Consider a neutral atom that has n protons and n electrons. Is it possible to remove a proton from the atom via some technique such as bombardment with another particle or applying an appropriate amount of energy to the system?
Is it possible to remove a proton from the atom via some technique such as bombardment with another particle or applying an appropriate amount of energy to the system?
Yes, this occurs in nature and can also be done in the laboratory. In nature the process is known as radioactive decay. Listed below are two decay processes that will remove a proton(s)
Alpha decay: an atom ejects a helium nucleus (2 protons and 2 neutrons)
23994Pu 42He+23592U
beta-plus decay: a positron is emitted and a proton is converted to a neutron.
In the (nuclear) lab, a process known as phototransmutation can be employed. If a nucleus is irradiated with high-energy gamma rays (high-energy photons) it can absorb the energy and change to another element by ejecting a proton and\or neutron.
2512Mg−→hν 11H+2411Na
You can make a rough estimate of the energy required as follows:
24.98583692amu 1.00727647amu+23.99096278amu
comparing the starting and final mass, we find that 0.01240233 amu has been gained in the process. Since 1 amu = 931.5 MeV, the gamma ray photon would have to have an energy of at least 11.6 MeV.
There are actually a (very small) number of nuclei that exhibit spontaneous proton emission decays. Much more common are photon, neutron or alpha initiated proton emission reaction such as the the alpha initiated reaction on Sulfur discussed in this pre-print.
Moderate energy alphas incident on light nuclei generate many interesting final states a fact that has been instrumental in figuring out how the nucleus works (which is admittedly usually framed as a physics rather than chemistry question).
That's more a nuclear physics question. But I will write some anyway. First, there is a good amount of naturally radioactive nuclei, that emits alpha particle, i.e. 4He nucleus. Than, there is a less common β+ decay, when nucleus emits positron, transforming one proton into neutron in the process (and emitting neutrino).
Next, some nuclei captures electron (usually from lowest electron shell), emitting neutrino and again, transforming one proton into neutron. Proton emission is known, but extremely rare.
Next, there is some amount of nuclear reactions, when an incoming hi-energy particle merges with nucleus, than the resulting excited nucleus emits some other particles. This reactions are extremely specific, each pair of nucleus and particle has their own reactions routes, etc, etc. Example of proton-emitting reaction:
3He+D=4He+p
Sometimes, heavy nuclei after capturing a neutron, undergoes β
-decay, transforming into α
-radioactive nuclei. The net result would be losing a proton and maybe a neutron or two. But this an awfully specific for few nuclei.
TL;DR : no, there is no general technique, but there are some techniques (very costly), than work in some specific cases.
I don't have much knowledge of Nuclear Chemistry but:
is it possible that by any method like bombarding other particle or providing high energy can we remove proton from atom ?
The best example that I can think of right now is alpha decay. An alpha particle consists of two protons and two neutrons bound together into aparticle identical to a helium nucleus.
This is also what we do in nuclear fission/fusion [atom bomb etc.]. But I think adding or removing just one proton might be very hard. One isotope that is made by removing a proton from an atom is carbon-14.
Nitrogen-14 is bombarded with a neutron and a proton is displaced giving carbon-14, which eventually decays back to the nitrogen isotope. Our ability to date organic material via carbon-14 thus depends on a proton removal process.
https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/14421/can-a-proton-be-ejected-from-an-atom
Assume you are the electron and how do we take out your all organs, brain,all things which are necessary for survival will you live. Proton is the main structure due to which all the electrons are revolving around the nucleus of an element.
Even if we somehow are able to take out a proton from an element then that element shall change it's atomic no. And that my friend if possible then the theory on which our present day chemistry is based (i.e. mendeleevs periodic law) would collapse and would cause a chaos. Now finally to answer your question - No it's not possible to take out a proton from the nucleus of an element.
Yes, this occurs in nature and can also be done in the laboratory. In nature the process is known as radioactive decay. Listed below are two decay processes that will remove a proton(s)
Alpha decay: an atom ejects a helium nucleus (2 protons and 2 neutrons)23994Pu⟶42He+23592UX94239X2942239Pu⟶X24X2224He+X92235X2922235U
Beta-plus decay: a positron is emitted and a proton is converted to a neutron. In the (nuclear) lab, a process known as phototransmutation can be employed. If a nucleus is irradiated with high-energy gamma rays (high-energy photons) it can absorb the energy and change to another element by ejecting a proton and\or neutron.
