The Impressive Range of Impress

The Impressive Range of Impress The Impressive Range of Impress The Impressive Range of Impress By Mark Nichol Impress has various meanings, both literal and figurative. This post explorers those senses and the meanings of various words in which impress is the root. Impress is derived from the Latin verb premere, meaning â€Å"press† and the source of press in all its senses. It usually is a verb and can mean â€Å"imprint by applying pressure† or â€Å"affect significantly.† (It is also a synonym for transfer and transmit.) One can impress a design onto an object using heat or physical pressure, such as by branding or stamping, and one can impress another person by performing an action the other person considers impactful or meaningful. One can also do or say something to impress on another person the significance of a fact or opinion. Another sense of impress is â€Å"force or take by force,† as in the case of sailors or soldiers enlisted against their will or someone coerced or pressured into undertaking an action or a task. However, impress is also a noun, though its use as such is not as common as its employment as a verb. An impress is an imprint or a stamp or seal, an effect, or an act of forcing such as one of those described in the previous paragraph. The act, however, is usually referred to as impressment. An impression is an effect of, or a feeling based on, an action or an imprint or mark on an object or an act such as imprinting or marking. The word also refers to a first coat of ink or paint or the amount of pressure with which it is applied, or the entirety of a set of printed materials produced in one batch. It also pertains to an imitation of a recognizable person that exploits well-known traits such as a unique voice or distinctive mannerisms; one is said to do an impression of someone else, and a person who routinely does impressions for entertainment purposes is called an impressionist. Impressionist also refers to an artist who creates visual art, literature, or music intended to capture feelings instead of details or represents impressions of reality rather than reality itself. In painting, the term is often capitalized, and the art form is called Impressionism. The adjective pertaining to the artist sense is impressionistic. Two other adjectives stemming from impress but distinct from impressionistic and each other in meaning are impressive and impressionable. The former means â€Å"eliciting admiration or awe,† while the former means â€Å"tending to be easily influenced† and usually pertains to children or young people who have not yet acquired critical-thinking skills, though it may also apply, in a pejorative sense, to adults who are insufficiently skeptical. The less common adjective impressible, however, applies to the sense of imprinting. The noun impresario, referring to a conductor, manager, promoter, or sponsor of an entertainment event or series, is unrelated; taken directly from Italian, it derives ultimately from the Latin verb prehendere, meaning â€Å"seize† (also the source of apprehend, comprehend, and prehensile). Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Redundant Phrases to Avoid8 Types of Parenthetical PhrasesDealing With A Character's Internal Thoughts

