Did you know that a solatium is money given to family or relatives, for the loss or injury of a loved one. When I read the essay about the solatium and why it was given to the boy, I was in shock. I had no idea that when the military did harm to another family during war they would give them money. I also didn’t know about the kind of things that had been going on in the Vietnam war. I also could understand why the government would pay for the tragic loss of a foreign family member. During the war they would give the family or relatives fourteen dollars and forty cents for children under the age of fourteen and thirty-five dollars to children over the age of fourteen. It seems like so little money to be given for the tragic loss of a loved one. The more I thought about it, I felt that maybe thirty-five dollars was a lot to the Vietnamese people back in the time that this war had happened. The author also informed the readers of what happened to a little boy when his company was in the boy’s town. He talked of how a boy had a concrete block dropped onto his head, he then told of how he tried to help the boy, but despite his efforts the boy died. The author felt somewhat responsible and tried to help the best that he could. In the essay he also told me a little about how the army was back in those days. He explained the rank structure from a S-1 to a S-5 and what they did in the army as officers. This essay showed me the compassion that the author has and also showed me about the casualties of war.

Originally, the S-1 was personnel; S-2,intelligence; S-3, operations; and S-4,supply. In Vietnam S-5 was the officer for civil affairs, providing civilian medical and dental care, repairing damaged property, and find Vietnamese civilians who have lost a loved ones in accidental combat and arrange solatium payments.

Solatium appears in the Vietnam glossary as “Grievance Payment”, “Compensation Payment”, and “Go-Minh Money” The Americans thought they were doing a good deed by giving the Vietnamese solatium, but the vietnames just thought the Americans were cold hearted.

When the little boy dies in the hospital the S-5 did the paperwork for the boys family to receive compensation for the accident. The S-5 was something the Army had added during the Vietnamese war. Many people came to the boy’s ceremony including officers and the boys family. When the boy’s family would bow to there son, the Americans showed compassion and bowed with them. Along with the money, the boy’s family received packs full of candy and snacks and toilet items and ten cartons of American cigarettes.

When Beidler went home he used his G.I. Bill to go back to school to get his Ph.D. in English. Beildler has a wife and daughter and always thinks something is going to happen to them. He began taking an excessive amount of medication to let go of those fears. He finally went to a VA psychologist. The psychologist tells him that the dead Vietnamese boy was what he was thinking about . Still he wonders why the boy is still in his head and not all the other dead people he had seen. Maybe it’s because he has a child now and is afraid that something bad will happen to her. But everyday he sees the little boy in his mind. He doesn’t know why he sees the boy and not the other casualties that he had seen during the war.

I know there are a lot of Vietnam Veterans that feel the same way as Beidler does. He is still trying to reason with himself with what he had done in Vietnam. He will never be able to forget this tragedy. But this essay was very informative and interesting to me. I know about the solatium payment from the government and I also learned a lot more about the Vietnam war. I feel sorry for the author and his experience with the boy, but I feel that as a writer he has helped share the experience with the readers and help us better understand the Vietnam war.

Covey talks about private victories are more important than public victories. I feel that was very true and mainly because you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. If you already know it yourself, other people will recognize your self-confidence and respect and admire that characteristic about you (67). It’s a belief in yourself to know that you can do it and you’re the most important person. When you know who you are and what you are honest with yourself about what you are capable of doing. It is a personal victory, which builds your self-esteem, which in turn makes you be more effective students. Your teacher or classmate, or friends will influenced you a lot. You will be able to make them feel important because you feel important yourself and they will also be better students in a sense that they are happy.

Being proactive means that you have your own ideas rather than being influenced by people, or conditions. Students who want to be proactive should stop giving up a lot of excuses to explain their fault, and they are responsible for everything they have done. According to Covey “Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditing for their behavior”(71). From my own experience, before I hadn’t read this chapter, I gave myself a lot of excuses to avoid problems and school. For example every time I was tired in the morning , then I gave myself an excuse to stay home and sleep. But when I read Coveys experience, I had learned how to respond to my school, and stop giving myself excuses. Covey said “Because we are by nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is because we have chosen to empower those things to control us”(71).

Not being reactive means that you don’t blame your genes, or parents, or your environment, and don’t be influenced by others. Covey points out “Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment.

If weather is good, they feel good”(71). For example, I had friend that from same high school with me, and his name’s Jimmy. Jimmy is reactive to students in our class, he always blame his parents about his ugly face:

He believe other people say that he can’t do anything, but he never believes he can do it. And every time he loses a game, he will blame his teammates. Consequently all his teammates didn’t want to play with him anymore. After he recognizes all his friends were leaving him because he was blaming too much. In my own experience, I had been reactive before I have read Covey. As before I had worried about the things that I couldn’t do anything about it. For other examples, sometime I worry about my friends attitude because I was caring too much about what they said, and what they acted. But after I had read Covey, I had learned not to be influenced by other people. Covey argues “Proactive people have a circle of concern that is at least as big as their of influence, accepting the responsibility to use their influence affectively”(85).

In conclusion from my own opinion I had learned from Covey a lot of things. From now on I will be more proactive and pay more attention to my own situation. I will not give a lot of excuses, and stop worrying about others problem. In my own experience I would recommend Coveys book to all the students in college can read through every detail. It will help you to know more about yourself and be more responsible.

3.1. From mechanics to thermal physics

Many concepts in thermal physics are based on mechanical concepts – for example temperature which is a measure of average kinetic energy. When mechanics is applied on millions and millions of atoms or molecules moving and colliding, it is often not possible to study every one in detail, but they are represented by “collective”, more easily measurable quantities.

3.2. Temperature, internal energy and heat

Temperature

This is ususally measured in degrees Celsius or oC where the freezing point of water is 0 oC and the boiling point is + 100 oC. We have taken observable physical phenomena for the substance water, and comibined with something that changes in the interval between them (the height of a pillar of a liquid in a thermometer) a temperature scale could be defined. Though we have negative values on the Celsius scale temperature is a scalar – the negative sign does not give information about any direction, only about what value the “temperature” has compared to that of a chosen phenomenon (freezing or melting water).