2512Mg−→hν 11H+2411NaX1225X212225Mg→hνX11X2121H+X1124X211224Na
You can make a rough estimate of the energy required as follows:
24.98583692amu ⟶1.00727647amu+23.99096278amu24.98583692amu⟶1.00727647amu+23.99096278amu
Comparing the starting and final mass, we find that 0.01240233 amu has been gained in the process. Since 1 amu = 931.5 MeV, the gamma ray photon would have to have an energy of at least 11.6 MeV.
It is possible to split an atom using nuclear fission , where a neutron is fired into the nucleus of an atom. So I guess, if you fire the neutron into elements with smaller atomic mass like Hydrogen or Helium, it could possible for just 1 proton to be released. I'm not sure if any scientisets have tried this in a lab or research centre.
https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-remove-a-proton-from-an-atom
There are two great Michelangelos in Italian art. One was the renaissance man: painter, sculptor, master draftsman and architect. Michelangelo Simoni gave us David — that supreme monument to human dignity in marble.
He decorated the Sistine Chapel with his vision of the end of the world. He was honoured with the job of reconstructing St Peter’s Basilica, Catholicism’s most important church. The master is venerated as among the greatest of western artists with a grand tomb in Florence.
The other Michelangelo was a vandal and brawler with a penchant for whores who made his way up to murder. Nobody knew how he died or where his body ended up until very recently. He also started an artistic revolution.
His style and subject matter was imitated all over Europe and ushered a new modernity into art. He was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, or just “Caravaggio”.
Michelangelo Merisi was born in Milan probably in 1571. The city was ravaged by the plague during his childhood. Huge religious ceremonies were conducted in the streets to petition divine intervention, but the plague got worse as more people were drawn out of their homes. The Merisi family took refuge in the town of Caravaggio, from where the artist took his name.
Michelangelo’s parents died when he was still young. His father and grandfather died on the same day, possibly from the plague that the family hoped to leave behind.
As a teenager, the promising artist undertook an apprenticeship under Simone Peterzano in Milan. In 1592 at the age of twenty-one, Michelangelo was involved in some brawls and connected to an incident that led to a police officer being wounded. Not taking any chances, the artist fled to Rome.
The young Caravaggio arrived in Rome penniless and found himself impoverished. He found some income as an assistant in a large workshop that churned out industrious quantities of paintings but was paid very little for his work.
Caravaggio was well-acquainted with the seedier, more violent shades of Rome in the late sixteenth century… and what a violent city it was. Rome was simultaneously the holy city and a city tearing itself apart. Mercenaries and soldiers returning from wars in the north and east of Europe washed up in Rome, unemployment and poverty were high in the city.
The rich dynasties of Rome — the likes of Barberini, Pamphili and Altieri — built for themselves enormous palaces and employed armies to guard them, the rest of the population fended for itself. Pitched battles broke out in the streets between rival gangs. The chaos seemed attractive to the pugnacious young artist.
Caravaggio spent his non-working hours painting sexually charged self-portraits or prowling the streets of working-class districts, looking for brawls with other young men. As his reputation as a painter rose, so did his notoriety. A contemporary notice described his behaviour:
“after a fortnight’s work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him.”
The seamier side of life found its way into his work as his talent matured to tackle more complex scenes. In The Fortune Teller and the Cardsharps, the artist depicts naive wealthy people being scammed.
The viewer of the painting can see the scam, but the subject cannot. This clever trick made the viewer part of the art and heightened the psychological drama of the picture.
While elder painters looked to antiquity for inspiration, Caravaggio literally pulled his models — gipsies, beggars, prostitutes, fops and petty crooks — off the street.
He was so poor that he undersold his paintings, despite his growing reputation as a gifted enfant terrible bucking the trend for a more noble, antique look. He sold the Cardsharps to a man who would profoundly change his fortunes.
Bacchus, c.1595. (source: Wikipedia) Note the froth of the recently poured wine into the carafe and the concentric circles of the wine in the glass.
Ecstasy in the Cardinal’s Palace - Caravaggio attracted the attention of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who purchased Cardsharps and wanted a great deal more.
Del Monte was a well-connected and wealthy member of the Bourbon dynasty. The Cardinal had an exquisite taste in art and an alleged penchant for young men like Michaelangelo Merisi.
The painter stayed in the residence of Del Monte for about six years. It is said that Del Monte held wild parties at this time, often involving lavish displays of food and drink and drag acts.
With the Cardinal’s patronage, Caravaggio produced several images of handsome young men in various states of undress surrounded by props of fruit, flowers and wine.
Two images are of Caravaggio’s adolescent assistant, Francesco Boneri or “Cecco”, as he was known, fully nude and playing the part of Cupid and a young John the Baptist frolicking with a ram.
His Bacchus of around 1595 (see above) is a painting not of the Roman god himself, but of a boy dressed as Bacchus. With his robe slipping from his shoulder, the handsome young man offers up wine from a shallow glass. His ruby lips are plump and his cheeks are soft and pale. Long, soft curls frame his face, with vine leaves and grapes forming a crown.
Concentric ripples in the wine he offers suggest movement. The tiny bubbles at the circumference of the carafe beside the boy reveal that it has just been poured. This is not Bacchus frozen in myth, but alive in the here-and-now.
The fruit around him is bruised and overripe — the pomegranate has already split to reveal its juicy innards. This is a lusty image of proposition — the promise of pleasure.
The painting could be of Mario Minniti, a younger painter some have thought to be Caravaggio's lover, or Caravaggio himself. The paintings are never quite straightforward as portraits, they have an enigmatic presence of the artist in them.
Like his earlier paintings of con tricks, these images let the viewer play a part. They are gamified with clues for the viewer, but Caravaggio rachets up the stakes with enigmatic visual riddles.
Reflections, symbols and even the poses of his figures reveal that the artist is at the heart of these pictures, even if they are not explicitly self-portraits. The internal structure of Caravaggio’s art reveals itself to the viewer, but it does so obliquely, teasingly.
Caravaggio’s religious paintings during his association with Del Monte are not spared of erotic undertone. Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (1604) shows the saint having swooned backwards into the arms of a handsome male angel.
The saint strongly resembles Del Monte and the angel resembles the boys in the ensemble of paintings Caravaggio produced for the Cardinal. Del Monte kept possession of the painting for the rest of his life, for him it was perhaps the image of a lovers embrace.
What quickly became striking of Caravaggio’s paintings of the time was his use of light and dark to evoke drama (chiaroscuro) and his meticulous realism. Art in the late sixteenth-century prized artifice.
People were often depicted looking more like statues, or with elongated limbs or contorted in unusual ways. This style is known as “Mannerism”, which developed out of the later Renaissance styles.
Caravaggio only painted directly from life. He rarely made preparatory drawings to perfect his figures. His angel in Saint Frances of Assisi, just like his Bacchus, is less of an angel than a boy dressed as an angel, wearing a robe and theatre-prop angel wings.
While other artists like the famous Annibale Carracci painted angels as putti and cherubim floating in puffy clouds, Caravaggio’s heavenly bodies are observed from the people around him, you can almost smell them.
There is nothing artificial in Caravaggio’s work of this Roman period. Even the dramatic lighting was a result of his working indoors using lamps, or relying on the shards of sunlight from small windows. It was an unusual way of working that, thanks to changes in Church attitudes, became high fashion.
Riding the Crest of a Cultural Revolution - As Caravaggio painted these distinctively realistic scenes, the Catholic Church was undergoing a cultural revolution.
Protestantism had taken hold in large swathes of northern Europe and the church embarked on a spiritual and cultural counterattack in the form of the Counter-Reformation.
The Church’s Council of Trent (1545–63) decreed that Catholic art needed to be less intellectual and stylised and more immediate in its subject matter. It was important for religious art to appeal to the masses in the war for their souls.
Caravaggio’s realism, coming years after the Council’s conclusion, seemed to fit that bill very well. The artist’s career blossomed quickly thanks to the super-rich of Rome at the bosom of the Church. His friendship with Del Monte ensured the commissions for religious paintings came in abundance.
His art, seen through the lens of history, exemplifies the pinnacle of “Baroque realism”: a dramatic style that was realistic to the grimy details.
You can still see Caravaggio’s altarpieces in the churches of Rome and you will not fail to be stunned by how incongruous they look among other paintings of the time. His works are shockingly realistic.
