4.1: The Law of Inertia
There is something funny about motion with constant velocity: it is indistinguishable from rest . Of course, you can usually tell whether you are moving relative to something else . But if you are enjoying a smooth airplane ride, without looking out the window, you have no idea how fast you are moving, or even, indeed (if the flight is exceptionally smooth) whether you are moving at all.
If I were to drop something from such an airplane, I know from experience that it would fall on a straight line—relative to me, that is. If it falls from my hand it will land at my feet, just as if we were all at rest. But we are not at rest. In the half second or so it takes for the object to fall, the airplane has moved forward 111 meters relative to the ground. Yet the (hypothetical) object I drop does not land 300 feet behind me! It moves forward with me as it falls, even though I am not touching it. It keeps its initial forward velocity , even though it is no longer in contact with me or anything connected to the airplane.
This remarkable observation is one of the most fundamental principles of physics, which we call the law of inertia . It can be stated as follows: in the absence of any external influence (or force ) acting on it, an object at rest will stay at rest, while an object that is already moving with some velocity will keep that same velocity (speed and direction of motion)—at least until it is, in fact, acted upon by some force.
Please let that sink in for a moment, before we start backtracking, which we have to do now on several accounts. First, we used repeatedly the term “force,” but we have not defined it properly. What if we just said that forces are precisely any “external influences” that may cause a change in the velocity of an object? That will work until it is time to explore the concept in more detail, a few chapters from now.
Next, I need to draw your attention to the fact that the object I (hypothetically) dropped did not actually keep its total initial velocity: it only kept its initial forward velocity. In the downward direction, it was speeding up from the moment it left my hand, as would any other falling object (and as we shall see later in this chapter). But this actually makes sense in a certain way: there was no forward force, so the forward velocity remained constant; there was, however, a vertical force acting all along (the force of gravity), and so the object did speed up in that direction. This observation is, in fact, telling us something profound about the world’s geometry: namely, that forces and velocities are vectors , and laws such as the law of inertia will typically apply to the vector as a whole, as well as to each component separately (that is to say, each dimension of space). This anticipates, in fact, the way we will deal, later on, with motion in two or more dimensions; but we do not need to worry about that for a few chapters still.
Finally, it is worth spending a moment reflecting on how radically the law of inertia seems to contradict our intuition about the way the world works. What it seems to be telling us is that, if we throw or push an object, it should continue to move forever with the same speed and in the same direction with which it set out—something that we know is certainly not true. But what’s happening in “real life” is that, just because we have left something alone, it doesn’t mean the world has left it alone. After we lose contact with the object, all sorts of other forces will continue to act on it. A ball we throw, for instance, will experience air resistance or drag, and that will slow it down. An object sliding on a surface will experience friction, and that will slow it down too. Perhaps the closest thing to the law of inertia in action that you may get to see is a hockey puck sliding on the ice: it is remarkable (perhaps even a bit frightening) to see how little it slows down, but even so the ice does a exert a (very small) frictional force that would bring the puck to a stop eventually.
This is why, historically, the law of inertia was not discovered until people started developing an appreciation for frictional forces, and the way they are constantly acting all around us to oppose the relative motion of any objects trying to slide past each other.
This mention of relative motion, in a way, brings us full circle. Yes, relative motion is certainly detectable, and for objects in contact it actually results in the occurrence of forces of the frictional, or drag, variety. But absolute (that is, without reference to anything external) motion with constant velocity is fundamentally undetectable. And in view of the law of inertia, it makes sense: if no force is required to keep me moving with constant velocity, it follows that as long as I am moving with constant velocity I should not be feeling any net force acting on me; nor would any other detection apparatus I might be carrying with me.
This is the next very interesting fact about the physical world that we are about to discover: forces cause accelerations, or changes in velocity, but they do so in different degrees for different objects; and, moreover, the ultimate change in velocity takes time . The first part of this statement has to do with the concept of inertial mass , to be introduced in the next chapter; the second part we are going to explore right now, after a brief detour to define inertial reference frames .
Inertial Reference Frames
The example we just gave you of what happens when a plane in flight experiences turbulence points to an important phenomenon, namely, that there may be times where the law of inertia may not seem to apply in a certain reference frame. By this we mean that an object left at rest, like the water in a cup, may suddenly start to move—relative to the reference frame coordinates—even though nothing and nobody is acting on it. More dramatically still, if a car comes to a sudden stop, the passengers may be “projected forward”—they were initially at rest relative to the car frame, but now they find themselves moving forward (always in the car reference frame), to the point that, if they are not wearing seat belts, they may end up hitting the dashboard, or the seat in front of them.
Again, nobody has pushed on them, and in fact what we can see in this case, from outside the car, is nothing but the law of inertia at work: the passengers were just keeping their initial velocity, when the car suddenly slowed down under and around them. So there is nothing wrong with the law of inertia, but there is a problem with the reference frame : if one wants to describe the motion of objects in a reference frame like a plane being shaken up or a car that is speeding up or slowing down, we need to allow for the fact that objects may move—always relative to that frame—in an apparent violation of the law of inertia.
The way we deal with this in physics is by introducing the very important concept of an inertial reference frame , by which we mean a reference frame in which all objects will, at all times, be observed to move (or not move) in a way fully consistent with the law of inertia. In other words, the law of inertia has to hold when we use that frame’s own coordinates to calculate the objects’ velocities . This, of course, is what we always do instinctively: when I am on a plane I locate the various objects around me relative to the plane frame itself, not relative to the distant ground.
To ascertain whether a frame is inertial or not, we start by checking to see if the description of motion using that frame’s coordinates obeys the law of inertia: does an object left at rest on the counter in the laboratory stay at rest? If set in motion, does it move with constant velocity on a straight line? The Earth’s surface, as it turns out, is not quite a perfect inertial reference frame, but it is good enough that it made it possible for us to discover the law of inertia in the first place!
What spoils the inertial-ness of an Earth-bound reference frame is the Earth’s rotation, which, as we shall see later, is an example of accelerated motion . In fact, if you think about the grossly non-inertial frames I have introduced above—the bouncy plane, the braking car—they all have this in common: that their velocities are changing; they are not moving with constant speed on a straight line.
So, once you have found an inertial reference frame, to decide whether another one is inertial or not is simple: if it is moving with constant velocity (relative to the first, inertial frame), then it is itself inertial; if not, it is not. We will show you how this works, formally, in a little bit ( Chapter 15 ), after we get around to properly introducing the concept of acceleration.
It is a fundamental principle of physics that the laws of physics take the same form in all inertial reference frames . The law of inertia is, of course, an example of such a law. Since all inertial frames are moving with constant velocity relative to each other, this is another way to say that absolute motion is undetectable, and all motion is ultimately relative. Accordingly, this principle is known as the principle of relativity .


2: Introducing Ratios Last updated Save as PDF Page ID 35054 Illustrative Mathematics OpenUp Resources Section 9: What are Ratios? 9.1: Introducing Ratios and Ratio Language 9.2: Representing Ratios with Diagrams Section 10: Equivalent Ratios 10.1: Recipes 10.2: Color Mixtures 10.3: Defining Equivalent Ratios Section 11: Representing Equivalent Ratios 11.1: Introducing Double Number Line Diagrams 11.2: Creating Double Number Line Diagrams 11.3: Constant Speed 11.4: Comparing Situations by Examining Ratios Section 12: Solving Ratio and Rate Problems 12.1: Representing Ratios with Tables 12.2: Navigating a Table of Equivalent Ratios 12.3: Tables and Double Number Line Diagrams 12.4: Solving Equivalent Ratio Problems Section 13: Part-Part-Whole Ratios 13.1: Part-Part-Whole Ratios 13.2: Solving More Ratio Problems Section 14: Let's Put it to Work 14.1: A Fermi Problem 14.2: How Much for One?


