Many parents and activists believe it would be cheaper to renovate existing schools, rather than build new ones. David Lever, executive director of Maryland’s Public School Construction Program, backs this belief.

In March 2006, the Baltimore schools reacted to public pressure and released a substantially revised plan, stating that they took to heart the public’s concerns. The changes did little to appease the opponents of the plan, leaving the Baltimore schools caught between the state demanding a school closings plan and the parents and community activists.

After 85 public meetings on the topic and more than 10,000 participants, the Baltimore schools board voted at the end of March to close 16 Baltimore schools over the next two years. They also approved a 10-year, $2.7 billion plan to build 27 new Baltimore schools, moving thousands of children from middle schools to pre kindergarten through eighth grade.

Baltimore Schools Enrollment Down, Schools to Close is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips

Encourage them to begin to find their favorite spot within their area for their reading activities. Grab yourself a comfy chair and join them and you’ll be amazed how much your child will want go into their reading area and have you with them for a reading session. And an added bonus to the reading area is a great place and time for you to spend with your child reading to them and vise versa. Reading is nothing more than a practiced skill. Practicing being the operative word. Instilling good reading habits in your child early on with consistent and daily reading and practice sessions is laying the bricks to a solid learning foundation no matter what the subject matter.

Books from bookstores, garage sales, flea markets and such are a great way to begin building your child’s reading library content. Grab a cardboard box, and old milk crate or two and decorate them with your child so they can have their own library and take pride in how it looks and help them organize their reading materials. If you already have bookcases, then clear of one of the shelves and make that special place for your child’s books. It’s fun to do and your kids will have fun too. Build momentum early with how much fun reading and exploring books can be.

Also make good use of your public library. Teaching reading skills begins with developing in your child an interest and love for reading. As your child’s library grows along with their reading skill they will understand that books are important, enjoyable, and always filled with new things to learn.

A good reading activity can involve very little actual reading. Use picture books with very few or no words and ask your child to describe the picture or tell a story about what the picture is about. This will allow you to monitor the child’s vocabulary and the use of the words they have been learning. Don’t overlook the importance of vocabulary building along with building reading skills. A strong vocabulary goes well with understanding what you’re reading which, in turn, keeps the frustration level down, and the fun factor up.

Encouraging your child to verbalize to you a story or even a couple pages of something they have read about gives them great pride (while you listen for accuracy) and makes them feel like a reader! And when kids feel good about their reading skills they naturally strive to learn more.

Developing Reading Skills In Your Child is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips

Bio Pyramid

All of the organisms in the world follow orders of classification. Whether you choose to put them into groups of plants and animals, herbivores and carnivores, or any other of the many different types of classification systems, organisms can be put into many groups in order to understand their relationship to one another. One way to classify organisms is to put them into their order, or hierarchy, in the food chain. In this way, we can see how animals and other organisms relate to each other based on what they consume.

There are several different ways to look at the food chain, and one important and useful tool in this area is the bio pyramid. A bio pyramid is a graphical chart that shows the comparative mass of the consumers to the producers in the food chain. This can be helpful in determining how energy is transferred to the top levels of the pyramid from the bottom levels.

Each level in a bio pyramid is composed of a trophic level. Trophic levels are groupings of different “consumer” groups, such as primary producers (usually just plants or other photosynthetic organisms) rising all the way up to carnivores (such as humans). While a typical biological pyramid might group these consumers in order of energy produced, a bio pyramid shows them in order of total mass from highest to lowest. This often means that the primary consumers, such as the plants, are at the bottom because they are more numerous and take up more mass. The levels are built upon then by how many upper level organisms could survive based on the level below. An example can be seen in this sea bio pyramid:

It would take 1,000,000 kg of phytoplankton (1st level), to feed 100,000 kg of zooplankton (2nd level), to feed 10,000 kg of shrimp (3rd level), to finally feed 1,000 kg of large fish. The final level, the 5th, would only be able to have 100 kg of shark supported by the levels below.

In this way, a bio pyramid shows the inefficiency of the food chain, and lets researchers know that if a level was able to be skipped (such as a shark dipping down and eating shrimp instead of fish), more energy would be conserved and the food chain would lose less energy along the way. Given this fact, a bio pyramid is an important tool when looking at the laws of conservation of energy among different classes of organisms.

Bio Pyramid is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips

In order to acquire an education in the United States, there are several necessary documents one must have.

One needs to acquire a student visa and a certificate of eligibility and to fill up several other forms aside from the applications one is to send out to prospective academic institutions.

Ok – try not to get overwhelmed.

Let’s take this one step at a time.

First a foremost, before one can be issued a student visa, there are several requirements one must obtain, forms one must fill up and submit.

(*taken from UnitedStatesVisas.gov)

1. A certificate of eligibility which you must get from your sponsoring educational institution in the U.S. If you are a regular student (an F visa) you’ll get Form I-20. If you are part of an approved exchange program (a J visa) you’ll get Form DS-1920.

* Further clarification will be made regarding student visas in an upcoming post.

2. Application Form DS-156

3. Form DS-158

4. Current, valid passport or travel document

5. Photograph. Requirements are strict for photograph size, type and quality. Please check with your nearest consulate for specifications before you get your picture taken.

6. Application fees. All applicants must pay the application fee. Some applicants, according to nationality and type of visa, must also pay an issuance fee.

7. Evidence of funds to cover expenses in the United States

8. Evidence of compelling social and economic ties abroad

For men between 16 and 45 years of age, a supplemental visa application Form DS-157 is also required.

Applications for student visas are sent through the US Embassy or Consulate in your country of origin.

An important thing to remember about applying for a student visa is to apply early – that is, one is allowed to apply 90 days in advance of the date of enrollment stated in one’s certificate of eligibility.

Still hungry?

Savor these starters, while I brew up the next post.

A Slice of American Pie is a post from: Ephilan Thropy Course Education Tips