The Madonna di Loreto of 1606 (which can be seen in the church of Sant’Agostino) caused an uproar at its unveiling. The Madonna is depicted as a working-class Italian woman, standing barefooted in the dark doorway of a cheap-looking Roman house, holding a naked baby Jesus.
Only the wisp of a halo marks out her divinity in the presence of similarly poor-looking pilgrims. This is Madonna as the girl next door, among the downtrodden and the discriminated.
The irony lost on the painting’s detractors was that this woman was probably very like the Virgin Mary herself, a woman of poverty. Caravaggio bought religion back to earth. His miracles are not accompanied by rays of heavenly light, golden halos or descended clouds.
The serenity of the painting is rare for Caravaggio. His paintings were often brutal and violent, and never less than dramatic.His paintings of Apostles Peter and Paul from 1601 depict them as ordinary human beings in the most extraordinary circumstances.
Peter watches anxiously as the cross he is nailed to is hoisted up in an inverted fashion. Saul (soon to be Paul), also inverted, falls from his horse as a vision of Christ overcomes him. His head hits the floor at our feet.
When Picasso was painting Guernica in 1938, he remarked that he wished he could make his horse “smell of sweat” like the horse Paul has fallen from in Caravaggio’s painting.
Both paintings have an extraordinary lopsidedness compared to others of the era. The word “Baroque”, comes from the Portuguese word “barroco”, a flawed pearl that is not quite spherical.
Whereas Renaissance painting, such as that of Leonardo, prized balance and harmony, Caravaggio and those who followed him created paintings that were unbalanced and discordant.
Figures in these compositions threatened to fall out into the space of the viewer. To the high clergy, this drama made the pictures perfect as urgent reminders of faith at a time when the church’s dominance had been shaken. While playing a part in the Church's divine mission, the artist himself continued to behave like a devil.
The fame and wealth that came with Del Monte’s support did not stop Caravaggio’s criminal antics. The artist is known to have attacked waiters, fight over gambling disputes and, in a particularly nasty act, he slashed the face of a prostitute who refused to sleep with him. Caravaggio was not a good man, he was awful. In 1606 he went too far.
Caravaggio killed a pimp, Ranuccio Tomassoni, during one of his brawls. The artist claimed it was accidental, but even powerful friends could not stop the pope from pronouncing Caravaggio’s death sentence. The artist fled the city and went into hiding in the estates of the powerful Colonna family. He was sleeping with his clothes on and with a dagger beside him.
The artist fled Rome and settled in Naples, at the time a separate state, where he was out of the jurisdiction of Rome and under the protection of the Colonnas. He lived in the palace of Costanza Colonna Sforza where he began a series of ambitious altarpieces for the grand churches of the city.
Despite his success in Naples, the price on Caravaggio’s head back in Rome haunted him. In 1607 artist went to Malta to join the last order of holy knights, the Order of St John, in order to secure a pardon for his crime.
Caravaggio was inducted as one of the warrior monks and became an official artist of the Order. The painter got to work on his largest masterpiece, The Beheading of St John the Baptist (1608) to honour the patron saint of his new comrades.
https://www.thoughtco.com/mongols-effect-on-europe-195621
But the leopard could not change his spots. During a night of drinking an argument turned into a fight and Caravaggio is believed to have shot and seriously wounded a fellow knight. The artist was expelled as “a foul and rotten member” and imprisoned. His patron’s son, Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, also a knight, probably helped Caravaggio escape from his prison cell. The artist fled to Sicily where he linked up with his old friend, the painter Mario Minniti.
In Sicily, the artist’s success continued. He was commissioned to paint several large altarpieces. His style became more classical, it began to resemble the friezes of antique art in its sparse expanses, but still faithful to real life.
But where his style became more restrained, his behaviour was as bizarre as ever and he quickly made a number of enemies. Mario Minniti could no longer bear Caravaggio’s paranoia and histrionics. Fearing for his safety, Caravaggio again moved on, this time back to Naples where he took refuge with the Colonnas once more.
In autumn 1609 his past caught up with him. He was ambushed by a group of men who held him down and seriously disfigured his face with a blade. It was a ritual act of grave insult and would have left the artist scarred for life. It was likely an act of retribution from the Knights of St John.