5.3: Chemical Formulas- How to Represent Compounds
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Learning Objectives
- Determine the number of different atoms in a formula.
- Define chemical formula, molecular formula, and empirical formula.
A chemical formula is an expression that shows the elements in a compound and the relative proportions of those elements. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen in a 2:1 ratio. The chemical formula for water is \(\ce{H_2O}\). Sulfuric acid is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the United States and is composed of the elements hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen. The chemical formula for sulfuric acid is \(\ce{H_2SO_4}\).
Certain groups of atoms are bonded together to form what is called a polyatomic ion that acts as a single unit. Polyatomic ions are discussed in more detail in Section 5.5 . Polyatomic ions are enclosed in parenthesis followed by a subscript if more than one of the same ion exist in a chemical formula. The formula \(\ce{Ca3(PO4)2}\) represents a compound with the following:
3 Ca atoms + 2 PO 4 3 - ions
To count the total number of atoms for formulas with polyatomic ions enclosed in parenthesis, use the subscript as a multiplier for each atom or number of atoms.
Ca 3 (PO 4 ) 2
3 Ca + 2 x1 P + 2 x 4 O = 3 Ca atoms + 2 P atoms + 8 O atoms
Molecular Formula
A molecular formula is a chemical formula of a molecular compound that shows the kinds and numbers of atoms present in a molecule of the compound. Ammonia is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen as shown below:
Note from the example that there are some standard rules to follow in writing molecular formulas. The arrangements of the elements depend on the particular structure, which is not of concern at this point. The number of atoms of each kind is indicated by a subscript following the atom. If there is only one atom, no number is written. If there is more than one atom of a specific kind, the number is written as a subscript following the atom. We would not write \(\ce{N_3H}\) for ammonia, because that would mean that there are three nitrogen atoms and one hydrogen atom in the molecule, which is incorrect.
Empirical Formula
An empirical formula is a formula that shows the elements in a compound in their lowest whole-number ratio. Glucose is an important simple sugar that cells use as their primary source of energy. Its molecular formula is \(\ce{C_6H_{12}O_6}\). Since each of the subscripts is divisible by 6, the empirical formula for glucose is \(\ce{CH_2O}\). When chemists analyze an unknown compound, often the first step is to determine its empirical formula.
- molecular formula: \(\ce{C_6H_{12}O_6}\)
- empirical formula: \(\ce{CH_2O}\)
There are a great many compounds whose molecular and empirical formulas are the same. If the molecular formula cannot be simplified into a smaller whole-number ratio, as in the case of \(\ce{H_2O}\) or \(\ce{P_2O_5}\), then the empirical formula is also the molecular formula.
Summary
- A chemical formula is an expression that shows the elements in a compound and the relative proportions of those elements.
- If only one atom of a specific type is present, no subscript is used.
- For atoms that have two or more of a specific type of atom present, a subscript is written after the symbol for that atom.
- Polyatomic ions in chemical formulas are enclosed in parentheses followed by a subscript if more than one of the same type of polyatomic ion exist.
- Molecular formulas do not indicate how the atoms are arranged in the molecule.
- The empirical formula tells the lowest whole-number ratio of elements in a compound. The empirical formula does not show the actual number of atoms.


11.4: Surface Gyres
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In the previous chapter the major wind patterns on Earth were derived. It is these prevailing winds that blow across the water surface to create the major ocean surface currents. However, only about 2% of the wind energy is actually transferred to the water, so a 50 knot wind only creates a 1 knot current. Furthermore, wind-driven surface currents only affect the top 100-200m of water, meaning surface currents only involve about 10% of the world’s ocean water. In section 9.8 we will examine deep, thermohaline circulation, which impacts around 90% of the ocean water.
Surface currents generally move in the same direction as the winds that created them. However, because of Coriolis deflection, the surface currents are offset approximately 45 o relative to the wind direction; 45 o to the right in the Northern Hemisphere, and 45 o to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. This creates a general circulation pattern where in both hemispheres, surface currents flow east to west between the equator and 30 o latitude, west to east between 30 o and 60 o , and east to west between 60 o and the poles (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)).
The trade winds create the equatorial currents that flow east to west along the equator; the North Equatorial and South Equatorial currents. If there were no continents, these surface currents would travel all the way around the Earth, parallel to the equator. However, the presence of the continents prevents this unimpeded flow. When these equatorial currents reach the continents, they are diverted and deflected away from the equator by the Coriolis Effect; deflection to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. These currents then become western boundary currents; currents that run along the western side of the ocean basin (i.e. the east coasts of the continents). Since these currents come from the equator, they are warm water currents, bringing warm water to the higher latitudes and distributing heat throughout the ocean.
At the same time, between 30-60 o latitude the westerlies move surface water towards the east. The Coriolis Effect and the presence of the continents deflect the currents towards the equator, creating eastern boundary currents (on the eastern side of the ocean basins). These currents come from high latitude areas, so they deliver cold water to the lower latitudes. Together, these currents combine to create large-scale circular patterns of surface circulation called gyres . In the Northern Hemisphere the gyres rotate to the right (clockwise), while in the Southern Hemisphere the gyres rotate to the left (counterclockwise).
There are five major gyres in the oceans; the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and Indian (Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)). The North Pacific gyre is composed of the North Equatorial Current on its southern boundary, which turns into the Kuroshio Current (a.k.a. the Japan Current) bringing warm water north towards Japan. The Kuroshio flows into the North Pacific Current which moves east towards North America, where it becomes the California Current to complete the gyre. The North Atlantic gyre is formed by the North Equatorial Current flowing into the Gulf Stream along the east coast of the United States. The Gulf Stream merges into the North Atlantic Current to move water towards Europe, which then becomes the Canary Current as it moves south to join the North Equatorial Current.
Near Antarctica the circulation is somewhat different. Because there is little in the way of continental land masses between 50-60 o south, the surface current created by the westerly winds can make its way completely around the Earth, creating the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) or West Wind Drift (WWD) that flows from west to east (Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)). The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the only current that connects all of the major ocean basins, and in terms of the amount of water that it transports, it is the largest surface current on Earth. Above 60 o latitude the prevailing winds are the polar easterlies, which create a current flowing from east to west along the edge of the Antarctic continent, the East Wind Drift or the Antarctic Coastal Current.
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current creates the southern boundary for all of the Southern Hemisphere gyres. In the South Pacific gyre the ACC becomes the Peru Current (also known as the Humboldt Current) moving up the west coast of South America, before joining the South Equatorial Current. The South Equatorial Current flows southwards as the East Australia Current, before completing the gyre with the ACC. The South Atlantic gyre is composed of the South Equatorial Current, the Brazil Current, the ACC, and the Benguela Current. Finally, the currents making up the Indian gyre are the ACC, the West Australia Current, the South Equatorial Current, and the Agulhas Current.
Not all of the equatorial water that is moved westward by the trade winds and reaches the continents gets transported to higher latitudes in the gyres, because the Coriolis Effect is weakest along the equator. Instead, some of the water piles up along the western edge of the ocean, and then flows eastward due to gravity, creating narrow Equatorial Countercurrents between the North and South Equatorial Currents (Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)). Some of this water also moves east as equatorial undercurrents that flow at depths between 50-200 m, underneath the Equatorial Currents. These undercurrents are called the Lomonosov Current in the Atlantic, and the Cromwell Current in the Pacific.


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7.10: Case Questions
The John Deere Company has one of the most enduring corporate narratives in the world. John Deere was a real person who developed an early, successful steel plow that in some ways contributed to the agricultural revolution the world over. Research and re-tell the John Deere story. What drove John Deere’s success? How does the corporation foster brand advocacy today through its media presence and publications? Some would argue that the John Deere Company has achieved the entrepreneur’s vision. Is it possible for a company to truly live up to its vision statement? Does that describe what John Deere the company did for John Deere the person, or is that an overstatement?
2 .Princeton University professor, president, and CEO of New America, a think tank dedicated to “renewing America in the Digital Age,” Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote an article for The Atlantic in 2012 called “Why women still can’t have it all.” 14 Slaughter starkly and personally lays out the challenges of maintaining the elusive work-life balance. She advocates for taking a long-term view in one’s life and balancing the needs of family with career aspirations. Can a successful entrepreneur have it all? What do entrepreneurs’ stories and corporate narratives suggest? What do you think of the serial entrepreneur who builds a company to sell it and then takes time between ventures to spend time with family and friends? Is this version of the entrepreneurs’ story rare? If you find it to be rare, do you think this might be because it rarely happens or because it doesn’t fit social expectations of workaholic success stories?
3 .Design plays a major role in how investors and other audiences respond to your pitch deck, but for one startup, achieving near perfection in their slide design did not create a pathway to success. Wattage Inc. was pitched as a modular electronics company that would allow users to design their own electronic equipment from modular parts, add art and other customized pieces, and have it shipped directly to them. To take a massive market—consumer electronics—and add a customization element was incredibly ambitious. The deck made for an aesthetically pleasing failure. 25 Potential investors would not open their checkbooks, but would smile and suggest that these guys could always go into business making pitch decks for other startups. 26 The innovation that promised to make us all inventors failed, at least for now, but it can teach us many lessons about developing pitches. View Wattage’s pitch deck to learn more.
- Can great design hurt a pitch presentation? How, or if no, why not?
- What do you think was missing if investors loved the pitch deck, appreciated the tactile prototypes, and yet decided not to invest?
- There is a “go-big-or-go-home” sentiment to this kind of startup that tries to shake up a massive marketplace. After visiting these links and reviewing what Wattage Inc. was trying to build, could you come up with a scaled-down or more focused version of the concept that might work? One issue with this type of startup is that it can only target very large investors. How might you build different pitch decks targeting different types of investors (electronics investors, those who invest in value-added customization products, modular tech enthusiasts, and so on)?
Zappos is sometimes cited as an example of the leanest of lean startups conducting the build-measure-learn process successfully. 34 The company started with no inventory and instead started taking orders to ship shoes to customers who ordered online. They let the market pull the inventory needs out of their startup rather than buying a store of shoes and hoping to sell them all. Their inventory was their local shoe stores. They started out buying their inventory at retail price and then marking up a surcharge for the service of seeking, sorting, and shipping.
There may not be many pairs of shoes worth more than retail price, but people were willing to pay for convenience, and Zappos could measure popular sizes, brands, and trends in ways that would help them anticipate inventory needs as they grew.
- In what ways is the Zappos lean startup story about feedback?
- Ideate a potential startup, besides a food delivery service, built around efficiently or conveniently packing and shipping something others have already made.
- Ideate a potential startup where you could conceivably earn revenues even when buying your inventory at retail price. What makes you think some online customers would pay a premium? What kind of business learning would you have to do to improve on the Zappos lean startup model?
- As soon as a retailer or other service provider notices that a startup is making a profit adding convenience to their existing business infrastructure, what is to keep them from entering the marketplace? Are there any protections for the service you propose? How might you protect such a business?
Entrepreneur.com is cited or referenced several times in this chapter, but even contributors to this publication, which relies on serving a culture of entrepreneurs as part of its value proposition, sometimes question its own community’s trends. Their article, “We’ve Become So Obsessed with ‘Innovation’ That It’s Now Meaningless” challenges a perceived overuse of the term “innovation.” Read the article here: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249408 .
Look for news of college pitch competition winners. Are they all truly innovations? Find a college pitch competition, business model competition, or elevator pitch competition winner who truly is innovative, and find ones, perhaps, who are variations of Uber—delivering stuff and charging a premium for convenience and little more.
- Do you agree with the guest commentary published in Entrepreneur.com? If so, why? If not, why not?
- What can you do in your work as an entrepreneur to develop value propositions that go beyond what can be dreamt up in a classroom?
- What can you read and do to come up with truly fresh ideas? What places can you visit? What networks and mentors can you tap?
- How can you as an individual move past an “innovation” obsession to solve people’s problems.
- Can you be more than another college innovator? Can you be a superhero entrepreneur?


7.12D: Reproductive Cloning
Reproductive cloning, possible through artificially-induced asexual reproduction, is a method used to make a clone of an entire organism.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Differentiate reproductive cloning from cellular and molecular cloning
Key Takeaways
Reproductive Cloning
Reproductive cloning is a method used to make a clone or an identical copy of an entire multicellular organism. Most multicellular organisms undergo reproduction by sexual means, which involves genetic hybridization of two individuals (parents), making it impossible to generate an identical copy or clone of either parent. Recent advances in biotechnology have made it possible to artificially induce asexual reproduction of mammals in the laboratory.
Parthenogenesis, or “virgin birth,” occurs when an embryo grows and develops without the fertilization of the egg occurring; this is a form of asexual reproduction. An example of parthenogenesis occurs in species in which the female lays an egg. If the egg is fertilized, it is a diploid egg and the individual develops into a female; if the egg is not fertilized, it remains a haploid egg and develops into a male. The unfertilized egg is called a parthenogenic, or virgin, egg. Some insects and reptiles lay parthenogenic eggs that can develop into adults.
Sexual reproduction requires two cells; when the haploid egg and sperm cells fuse, a diploid zygote results. The zygote nucleus contains the genetic information to produce a new individual. However, early embryonic development requires the cytoplasmic material contained in the egg cell. This idea forms the basis for reproductive cloning. If the haploid nucleus of an egg cell is replaced with a diploid nucleus from the cell of any individual of the same species (called a donor), it will become a zygote that is genetically identical to the donor. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the technique of transferring a diploid nucleus into an enucleated egg. It can be used for either therapeutic cloning or reproductive cloning.
The first cloned animal was Dolly, a sheep who was born in 1996. The success rate of reproductive cloning at the time was very low. Dolly lived for seven years and died of respiratory complications. There is speculation that because the cell DNA belongs to an older individual, the age of the DNA may affect the life expectancy of a cloned individual. Since Dolly, several animals (e.g. horses, bulls, and goats) have been successfully cloned, although these individuals often exhibit facial, limb, and cardiac abnormalities. There have been attempts at producing cloned human embryos as sources of embryonic stem cells. Sometimes referred to as cloning for therapeutic purposes, the technique produces stem cells that attempt to remedy detrimental diseases or defects (unlike reproductive cloning, which aims to reproduce an organism). Still, therapeutic cloning efforts have met with resistance because of bioethical considerations.
