Rocking Horse Winner Essay Example

Rocking Horse Winner Essay Example Rocking Horse Winner Essay Rocking Horse Winner Essay â€Å"For the love of money is the root of all evil. † in the short story, The Rocking Horse Winner by D. H Lawrence. The story is centered on Paul, a persistent young boy, who remains selfless in his quest to make his mother, Hester, a happy wealthy woman. Paul shows loyalty throughout the story, never giving up on bringing luck into his mother’s life. The happiness of his mother, motivates Paul to continue gambling on horse races. His naive belief that money would cure his mother’s depression over being well-off, ultimately leads to Paul’s early unfortunate death. Paul’s persistency began when he discovered that his mother believe that they were born with no luck. â€Å"If you’re lucky, you have money†, Hester explains to Paul. His mission was to change his mother’s mind and show her that the family indeed was lucky. Paul solicited the help of the family’s gardener, Basset, and pleads with him to bet on a horse on his behalf. After sensing unsatisfactory with the money sent to her anonymously, Paul felt he hadn’t done enough to make his mother feel lucky. The young boy road the horse day and night, not sleeping or eating, seeking the name of the winner. When you have a goal, persistency helps you achieve that goal. Paul loves his mother, therefore, the love he has for Hester motivated him to do whatever it took to make her happy. When Hester revealed that she felt unlucky, it sadden him. It’s troubling to hear of a love one hurting, struggling, and unhappy with the life they’ve been given. Paul’s loyalty to his mother was obsessive and detrimental to his health. Doing things for the ones you love should always have boundaries and not cause harm in the process of trying to help. Dedicated and loyal Paul, crawled from his sick bed and onto the rocking horse, to achieve his final win in the name of making Hester lucky. In life you come across people that are hard to satisfy and please. Hester was happy momentary with the winnings and spent the money lavishly. She had begun to earn extra money sketching figures of women in the latest fashions. Paul seemly had reached his goal of making her happy. However, Hester did not make much money and the money from the horse races dwindled. To Paul’s dismay, Hester remained unhappy. He whole heartedly believed the five pound would cure his mother’s depression. Paul’s naive thinking was one of a child, in which he was. Money does not always solve every problem and that’s a lesson Paul died learning. Throughout the house there’s a whisper, â€Å"There must be more money. † haunting the family. Hester and her husband married for love, not financial gain. The love in Hester’s marriage soon runs dry and she began to resent the path she has chosen in life. The whispers in the short story symbolizes the family desire for money. Always wondering where their next source of income would come from, the haunted house added more pressure to have money to the family. â€Å"There must be more money†, resounding through the house, is a constant reminder of their financial troubles. Everyone hears the whispers, but no one acknowledges it aloud. The whispers could have been used as a source of motivation to have better careers, and work harder to reach the financial status desired. Instead of using the taunting words in a positive light, the family, mainly Hester, fell into a depression. Paul’s rocking horse was given to him on Christmas morning. The rocking horse was a great gift for Paul because he had a love for horses. He also enjoyed the horse races and always stayed up to date with what was going on in the race world. Riding the rocking horse led to Paul gambling. He felt his uncle had past luck to him and would now be successful in winning. The rocking horse gave Paul the power to know which horse would win the race, therefore, allowing him to place a bet on the correct horse and win. The rocking horse is the devil in the form of a toy. Enabling obsession, with winning and money, Paul fell to the powers of the horse. On his last lap, young Paul saw who the winner of the derby would be. He had no concern with his health, his only desire was be sure of the winner. Poisoned with the thought that money was the answer to being lucky, Paul died on the back of his favorite toy, the rocking horse. The desire to be well-off came with a price and Paul paid it, to ensure his mother’s luck and happiness.

Roy Plunkett and the Invention of Teflon

Roy Plunkett and the Invention of Teflon Dr. Roy Plunkett discovered PTFE or polytetrafluoroethylene, the basis of Teflon ®, in April 1938. It’s one of those discoveries that happened by accident. Plunkett Discovers PTFE Plunkett held a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Master of Science degree, and his PhD in organic chemistry when he went to work at the DuPont research laboratories in Edison, New Jersey. He  was working with gases related to Freon ®Ã‚  refrigerants when he stumbled upon PTFE. Plunkett and his assistant, Jack Rebok, were charged with developing an alternative refrigerant and came up with tetrafluorethylene or TFE. They ended up making about 100 pounds of TFE and were faced with the dilemma of storing it all. They placed the TFE in small cylinders and froze them.  When they later checked on the refrigerant, they found the cylinders effectively empty, even though they felt heavy enough that they should still have been full. They cut one open and found that the TFE had polymerized into a white, waxy powder polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE resin. Plunkett was an inveterate scientist. He had this new substance on his hands, but what to do with it? It was slippery, chemically stable and had a high melting point. He began playing with it, attempting to find out if it would serve any useful purpose at all. Ultimately, the challenge was taken out of his hands when he was promoted and sent to a different division. The TFE was sent to DuPont’s Central Research Department. The scientists there were instructed to experiment with the substance, and Teflon ® was born. Teflon Properties The molecular weight of Teflon ® can exceed 30 million, making it one of the largest molecules known to man. A colorless, odorless powder, it is a fluoroplastic with many properties that  give it an increasingly wide range of uses. The surface is so slippery, virtually nothing sticks to it or is absorbed by it – the Guinness Book of World Records once listed it as the slipperiest substance on earth. It’s still the only known substance that a geckos feet cant stick to.   The Teflon Trademark PTFE was first marketed under the DuPont Teflon ® trademark in 1945.   No wonder Teflon ® was chosen to be used on non-stick cooking pans, but it was originally used only for industrial and military purposes because it was so expensive to make. The first non-stick pan using  Teflon ® was marketed in France as Tefal in 1954. The U.S. followed with its own Teflon ®-coated pan the Happy Pan in 1861. Teflon Today Teflon ® can be found just about everywhere these days: as a stain repellant in fabrics, carpets and furniture, in automobile windshield wipers, hair products, lightbulbs, eyeglasses, electrical wires and infrared decoy flares. As for those cooking pans, feel free to take a wire whisk or any other utensil to them – unlike in the old days, you won’t risk scratching the Teflon ® coating because its been improved. . Dr. Plunkett stayed with DuPont until his retirement in 1975. He died in 1994, but not before being inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame and the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame.