Guns, Glory and Science!
China (Doc: sites.google.com)
As wars spread across the earth, guns have become very popular nowadays, even in games. And it's easy to own a gun if you have a permit. It makes you a little uneasy doesn't it? Now I'll give you a chance to say something here. What do you think about guns? Do you think their just plain violence should just be banned from this world? Or do you think they can still be used for good like hunting for food, instead of hurting one another.
If you throw something in the air say perhaps a ball, it won't go very far. No matter how hard you try, it'll still end up somewhere nearby. How about something smaller than a ball, a rock maybe? Will it go far? Perhaps it could, but probably not as far as a bullet from a gun could reach. What makes a bullet fly faster than the speed of sound, and reach ten times farther than that rock you threw? Well to answer that, we have to look back in history.
Guns showed up a lot in history because they were used in wars. Civil wars, revolutions, war against other countries dating back to 8gf00 years ago. Sometimes they were used for good, other times for bad. They also took part in world war one and two. But believe it or not, guns weren't always used for violence.
If you go back 1000 years ago, you'll surprisingly see that China was more advanced than Europe. The Chinese Dynasties made better plows for harvesting crops which lead to more food and finally leading to bigger populations. You can't have a busy city without people in taking residence in that city.
China
China has also discovered gun powder in the 10th century. I don't know how the story went but maybe the Chinese were just mixing some powders until they created a magical powder that rapidly fires up after being lit. And that was gunpowder by the way, a powder that lights up really fast after being lit.
Gunpowder usually consists in nitrate, charcoal and sulfur. When it gets hit by a spark, it burns really fast and turns into a gas. You may know that solids are tight and gasses move around freely. Well, when you put that solid gunpowder in a tight room with a projectile up front, and finally light it up, the solid will turn into a gas, and because gasses move around freely thus take up more space, it Pops! Sending the projectile far, far away from you. Phew, that was a long sentence.
That is basically how guns work, old and new. The new guns are just a better version of the old manual guns. Newer guns are more advanced, effective and efficient. Some have scopes, other shoot automatically, but what they have in common is that they use the basic gun powder. Cannons also use gun powder, just a whole lot more.
Cannons (Doc: www.wga.hu)
But let's not forget that this was all made with choices and decisions. Choices that people made long ago that now led to our world as it is now. So in other words, you control your future and others along with it. China made gunpowder, but at first they didn't know what to do with it. Could they use it for good? Maybe they could use it to power fuel for cars and industry, and for the better technology and humanity. But no, they decided to make guns instead.
Well there's no good in regretting the past. What we should do is change the future into a better one, because you control the future. Thanks for reading!
M. Rasyid Nur 16 Mar, 2013
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Source: http://edukasi.kompasiana.com/2013/03/16/guns-glory-and-science-543189.html
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