Soon after the incident, Caravaggio sent a painting to the Order’s leader in a plea for forgiveness. The painting showed the artist’s own head on Salome’s platter as St John the Baptist.
In another painting of the later period, his own likeness was given to the severed head of Goliath (see above), held up by David right in front of the viewer. On David’s sword is written Humilitus Occideit Superbium — “humility conquers pride”. It took a death sentence and a manhunt to humble the violent egoist.
An unscrupulous Cardinal and lover of the arts, Scipione Borghese, worked in Rome to secure Caravaggio’s pardon in return for paintings. The news that came back to Naples was good so Caravaggio set off for Rome in the early summer of 1610 by boat.
The artist did not arrive. A letter reached Rome weeks later declaring Caravaggio dead. What happened to him on his journey is shrouded in mystery. The artist was quickly forgotten even as his influence spread throughout Europe.
Nobody knew for sure how he died or where he was buried. Unlike the venerated Michelangelo of the Renaissance, the Michelangelo of the Baroque became an embarrassment to the church. Like a desperado, Caravaggio’s life was brutal and short. But the artist’s influence has been profound.
Caravaggio’s particular flavour of realism with its “tenebrism” — a technical term for extreme contrast between light and dark — and directly observed naturalism revolutionised art. Many painters in Caravaggio’s orbit began to copy his style and many followed after.
These artists became known as the “Caravaggisti” and often painted similar scenes as the originating master himself. Even his enemies, such as the painter Giovanni Baglione — who depicted Caravaggio as Satan in one of his paintings — copied his style.
The spread of Caravaggism across Europe was the birth, in some ways, of “modern” art: art that had a theatrical staging to the way it was presented, a self-conscious art of painting that was a kind of game that the viewer can play a part in.
These were portable, self-contained works to be displayed in the salons (galleries) of wealthy households — rooms that would provide the model of public galleries from the Victorian age that morphed into the “white cube” galleries of today.
The trajectory of “Caravaggiesque” realism continued through the centuries, through great masters like the Gentileschis, Georges De La Tour, Diego Velázquez, Rembrandt, Gustave Courbet, Jean-Francoise Millet and finally Eduard Manet. Caravaggio’s particular eye for the real stuff of life has echoed through the centuries.
So influential was the artist that his innovations were taken for granted as the centuries wore on. Caravaggiesque self-consciousness became the wood through the trees. The painter’s reputation dissipated when the European academies began once again to favour the ideal over the real.
The painter has only recently — in the twentieth century — been “rediscovered” as one of the greatest of the Italian masters. Scholars spent decades trying to get to the bottom of Caravaggio’s death and resting place. Human remains exhumed in 2010 in Porto Ercole, Tuscany, are likely to be those of the artist after a number of genetic and carbon dating tests.
Studies of the remains reveal lead poisoning (from the lead salts in paint, which can cause erratic and violent behaviour), and sepsis from one or more flesh wounds, though it’s still unclear what finished him off. The artist’s life was short and mostly miserable, his unceremonious death was abject, but his art, at least to modern tastes, is sublime.
The depth of Caravaggio’s insight into human drama and the deeper structures of his aesthetic have made him one of the most pleasurable and disturbing painters in the history of western civilisation. His vision was as unsparing as his manner.
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-outlaw-who-revolutionised-art-19e013b933f
Every month I write an article for Today’s Pet. Every month I tell you how great birds are; and they are! This month however I would like to talk about problem birds and the pet shops that sell them.
Hardly a week goes by that we don’t get a call from a future bird owner wanting one of those cuddly Cockatoo’s. Or we want one of those birds like was on Beretta.
Owning a bird is a commitment – a huge commitment. It is not like owning a dog. One of the most mentally and emotionally complicated parrots to deal with is a Cockatoo. Some sub species are worse then others.
Few people are equipped to provide for the many needs of these special birds. Rescue organizations are full of unwanted Cockatoos. The average Umbrella or Moluccan Cockatoo is in its second home by the time it is 3 years old. There is much more than meets the eye when considering a parrot such as these.
Many pet stores and breeders only want to sell birds: it helps to pay the rent. However, if they were advised to do their homework, to read and study and are armed with the realities about cockatoos, the potential buyer would probably make a wiser selection such as an Amazon, or Eclectus or any of a wide variety of more socially acceptable bird.
https://www.youtube.com/user/liferegenerator
Yes, cockatoos are the cuddlers of the bird family (especially the Umbrella and Moluccan varieties). Yes, cockatoos are smart. Very smart. They can be very entertaining. But, depending on the variety, a cockatoo can cause you more grief, aggravation, and headaches then any ten children.