Key Points
- A form of asexual reproduction, parthenogenesis, occurs when an embryo grows and develops without the fertilization of the egg.
- In reproductive cloning, if the haploid nucleus of an egg cell is replaced with a diploid nucleus from the cell of an individual of the same species, it will become a zygote that is genetically identical to the donor.
- Reproductive cloning has become successful, but still has limitations as cloned individuals often exhibit facial, limb, and cardiac abnormalities.
- Therapeutic cloning, the cloning of human embryos as a source of embryonic stem cells, has been attempted in order to produce cells that can be used to treat detrimental diseases or defects.
Key Terms
- clone : a living organism produced asexually from a single ancestor, to which it is genetically identical
- stem cell : a primal undifferentiated cell from which a variety of other cells can develop through the process of cellular differentiation
- parthenogenesis : a form of asexual reproduction where growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization


11.3: Capitalization
Capitalization
The following are some capitalization rules. You probably know most of them, but it's very possible you may be unclear on a couple of them.
- Always capitalize the first letter of a sentence. This gives a visual signal to your reader that a new idea is beginning.
- Always capitalize "I" when referring to yourself. Don't fall into the texting lowercase "i" habit.
- Always capitalize proper nouns. This may be a little trickier than you think. See this video for some tips.
The following video will tell you more.
Free English Lesson -- Capitalization and Proper Nouns . Authored by: The Nardvark. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License.
| Capitalize | Don't Capitalize |
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Note:
Capitalize adjectives when the adjective pertains to "X," and "X" is a proper noun. For instance, French refers to France , which is a proper noun. So French in French fries should be capitalized.
Writing at Work
When working with legal documents, capitalization rules differ from the standard. Defined terms may be capitalized throughout legal documents.
Exercise 1
Correct the capitalization errors in the following fictional story. Copy the corrected paragraph onto your own sheet of paper.
lance worthington signed a Recording Contract with Capitol records on june 15, 2007. Despite selling two million copies of his Debut Album, nothing to lose, lance lost quite a bit as his tax returns from the irs revealed. lance did not think it was fair that the Record Company kept so much of his earnings, so he decided to hire robert bergman, a prominent music Attorney with a Shark-like reputation. bergman represented lance all the way to the supreme court, where lance won the case against capitol records. Lance worthington was instrumental in changing intellectual property rights and long standing Record Company practices. All artists and musicians can thank him for his brave stance against record companies. Lance subsequently formed his own independent record label called worthy records. worthy is now a successful Label based out of chicago, illinois, and its Artists have appeared on well known shows such as The tonight show and Saturday night live. Lance worthington is a model for success in the do-it-yourself World that has become the Music Industry.
Capitalization of Titles (Title Case)
Capitalization of titles can be confusing because we see this done in different ways (styles) in different publication.
The traditional method of capitalizing a title involves:
- Capitalizing the first letter of the first and last words in a title.
- Capitalizing the first letter of all words that aren't articles or coordinating conjunctions that are less than five letters.
The following video illustrates this with particular examples.
Capitalization Rules: Capitalization of a Title . Authored by: Union Test Prep. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License.
Note:
Some style guides treat the title as a sentence and only capitalize the first word. This is not generally acceptable in college classes, however.
In particular, when you list the title on your Works Cited or Bibliography page, even if the original title used sentence case capitalization, change the capitalization to title case.
Exercise 2
Capitalize the following titles according to standard title case .
1. the song remains the same
2. enter the wu-tang (36 chambers)
3. the dna drug revolution
4. the curious incident of the dog in the night time
5. so long, and thanks for all the fish
6. if life's a bowl of cherries, what am i doing in the pits?
Contributors and Attributions
- Adapted from Writing for Success . Provided by: The Saylor Foundation. License: CC-NC-SA 3.0 .
This page most recently updated on June 8, 2020.


9.1: Introduction
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- Last updated
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Learning Outcomes
After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer these questions:
- What are the basic principles of Frederick Taylor’s concept of scientific management?
- What did Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne studies reveal about worker motivation?
- What is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and how do these needs relate to employee motivation?
- How are McGregor’s Theories X and Y and Ouchi’s Theory Z used to explain worker motivation?
- What are the basic components of Herzberg’s motivator-hygiene theory?
- What four contemporary theories on employee motivation offer insights into improving employee performance?
- How can managers redesign existing jobs to increase employee motivation and performance?

EXPLORING BUSINESS CAREERS
Chuck Kaplan, Ciena Corporation
Chuck Kaplan loves music and playing in a band, but he does not work in the music industry. He works for Ciena Corporation, a global supplier of telecommunications networking equipment, software, and services. Kaplan spends his days leading a team to help customers solve business problems by updating and creating revenue through their networks—the process of modernizing and monetizing networks. He also plays music with OTN Speedwagon, Ciena’s all-employee band.
OTN Speedwagon was created after Kaplan thought the entertainment at a corporate function was “cheesy.” He and three others took the idea of creating an employee band to their boss, and OTN Speedwagon was born. Its name comes from the networking technology Ciena implements, Optical Transport Network, and the rock band REO Speedwagon; its members are from all over the globe.
The band is made up of employees from multiple departments, time zones, and countries. Members include an executive administrative assistant in London, England; a CTO in Dallas, Texas; sales system engineers in Dallas, Texas, and St. Louis, Missouri; an account manager in Denver, Colorado; senior managers in Baltimore, Maryland, and New York, New York; a sales consultant in Atlanta, Georgia; vice presidents in Atlanta, Georgia, and Dallas, Texas; and a materials management leader in Ottawa, Canada. When playing with the band, they set aside their job titles and focus on producing award-winning music.
OTN Speedwagon performs songs in a variety of styles and enjoys performing whenever and wherever opportunity exists. A highlight is the opportunity to compete at the Fortune Battle of the Corporate Band, a competition for all-employee bands. OTN Speedwagon won the event one year, beating seven other corporate bands. Two members also walked away with individual awards: best guitarist and best horns.
Producing great music together is not easy. Everyone knows one person being off-tempo or off-key can ruin a song. Because the band members have different job responsibilities and live in separate countries, they are rarely together. Scheduling live rehearsals is a major challenge, and they often happen only the day of or day before an event. The band is up to the challenge, though, and harnesses technology to solve the problem. The members discuss songs to sing (enough for a multi-hour show!) and pick a key for each song that fits the lead vocalist. One member makes an MP3 soundtrack for each song and shares it and lyrics with the others through a secure file-sharing system. Everyone spends hours practicing to the soundtracks—alone. But hard work and dedication pay off. When the band finally is together, often one time through is enough to perfect each song.
Opportunities and benefits such as being part of the band pay dividends for Ciena, certified as a “great place to work.” Band members say trust in each other to do each person’s part makes the band a success. Everyone knows what to do and does it, and that level of trust transfers back to the workplace. Members have built trust in coworkers, knocked down walls, and become more collaborative. The experience has brought the employees together, some meeting for the first time at rehearsal, and made the company seem more like a family. Bonus benefit? Corporate events are much more entertaining.
Sources: “About Chuck Kaplan,” http://www.ciena.com , accessed January 19, 2018; “What Is Network Monetization?” http://www.ciena.com , accessed January 19, 2018; “OTN Speedwagon,” http://www.ciena.com , accessed January 19, 2018; Great Place to Work, “Ciena Corporation,” http://reviews.greatplacetowork.com , November 27, 2017; Jessica Stillman, “What This Remote Company Rock Band Can Teach You About Collaboration,” Inc. , https://www.inc.com , March 10, 2017; Molly Winans, “Ciena’s OTN Speedwagon Gears Up to Rock Out at OFC,” https://www.ofcconference.org , March 17, 2017; Jane Hobbs, “Being a Great Place to Work Shouldn’t Be a Mystery,” http://www.ciena.com , October 24, 2016; “Ciena Takes Home National Title at 13th Annual FORTUNE Battle of the Corporate Bands,” http://www.ciena.com , October 6, 2013; Bo Gowan, “Behind the Scenes with Ciena’s Corporate Rock Band,” http://www.ciena.com , September 16, 2013.
This chapter details motivational theory, both historically and currently, and applies that theory to the business world, where motivation, whether in the form of a rock band or not, is a key to success.
People can be a firm’s most important resource. They can also be the most challenging resource to manage well. Employees who are motivated and work hard to achieve personal and organizational goals can become a crucial competitive advantage for a firm. The key then is understanding the process of motivation, what motivates individuals, and how an organization can create a workplace that allows people to perform to the best of their abilities.


3.3: I Laugh Because It’s Absurd
“A man orders a whole pizza pie for himself and is asked whether he would like it cut into eight or four slices. He responds, ‘Four, I’m on a diet”.’ 1
While not hilarious – so funny that it induces chortling punctuated with outrageous vomiting – this little gem is amusing. We recognize that something has gone wrong. On a first reading it might not compute, something doesn’t quite make sense. Then, aha!, we understand the hapless dieter has misapplied general rules of thumb, mental shortcuts, or heuristics, that we were also initially committed to and that would usually be good enough to rely upon – fewer slices equals fewer calories; diets require fewer calories, etc. – but in this particular case they fail, and the feeling of mirth is our reward for making this discovery. We don’t say all of that after a punchline, of course, but that’s what is happening according to the Humor as Error-Detection Theory: our sense of humor can sense our errors.
This chapter will focus on the overlap and benefits of a humorous and philosophical attitude toward the world and our place in it. The historian of philosophy Will Durant tells us that genuine philosophy begins when one learns to doubt; we can say something similar with humor--trust me.
If philosophy (or humor) is to serve a positive purpose it is to dissipate certainty The paraphrase above (with my parenthetical addition) is from Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy for Laymen. This is his central point: “[Philosophy] must not teach mere skepticism, for, while the dogmatist is harmful, the skeptic is useless. Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing” (Russell, 45). It is interesting that both philosophy and humor confront a similar target: absolutism. To clarify, Russell is worried about an extreme form of skepticism that presumes knowledge is impossible.  The extreme skeptical claim is self-refuting, paradoxical, and at least a little bit droll. 2
This is different from what we might call “rational skepticism” which is the sort of epistemic caution extolled in philosophy, but also in humor as we can see from humorists like Mark Twain, “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know; it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so” (quoted in Hurley 109), and comedians like Chris Rock, “to make people laugh about things that weren’t so funny [or obvious] to begin with. That’s why I’m here” (Oprah Interview 2002), Hannah Gadsby, “My goal is to shake your confidence” (Douglas 2020), and Louis CK, 3 “I believe in taking people to upsetting territory, and making them glad they went there” (Sundance 2010), and we like it. So, we benefit from a humorous attitude in a similar way that we can benefit from a philosophical attitude: we are open to doubt, confusion, ambiguity, vagueness, complexity. That is, we are open to reality as it is, not just as we might wish it were.
The moment you sense that feeling of unshakable confidence in your beliefs, you should be worried, because, as Russell and Twain aver, that is where danger lurks. I give little to no thought to the truth of the equation 1+1=2. 4 In fact my certainty in that precludes me from even considering alternative answers. That is fine. But if that same feeling of certainty infects other areas of epistemic concern, like religion, politics, ethics, or baseball statistics, then I have a problem. I will be disinclined to even listen to differing perspectives. This way leads to dogmatism, and that quickly manifests in burning witches, or insisting that COVID-19 will go away if only we would just stop testing for it so much. 5
Happily, a humorous attitude toward the world helps facilitate a philosophical attitude, and vice-versa. Consider any number of seminal 6 thought experiments involving evil demons, brains in vats, what it would be like to be bats, teletransporters, and famous violinists surreptitiously attached to our backs. These mental exercises cultivate unconventional ways of thinking about issues we might otherwise complacently ignore. They are also kind of funny; at least, if we are open-minded, they elicit a “hey, that’s funny”, as in “strange”, “unexpected”, “novel”, or an enlightening variant of “WTF!”, but about matters we thought we already knew quite well. Humor, like philosophy, takes nothing for granted; this is good, because I’m pretty confident that we’re wrong a lot more than we’re right.
Fallacies are funny
Very often when we discover a mistake in reasoning, a fallacy, we laugh. 7 This is interesting. Contradiction, inconsistency, irrationality, absurdity, nonsense, ridiculousness, repugnance, fallacy, etc., are some terms philosophers have used to refer to instances of poor reasoning. They are also concepts useful in analyzing why laughter often accompanies fault-finding endeavors. For instance, I was recently in a political economic discussion, and my interlocutor responded to my point with something like “you don’t benefit poor people by raising the minimum wage. That’s just Econ 101.” My witty repartee: “And that is a proof surrogate!”  My even wittier riposte: “Don’t you know?  Likewise, a surrogate proof is not an actual proof, it is something else that is easy (castigating someone for not taking the proper college course), taking the place of the burden of thinking logically. Of course, part of my wittiness was itself a proof surrogate. We laughed.
Returning to our President’s peculiar view on the causal connections between testing and the spread of a disease, Trump and his spokespeople have claimed he was being sarcastic with those comments, presumably each time he made them. But if you watch the videos of each of those statements, and you know the meaning of “sarcasm”, you might come to a different conclusion--indeed, you might laugh at their risible rationalizations. If he was being serious, which he has, inexplicably, also said, well, there’s not much hope. To expound by way of analogy, here are some other areas where we could “improve” through willful, aggressive ignorance: if we desire fewer babies, get rid of pregnancy tests; if we don’t want mercury in our waters, stop looking for it there; want to lose weight? throw away all your scales, and don’t go to the doctor-- ever. That last one should markedly improve your overall health. Notice these absurd analogies reveal the silliness (I was going to use “stupendous stupidity” but that would be uncouth, and if I am anything, it’s couth) 9 of the primary analogue.
It is not coincidental that in logic we have an argument form called reductio ad absurdum, or for the initiated, and snobby, just reductio. It is, as you might guess, to reduce another’s argument or claim to absurdity, which in logic implies revealing contradictions or at least significant inferential errors in their argument. Daniel Dennett refers to it as “the crowbar of rational inquiry,” and, in reference to the common employment of analogies found with similar logical thrusts and parries, he tells us it works “by parody of reasoning” (Dennett 29). This is clever; “parity” of reasoning amounts to the legal heuristic, similar cases ought to be decided similarly. But you see, “parody” of reasoning connotes satirical imitation or lampooning. It’s quite good, really.