In the Kelvin scale the size of a “degree” is the same as in Celsius, but the scale has been shifted to avoid negative numbers. The lowest possible temperature in the universe (more about why it is that later), about – 273 oC is 0 Kelvin = 0 K (not called ‘degrees’) and 0 oC is 273 K.

ex. 25 oC = (25 + 273) K = 298 K and 400 K = (400 – 273) oC = 127 oC

The higher the temperature, the more do the atoms or molecules move. A more exact definition of temperature is that

temperature is proportional to average kinetic energy

[or (not necessary in IB) Ek,average = ½mv2average = 3kT/2 where m = the mass of the atom or molecule, T = the temperature in Kelvins, k = the Boltzmann constant = 1.38 x 10-23 JK-1 ]

Thermal energy (= energy in the form of kinetic energy of the atoms in a material) can be transferred from one object to another in several ways, which means that one loses average kinetic energy (the temperature decreases, it cools) and another gains it (the temperature increases):

Thermal energy flows from an object with a higher temperature to one with a lower

“Zeroth law of thermodynamics”

If two objects have the same temperature, then there is no flow of thermal energy between them and vice versa – if there is no flow of thermal energy, they must be at the same temperature. They are then in thermal equilibrium. That these (no flow of thermal energy and same temperature) are equivalent is somtimes called the 0th law of thermodynamics.

Internal energy

The temperature is proportional to average kinetic energy of the atoms. But there are millions of them, and their total kinetic energy combined with their total potential energy (which they may have because there are forces between the atoms or molecules) is the total internal energy U.

Heat

is the amount of thermal energy which in a certain situation flows from one object to another. Note that heat and internal energy have the unit joule, while temperature has the unit Kelvin.

3.3. Solids, liquids and gases (and plasma)

States of matter

* solid : atoms closely packed, often in some regular pattern (crystal structure), most kinetic energy is in the form of vibrations

* liquid : atoms still rather closely packed, but their positions not fixed, there is no permanent pattern, most kinetic energy is vibrational, but some rotational and translational

* gas : atoms move freely, interact only briefly in collisions with each other and container walls, most energy is translational

* plasma : a state caused by extremely high temperature or pressure (or both), electrons separated from rest of atoms; found inside the sun or a nuclear explosion.

Exercise: Draw a sketch to illustrate translational, rotational and vibrational motion of a two-atom molecule

Maxwell-Boltzmann speed distribution (t03a)

In gases the speed of atoms (or molecules) follows a curve which looks like (but is not) an upside down parabola which is asymmetric so that it goes down “slower” on the right side, towards higher speeds.

Ex. Draw a speed distribution diagram for the gas in a container where there are 6 atoms : one with the speed 1 ms-1, three with the speed 2 ms-1, two with the speed 3 ms-1. We can then calculate:

* the most probable speed = the speed which the highest nr of atoms have = the value on the v-axis where the peak is. Here vmp = 2 ms-1.

* the average speed vav, in the unit ms-1 here = (1+2+2+2+3+3)/6 so vav = 2.167 ms-1

* the root mean square speed: Ö[( 12 + 22 +22 +22 + 32 + 32)/6] = Ö[31/6] = 2.27 so vrms = 2.27 ms-1.

Usually vmp < vav < vrms .

[Draw into t03a the graphs of T0 < T1 and T3>T2 plus a separate graph of N as a function of v for the six atoms in the example.]

Force between atoms

The force between atoms is mostly electromagnetic, and the details of it depend on issues of chemistry not dealt with here. It generally attracts atoms to each other until they are at some short distance r0 from each other – the “equilibrium separation” – around which they vibrate.

t03b

* LEFT: the distance between (the center of = the nucleus of) the atom on the x-axis, the force on the y-axis. Negative force values for attractive, positive for repulsive. At r0 the curve crosses the x-axis.

* RIGHT: Potential energy on the y-axis. Minimum at r0 around which distance the atoms may vibrate (go back and forwards like a ball in a bowl) – further away the higher the average kinetic energy = the temperature. The curve is steeper towards smaller distances (it takes a lot of energy to bring atoms very close to each other, where they repel each other strongly), but more shallow towards higher distances. Consequence:

If the temp. = average kinetic energy is increased, the atom can more easily “roll uphill” away from the other atom => its average distance increases which is why materials generally expand when heated.

Note that the force curve is the gradient or slope of the potential energy curve (as in space physics).

[ Not in the IB program: the change in length is Dl = a * l0 * DT where DT = the temperature change, l0 the original length and a = a length expansion coefficient with the unit K-1 . This results in a new length l = l0 + a * l0 * DT = l0 ( 1 + a * DT ). In the same way, a change in volume leads to a new volume V = V0(1 + g * DT) where g = a volume expansion coefficient. It can be shown that g = approximately 3a ]

t03c

Phase changes

When a solid melts to a liquid or a liquid boils to a gas, the heat (energy flowing in) goes to increase the potential energy, and therefore the average kinetic energy = the temperature remains constant.

t03d

Note here that since P = W/t => W = Pt the supplied energy is directly proportional to time for a constant heating power.

3.4. Specific heat capacity and specific latent heat

Specific heat capacity c

If the an amount Q of heat (unit J) flows into an object with the mass m, its temperature will change with DT (same in Celsius and Kelvin). The size of the temperature change also depends on the substance, which is represented by the specific heat capacity c. We have:

Q = mcDT [DB p.6]

where c is in the unit Jkg-1K-1

Heat capacity C

If we have an object which is made of several materials it may be easier to define a constant for this object, the heat capacity C with the unit JK-1 using

Q = CDT [not in DB]

If the object is made of one substance, the relation between C and c is C = mc.

Substances have different c-values because a certain mass of the substance may contain different numbers of atoms and molecules with different masses; and the chemical forces between these are more or less strong (ex. the hydrogen bonds between water molecules give them a high c-value).

Specific heat capacity is measured in a calorimeter, a vessel with good isolation against heat flow in or out (like a thermos flask) designed so that a liquid inside it can be stirred and temperature measured.

* Electric method:

An amount of electric energy, Q = W = E = VIt (voltage x current x time) is supplied to a calorimenter with the heat capacity Cc containing the mass ml of the liquid causing an increase of temperature = DT. The specific heat capacity cs of the sample is then the unknown in:

energy released = energy absorbed

Q = mcsDT + CcDT (solve this for cs)

* Mixing method:

The same calorimeter contains the mass m1 of the liquid at the temperature T1 and the mass m2 of the same liquid at the higher temperature T2 is inserted; after stirring the temperature stabilises at Tmix . We can then solve this for cs :

energy released by cooled liquid = energy absorbed by heated liquid + same by heated calorimeter (which is at same initial temperature as m1)

m2csDT2 = m1csDT1 + CcDTc

m2cs(T2 – Tmix) = m1cs(Tmix – T1)+ Cc(Tmix – T1)

Solve this for cs.

* Other methods:

To find the specific heat capacity cs for an unknown solid sample with mass m2, we can heat it to a known temperature T2 (e.g. by keeping it in boiling water or in an oven set at a certain temperature for some time) and then insert it into the calorimeter which now contains m1 of some liquid with an already known specific heat capacity ck (e.g. water) at T1. The equation from the mixing method now becomes:

m2cs(T2 – Tmix) = m1ck(Tmix – T1)+ Cc(Tmix – T1)

which is then solved for cs .

Specific latent heat L

When a substance is melting/freezing or boiling/condensing the temperature does not change, but heat energy flows in or out of it. Examples:

* hot water vapour at 100 oC causes a worse burn than liquid water at the same temperature, since heat is given first when the vapour condenses to a liquid and then when the 100 oC water cools to 37 oC.

* when the temperature in the winter falls below 0 oC the lakes and seas do not immediately freeze – first they must be cooled to 0 oC and then more heat must flow out to freeze it,

For both freezing/melting and boiling/condensing we can use:

Q = mL [DB p. 6]

where for the first we have Lf = specific latent heat of “fusion” (for melting or solidifying) in the unit 1 Jkg-1 and for the second Lv = specific latent heat of vapourisation (for boiling or condensating) in the same unit. These can be measured using:

* Electric method (Lv) :

A vessel contains the mass m1 of a liquid which is heated with an electric heater with a known power (which can be found from relevant electrical quantities, P = VI, to be explained later). The vessel is placed on an electronic scale, tared (zeroed) to show the mass of the liquid only, not the mass of the vessel (the heater can be one immersed in the liquid). While the liquid is being heated to its boiling point, the mass decreases to m2 because of evaporation. When the boiling starts, the mass is recorded and a stopwatch started. After the time t the mass has decreased further to m3 and the Lv can be found from:

energy supplied = energy absorbed

Pt = VIt = (m2 – m3)Lv which is then solved for Lv.

* “Mixing” method (Lf)

A calorimeter with the heat capacity contains m1 of a liquid (with known specific heat capacity c) at T1 and into it m2 of the solid form of the same substance (e.g. ice if the liquid was water) at its melting temperature is inserted, which causes the temperature to drop to Tmix (above the melting point of the substance – otherwise take more and/or warmer liquid). The Lf can be found from:

energy released (by the liquid) = energy absorbed (by the solid)

m1c(T1 – Tmix) = m2Lf (solve for Lf)

* Other calculations:

If a mass m of a substance (e.g. ice) at the temperature Tinitial, which is lower than its melting point is heated until it has turned into gas, the energy needed is:

Qtotal = mcice(Tmelt – Tinitial) + mLf + mcwater(Tboil – Tmelt) + mLv

where the terms are: heat to warm the ice to the melting point, heat to melt the ice, heat to warm the water from the melting to the boiling point, and heat to vaporise the water.

3.5. Evaporation

“Boiling” means that the liquid is turning to gas everywhere – in a kettle of boiling water bubbles of water vapour are formed at the bottom, and stay gaseous while they rise to the surface.

But if we leave a glass of water uncovered the water will eventually “evaporate” – turn to gas – even at room temperature. The reason for this is that some of the molecules (at the surface) have high enough speeds and kinetic energies to break away from the forces between molecules keeping them in the liquid. The room temperature only says what the average kinetic energy is. When these fast-moving molecules are gone, the average kinetic energy decreases => the liquid is cooled, and then heat flows from its surroundings into it. This is why it feels colder to have wet clothes than dry ones.

The rate of this evaporation depends on several factors, like:

* what liquid it is (what its Lv -value is) : some liquids with low values evaporate quickly and therefore cool quickly; heat flows fast into them from the environment (alcohol or acetone on the skin feels colder than water, although all substances may have been taken from containers at room temperature).

* the temperature : evaporation takes place at all temperatures, but faster with higher temperature (if you water the lawn, do it in the evening, in the day more of it will evaporate before it gets into the ground).

* how much (for example) water vapour already is in the air: in a dry climate, sweat evaporates quickly, but in the jungle it stays on the skin.

This can be used to measure the humidity in air with a psychrometer (a dry thermometer and one with a moist gauze; the temperature difference can be used to find the relative air humidity).

3.6. Transporting thermal energy : conduction, convection, radiation

Conduction

If you put one end an iron rod into the fire, it will soon feel hot in the other end. This is because the heated atoms (or electrons in a metal) have higher average Ek som higher average speed, and in a series of collisions this Ek is spred through the rod. Different materials conduct heat faster or slower; try puttin silver, steel and plastic spoons in a cup of hot tea.

[Not in the IB programme anymore, but useful background information for investigations:

P = Q/t = (-)kA DT/Dx

where P = power of heat transfer = amount of energy Q transported in time t depends on k = thermal conductivity values for different materials, A = the cross section area of the conductor (that is, the area through which heat is conducted), DT = temperature difference between hot and cold end, Dx = length of rod or thickness of the material.].