They really can drive you over the edge! That’s why there are so many in Rescue programs. We currently have one in our Rescue program. He is 4 years old and we are his 3rd placement.
The problem centers around their screaming. Cockatoos in the wild have periods in the day when they naturally scream: usually in the morning and evening. They do not necessarily loose this natural instinct just because they become a pet.
And when they scream you can literally hear them as far as a city block. And when they scream in your home the sound penetrates and resonates unnaturally to the rhythms of your mind. It’s no one’s fault: it just what they do. Added to the natural times they scream, they also are a very, very needy bird. They need constant attention.
They need to know that you are near by most of the time. That means you absolutely should not have a cockatoo if no one is home or if the bird is left alone during most of the day.
That will probably set the bird to picking its feathers; and once that very bad habit begins it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to have the bird stop destructive behavior! Think of it as leaving your young child in a playpen every day for 8-10 hours alone day after day; month after month without attention!
These very important things are usually not told to the potential buyer. And after having the cockatoo for a while and the new owner calls and says they cannot live with the birds anti-social behavior they become even more frustrated because the seller won’t take the bird back much less refund their money.
They’re out their big bucks and the cockatoo ends up in a rescue program. And the bird will live for 55-65 years. We at Mt Rushmore Birds go to extreme lengths to educate potential cockatoo owners of the possible and probable consequences of owning several varieties of Cockatoos because we feel obligated for them to have sufficient information so they can make an informed and intelligent decision. As reputable breeders we feel it is our ethical responsibility to do no less.
Back to the scenario of having an umbrella cockatoo. So now you’re gone to work at least 8 hours a day. Sometimes you don’t come home for dinner or there are the children’s activities at night and after school.
Your cockatoo is home alone in his little cage and now he is screaming and picking his feathers out. You bought a cuddly little bird that most likely was under 5 months old and it took him about a year before he started to show all these anti-social traits.
I truly believe if you are going to have a happy well adjusted Cockatoo he needs to be out of his cage on play stands or in huge flights most of the day; and don’t be surprised if he gets off the play stand while you are out of the room for just a minute.
That is how long it will take your Cockatoo to eat your favorite antique. They are the Houdini’s of the bird family. They’ll do anything, including screaming, and chewing your favorite furniture simply because they yearn for your continued attention.
We are seeing a lot of ads regarding folks trying to sell their Cockatoos. We are getting a lot of calls. We belong also to the Rocky Mountain Avian Society. Rescuing cockatoos is a big problem in that area as well.
Think long and hard before you consider a Cockatoo. It could be the mistake of your lifetime and the bird also suffers greatly. Every year many parrots end up in a rescue shelter because people were uninformed or misinformed or found out too late the sacrifices it takes to own one of the several varieties of cockatoos.
The birds suffer even more than the owners because they keep going from owner to owner because of behavioral problems; or even euthanized. There are a lot of wonderful birds out there that make wonderful pets.
Cockatoos in all their wonderful cuddliness might not be the bird for you. Never, ever buy a bird on impulse. Spend lots of time and do the homework. An informed decision will help insure that you and your pet bird will enjoy many years of compatibility, love and mutual bonding.
https://mtrushmorebirds.com/cockatoos-think-carefully-before-buying/
The cockatoo is one of the most challenging of the many parrot species. They are an enigma. They are a white, fluffy ball of contradiction. They are emotionally complex, highly intelligent and devilishly manipulative. They keep you guessing on a daily basis as they strive to out-maneuver you.
The relationship between an owner and his cockatoo is like a crazy dance choreographed by Mother Nature. Oh, how I love these birds! I don’t know how many times I have read a book or an article where the phrase “parrots and cockatoos” is used.
Are cockatoos not parrots? Of course they are! However, there are some distinct physiological and behavioral differences that make them unique. First and most evident is the crest.
Aside from the cockatiel (who may or may not be a distant cousin depending on what literature you are consulting), cockatoos are the only parrot with a set of muscles whose sole purpose is for raising the long feathers on their heads to an erect stance.