Hassium Facts - Hs or Element 108

Hassium Facts - Hs or Element 108 Element atomic number 108 is hassium, which has the element symbol Hs. Hassium is one of the manmade or synthetic radioactive elements. Only about 100 atoms of this element have been produced so there is not a lot of experimental data for it. Properties are predicted based on the behavior of other elements in the same element group. Hassium is expected to be a metallic silver or gray metal at room temperature, much like the element osmium. All of the isotopes of hassium are radioactive. Martin Diebel / Getty Images Here are interesting facts about this rare metal: Discovery:  Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Munzenber and co-workers produced hassium at GSI in Darmstadt, Germany in 1984. The GSI team bombarded a lead-208 target with iron-58 nuclei. However, Russian scientists had attempted to synthesize hassium in 1978 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. Their initial data was inconclusive, so they repeated the experiments five years later, producing Hs-270, Hs-264, and Hs-263. Element Name:  Before its official discovery, hassium was referred to as element 108, eka-osmium or unniloctium. Hassium was the subject of a naming controversy over which team should be given official credit for discovering element 108. The 1992 IUPAC/IUPAP Transfermium Working Group (TWG) recognized the GSI team, stating that their work was more detailed. Peter Armbruster and his colleagues proposed the name hassium from the Latin  Hassias  meaning Hess or Hesse, the German state, where this element was first produced. In 1994, an IUPAC committee recommended making the elements name hahnium (Hn) in honor of the German physicist Otto Hahn. This was despite the convention of allowing the discovering team the right to suggest a name. The German discoverers and the American Chemical Society (ACS) protested the name change and the IUPAC finally allowed element 108 to be officially named hassium (Hs) in 1997. Atomic Number:  108 Symbol:  Hs Atomic Weight:  [269] Group: Group 8, d-block element, transition metal Electron Configuration:  [Rn] 7s2  5f14  6d6 Appearance:  Hassium is believed to be a dense solid metal at room temperature and pressure. If enough of the element were produced, it is expected it would have a shiny, metallic appearance. Its possible hassium could be even more dense than the heaviest known element, osmium. The predicted density of hassium is  41  g/cm3. Properties: Its likely hassium reacts with oxygen in air to form a volatile tetraoxide. Following periodic law, hassium should be the heaviest element in group 8 of the periodic table. It is predicted that hassium has a high melting point, crystallizes in the hexagonal close-packed structure (hcp), and has a bulk modulus (resistance to compression) on par with diamond (442 GPa). Differences between hassium and its homologue osmium would likely be due to relativistic effects. Sources:  Hassium was first synthesized by bombarding lead-208 with iron-58 nuclei. Only 3 atoms of hassium were produced at this time. In 1968, Russian scientist Victor Cherdyntsev claimed to have discovered naturally-occurring hassium in a sample of  molybdenite, but this was not verified. To date, hassium has not been found in nature. The short half-lives of the known isotopes of hassium mean no primordial hassium could have survived to the present day. However, its still possible nuclear isomers or isotopes with longer half-lives might be found in trace quantities. Element Classification:  Hassium is a transition metal that  is expected to have properties similar to those of the platinum group of transition metals. Like the other elements in this group, hassium is expected to have oxidation states of 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. The 8, 6, 4, and 2 states will likely be the most stable, based on the elements electron configuration. Isotopes:  12 isotopes of hassium are known, from masses  263 to 277. All of them are radioactive. The most stable isotope is  Hs-269, which has a half-life of 9.7 seconds. Hs-270 is of particular interest because it possesses magic number of nuclear stability. The atomic number 108 is a proton magic number for deformed (nonspherical) nuclei, while 162 is a neutron magic number for deformed nuclei. This doubly magic nucleus has a low decay energy compared with other hassium isotopes. More research is needed to determine whether or not Hs-270 is an isotope in the proposed island of stability. Health Effects:  While the platinum group metals tend not to be particularly toxic, hassium presents a health risk because of its significant radioactivity. Uses:  At present, hassium is only used for research. Sources Emsley, John (2011). Natures Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements (New ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 215–7. ISBN 978-0-19-960563-7.Hoffman, Darleane C.; Lee, Diana M.; Pershina, Valeria (2006). Transactinides and the future elements. In Morss; Edelstein, Norman M.; Fuger, Jean. The Chemistry of the Actinide and Transactinide Elements (3rd ed.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer ScienceBusiness Media. ISBN 1-4020-3555-1.Names and symbols of transfermium elements (IUPAC Recommendations 1994).  Pure and Applied Chemistry  66  (12): 2419. 1994.Mà ¼nzenberg, G.; Armbruster, P.; Folger, H.; et al. (1984). The identification of element 108 (PDF). Zeitschrift fà ¼r Physik A. 317 (2): 235–236. doi:10.1007/BF01421260Oganessian, Yu. Ts.; Ter-Akopian, G. M.; Pleve, A. A.; et al. (1978). ОÐ ¿Ã'‹Ã'‚Ã'‹ Ð ¿Ã ¾ Ã' Ã ¸Ã ½Ã'‚Ð µÃ ·Ã'Æ' 108 Ã' Ã »Ã µÃ ¼Ã µÃ ½Ã'‚Ð ° Ð ² Ã'€Ð µÃ °Ã ºÃ'†Ð ¸Ã ¸ [Experiments on the sy nthesis of element 108 in the 226Ra48Ca reaction] (in Russian). Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.