Convection

In the Mexican gulf, ocean water is heated and flows in the “Gulfstream” to Northern Europe making the climate warmer than it would otherwise be. In a smaller scale, houses with central heating have an oil burner where water is heated and pumped through the rooms where it is radiated out (see below). This means that heat is transported not by collisions within a material but by transporting the material itself (which then should have a high specific heat capacity, which is why water is suitable).

Radiation

The sun can heat the earth without being in touch with it (conduction) or letting materia flow from the earth to the sun (some small amounts of particles do flow, causing aurora borealis, but this does not significantly heat the planet). This energy is transported in the form of electromagnetic (EM) radiation, which is explained more in the Waves section. For now : many types of radiation are of this sort, including light, infrared and radio waves.

The earth can then radiate some heat out in space in the night (unless the atmosphere only lets sunlight through, and not the radiation from earth = greenhouse effect).

[The reason for this is that the typical wavelength for the radiation depends on the temperature of the object which is radiating (a rather hot metal emits invisible radiation, a hotter one red light, an even hotter whiter light), and the sun surface is much hotter than the earth's; this is explained more in connection with the lmax = k/T, k = 2.90 x 10-3 m, formula in Astrophysics. Molecules in the atmosphere may stop radiation of some wavelengths better than other]

* Shiny objects radiate heat less than black or dark ones; the same goes for absorbing radiation. This is why thermos flasks are shiny.

* The hotter an object gets, the higher is the power of radiation (radiated energy per time), but this is not directly proportional to the temperature T, rather to T4.

* The larger the area radiating, the higher is the power. This is why motorcycle engines are shaped to increase the area in contact with air.

[See the L = sAT4 formula in Astrophysics where L is a type of power.]

3.7. Ideal gas law

Pressure

If some force F (which can be the result of gas atoms colliding with hte surface or other) acts on a surface with the area A (perpendicular to the surface) the pressure p (a scalar quantity) is

p = F/A [DB p.6]

with the unit 1 Nm-2 = 1 pascal = 1 Pa. Other units : 1 bar = 100 000 Pa, 1 millibar = 1mb = 100 Pa, 1 atmosphere = 1 atm (about ordinary air pressure) = 1013 mb = 101.3 kPa.

1 atm = 1.01 x 105 Nm-2 =101 kPa = 760 mmHg [DB p. 2]

Macroscopic gas laws

* Boyle’s law: If you open a container with gas under high pressure, it fills the room and therefore the volume V increases and the pressure drops. Increased V gives smaller p, so p = k/V for some constant k

t07a

This gives a hyperbola in a p-V graph (compare to y = 1/x, y = 2/x etc.)

* Gay-Lussac’s law: If an amount of gas is heated it expands, ex. heating the air in a hot air balloon. When the same mass of air gets a higher volume V the density decreases; this is why hot air is “lighter” than cold and rises upwards. Higher T gives higher V so V = kT for some other constant

t07b

This gives a straight line in a V-T graph. Since there can be no negative volume, the point where the V-graph hits the T-axis is the lowest possible temperature : 0 K =

-273oC.

t07c

* Pressure or Admonton law: If an amount of gas is heated and is in a rigid container so the volume cannot increase, the pressure will rise. Ex. if you throw a spray can in the fire the gas in it is heated and the pressure increases until it explodes (do not do this at home!). Higher T gives higher p so p = kT for some constant k so :

This gives a straight line in a p-T graph. Since there can be no negative pressure, the point where the p-graph hits the T-axis is the lowest possible temperature : 0 K =

-273oC.

All these laws can be summed up in one formula:

pV/T = constant which means p1V1/T1 = p2V2/T2 = p3V3/T3 = … as long as the amount of gas is the same

If the amount of gas changes – some of leaks out or some is inserted – then we must take into account how many atoms or molecules we have, which is done using the chemical quantity amount of substance = n in the unit mole. For a mass m (exceptionally here in the unit g, not kg !!!) of gas with the molar mass M in the unit gmol-1 we have:

n = m/M

The amount of substance n in moles is related to the number N of atoms or molecules we have via Avogadros number NA = 6.02 x 1023 :

N = n NA

It can be found that the ideal gas law is pV/T = nR or :

pV = nRT [DB p.6]

where the ideal gas constant R = 8.31 JKmol-1

All this is based on a model of an ideal gas, which means:

* many small gas atoms are assumed to move in straight lines in random directions

* they change direction only when colliding with each other and the container walls

* the collisions are assumed to be perfectly elastic = not only momentum but also kinetic energy is conserved

Under such assumptions, the gas laws can also be supported theoretically, ex.

* if you increase the volume, the atoms have a longer distance to move between collisions with the wall => fewer collisions happen in a certain time which means less force acts on a chosen area of the walls => the pressure has decreased (p = k/V)

* if the gas is heated, then the average kinetic energy of the atoms goes up, therefore the average speed goes up, which means that we either get more collisions and higher pressure (p = kT) or, if we keep the pressure constant, must let the volume increase V = kT).

3.8. Thermodynamics (first law): heat and work

First law of thermodynamics

We now study the flow of energy or work between a thermodynamical system – some object or device or amount of gas or liquid that we study – and its surroundings. The basic rule is that

energy does not appear from nowhere or disappear into nothing

or the principle of energy conservation (conservation = the same totally before and after. To formulate it mathematically we use these quantities:

DQ = thermal energy transferred (positive when into the system, negative out)

DU = change in internal energy (positive when increases, negative for decrease)

DW = work done (positive when done by the system, negative when done on the system)

We then have:

DQ = DU + DW [DB p.6]

This rule may be easier to understand in the mathematically equivalent form

DU =DQ – DW

* U is the total internal energy, the sum of all kinetic and potential energies of the atoms in the system we study

* DU is the change in this. What (work or energy) comes into the system and what goes out of it must either balance out (be zero when added) or result in a change in U which is positive if more work or energy comes than goes out, otherwise negative

Take a case where the U is constant => DU = 0 , (which means that the temperature is constant), for example a steam engine where heat is flowing in and the engine does work on the wheels to move a train. If DU = 0, this can go on for hours without overheating the engine or having it cool off.

* since the DQ is positive for energy flowing in, the formula is suitable if the work “flowing out” (being done by the system on something else) is subtracted. With a minus sign in the formula but a positive value for the DW, the sum can be 0.

[It would have been possible to agree on a different sign system and let DU = DQ + DW with the simple sign rule for both Q and W that everything "into" the system is positive and everything "out of" it is negative]

3.9. Thermodynamic processes

Work done by a moving piston

Suppose we have a gas at the pressure p in a cylindric container with a mobile wall (ex. a car engine cylinder with a piston).

t09a

* since p = F/A we have the force F = pA on the mobile wall

* when it is moved the distance s by F, the work W = Fs is done

* the change in the volume of the gas is then DV = As

* W = Fs = pAs = pDV if p is constant, or if we use the symbol DW for W:

DW = pDV [DB p.6]

Isobaric process

In a pV-diagram we have V on the x-axis and p on the y-axis.

t09b

The work done in a process is the area under its graph in a pV-diagram

If p is constant then the process is isobaric (“same pressure” recall the alternative pressure unit 1 bar).

* The graph is a horizontal line, the area is a rectangle.

Isochoric process

If the volume is constant, then the process is isochoric (the piston remains in the “same place”, compare to “choreography” – describing how dancers move)

* The graph is a vertical line, the area under = the work done = 0

Isothermal process

t09c

If the temperature is kept constant, the process is isothermal, and since pV = nRT we get p = nRT/V which with constant T gives p = constant/V which gives a hyperbola graph (compare to y = 1/x, y = 2/x etc).

* The graph is a hyperbola, the work done = the area under it, found using integration or numeric approximation.

[Integration gives that if the volume increases from V1 to V2 the work is W = nRT ln (V2/V1) ]

Other processes

The types of processes mentioned here are special cases – in real engines the processes may show some other curves in the pV-diagram, where the area under the graph would be the work done – often only found with numeric integration.

Adiabatic process

One process which is not isobaric, isochoric or isothermal is the adiabatic process.

A process is adiabatic if no heat (energy) Q flows into or out of the system

Recall that DQ = DU + DW where now Q or as we may call it DQ = 0 giving DU = – DW or just

DU = – W for adiabatic process

Using the earlier mentioned sign rules this means than we can have:

[The sign rules were:

DQ = thermal energy transferred (positive when into the system, negative out)

DU = change in internal energy (positive when increases, negative for decrease)

DW = work done (positive when done by the system, negative when done on the system)]

* adiabatic expansion, where the gas in the piston does the work W on something else, so W is positive, and DU is negative, which means that the total kinetic energy must go down, so the average kinetic energy goes down, so the temperature goes down

(“joules go out of the gas as work but none come in as heat so the number of them in the gas decreases”)

t09d

In a PV-diagram, this gives a curve decreasing faster than a isothermal hyperbola starting at the same point.

* adiabatic compression, where work is done on the gas in the piston by something else, so W is negative and therefore -W is positive so DU is postive and, in a similar way, the temperature goes up

(“joules get into the gas as work but none go out as heat so the number of them in the gas increases”)

In a PV-diagram, this gives a curve which when going from right to left on the horizontal V-axis (note: compression = decrease in volume!) gives a curve rising faster than an isothermal hyperbola starting at the same point.

There are two major ways to achieve an approximately adiabatic process:

- to let the process happen so fast that little or no heat has time to flow in or out (e.g. some of the processes in the cylinder of a car engine)

– to have the system very well insulated during the process

3.10. Thermodynamic cycles

In a real engine, you cannot let the volume just increase or decrease forever, then the engine would either explode or disappear. The volume must increase and decrease periodically, in a cycle.

The work done in expansion is positive and in compression negative, so the net work is the area left over when the area under the compression curve is taken away from the one under the expansion curve

If the engine would always use the same type of process, the point describing what the V- and p-values are would just go back and forwards along the same curve in the pV-diagram; the areas would cancel out and no work be done.

A useful engine must therefore use a combination of different processes to form a cycle in the pV-diagram

3.11. Heat engines and pumps

Heat engine

There are many sorts of “heat engines” – gas and diesel car engines, steam engines, power plants taking energy form burning coal or heat from nuclear reactions and others.

A heat engine is a machine into which the heat QH (energy) flows from a hot reservoir (place) at the the “hotter” temperature TH and is converted to useful work W and heat QC (energy) flowing out of it to a cold reservoir (place) at the “colder” temperature TC.

t11a

* In practice, an engine must work in a cycle in the PV-diagram (see above, TH (hot) is the high temperature or hot end, TL or TC is the low temperature or cold end). In a cycle, we get back to the same point in the PV-diagram

* this point is on some hyperbola which describes a certain temperature (see isothermic processes above) so we get back to the same temperature

* temperature “is” average kinetic energy, so for the same amount of gas we get back to the same total internal energy U

* so DU = 0

* since from before DU =DQ – DW we get DQ = DW = W

* so

W = QH – QC

Since the efficiency h = useful work or energy out / work or energy in we get the efficiency h = W/ QH and therefore :

efficiency = (QH – QC)/ QH [DB p. 6]

Heat pump and refrigerator

In a refrigerator – an example of a heat pump – the opposite happens. “Work” is put into the refrigerator (in the compressor, powered by electrical energy) and then heat flows from the “hot reservoir” to the “cold reservoir” (if it is 25 degrees C inside the refrigerator and 20 degrees outside, this can be changes by switching it on).

t11b

3.12. Carnot cycles

An ideal engine would have no friction and be perfectly insulated against unintended heat losses, and be able work in both directions. This would be called a Carnot engine, and it could be shown that in this ideal case the efficiency would be:

h = Carnot efficiency = (TH – TC)/ TH [DB p.6]

But the Carnot engine also follows the general efficiency formula for all heat engines, so

h = h => (QH – QC)/ QH = (TH – TC)/ TH = >

QH/QH – QC/QH = TH/TH – TC/TH = > 1 – QC/QH = 1 – TC/TH = >

- QC/QH = – TC/TH which for an ideal Carnot cycle gives us:

QC/QH = TC/TH [DB p.6]

From the expression h = 1 – TC/TH we can see that h = 100% if TC = 0 Kelvins. Since no heat engine (or heat pump) is perfectly insulated or totally frictionless, the absolute zero temperature can not be reached. This can be called the third law of thermodynamics.

t12a

3.13. Second law of thermodynamics : Entropy

Entropy is a quantity which is complicated to define since it describes something about a system of many particles, in principle about the whole universe. We start with:

Kelvin-Planck-form of the second law:

An engine working in a thermodynamic cycle cannot transform all the heat flowing into it to work.