The reductio offers a handy rejoinder to rampant conspiracy theories, e.g., where you might ask an Alex Jones-type, what would have to also be the case if what you’re saying about the Sandy Hook mass shooting conspiracy were true? An answer: Oh, the gun-control folks wanted to gin up anger at NRA folks, so they went the route of masschild-murder to manipulate our pathos to spark an attack against the Second Amendment. This seems implausible. 10 If contradictions, absurdities, question-begging nonsense, etc., were to follow, that should show that the initial conspiratorial claims are dubious, if not outright laughable. 11
Recognizing absurdity can be funny. Søren Kierkegaard goes so far as to claim that all humor is a species of contradiction. Literally “to speak against” oneself, contradictions do seem ripe for humor: “Errors are comical, and are all to be explained by the contradiction involved, however complicated the combinations” (Kierkegaard 1986, 86). He probably meant something like “incongruity”, or unexpected dissonance, rather than the strict logical sense of “contradiction”, but there are many examples of funny formal contradictions. 12 Here’s one from quantum physics: Schrödinger’s cat walks into a bar and doesn’t. It would be irrational, in terms of classical logic 13 to assent to both of those claims at once. But, lots of people a lot of the time, fall into the abyss of absurdity. It might even be an inescapable aspect of being human, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, so what if we contradict ourselves, “we are large, we contain multitudes,” and this might mean that humor is in fact inevitable.
The first part of this chapter’s title borrows from Kierkegaard (1989, 446), and before him the Christian apologist Turtullian, who once quipped about the central contradictory tenets of Christianity, in putatively ironic fashion, “I believe because it is absurd.” The idea that we laugh at absurdity, contradictions, or an incongruity between the way we thought the world was and how we now recognize it actually is, goes back at least to Arthur Schopenhauer (an odd source for humor analysis. Seriously, go find an image of him right now--that face and humor are extremely incongruous).
For Schopenhauer, humorous laughter results from the “victory of knowledge of perception over thought [which] affords us pleasure…It must therefore be diverting to us to see this strict, untiring, troublesome governess, the reason, for once convicted of insufficiency” (Schopenhauer, 279-80). This seems correct, but needs the following: being amused can be a diversion, but not necessarily, or not only that, and “for once” seems too weak – mistakes are everywhere, and with the properly cultivated attitude, not only can we be primed to find them, we can actually enjoy the discoveries enough to want to repeat the experience of error-detection, so that we are open 14 to the possibility of errors and become better equipped to recognize them in the future. Thus, humor can be intrinsically valuable and diverting, like sex, which is pleasurable in and of itself, but also instrumentally valuable as a fecund form of playful intellectual training, a means to give birth to a sound web of beliefs – like sex, with an intellectual.
Schopenhauer even provides an example of our joyful experience of detecting an error in a joke: “The soldiers in the guard-room who allowed a prisoner who was brought in to join their game of cards, then quarreled with him for cheating, and turned him out … [he then dissects the joke for us] They let themselves be led by the general conception, ‘Bad companions are turned out,’ and forget that he is also a prisoner, i.e., one who they ought to hold fast” (Schopenhauer, 277-8). Once again, no projectilepuking here, but notice it can be interpreted as a fallacy of Accident in which a general rule is followed and accidental features in this specific case are ignored, as the rule of thumb, heuristic, or “general conception” is strictly adhered to even in the face of mitigating factors that should have been seen as exceptions the rule. That sought-out feeling of mirth is so rewarding that we enjoy finding mistakes, even in our own cognitive house, as we will soon see. So, on the Error-Detection model, mirth provides “the motivation for a mind to search out subtle oversights made in reasoning that could infect the integrity of our knowledge” (Hurley, 67), making humor an excellent and enjoyable mistake-minding tool.
Why is error-detection so enjoyable?
I mentioned sex, a couple of times. That is with good reason – we need it, desperately. For whatever (comically strange) reason, that is just how our species propagates. It is nearly impossible to explain this procedure to your children without eliciting an uncomfortable smile or a guffaw of outrage tinged with befuddlement – “No way! That can-not be how it’s done!” The child’s mixed-emotional exclamation is not misplaced; it really does seem like they have unearthed a colossal blunder in the design of the world, and their laughter in part expresses this.
The world is complex, and is exponentially more so when we add human beings interacting with one another in situations that require immediate action with little information. We need something that can do the dirty work of “debugging for the underlying mechanisms of control within an environment” (Hurley, xi) to catch the flawed rules of thumb that would otherwise direct our behavior and belief. One of the clearest presentations of this view is from Hurley:
Our brains are engaged full time in real-time (risky) heuristic search, generating presumptions about what will be experienced next in every domain. This time pressured, unsupervised generation process has necessarily lenient standards and introduces content—not all of which can be properly checked for truth—into our mental spaces. If left unexamined, the inevitable errors in these vestibules of consciousness would ultimately continue on to contaminate our world knowledge store. So there has to be a policy of double-checking these candidate beliefs and surmisings, and the discovery and resolution of these at breakneck speed is maintained by a powerful reward system—the feeling of humor; mirth—that must support this activity in competition with all the other things you could be thinking about (Hurley, 12-13).
The hard-won reward for sex is orgasm, as the easy-won reward for error-detection is mirth, and we are addicted to both – hopefully not at the same time. The feelings of mirth arise as payoff for the mental energy required to juxtapose potentially conflicting ideas in our minds, allowing for us to discover an error in our committed beliefs:
“Humor happens when an assumption is epistemically committed to in a mental space and then discovered to have been a mistake” (Hurley, 121). Most of the examples used by Hurley regarding committed erroneous beliefs are rather innocuous. However, the cognitive groundwork they provide allows us to extend their notion of error detection to humor as a mechanism capable of revealing pernicious stereotypical beliefs, e.g., to which one is committed. The feelings of mirth arise as a reward for finding an error in heuristic thinking that if left unchecked, would lead to the sort of negative stereotyping and oppression. That is some of the serious work that humor can do. 15
Heuristics are fast, frugal, and rarely conscious, so, in order for an error to be exposed, the humor must bring to consciousness the relevant frames or schemas in our mental spaces, and in a way that is pleasant enough to desire repeating it, again, and again. Not only are the heuristics that so often regulate our lives below the level of consciousness, most of our beliefs are not consciously engaged at any given moment, even when they might be causally efficacious with respect to our action. This is a problem if those underlying causal beliefs are flawed and might lead to unethical acts against others. This is one reason why philosophical thought experiments can be so effective, for example, as they are designed to tweak our intuitions in the “laboratories of our minds”, our mental spaces, as opposed to empirical testing in physical labs which is not always possible.
It is a useful exercise to consider how many beliefs you might actually have, and then, ask how many of them are likely true? Where did they come from, when did you acquire them and why? Listening to some comedians, it seems this Cartesian method is central to their performance: you think you know all your beliefs are true? Well, what’s the deal with death and public speaking? “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy” (Seinfeld, 2014). 16 Well obviously, that is false, even absurd. But then why do we keep claiming we fear public speaking so damn much? In other words, we are wrong about what we think our own fears are!  A better question: can we ameliorate our ignorance through recognizing an error within our own belief system? If we cannot, then perhaps “stupid” is apt. If we can, and even enjoy the process, well then, we might just be brilliant!
What’s so funny about me being so wrong?
It is true, our gleeful error-detection in other people’s words and deeds is more common because it is much easier than realizing I have reasoned repugnantly. But sometimes we can laugh at our own ludicrous behavior and thought, and be better for it. After all, a philosophical attitude critical only of others comes perilously close to dogmatism, so we should be able to direct our humor-analyzing mechanism to our own web of beliefs as well. I will close with an anecdote to make this pedagogical point, even though it will be at my own expense--such is the sacrifice heroic educators must sometimes make.
