Rapids are sections of a river where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient, causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. Rapids are hydrological features between a run (a smoothly flowing part of a stream) and a cascade. Rapids are characterised by the river becoming shallower with some rocks exposed above the flow surface. As flowing water splashes over and around the rocks, air bubbles become mixed in with it and portions of the surface acquire a white colour, forming what is called "whitewater". Rapids occur where the bed material is highly resistant to the erosive power of the stream in comparison with the bed downstream of the rapids. Very young streams flowing across solid rock may be rapids for much of their length.
Rapids are categorized in classes, generally running from I to VI. A Class 5 rapid may be categorized as Class 5.1-5.9. While class I rapids are easy to negotiate and require no maneuvering, class VI rapids pose threat to life with little or no chance for rescue.
The Rapid was a brig of 161 tons, remembered as the ship which brought William Light's surveying party to the new colony of South Australia.
The Rapid was built in 1826 at Yarmouth, and featured a carved figurehead in the shape of a greyhound.
She was purchased by the board of commissioners of the South Australian Company to send out on their first fleet to establish the Colony of South Australia and the city of Adelaide. The company added a deck for passenger exercise, but as the height between decks was 4'1" (1.25 m), it was hardly luxurious. On 1 May 1836, the Rapid left Blackwall, and sailed down the English Channel under the command of Col. William Light, and reached Kangaroo Island on 17 August 1836.
Light's crew included Lieut. G. M. Field, R.N. (first officer), Lieut. (later Admiral) William S. Pullen (second officer), Lieut. R. Hill (third officer) and Thomas Woodforde (surgeon). Other members of the party were William Bell, W. Bradley, Robert Bush, William Chatfield, George Childs, William Clampton, John Duncan, William Freemantle, Edward Gandy, Marion Gandy, William Gandy, Thomas Gepp, Robert Goddard, William Hodges, William Jacob, William Lawes, James Lewis, George Mildred, Hiram Mildred, George Penton, and Robert G. Thomas, John Thorn, John Thorpe, William Tuckey.
When HMS Maidstone and HMS Spartan captured the American privateer Rapid in 1812, the Royal Navy took her into service as the 14-gun gun-brig HMS Nova Scotia. She was renamed HMS Ferret in 1813 and sold in 1820.
Rapid, of Portland, Maine, had two commanders, Captain W. Crabtree and Captain J. Weeks, during her career as a privateer. Rapid captured one ship, the Experience, and two brigs. The Experience's cargo was valued at US$250,000.
The owners of one brig ransomed her and Rapid sent the other, the St. Andrews, of eight guns and sailing in ballast, into Portland. Another report has Rapid capturing a barque St Andrews, of eight guns, that she sent into Portland. The ransomed vessel may have been the schooner Mary, of St Thomas, which Rapid ransomed as Rapid could not spare the men for a prize crew.Rapid apparently also captured the brig Pursuit, sailing from Poole to St. Andrews and the brig Tay, sailing from Dundee for Pictou, New Brunswick. Rapid sent both into Portland. Lastly, Rapid captured and burnt a British New Providence privateer, the Searcher, of one gun and twenty men.
SLAB! are an industrial music/alternative rock band initially active between the mid-1980s and early 1990s. They reformed in 2009.
The band's first release was the "Mars on Ice" 12-inch single in 1986 on Dave Kitson's Ink Records (an offshoot of his Red Flame label). This received airplay from John Peel who invited them to record a session for his BBC Radio 1 show the same year. They followed this with "Parallax Avenue" in 1987 which saw them in the lower reaches of the UK Independent Chart, and in May that year their debut mini-LP Music From The Iron Lung was issued, reaching number 21 on the Independent Albums chart. "Smoke Rings" gave them their highest charting single, reaching number 31 on the indie chart in July 1987, and towards the end of the year the band's first long-playing album, Descension was issued. Second full-length LP album Sanity Allergy was issued in 1988, and that year they recorded their third and final Peel session. The band split up in 1991, with a 'best of' compilation, Ship of Fools, released the same year.
In geology, a slab is the portion of a tectonic plate that is being subducted.
Slabs constitute an important part of the global plate tectonic system. They drive plate tectonics both by pulling along the lithosphere to which they are attached in a processes known as slab pull and by inciting currents in the mantle (slab suction). They cause volcanism due to flux melting of the mantle wedge, and they affect the flow and thermal evolution of the Earth's mantle. Their motion can cause dynamic uplift and subsidence of the Earth's surface, forming shallow seaways and potentially rearranging drainage patterns.
Slabs have been imaged down to the seismic discontinuities between the upper and lower mantle and to the core–mantle boundary. Slab subduction is the mechanism by which lithospheric material is mixed back into the Earth's mantle.
Constitution type or body type refer to a number of classification systems or typology systems used to empirically or theoretically classify the body shape of a human individual.
The systems are believed to provide some guidance to creating medical, nutritional, psychotherapeutic, or exercise programs for the person so classified. The classification systems include:
Ire or IRE may refer to: