Study information about the role of the chairperson again and do the tasks below FOR A MARK (on sheets of paper or by e-mail)!!!

Wills

What happens if I die without a will?

If you don't make a will or use some other legal method to transfer your property when you die, state law will determine what happens to your property. This process is called "intestate succession." Your property will be distributed to your spouse and children or, if you have neither, to other relatives according to a statutory formula. If no relatives can be found to inherit your property, it will go into your state's coffers*. Also, in the absence of a will, a court will determine who will care for your young children and their property if the other parent is unavailable or unfit.

Do I need a lawyer to make my will?

Probably not. Making a will rarely involves complicated legal rules, and most people can draft their own will with the aid of a good self-help book or software program. You just need to know what you own, whom you care about, and have a good self help resource to guide you.

/ don't have much property. Can't I just make a handwritten will?

Handwritten wills, called "holographic" wills, are legal in about 25 states. To be valid, a holographic will must be written, dated and signed in the handwriting of the person making the will. Some states allow you to use a fill-in-the-blanks form if the rest of the will is handwritten and the will is properly dated and signed.

If you have very little property, and you want to make just a few specific bequests, a holographic will is better than nothing if it's valid in your state. But generally, we don't recommend them. Unlike regular wills, holographic wills are not usually witnessed, so if your will goes before a probate court, the court may be unusually strict when examining it to be sure it's legitimate. It's better to take a little extra time to write a will that will easily pass muster when the time comes.

What makes a will legal?

Any adult of sound mind is entitled to make a will. Beyond that, there are just a few technical requirements:

• The will must be typewritten or computer generated (unless it is a valid handwritten will, as discussed above).

• The document must expressly state that it's your will.

• You must date and sign the will.

• The will must be signed by at least two, or in some states, three, witnesses. They must watch you sign the will, though they don't need to read it. Your witnesses must be people who won't inherit anything under the will.

You don't have to have your will notarized. In many states, though, if you and your witnesses sign an affidavit (sworn statement) before a notary public, you can help simplify the court procedures required to prove the validity of the will after you die.

Do I need to file my will with a court or in public records somewhere?

No. A will doesn't need to be recorded or filed with any government agency, although it can be in a few states. Just keep your will in a safe, accessible place and be sure the person in charge of winding up* your affairs (your executor) knows where it is.

Comments:

it will go into your state's coffers -o wind up -

Say whether the following statements are TRUE, FALSE or INCOMPLETE. In case of FALSE or INCOMPLETE statements give the correct version.

1. If there is nobody to inherit a deceased person's property, the state takes it.

2. It's the court that determines who should care for the deceased person's children and their property.

3. One can draft his/her will without the aid of a lawyer.

4. Handwritten wills are as valid in the USA as typewritten wills.

5. Handwritten wills are not recommended because they are not usually witnessed.

6. To be valid a will must be dated and signed by the will maker.

7. Witnesses who sign the will inherit part of the property.

8. A will doesn't require notarization.

Answer the following questions:

1. What is intestate succession?

2. What does one need to draft a will?

3. What does a handwritten (holographic) will need in order to be valid?

4. Why are handwritten wills not recommended?

Can I use my will to name somebody to care for my young children, in case my spouse and I both die suddenly?

Yes. If both parents of a child die while the child is still a minor, another adult—called a "personal guardian"--must step in. You and the child's other parent can use your wills to nominate someone to fill this position. To avert conflicts, you should each name the same person. If a guardian is needed, a judge will appoint your nominee as long as he or she agrees that it is in the best interest of your children. The personal guardian will be responsible for raising your children until they become legal adults.

Can I leave property to young children in my will?

Children under 18 can inherit property—but if it's anything valuable, an adult must manage it for them. You can use your will to name someone to manage property you leave to minors, thus avoiding the need for a more complicated court-appointed guardianship. There are many ways to structure a property management arrangement. Here are four of the simplest and most useful:

Name a custodian under the Uniform Transfers to Minors Act.

In every state except South Carolina and Vermont, you can choose someone, called a custodian, to manage property you are leaving to a child. If you die when the child is under the age set by your state's law—18 in a few states, 21 in most, 25 in several others—the custodian will step in to manage the property until the child reaches the age specified by your state's law. To set up a custodianship, all you need to do is name a custodian and the property you're leaving to a young person. You can do this in your will or living trust. For example, your will might state, "I leave $10,000 to Michael Stein, as custodian for Ashley Farben under the Illinois Uniform Transfers to Minors Act." That would be enough to create the custodianship.

Set up trust for each child.

You can use your will to name someone (called a trustee), who will handle any property the child inherits until the child reaches the age you specify. Generally, the trustee can spend trust money for the young person's health, education, and living expenses. When the child reaches the age you specified, the trustee ends the trust and gives whatever is left of the trust property to the child. Serving as a trustee is more work than is serving as a custodian under the UTMA. For one thing, a trustee must file annual income tax returns for the trust. And because the powers of a trustee are limited to what's allowed in the will or other document authorizing the trust, the trustee may have to show the will (or at least the part of it that outlines the trustee's authority) to banks and others with whom he or she deals. The powers of an UTMA custodian, however, are set out by state statute. Most banks and other institutions are familiar with them and know what authority custodians have.

Set up a "pot trust" for your children.

If you have more than one child, you may want to set up just one trust for all of them. This arrangement is usually called a pot trust. In your will, you establish the trust and appoint a trustee, who will have the power to dole out trust money to each of the children. The trustee doesn't have to spend the same amount on each child; instead, the trustee decides what each child needs. When the youngest child reaches a certain age, usually 18, the trust ends. A pot trust provides great flexibility for the trustee. Its major drawback is that the older children can't receive their shares of the trust property until the youngest child turns 18; they may not get control over their inheritance until they are well into adulthood*.

Name a property guardian.

If you wish, you can simply use your will to name a property guardian for your child. Then, if at your death your child needs the guardian, the court will appoint the person you choose. The property guardian will manage whatever property the child inherits, from you or others, if there's no other mechanism (a trust, for example) to handle it.

Comments:

Say whether the following statements are TRUE, FALSE or INCOMPLETE. In case of FALSE or INCOMPLETE statements give the correct version.

1. Minors don't inherit property.

2. The custodian will manage the property until the child reaches the age of 21.

3. Serving as a trustee is the same as serving as a custodian.

4. One trust for all children is called a pot trust.

Answer the following questions:

1. What does one need to do to set up a custodianship?

2. Who is & personal guardian and what is he/she responsible for?

3. Who appoints the personal guardian?

4. What does a person called a custodian do?

5. Is trustee the same as custodian!

6. What is the main drawback of the pot trust?

Can I disinherit relatives I don 7 like?

It depends on whom you want to disinherit. If it's anyone other than your spouse or child, the rule is very simple: don't mention that person in your will, and he or she won't receive any of your property. Rules for spouses and children are somewhat more complex.

Spouses

It is not usually possible to disinherit your spouse completely. If you live in a community property state (Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington or Wisconsin), your spouse automatically owns half of all the property and earnings (with a few exceptions) acquired by either of you during your marriage. You can, however, leave your half of the community property, and your separate property (generally considered to be all property you owned before marriage or received via gift or inheritance during marriage), to anyone you choose.

In all other states, there is no rule that property acquired during marriage is owned by both spouses. To protect spouses from being disinherited, these states give your spouse a legal right to claim a portion of your estate, no matter what your will provides. But keep in mind that these provisions work only if your spouse challenges your will. If your will leaves your spouse less than the statutory share, and he or she doesn't object, the document will be honored as written.

Children

Generally, it's legal to disinherit a child. Some states, however, protect minor children against the loss of a family residence. For example, the Florida Constitution prohibits the head of a family from leaving his residence to anyone other than a spouse if he is survived by a spouse or minor child.