There was a time when I suffered from “road rage” and I would often yell and pound my fist in the air at my freeway opponents.  I briefly caught sight of myself in the rear-view mirror, and in that second I burst out in uncontrollable laughter, at myself. This happened so quickly that the laughter began before the ceiling-pounding had ended, making for a borderline psychotic, clearly ridiculous scene.
This was not a typical eureka moment that happened in a flash; I had built up to it through months, if not years, of my wife’s gentle, and at times more aggressive, humorous mocking of my deep character flaw. My self-directed laughter was not ridiculing or a superiority-type of mockery espoused by Hobbes (see Sophia Stone’s chapter on superiority theory in section 1), as I would then have had to be feeling superior to myself in that very moment--this would be incoherent. The sense of humor in that instance put me in the right distance metaphorically from the source of the humor (myself, perceived in an unappealing light), and enabled me to understand, and perhaps feel what I must have looked like from someone else’s perspective, and that something had gone horribly wrong with me. It worked! This, finally, made me conscious of the stereotype-driven character flaw, and changed my behavior; the 78 laughter at myself drove me to ride a bicycle to work. I am happy to report, I no longer feel any rage at those pickup truck driving jackasses.
Foot Notes
1 From Philosophy Bites Podcast with David Edmunds and Nigel Warburton, ep. 151, 4/9/11. https://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/4/4/0/440...38&cs_id=31709 38&expiration=1593445900&hwt=96d8eb7bc5bf362449d62701916c818e. Carroll believes that “Humor is about humility, realizing what cognitively frail beings we are.” He’s probably right.
2 If I know I know nothing, then there is something I know; that I know nothing. But that is not knowing nothing, it’s knowing something--that I know nothing. Therefore, it’s false that I know nothing. And I know it’s false. So, I know something.  I will only say this: Louis CK is like Immanuel Kant, if only in this respect: both displayed egregiously sexist ideology and/or behavior, and both are difficult to completely remove from the canons of their respective fields. For more on this, see Becca Rothfeld’s “Can Sexual Predators Be Good Scholars?” The Chronicle of Higher Education 2017). Kant probably also masturbated into plants in front of people.
4 Russell did though. For a fun time, find his logical grounding for that equation halfway through volume 2 of the massive tome Principia Mathematica. Now that text is hilarious. You will vomit.
5 Our President: “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases, so I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’” Jane C. Timm, “Fact check: Trump blames testing
for spike in COVID-19 cases. Experts fault reopening of states.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...perts-n1228671 . June 10, 2020, accessed 6/29/20.
6 You thought there’d be a joke here, didn’t you?
7 Special thanks to Brian Wagner and Michelle Rotert for all our conversations on this topic. For a look at funny fallacies in Sesame Street, see (Ross 2015).
8 That’s not exactly how it went down. Instead I actually made some esoteric case against propagandistic language that indoctrinates us into thinking we help the poor by helping the rich; and we hurt the poor by trying to help the poor. Not as funny or clever. But the witty reply only really occurred to me just now. If brevity is the soul of wit, immediacy-of-rebuttal is its body
9 This is an example of paralipsis, more of a rhetorical device of manipulation than a fallacy, but usually resorted to when one is bereft of logical argument; and it can also be quite funny. It is purposely calling attention to something in the very act of asserting that you are not going to talk about it. It could be classed as a variant of performative contradiction, like that found in Augustine and later more formally in Descartes: if I can doubt my own existence, that entails I must exist. Put in terms relevant here, “I don’t exist!”, once uttered, annihilates itself--“Who said that?”
10 That is called understatement--exaggeration going the other direction. See Timothy Johnson’s “Here is exactly what Alex Jones has said about the Sandy Hook massacre” https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jo...-hook-massacre (2017) for Jones’ long-standing perspectives on Sandy Hook. Accessed 7/1/2020.
11 There are plenty more supremely stupid claims that would have to be true if the “Sandy Hook Conspiracies” (there is more than 1) were true. Why this will not always convince a conspiracy theorist that they have made an error is curious, but would require a separate chapter to properly address. Suffice it to say here, their perseverance in maintaining a self-sealing web of beliefs is extraordinary, against which even laughter might prove ineffective.
12 Our meme-obsessed culture sometimes can provide decent educational examples: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q...contradicitons &form=IGRE&first=1&scenario=ImageBasicHover. Accessed 6/10/20. Kierkegaard would love the internet! (Sarcasm, not paralipsis).
13 There might be exceptions to this according to non-classical logics, in which some contradictions can be true. This view can be found in paraconsistent logic--which is itself a joke. And also, it isn’t.
14 Being open to error is essential, and we can see in at least one way how a humorous attitude differs from an overly serious one: “The opposite of laughing and joking is seriousness. Accordingly, it consists in the consciousness of the perfect agreement and congruity of the conception, or thought, with what is perceived, or the reality. The serious man is convinced that he thinks the things as they are, and that they are as he thinks them” (Schopenhauer 280, my italics). Such a dogmatic lens is highly susceptible to ignoring errors, not just committing them. For more on the ambiguities of “seriousness” and “playfulness”, see (Kramer 2015b).
15 For more on this see (Kramer 2013; 2015ab).
16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6giVKp9ec . Accessed 7/3/2020.
Bibliography
Dennett, Daniel. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013.
Hurley, M. W., Dennett, D. C., & Adams, Jr., R. B. Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011.
Kierkegaard, Søren. “Concluding Unscientific Postscript.” in The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. (ed.) John Morreall. New York: SUNY Press, 1987.
Kierkegaard, Søren. The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. (eds.) Howard and Edna Hong. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Kramer, Chris A. “Subversive Humor.” PhD Dissertation, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University. http://epublications.marquette.edu/d...tations_mu/424 . (2015a).
Kramer, Chris A. “Incongruity and Seriousness.” Florida Philosophical Review 15(1) (2015b):1–18.
Kramer, Chris A. “An Existentialist Account of the Role of Humor against Oppression.” International Journal of Humor Research, 26(4) (2013): 629-651.
Kramer, Chris A. “As If: Connecting Phenomenology, Mirror Neurons, Empathy, and Laughter.” PhaenEx 7 (1): (2012) 275–308.
Ross, Sheryl Tuttle. “Finding Fallacies Funny: How Sesame Street’s Playing with Mistakes in Reasoning Makes Learning Fun.” In Jim Henson and Philosophy: Imagination and the Magic of Mayhem, Edited by Timothy Dale and Joseph Foy. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
Russell, Bertrand. “Philosophy for Laymen.” Universities Quarterly 1.1 (1946): 38–49.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Idea: Volume II, Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp. Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1887.


2.5.6: ATP- Adenosine Triphosphate
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Learning Objectives
- Explain the role of ATP as the currency of cellular energy
ATP: Adenosine Triphosphate
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the energy currency for cellular processes. ATP provides the energy for both energy-consuming endergonic reactions and energy-releasing exergonic reactions, which require a small input of activation energy. When the chemical bonds within ATP are broken, energy is released and can be harnessed for cellular work. The more bonds in a molecule, the more potential energy it contains. Because the bond in ATP is so easily broken and reformed, ATP is like a rechargeable battery that powers cellular process ranging from DNA replication to protein synthesis.