This means some energy is always wasted to heat at the low temperature end of the engine. This means that temperature differences in the universe generally tend to even out, and with no such differences, there will be no “engines” of any kind (dead or living). This is the future “heat death” of the universe.

Even if energy is not destroyed or disappears from the universe (first law), it becomes less and less useful – we have an energy degradation.

* ICE IN HOT WATER: we know that if we put ice in hot water, the ice melts and the water is cooled. Earlier formulas would not prohibit the opposite process – some of the hot water would freeze and make the ice cube bigger, and the heat released in this would go to making the rest of the water even hotter or maybe boil it. That this would not happen in nature is what the 2nd law says.

We lose information in this process (before: the shape of the ice can contain a lot of information, e.g. a formula written with ice, which the water cannot). We also had two temperatures (pieces of information) before, but only one afterwards.

* REFRIGERATOR: if we come to a warm room with a refrigerator which has been turned off for a while, we have the same temperature inside it and outside it. But if we turn it on, we will get a the inside of it cooled and the outside heated. This is possible using extra (electrical) energy from the rest of the universe. Where this energy was produced, temperature differences were evened out. The net result for the whole universe is always that more temperature differences are evened out than produced.

We went from one piece of information (temperature) to two.

* MORNING ON THE ISLAND: The same can happen not only with devices made by an intelligent being, but also in nature. In the morning the rocks of an island and the sea around them may have the same temperature, but when the sun rises, the rocks are heated faster than the water, so we get two temperatures instead of one (and this can cause complicated weather systems), which is possible because energy flows in from the rest of the universe (the sun, which radiates energy into the cold solar system, evening out temperature differences).

Entropy can qualitatively be defined as a measure of the disorder in the universe – the more disorder or less information, the higher the entropy.

Clausius form :

The net change in entropy for a system and its environment (may be the whole universe) is always positive.

[Not (?) in the IB programme anymore: A quantitative definition of the entropy change DS would be DS = Q/T where Q is the heat energy = mcDT (positive if added and negative if released) and T the temperature at which this happens (constant for melting and freezing) - or the average temperature if the process is not at a constant temperature (heating or cooling).

Example: An amount of cold water at 280K is mixed in the same amount of hot water at 320K, giving a mix where all the water is at 300K

For the hot water, energy is released and the heat negative = -Q. For the cold water, heat is added as a positive Q.

For the hot water, the average temperature in the process is 310K and for the cold water it is 290K. We then get the total change in entropy as

DStotal = DShot + DScold = (-Q/310K) + (Q/290K) which is positive.

The total change in entropy is always positive when all relevant parts of the universe are included in the calculation.

This was a calculation of the DS, but defining S itself is more complicated and requires applying statistics and probability to the microscopic and macroscopic states of the molecules in an object.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Amazon.com has experienced exceptional growth since the company’s inception in early 1994. The company has grown to a massive online superstore with recent sales of $1.64 billion in 1999, an increase of 270% from the previous year’s sales. The stellar grow of the company’s sales can be attributed to a very strong product situation. Amazon.com’s initial target market, online book consumers, proved to be very lucrative. In addition, the expansion into more diverse product offerings beyond books, such as music, DVD & video, toys, electronics, home improvement and auctions only served to increase the company’s product portfolio. In order to expand Amazon.com’s position Insight Solutions has identified an aggressive marketing strategy to broaden the companies target market, expand the product positioning to all consumer goods, focus distribution outlets through the top ten web sites and price items at a low but profitable margin. To ensure this plan is successful,! Insight Solutions also recommends four action plans involving, increasing name recognition, target market, product marketing and distribution management. &Oslash; Name Recognition&Oslash; Free E-mail&Oslash; Advertise on Internet Radio &Oslash; Target Market&Oslash; Telephone Operators&Oslash; “Click & Mortar” Store &Oslash; Product Marketing&Oslash; Expand Product lines, Auto, Travel, Grocery &Oslash; Distribution Management&Oslash; Increased Distribution Centers TABLE OF CONTENTS CURRENT MARKETING SITUATION 1 FINANCIAL SUMMARY: SALES/COSTS/PROFITS 1 PRODUCT SITUATION – BOOKS 2 PRODUCT SITUATION – MUSIC 3 PRODUCT SITUATION – DVD & VIDEO 4 PRODUCT SITUATION – TOYS 5 PRODUCT SITUATION – ELECTRONICS 5 PRODUCT SITUATION – HOME IMPROVEMENT 6 PRODUCT SITUATION – AUCTIONS, ZSHOPS AND SOTHERBYS.AMAZON.COM 7 COMPETITIVE SITUATION 8 DISTRIBUTION SITUATION 9 OPPORTUNITY AND ISSUE ANALYSIS 11 AMAZON.COM’S MAIN OPPORTUNITIES 11 AMAZON.COM’S MAIN THREATS 11 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES ANALYSIS 12 AMAZON.COM’S MAIN STRENGTHS 12 AMAZON.COM’S MAIN WEAKNESSES 12 O! BJECTIVES 13 FINANCIAL OBJECTIVES 13 MARKETING OBJECTIVES 14 MARKETING STRATEGY 19 TARGET MARKET: OWNERS OF PERSONAL COMPUTERS & SHOP AT HOME CONSUMERS 19 POSITIONING: A ONE-STOP SHOPPING ENVIRONMENT FOR ALL CONSUMER GOODS 19 PRODUCT LINE: THE LARGEST SELECTION OF SELECT RETAIL CATEGORIES 20 PRICE: PRICE AT A LOW BUT PROFITABLE MARGIN 22 DISTRIBUTION OUTLETS: ADVERTISE ON THE TOP TEN MOST POPULAR WEB SITES 22 SALES FORCE: KEEP AT A MINIMUM 23 SERVICE: EFFICIENT & WIDELY AVAILABLE SERVICE WITH FAST TURN-AROUND 23 SALES PROMOTION: DEVELOP AN ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN TO PROMOTE CONSUMER AWARENESS, NEW PRODUCTS, AND BETTER DISTRIBUTION 23 ADVERTISING: DECREASE SALES PROMOTION BUDGET BY 10% AND ADVERTISE ON HIGH TRAFFIC WEB PAGES, TELEVISION, NEWSPAPER, RADIO, AND NEW PC OWNERS 24 R & D: DEVELOP NEW PRODUCT LINES SUCH AS APPAREL, JEWELRY, AND AUTOMOTIVE PARTS 25 MARKETING RESEARCH: MONITOR COMPETITORS MORE CLOSELY & EXPLORE CONSUMER BEHAVIOR OF INTERNET PURCHASES 25 ACTION PROGRAMS 27 ! NAME RECOGNITION 27 INCREASE TARGET MARKET 28 INCREASE PRODUCT MARKETING: 30 DISTRIBUTION MANAGEMENT: 31 CONTROLS 32 NAME RECOGNITION 32 INCREASE TARGET MARKET 34 INCREASE PRODUCT MARKETING 35 DISTRIBUTION MANAGEMENT 36 APPENDIX 38 BIBLIOGRAPHY 39 CURRENT MARKETING SITUATION