Most states have laws—called "pretermitted heir" statutes—to protect children of any age from being accidentally disinherited. If a child is neither named in your will, nor specifically disinherited, these laws assume that you accidentally forgot to include that child. In many states, these laws apply only to children born after you made your will, but in a few states they apply to any child not mentioned in your will. The overlooked child has a right to the same share of your estate as he or she would have received if you'd left no will. The share usually depends on whether you leave a spouse and on how many other children you have, but it is likely to be a significant percentage of your property. In some states, these laws apply not only to your children, but also to any of your grandchildren by a child who has died.

To avoid any legal battles after your death, if you decide to disinherit a child, or the child of a deceased child, expressly state this in your will. And if you have a new child after you've made your will, remember to make a new will to include, or specifically disinherit, that child.

What should I do with my will after I sign it?

After you die, your executor (the person you appointed in your will) is responsible for seeing that your wishes are carried out as directed by your will. So wherever you choose to keep your will, make sure your executor (and at least one other person you trust) knows where to find it.

Your executor's first task is to locate your will, and you can help by keeping the original in a fairly obvious place. Here are some suggestions.

• Store your will in an envelope on which you have typed your name and the word "Will."

• Place the envelope in a fireproof metal box, file cabinet or home safe. An alternative is
to place the original in a safe deposit box*. But before doing that, learn the bank's policy about
access to the box after your death. If, for instance, the safe deposit box is in your name alone,
the box can probably be opened only by a person authorized by a court, and then only in the
presence of a bank employee.

Comments:

safe deposit box - депозитарный ящик в банке

Say whether the following statements are TRUE, FALSE or INCOMPLETE. In case of FALSE or INCOMPLETE statements give the correct version.

1. Any relative can be disinherited.

2. A child not named in a will is disinherited.

3. Pretermitted heir statutes apply to children not mentioned in the will.

4. If a person has a new child after he has made his will, he needs to make a new will.

5. An executor is a person who knows where to find the will.

Answer the following questions:

1. How can one disinherit their relatives?

2. How are spouses protected from being disinherited?

3. Can a child be disinherited?

4. What are "pretermitted heir" statutes?

5. What does the overlooked child's share of inheritance depend on?

6. What does one have to do to disinherit his children?

7. Who is an executor?

Making your will legal - follow a few simple rules to make a binding will

The legal requirements for drafting a valid will aren't nearly as complicated as many

people fear. There are just a few simple rules; follow them and you'll leave a will that

you can rely on to make sure your wishes will be carried out.

Age

To make a will, you must either be:

• 18 years of age or older, or

• living in one of the few states that permit younger persons to make a will if they're married, in the military, or otherwise considered "emancipated."

Mental state

You must be of "sound mind" to make a valid will. It's not a rigorous requirement. The

standard interpretations require that you:

• know what a will is and that you're making one

• understand the relationship between yourself and those persons who you would normally provide for, such as a spouse or children

• understand what you own, and

• be able to decide how to distribute your property.

In reality, a person must be quite unbalanced before a court will rule that she lacked the capacity to make a valid will. For example, forgetfulness or even the inability to recognize friends doesn't, by itself, establish incapacity. Also, it's important to remember that in the vast majority of cases, there's no need to prove mental state to a court. It's presumed that the will writer was of sound mind, and the issue will never arise unless someone challenges this in a court proceeding—which is very rare. A will can also be declared invalid if a court determines that it was procured by "fraud" or "undue influence." This usually involves some evil-doer manipulating a person of unsound mind to leave all, or most, of his property to the manipulator. Will contests based on these grounds are also quite rare.

If you suspect someone might challenge your will on the basis of your mental competence or fraud, be sure to see a lawyer. For example, if you plan to leave the bulk of your property to someone you know is disliked and mistrusted by some close family members, work with a lawyer to minimize the possibility of a lawsuit, and maximize the chances your wishes will prevail if there is one.

What your will must look like

You won't be around* to vouch for your will's validity when it takes effect. Because of this stark truth, every state has laws designed to make sure that nobody can pass off a phony document as your will after your death. Most states' rules (except Louisiana's) are very similar, and they are less onerous than many people imagine.

• The will must be typewritten or computer-printed. Handwritten wills are valid in some states, but aren't recommended.

• The document must expressly state that it's your will.