A cockatoo’s muscular structure also allows the beak to be nearly concealed by surrounding feathers in moments of contentment. A cockatoo is the only species of parrot with feathering that is white or contains pink.
Along with the cockatiel and the African grey, they have powder down feathers that have the power to unleash on your house the most hellacious mess ever seen outside of your teenager’s bedroom.
Also, if you’ve ever been the recipient of a cockatoo bite, you will have noticed how it differs from other bird bites. The lower mandible with two prongs combined with the pointed top mandible gives the cockatoo the advantage of being able to hold and tear in three separate places. I speak from experience on this matter.
The cockatoo is the diva of the avian world. Dramatic and vocal, a cockatoo might throw a tantrum befitting a princess because her oatmeal is 2 degrees too cold or because she objects to your shirt’s shade of blue.
Needy and demanding, the cockatoo might hold on furiously to your shirt collar (perhaps the same one she just found fault with) when cuddle time must draw to a close. Good luck getting to work on time!
Notoriously hard to read, a cockatoo can send signals so minute and vague that a mere human doesn’t stand a chance. This leaves their owners scratching their heads as to why she was bouncing and happy one minute and hissing the next.
They are frightfully destructive. Being a tree cavity nester, they love to chew wood, any wood, and lots of it. However, this doesn’t exclude your curtains, carpet or laptop from their to-do list.
Have I mentioned the foot thing yet? Cockatoos are surprisingly at home on the floor. Where most birds feel very small and vulnerable when placed on the floor, your cockatoo will take ownership of it and anything on it: including feet! He may ask you, impolitely, to remove yours from the area.
Reading Cockatoo Body Language - The ability to effectively read your cockatoo’s body language is the owner’s most essential tool. It is something that can only be learned through exposure to this species. Being told what to look for is almost inconsequential, as every individual cockatoo has it’s own way of asserting it’s opinions about life. However, there are some signs that are universal.
This video, towards the end, will show you unmistakable territorial and aggressive behavior. This bird clearly wants the cameraman to go away. He doesn’t, and he has taken quite a risk in not doing so. Had my cockatoo presented to me in this way, I would have been long gone.
I find that feather positioning, a means of determining the disposition of most birds, to be ineffective in reading a cockatoo. When the crest is raised, for example, it signals an excited bird. The problem is this: an excited cockatoo doesn’t necessarily mean an angry cockatoo.
They will frequently raise their crest when they are stimulated by conversation or playtime. It is the positioning and movement of the body that is much more telling in this species: neck stretched out, nervous pacing and wings away from the body.
When I feel I am getting an unclear signal from my cockatoos, I look to their eyes. I find that there is a great deal of expression and information there.The shape of the eye will usually tell me everything I need to know. When a cockatoo is contented and when all is right in their world, then the shape of their eye is completely round.
Anything other than that tells me something is on their mind. A squint tells me that something is not to their liking or is making them uncomfortable. Then there is the “glarey eyeball” as Dave and Jamie put it, or the “stink-eye” as I refer to it.
It can be read as: “What are YOU looking at?” or “If you’re smart, you’ll back off”. Either way, it’s a clear warning even when issued by my mild mannered Goffin's cockatoo.
One of the more notable movements is the lack of movement, which is always concerning to me. When mine come to a dead stop in the middle of an activity and stare at me or something else, I have the distinct sense that they are plotting their next move, which is usually an unfavorable one. One of the birds in the above video did this. It just stopped, foot still raised in the air.
Cockatoos, especially the white ones, are not for everyone. While many birds of other species can carry the behavioral traits listed above, a cockatoo will surely have several if not all of them. It takes a certain kind of personality to mesh successfully with these high-maintenance birds.
This fact is the reason they are the parrot most relinquished to rescues and sanctuaries throughout the world. They will test your patience to the limit and delight in doing so. If you don’t have a sense of humor about their activities and behaviors, you are surely sunk.
Should you be the sort to be able to handle the many demands of cockatoo ownership, then you (like me) will find it to be the most rewarding of all of your avian relationships.
There is nothing like the special brand of love you get from a cockatoo, as it has been hard won and painstakingly maintained. I am heading downstairs to get in some cuddle time right now.
https://birdtricksstore.com/blogs/birdtricks-blog/the-incredible-cockatoo
Another corollary of special relativity is that, in effect, one person’s interval of space is another person’s interval of both time and space, and one person’s interval of time is also another person’s interval of both space and time.