Financial Summary: Sales/Costs/Profits Amazon.com has been described as a massive flea market with not one target market, but various target markets. Their categories of merchandise include books, music, DVD & video, and electronics & software to name a few. This massive “one stop shop” has generated sales of $610 million in 1998, up 313% from the previous year of $148 million. As a result of strong sales in its new electronic store, Amazon.com claimed net sales of $676 million in fourth quarter 1999, an increase of 167% over net sales of $253 million fourth quarter of 1998. Net sales for all of 1999 were 1.64 billion, a 169% increase over net sales of $610 million for all of 1998. Pro forma operating loss! for the fourth quarter of 1999 was $175 million, compared to a pro forma operating loss of $18 million in the fourth quarter of 1998. The fourth-quarter pro forma net loss was $185 million, or $0.55 per share, compared with a pro forma net loss of $22 million, or $0.07 per share, in the fourth quarter of 1998. Amazon.com’s registered customers have been dramatically growing in recent months. In 1997, the company had 1.5 million “cumulative customer accounts” which grew to 6.2 million accounts. In first quarter of 1999 cumulative customer accounts increased by more than 2.2 million to 8.4 million. Repeat-customer orders for the quarter increased to more than 66%, up from the 1998 rate of 60%. Amazon.com’s customer accounts continue to grow into the fourth quarter of 1999 with an increase of 3.8 million to more than 16.9 million at December 31. This represents an increase of more than 170% at December 31,1998. Repeat customer orders represented more than 73% of orders in the fo! urth quarter from 72% in the previous quarter. Amazon.com’s 1998 annual statement warned that its stellar growth would slow. The company indicated that its total deficit had grown to $162.1 million. In addition, the company’s expenses related to recent acquisitions and interest expense from February 1999 and May 1998 would affect operating cost. But the company’s more than $2 billion mixed product shelf proved to be stable in late May. Product Situation – Books There are 1.5 million English-language books in print, 3 million books in all languages worldwide. Primeda Information indicated the size of the U.S. consumer book market was $11.01 billion in 1999 and expects the market to grow to $12.45 billion by 2002. Worldwide book sales, according to Euromonitor, were approximately $81 billion in 1998 and are expected to grow to $85 billion by 2000.Online book sales in 1998 were recorded at $630 million and forecast for book sales online will represent 18% of total book sales at ! $3 billion by 2003. It is also projected that 11.3% migration of the book market online by 2002. Barnesandnoble.com’s annual report cited that by the end of 1998 some 10 million U.S. households had made at least one purchase online, and that population should more than triple to 36.5 million households by 2002. This is not to signify that book sales will grow at the same rate, but there is a significant factor that most online consumers got their feet wet buying books. TWO LEADING ONLINE BOOKSELLERS Domain Unique Audience % Reach / Rank Page View / Rank Time on the Site per User Amazon.com 6.38 Million 10.39% / 15 125.3 Million / 12 15 min / 60 users B&N.com 1.88 Million 3.07% / 43 16.2 Million / 84 8 min / 38 users The largest physical bookstore has 175,000 titles compared to Amazon with 1.1 million titles. If Amazon.com printed a catalog, it would be the size of seven New York City phone books. Even with Amazon.com’s extension of its product lines, book sales from the compan! y’s U.S. base extended their lead as the number one online bookstore in the fourth quarter. There was a strong show of revenue growth to $317 million, up 66% from the fourth quarter of 1998. U.S. based book sales have now reached a rate of $1.2 billion. From the third quarter to the fourth quarter, the growth alone in dollars for U.S. based books for Amazon.com was greater than the total fourth-quarter sales of any other online bookstore. Product Situation – Music According to Merrill Lynch’s report “E-Commerce: Virtually Here,” April 8, 1999, says, “We are hard pressed to find an industry sector that is poised to benefit from e-commerce and the Internet as much as the recorded music industry.” Merrill stated that the Internet’s ability to provide more efficient and effective distribution of music. Amazon’s U.S. based music sales reached $78 million in the fourth quarter, up more than 136% fourth quarter 1998. Sales for fiscal year 1999 were $195 million. The store ended with ! an annualized run rate over $300 million. Amazon.com’s music team continues to listen to customer feedback and improve the features of their music stores. They’ve launched an improved classical music store, enhanced recommendation features, and additional services to promote independent artists. Amazon.com was the first online music retailer to dedicate an area of its store to offer the largest selection of free promotional song downloads from major-label artists. These valued services have led to Amazon.com’s music store domination in industry polls and earning the honor such as: &Oslash; Number one overall Internet music store in Gomez Advisors’ two most recent scorecards. &Oslash; Number one ranking in the first Forrester PowerRankings for online books, music, and video retailers. &Oslash; The Harris Interactive e-Commerce Pulse Excellence Award for the highest overall satisfaction rating among online music and video retailers. &Oslash; The Midwest Award 2000 for the best music shopping/digital distri! bution Web site. Product Situation – DVD & Video Amazon.com’s U.S. DVD & video sales grew to $64 million in the fourth quarter, up over 500% from the fourth quarter of 1998. Sales exceeded $64 million during the fourth quarter of 1999, placing the business over a $250 million annualized run rate. More than half of the DVD & video fourth