• The will must have at least one substantive provision. A clause that leaves some, or all, of your property to someone is the most common substantive provision. However, a will that only appoints a personal guardian for your minor children and doesn't dispose of any property is also perfectly valid.

You must appoint an executor. This person (called a "personal representative" in some states) is responsible for supervising the distribution of your property after your death and seeing that your debts and taxes are paid. Nevertheless, in most states, even if you fail to name an executor in an otherwise valid will, a court will appoint one and then enforce the will.

Comments:

You won't be around - вас не будет рядом

Offer words/phrases corresponding to the following definitions:

1. to take or receive (property, a privilege, title, etc.) as an heir at the death of a former possessor -

2. the action of showing something for inspection or verification -

3. a person's formal declaration as to the disposal of his or her property after death; the document in which this declaration of intention is expressed -

4. a person who has custody of the person or property of a minor or other person deemed incapable of managing his or her own affairs -

5. a person who has responsibility for controlling or administering property in trust -

6. to dispossess of or bar from an inheritance -

7. succession of property that has not been disposed of by a valid will -

Answer the following questions:

I. Can you compare the main rules of will making in the USA and Russia?

Witnesses

You must date and sign the will in the presence of at least two witnesses. Three are required in Vermont, and it's a good idea to use three in all states. Your witnesses cannot be named to receive property in your will. The witnesses watch you sign your will, and then sign it themselves.

Notarization

Contrary to what many people believe, wills don't have to be notarized to be valid. However, in most states you may want your witnesses to sign a short document called a "self-proving" affidavit (a sworn statement) before a notary public. Doing so makes the probate process easier: your witnesses won't have to come to court after your death to swear that the will is valid.

If you move

Generally, a will is valid in any state where you die, if it was valid under the laws of the state (or country) where you were "domiciled" when the will was made. Your domicile is the state where you have your principal home, where you spend most of your time, as opposed, say, to a summer home. You can have only one domicile.

If you move to another state after signing your will, you should review your will in light of the new state's laws, especially property ownership laws that apply to married couples. Fortunately, you'll probably determine that your original will remains valid.

Revise your will when your family changes

Significant family changes always signal the need to revise your estate plan. In particular, you should make a new will if you get a divorce, or if a child is born or dies. In several states, getting divorced automatically revokes gifts made to a former spouse in your will. In some states, however, your ex-spouse will still be entitled to take property as your will directs. If you remarry, state laws become even more complex. To be on the safe side, if you get divorced, make a new will that revokes your old one. If you want to disinherit your former spouse, simply leave him or her out of your new will-that will do the job.

If you have a new child after preparing your will, revise your will to account for the new child. If you don't, your existing estate plan will likely be disrupted when that child claims his or her share of your estate under law.

If a grown child dies, leaving children (your grandchildren), you should make a new will to provide for or disinherit these grandchildren. Then, make sure that all property you left to the deceased child is redirected to other beneficiaries.

Find in the text English equivalents of the following phrases:

Offer words/phrases corresponding to the following definitions:

1. a person receiving or entitled by law to receive property as the successor of the former owner -

2. the whole of one's possessions, especially all the property and debts left by one at death -

3. a person appointed by a testator to execute his or her will -

4. the official proving of a will -

5. legal disqualification -

6. to confirm by evidence or assertion; to state authoritatively that; to provide evidence of-

7. the recipient of funds, property, or other benefits, as from a will -

Answer the following questions:

1. In what cases does a will have to be revised?

GIVE THEM LEGAL ADVICE: There are people who find themselves in difficult situations and seek legal help. Read these real-life stories, coming from E-net chat rooms, and give your advice based on your knowledge of either the US or Russian law. In the latter case begin your answer with "If this happened in Russia, I would say..."

1) Joint inheritance?

I have a friend whose husband is going to inherit some money and a house soon. Would someone tell me if that inheritance would be joint property in the case of a divorce?

2) Wills

My husband's mother who has lived with us for the past year is dying of cancer. My husband was named executor about one year ago. His sister wants to begin to settle things now. Is my husband required to show her the will before the mother's death?