Molecular Structure
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is comprised of the molecule adenosine bound to three phosphate groups. Adenosine is a nucleoside consisting of the nitrogenous base adenine and the five-carbon sugar ribose. The three phosphate groups, in order of closest to furthest from the ribose sugar, are labeled alpha, beta, and gamma. Together, these chemical groups constitute an energy powerhouse. The two bonds between the phosphates are equal high-energy bonds (phosphoanhydride bonds) that, when broken, release sufficient energy to power a variety of cellular reactions and processes. The bond between the beta and gamma phosphate is considered “high-energy” because when the bond breaks, the products [adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and one inorganic phosphate group (P i )] have a lower free energy than the reactants (ATP and a water molecule). ATP breakdown into ADP and P i is called hydrolysis because it consumes a water molecule (hydro-, meaning “water”, and lysis, meaning “separation”).
ATP Hydrolysis and Synthesis
ATP is hydrolyzed into ADP in the following reaction:
ATP+H 2 O→ADP+P i +free energy
Like most chemical reactions, the hydrolysis of ATP to ADP is reversible. The reverse reaction combines ADP + P i to regenerate ATP from ADP. Since ATP hydrolysis releases energy, ATP synthesis must require an input of free energy.
ADP is combined with a phosphate to form ATP in the following reaction:
ADP+P i +free energy→ATP+H 2 O
ATP and Energy Coupling
Exactly how much free energy (∆G) is released with the hydrolysis of ATP, and how is that free energy used to do cellular work? The calculated ∆G for the hydrolysis of one mole of ATP into ADP and P i is −7.3 kcal/mole (−30.5 kJ/mol). However, this is only true under standard conditions, and the ∆G for the hydrolysis of one mole of ATP in a living cell is almost double the value at standard conditions: 14 kcal/mol (−57 kJ/mol).
ATP is a highly unstable molecule. Unless quickly used to perform work, ATP spontaneously dissociates into ADP + P i , and the free energy released during this process is lost as heat. To harness the energy within the bonds of ATP, cells use a strategy called energy coupling.
Energy Coupling in Sodium-Potassium Pumps
Cells couple the exergonic reaction of ATP hydrolysis with the endergonic reactions of cellular processes. For example, transmembrane ion pumps in nerve cells use the energy from ATP to pump ions across the cell membrane and generate an action potential. The sodium-potassium pump (Na + /K + pump) drives sodium out of the cell and potassium into the cell. When ATP is hydrolyzed, it transfers its gamma phosphate to the pump protein in a process called phosphorylation. The Na + /K + pump gains the free energy and undergoes a conformational change, allowing it to release three Na + to the outside of the cell. Two extracellular K + ions bind to the protein, causing the protein to change shape again and discharge the phosphate. By donating free energy to the Na + /K + pump, phosphorylation drives the endergonic reaction.
Energy Coupling in Metabolism
During cellular metabolic reactions, or the synthesis and breakdown of nutrients, certain molecules must be altered slightly in their conformation to become substrates for the next step in the reaction series. In the very first steps of cellular respiration, glucose is broken down through the process of glycolysis. ATP is required for the phosphorylation of glucose, creating a high-energy but unstable intermediate. This phosphorylation reaction causes a conformational change that allows enzymes to convert the phosphorylated glucose molecule to the phosphorylated sugar fructose. Fructose is a necessary intermediate for glycolysis to move forward. In this example, the exergonic reaction of ATP hydrolysis is coupled with the endergonic reaction of converting glucose for use in the metabolic pathway.
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Key Points
- Adenosine triphosphate is composed of the nitrogenous base adenine, the five-carbon sugar ribose, and three phosphate groups.
- ATP is hydrolyzed to ADP in the reaction ATP+H2O→ADP+Pi+ free energy; the calculated ∆G for the hydrolysis of 1 mole of ATP is -57 kJ/mol.
- ADP is combined with a phosphate to form ATP in the reaction ADP+Pi+free energy→ATP+H2O.
- The energy released from the hydrolysis of ATP into ADP is used to perform cellular work, usually by coupling the exergonic reaction of ATP hydrolysis with endergonic reactions.
- Sodium-potassium pumps use the energy derived from exergonic ATP hydrolysis to pump sodium and potassium ions across the cell membrane while phosphorylation drives the endergonic reaction.
Key Terms
- energy coupling : Energy coupling occurs when the energy produced by one reaction or system is used to drive another reaction or system.
- endergonic : Describing a reaction that absorbs (heat) energy from its environment.
- exergonic : Describing a reaction that releases energy (heat) into its environment.
- free energy : Gibbs free energy is a thermodynamic potential that measures the useful or process-initiating work obtainable from a thermodynamic system at a constant temperature and pressure (isothermal, isobaric).
- hydrolysis : A chemical process of decomposition involving the splitting of a bond by the addition of water.


1.5.9: Chemical Potentials; Excess; Aqueous Solution
A given aqueous solution, at temperature \(\mathrm{T}\) and pressure \(\mathrm{p}\) (\(\cong \mathrm{p}^{0}\)), contains a solute, chemical substance \(j\). If the thermodynamic properties of the solution are ideal, the chemical potential of the solute is given by equation (a).
\[\mu_{\mathrm{j}}(\mathrm{aq} ; \mathrm{id})=\mu_{\mathrm{j}}^{0}(\mathrm{aq})+\mathrm{R} \, \mathrm{T} \, \ln \left(\mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{j}} / \mathrm{m}^{0}\right) \nonumber \]
For the corresponding real solution,
\[\mu_{\mathrm{j}}(\mathrm{aq})=\mu_{\mathrm{j}}^{0}(\mathrm{aq})+\mathrm{R} \, \mathrm{T} \, \ln \left(\mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{j}} \, \gamma_{\mathrm{j}} / \mathrm{m}^{0}\right) \nonumber \]
Here \(\gamma_{j}\) is the activity coefficient. The excess chemical potential, \(\mu_{\mathrm{j}}^{\mathrm{E}}(\mathrm{aq})\) is given by equation (c).
\[\mu_{\mathrm{j}}^{\mathrm{E}}(\mathrm{aq})=\mu_{\mathrm{j}}(\mathrm{aq})-\mu_{\mathrm{j}}(\mathrm{aq} ; \mathrm{id}) \nonumber \]
\[\text { Then, } \mu_{j}^{E}(a q)=R \, T \, \ln \left(\gamma_{j}\right) \nonumber \]
Often an excess chemical potential \(\mu_{\mathrm{j}}^{\mathrm{E}}(\mathrm{aq})\) is written in the form \(\mathrm{G}_{j}^{\mathrm{E}}\). The latter notation stems from the fact that chemical potentials are partial molar Gibbs energies. In the case of the solvent, water(\(\ell\)), the corresponding equations for the chemical potentials in solutions having either ideal or real thermodynamic properties are given by equations (e) and (f).
\[\mu_{1}(\mathrm{aq} ; \mathrm{id})=\mu_{1}^{*}(\ell)-\mathrm{R} \, \mathrm{T} \, \mathrm{M}_{1} \, \mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{j}} \nonumber \]
\[\mu_{1}(\mathrm{aq})=\mu_{1}^{*}(\ell)-\phi \, \mathrm{R} \, \mathrm{T} \, \mathrm{M}_{1} \, \mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{j}} \nonumber \]
\[\mu_{1}^{\mathrm{E}}(\mathrm{aq})=(1-\phi) \, \mathrm{R} \, \mathrm{T} \, \mathrm{M}_{1} \, \mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{j}} \nonumber \]