Thus, space and time are effectively interchangeable, and fundamentally the same thing (or at least two different sides of the same coin), an effect which becomes much more noticeable at relativistic speeds approaching the speed of light.
Einstein’s former mathematics professor, Hermann Minkowski, was perhaps the first to note this effect (and perhaps understood it even better than Einstein himself), and it was he who coined the phrase “space-time” to describe the interchangeability of the four dimensions.
In 1908, Minkowski offered a useful analogy to help explain how four-dimensional space-time can appear differently to two observers in our normal three-dimensional space.
He described two observers viewing a three-dimensional object from different angles, and noting that, for example, the length and width can appear different from the different view points, due to what we call perspective, even though the object is clearly one and the same in three dimensions.
Thus, space and time are effectively interchangeable, and fundamentally the same thing (or at least two different sides of the same coin), an effect which becomes much more noticeable at relativistic speeds approaching the speed of light.
Einstein’s former mathematics professor, Hermann Minkowski, was perhaps the first to note this effect (and perhaps understood it even better than Einstein himself), and it was he who coined the phrase “space-time” to describe the interchangeability of the four dimensions.
In 1908, Minkowski offered a useful analogy to help explain how four-dimensional space-time can appear differently to two observers in our normal three-dimensional space.
He described two observers viewing a three-dimensional object from different angles, and noting that, for example, the length and width can appear different from the different view points, due to what we call perspective, even though the object is clearly one and the same in three dimensions.
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The idea perhaps becomes even clearer when we consider that our picture of the Moon is actually what the Moon was like 1¼ seconds ago (the time light takes to reach the Earth from the Moon), our picture of the Sun is actually how it looked 8½ minutes ago, and by the time we see an image of Alpha Centauri, our nearest star system, it is already 4.3 years out of date.
We can therefore never know what the universe it like at this very instant, and the universe is clearly not a thing that extends just in space, but in space-time.
Physicists do not regard time as “passing” or “flowing” and time is not a sequence of events which happen: the past and the future are simply there, laid out as part of space-time.
The "twins paradox" mentioned in the previous section can be considered an example of this: whereas the stay-at-home twin’s progress through space-time was wholly through time, the travelling twin’s progress was partly through space, so that his progress through time was less than that of the stay-at-home twin (so that he aged less).
Therefore, as Einstein remarked, “For us physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent”, and these concepts really do not figure at all in special relativity.
Similarly, our whole conception of space becomes unreliable as the relativistic effects of length contraction become apparent at high relative speeds.
But the malleability and blurring of space and time also has implications for other aspects of physics.
Just as Maxwell had shown that the electric and magnetic fields, once considered completely separate entities, were both just part of a single seamless entity known as the electromagnetic field, likewise (although perhaps more difficult to grasp and perhaps more unexpected) energy and mass turn out to be just different faces of the same coin, a connection encapsulated in Einstein’s justifiably famous formula, E = mc2, which we will look at in the next section.
We can therefore never know what the universe it like at this very instant, and the universe is clearly not a thing that extends just in space, but in space-time.
Due to the relativistic effects of time dilation, our idea of “now” is therefore something of a fictitious concept, one which we as humans have invented for ourselves, but for which nature itself has no real use.
Physicists do not regard time as “passing” or “flowing” and time is not a sequence of events which happen: the past and the future are simply there, laid out as part of space-time.
The "twins paradox" mentioned in the previous section can be considered an example of this: whereas the stay-at-home twin’s progress through space-time was wholly through time, the travelling twin’s progress was partly through space, so that his progress through time was less than that of the stay-at-home twin (so that he aged less).
Similarly, our whole conception of space becomes unreliable as the relativistic effects of length contraction become apparent at high relative speeds.
But the malleability and blurring of space and time also has implications for other aspects of physics.
Just as Maxwell had shown that the electric and magnetic fields, once considered completely separate entities, were both just part of a single seamless entity known as the electromagnetic field, likewise (although perhaps more difficult to grasp and perhaps more unexpected) energy and mass turn out to be just different faces of the same coin, a connection encapsulated in Einstein’s justifiably famous formula, E = mc2, which we will look at in the next section.
http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_relativity_spacetime.html
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