3) Supposedly no will

My father died. He has 4 children. My Stepmother said he had no will. She and my father had no children. I saw a will of his some years back. Could this have been voided? She refuses to talk us. There are things he had before he married her. Is she entitled to everything? Please shed light on this situation. T

4) Contesting of Will

My grandfather has a will and is still alive. He has stated in his Will that his house will go to his two sons and to his grandson in equal shares per capita.

Now, the two sons don't know that the grandson was put into the will to inherit part of the house. The two sons are not going to be happy that the grandson is getting part of the house. The grandson has been living with grandpa for the last 5 years. He is the one taking care of him. We feel they might want to contest the Will. How would they go about that? And what are the chances of them doing that?

5) No cash to leave

] am elderly and wish to pass on to grandchildren possessions which I have, i.e., the car, the PC, the TV, the VCR, etc. — items which have little monetary value but which have sentimental value. I have no cash to leave to anyone. Could I just leave a list with my children to act as a

will?

6) Am I entitled to anything?

I had been seeing a guy for 1 year and got married 1 month ago. He passed away on July 8, 2003, due to cancer. He had a will written in 1995 and had left everything to his sister. Do I have any rights to anything? Personal items in the house - who do they belong to? He had a house with 40 acres of land that I am living in. Will that be mine or his sister's?

7) Under guardianship

Can a person who is under guardianship* make or revoke a will? My aunt who has dementia*

has a will made before she had a guardian. Can she revoke or make changes in her will during

lucid times*?

guardianship - опека; опекунство, попечение

dementia - слабоумие

lucid limes - периоды просвещения, периоды ясного сознания

8) Video will

Can a person have a video tape of himself stating the same things that would be in a written will and it become a legal will?

9) Ethics and wills

Is it ethical for the attorney drawing up a will for his client to add himself as the executor of the estate and all belongings, and also add himself as beneficiary of $10,000 on the will? It just doesn't sound right...also, when you draw up a will, then get married, is that will evoked?

Symmetry. 5. _________ In the early days of X-ray analysis, when the ionic compounds that were being studied often had a high symmetry this fact was of great assistance in arriving at a solution. The possible schemes of symmetry are limited by geometry, just as the possible number of regular solid figures are limited, although in the case of crystals symmetries the number, 230, is quite large. Symmetry axes and symmetry planes can be identified by nothing regular absences of diffracted - wave orders; the presence or absence of symmetry centers can be determined by a statistical survey of intensities, as was first shown by A.T. Wilson; crystals with symmetry centers characteristically have many more weak reflections than crystals with no symmetry centers.

6. _________ Optically active molecules can have two forms, one of which is the reflection of the other (dextro and levo forms of the chemists). In general when the waves scattered by the atoms have phases as if coming from atomic centers, these two forms give identical X-ray diffraction, that is, the reflection from the right-hand side has the same amplitude as that from the left, although the phase is reversed. 7. _________The atom scatters as if at one location for the one side and at another location for the two other side so that two resultant amplitudes are different. This enables dextro and levo to be distinguished, for instance, in the classic case of a tetrahedron with four different corners, one could tell for each orientation whether one was looking at an appex or a base. I.M. Biyvoet was the first to distinguish between dextro and levo forms of the ion. There was a 50:50 chance, that the traditional chemical convention for representing dextro and levo was correct; luckily it turned out to be right.

monochromatic (uniform wavelength), successive sheets, wavetrains, a strong reflected beam, glancing angle, initial adventure, interpretational techniques, crystalline penicillin, mathematical analysis of anisotropy, preferred orientations, alias textures, inextricably commingled, a three-dimensional scaffolding, uniquely determined, symmetry planes, absorbtion edge.

1. Can you give the definition of the Fourier Method?

2. What science is Fourier Method applied in?

THE FOURIER METHOD

In the last five decades, defect structure analysis of polycrystalline materials by X-ray powder diffraction technique has been able to cover a number of lattice imperfections. 1. ____C____ They are generally based on two different approaches and have been incorporating an impressively high number of modifications and nuances that is too hard to mention all of them. Both approaches require a twofold task: the determination of the intrinsic (pure) physical diffraction line profile of the sample and, then, the extraction of the lattice imperfection parameters.

