Mythology
This Egyptian sky god was believed to avenge his father Osiris after Osiris was murdered by Set. He is commonly depicted with the head of a falcon and his eye became a powerful protective symbol in ancient Egypt.
Horus
Located in the Palace of Westminster, this tower contains a clock mechanism designed by Edmund Beckett and George Airy and includes five bells. The tower itself was designed by Augustus Pugin and was later renamed Elizabeth Tower. This landmark is commonly known by this nickname.
Big Ben
This poetic form originated in Japan and traditionally consists of three lines with a syllable structure of five, seven, and five. These poems often contain seasonal imagery and include a “cutting word” that separates two ideas. One famous example by Matsuo Bashō describes the sound of a frog jumping into an old pond.
This concept describes the sum of terms in a sequence of numbers. When the total approaches a finite value the series is called “convergent,” but when the sum grows without bound it is considered “divergent.” These expressions appear frequently in calculus when summing infinitely many terms.
series
This South American country became the first in the world to include “rights of nature” in its constitution. Charles Darwin studied finches on islands belonging to this country during his voyage on the HMS Beagle. Its capital city is Quito.
Ecuador
In Norse mythology this cosmic ash tree connects the nine worlds of existence. Creatures such as the squirrel Ratatosk and the dragon Nidhogg are said to live within or beneath it.
Yggdrasil
This Renaissance sculptor created a famous bronze statue of David that shows the biblical hero standing over the severed head of Goliath. The figure wears a laurel-lined helmet and holds Goliath’s sword. This artist also sculpted a statue of Saint George in full armor in Florence.
Donatello
This short story by Washington Irving follows a timid schoolteacher who travels through the Hudson Valley. The protagonist becomes romantically interested in Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of a wealthy farmer named Baltus Van Tassel. After leaving a party, the teacher encounters the legendary Headless Horseman while riding his horse Gunpowder near a church bridge.
The Legend of Sleep Hollow
This trigonometric function corresponds to the x-coordinate of a point on the unit circle. In right triangles it equals the ratio of the adjacent side to the hypotenuse. The reciprocal of this function is secant.
cosine
This Central American country controls a major canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Gatun Lake lies along this canal route, and the United States returned control of the canal to this country in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter.
Panama
This Greek hero tricked the Graeae by stealing their shared eye and tooth in order to learn how to defeat a Gorgon. Using a reflective shield and winged sandals from Hermes, he eventually beheaded Medusa.
Perseus
This architect developed the Prairie House style and designed homes emphasizing horizontal lines and open interior spaces. His works include the Robie House in Chicago and Fallingwater, which famously uses cantilevered terraces over a waterfall. He also worked at Taliesin West in Arizona.
Frank Lloyd Wright
This Shakespeare tragedy is set at Elsinore Castle in Denmark and centers on a prince seeking revenge for his father’s murder. The king responsible for the crime is the prince’s uncle Claudius, who has married the prince’s mother Gertrude. Two former friends of the prince, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are later executed after being sent to spy on him.
Hamlet
This calculus concept describes the value that a function approaches as its input approaches a particular number. One method of evaluating it is the squeeze theorem, which traps a function between two others with the same limiting value. When this value equals the function’s value at that point, the function is continuous.
Limit
This Central American lake is the largest lake in the region. It receives water from nearby Lake Managua and contains freshwater sharks.
Lake Nicaragua
These twin brothers were said to have been abandoned and later raised by a she-wolf near the Tiber River. After a dispute over where to build a city, one brother killed the other and founded Rome.
Romulus and Remus
This Renaissance painting depicts the Roman goddess of love emerging from the sea on a shell. The wind god Zephyrus blows her toward shore while the Hora of Spring prepares a cloak.
The Birth of Venus
This American poet wrote a collection titled Leaves of Grass, which he revised and expanded throughout his life. One of his most famous poems mourns the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and begins “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done.” Another poem in this collection describes a spider launching threads into space in A Noiseless Patient Spider.
Walt Whitman
These mathematical objects have both magnitude and direction and are often represented by arrows. A combination such as av+buav + buav+bu is called a linear combination of them. When their magnitude equals one, they are called unit vectors.
This archaeological site in Peru contains famous ruins of the Incan Empire high in the Andes Mountains. The site was brought to international attention by explorer Hiram Bingham in 1911.
Macchu Picchu
This Hindu deity is the preserver in the Trimurti and is known for appearing on earth in various avatars such as Rama and Krishna. One incarnation, Matsya, appears as a fish who saves humanity from a flood.
Vishnu
This bronze sculptural project depicts scenes from Dante’s Inferno and was one of the most ambitious works attempted by a single sculptor. At its center sits a smaller figure later enlarged into a famous sculpture of a man sitting with his chin on his hand. This monumental unfinished work was created by Auguste Rodin.
The Gates of Hell
This Russian novel follows a troubled student named Rodion Raskolnikov who believes he can justify committing murder for a greater good. Early in the novel he kills an elderly pawnbroker named Alyona Ivanovna with an axe. Later, the character Sonya reads to him a biblical passage about the resurrection of Lazarus.
Crime and Punishment
In probability theory, these events occur when the outcome of one does not affect the outcome of another. Repeated coin tosses are a classic example of this type of event.
independent
This mountain in Alaska is the tallest peak in North America. It was formerly known as Mount McKinley.
Mount Denali