The first highly elaborated approach of size/strain analysis is Warren-Averbach method (known also as a Warren-Averbach-Bertaut method) which employs the deconvolution Fourier-transform method (known also as the Stokes method) for the determination of the intrinsic physical line profile, followed by the Fourier method for evaluation of lattice imperfections. 2. _________ The coefficients are numerically calculated. The method was initially proposed for application in the field of metals and alloys, but rapidly was extend to the area of ceramic and also polymer materials.

3. _________ The intrinsic line parameters extract in this manner, such as 200 diffraction line positions, full width at a half maximum (FWHM), integral breadths and others, that define diffraction line shapes, are further used to calculate the Fourier transforms of intrinsic diffraction lines.

Balzar’s method uses the Voigt function and its Fourier transform to describe the intrinsic line profile, which is used to calculate both the size and strain coefficients proposed by Warren and Averbach. The advantages of Balzar’s method are that the Voigt function Fourier transform has an analytical form and the convolution of two Voigt functions is also a Voigt function, so size and strain coefficients could be analytically determined.

Enzo’s method uses a pseudo-Voigt function and its Fourier transform for the description of the intrinsic line profile. 4. _________

The acceptance of the convolution profile-fitting methods in the materials science community is very high due to the much less consuming time than the Warren-Averbach method, giving, nonetheless, trustful results. There are numbers of publications on lattice imperfection analyses using the second approach. However, the Warren-Averbach method is still considered as the less biased one, because it does not assume any shape for the diffraction lines. At the other side, the second approach uses some analytical functions to describe the diffraction line shapes. Experimentally it has been showed that in the most cases satisfactory representation of diffraction lines is done by Voigt function, or by some of it approximations, pseudo-Voigt and Pearson VII.

Another method of X-ray analysis attacks the solution of the crystal structure from a quite different angle. 5. _________ The resultant of the waves scattered by these atoms is then compared with the observed amplitude of reflection, the position of the atoms being adjusted to give the best fit. This method was successful as long as the number of atoms in the unit cell was small. As increasingly complex crystals were studied however, it became more and more difficult to try adjustments of so many parameters simultaneously, even when the structure was approximately known. The refining of the structure to get the best fit became extremely laborious.

The Fourier method is in a sense a complete reversal of this process. A structure is treated not as a cluster of atoms put as continuous electron distribution capable of scattering X-rays. 6._________ There is no juggling with the positions of the atoms one by one; the density map shows the best position for all of them, however large their number.

The density distributions are mapped by adding together the terms of a "Fourier series", a mathematical expression that can be used to represent any quantity that varies periodically. Since the crystal is a periodic pattern in three dimensions, the electron density can be represented by a three-dimensional Fourier series. 7. _________

powder diffraction technique, size-strain analyses, lattice imperfection parameters, polymer materials, the convolution profile-fitting method, integral breadths, intrinsic diffraction lines, size and strain coefficients, the less biased method, a pattern of atoms, amplitude of reflection, refining of the structure, to become extremely laborious, cluster of atoms, pick values, a set of electron sheets, a plot of the density distribution, stacking fault probabilities.

1. Who created the science called statistical mechanics?

2. What scientists contributed greatly to the development of the statistical mechanics?

STATISTICAL MECHANICS

It is one of the wonders of the history of physics that a rigorous theory of the behaviour of a chaotic assembly of molecules - a gas - preceded by several decades the experimental uncovering of the structure of regular, crystalline solids. Attempts to create a kinetic theory of gases go all the way back to the Swiss mathematician, Daniel Bernouilli, in 1738, followed by John Herapath in 1820 and John James Waterston in 1845. But it fell to the great James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s to take the first accurate steps - and they were giant steps - in interpreting the pressure-volume-temperature relationship of a gas in terms of a probabilistic (or statistical) analysis of the behaviour of very large populations of mutually colliding molecules -the kinetic theory of gases. 1. ____F____ The Maxwell distribution of kinetic energies of such a population has made his name immortal... even if it had not been immortalised by his electromagnetic equations. The science he created is sometimes called statistical mechanics, sometimes statistical thermodynamics.

For many years this kind of theory was applied to fluids of various kinds, and it became interestingly applicable to solids much later, in 1925, when W. Lenz in Germany, together with his student Ising, created the theory of critical phenomena, which covers phenomena in solids such as ferromagnetism and order-disorder transitions. 2. _________ The issue was whether an array of spins attached to atoms in a regular array would automatically generate spin alignment and ferromagnetism. Ising only managed a theory in one dimension and wrongly surmised that in higher dimensions there would be no ferromagnetism. The many attempts to generalise the theory to two or three dimensions began with Rudolf Peierls in 1936; he showed that Ising’s surmise was wrong.

A population of theorists floating uneasily between physics and materials science (but a number of them working in materials science departments) have become specialists in the statistical thermodynamics of solids, critical phenomena in particular, working in specific fields such as order-disorder transitions; to go into any details of critical phenomena here would take us much too far into the domain of mathematical physics. Two splendid historical accounts of the whole field are by Domb (1995, 1996); another important historical treatment is by Brush (1967). It is intriguing that Ising’s name was immortalised in the Ising Model, but in Domb’s opinion (private communication), "Ising was a low-grade scientist who by a quirk of fate managed to get his name on thousands of papers, many of them outstandingly good. 3. _________

From the historical point of view, an interesting dispute concerns the relative claims of Maxwell in England, Josiah Willard Gibbs in America and Ludwig Boltzmann in Austria to be regarded as the true father of statistical thermodynamics - as distinct from macroscopic chemical thermodynamics, where Gibbs’ claims are undisputed. Gibbs’ claim rests on a book in 1902 (Gibbs 1902), but this is a good deal later than the various classic papers by Boltzmann. The most important of these were his study of the process by which a gas, initially out of equilibrium, approaches the Maxwell Boltzmann distribution (as it has since become known), and his profound investigation in 1877 of the probabilistic basis of entropy, culminating in the relation S = k log W, where S is entropy and W is the probability of a microstate; this immortal equation is carved on Boltzmann’s tomb. 4. _________

The sequence of events is traced with historical precision in a new biography of Boltzmann (Cercignani 1998). 5. _________ Cercignani attributes this to the unfamiliarity of many physicists early in this century with Boltzmann’s papers, partly because of the obscurity of his German style (but Gibbs is not easy to read, either!), and partly because the great opinion-formers of early 20th-century physics, Bohr and Einstein, knew little of Boltzmann’s work and were inclined to decry it. The circumstances exemplify how difficult it can be to allocate credit appropriately in the history of science.

crystalline solids, pressure-volume-temperature relationship, electromagnetic equations, interestingly applicable to, spin alignment, order-disorder transitions, splendid historical accounts, to be negligible, macroscopic chemical thermodynamics, initially out of equilibrium, profound investigation, unfamiliarity, obscurity of style, to exemplify.

Lakes

Northern Ireland is also home to the UK's largest lake, Lough Neagh, which covers an area of 396sq.km (153 sq miles). Other major lakes include Windermere in the English Lake District and Loch Lomond in Scotland. Another of Scotland's lakes, Loch Ness is famous for sightings of 'Nessie', a mythical monster!

Find out more about the landscape of England

UK Rivers

Being a relatively small Island, the UK's rivers are not very long. The Severn, its longest river, is just 338 km in length, beginning in Wales and entering the Atlantic Ocean near Bristol in England. Other major rivers include the Thames, which flows through Oxford and London, and the Trent and Mersey rivers, which drain rainfall from large areas of central England.

Find out more about UK Rivers

Climate

The Uk's climate varies greatly according to season and location, but on the whole can be described as mild with few extremes.

Find out more about the climate

Facts

• The capital of England is London. Sometimes referred to the capital of Britain. London is built along the River Thames
• Three quarters of the land in Britain is used for farming.
• Nine out of ten people live in towns and cities.
• The highest mountains are in Scotland and Wales.
• More than two-thirds of people own their own homes.