quarter revenue came from the DVD category. These figures have reinforced Amazon.com’s position as the number one online DVD and video retailer and establishing the following honors: &Oslash; Amazon.com was the industry’s number three retailer of The Matrix DVD, the biggest selling DVD in 1999 (according to Warner Home Video). &Oslash; Amazon.com was the industry’s number one overall seller, online and retail combined in 1999. &Oslash; The Amazon.com’s Advantage program for videos was launched in July 1999, helping independent filmmakers solve the problem of securing distribution for their work. &Oslash; Amazon.com now offers more than 65,000 different DVD and video title! s, which is nearly seven times as large as a typical off-line DVD and video store. Product Situation – Toys In the fourth quarter, sales of children’s products exceeded $95 million with a significant majority being toys. Amazon.com’s toy selection has been rated the best online toy store in an MS-NBC survey, beating out a number of longer-established players, and was ranked the number one toys and games store by Forrester Research. Product Situation – Electronics The Amazon.com Electronics & Software was launched in 1999. The store features a full range of popular electronic products and brands, and a complete software line of office, educational, and gaming titles. The Electronic & Software Store provides detailed buying guides and expert product reviews to help customers choose from the large selection. Amazon.com’s Electronic and Software Store exceeded cumulative sales during the store’s first five months of operation in December alone, demonstrating strong growth in the f! ourth quarter. In December, Amazon.com’s overall number one product by dollar sales across all product lines was the 3Com Palm V Connected Organizer, and electronics products accounted for six of Amazon.com’s top revenue-generating items in the month. Despite the Electronic and Software Store being a new store, Amazon.com’s reputation as the best place for customers to find and discover consumer electronics has definitely been recognized. In December 1999, Amazon.com was ranked the number one online electronics store by Gomez Advisors, Inc., a leading provider of online research and analysis. Amazon.com also tied for the top overall customer satisfaction rating among online electronics retailers in a December 1999 poll conducted by Harris Interactive, a leading Internet-based market research and polling firm. In addition, more than half the Amazon.com Electronic customers surveyed recently by Amazon.com described their online experience as better than their experience in “Bric! k & Mortar” stores. The survey also showed that 90% of customers said they would buy electronics from Amazon.com again. In addition, the growth and recognition of Amazon.com’s new Electronics & Software store has led to a growing interest among manufacturers in selling electronics online. A total of six electronics products were included in Amazon.com’s top 10 revenue-generating items for all retail stores for the month of December: &Oslash; 3Com Palm V Connected Organizer &Oslash; Garmin GPS III+ Personal Navigator &Oslash; 3Com Palm IIIx Connected Organizer &Oslash; Panasonic DVD-L50 Palm Theater &Oslash; Nikon Coolpix 950 Digital Camera &Oslash; Olympus D-450 Zoom Digital Camera Product Situation – Home Improvement Amazon.com’s Home Improvement Store experienced strong sales in Tools & Equipment during the holidays. The store was launched on November 10, 1999, offering Earth’s largest selection of tools and a broad selection of other home improvement products. The store has enabled a broad set of manufacturers such! as Delta, Black & Decker/DeWalt, and Makita. February 1, 2000, Amazon.com announced a multimillion-dollar agreement to create a Home Living store. Under this agreement, Amazon.com will receive $145 million from living.com over five years in exchange for being the exclusive Amazon.com Home Living store providing furniture, bedding, home textiles, decorative accessories, tabletop, window treatments, and other related home categories. At the same time, Amazon.com will make an investment in living.com to acquire an 18% stake in the company. Amazon.com also has warrants for another 9%, upon the transaction’s closing. Product Situation – Auctions, zShops and sotherbys.Amazon.com Amazon.com’s three major marketplaces, Auctions, zShops, and sothebys.Amazon.com surpassed a combined 1 million registered users and 1.5 million active listings, during the fourth quarter. Amazon.com continued to integrate these services with its retail stores to deliver a better overall value and experienc! e for customers. Examples include a partnership with DreamWorks to promote Stuart Little and American Beauty (72 auctions, averaging 27 bids per auction, total gross merchandise sales of over $25,000, yielding an average of over $400 per item). February 3, 2000, Amazon.com announced the availability of e-Poster 2000 for Amazon.com Auctions and zShop sellers. With full functional support for Amazon.com Auctions and zShops, e-Poster 2000, an updated version of the popular auction-listing automation software AuctionPoster98, was officially launched today by AuctionPoster.com, Inc. Amazon.com’s sellers can now download e-Poster 2000 from www.auctionposter.com/amazon for use when creating Amazon.com zShops and Auctions listings. AuctionPoster.com provides software and services to enable online sellers to create online auction, storefront, and classified listings easily, quickly, cost-effectively, and professionally. Auction Poster software and services provide professional results ! to non-technical business people, empowering a whole new segment of online sellers. AuctionPoster.com provides the tools and support to enable sellers to get superior results. Used by some of the most active online sellers, AuctionPoster.com customers have over 30,000 online auctions running daily on popular online marketplace sites, including Amazon.com. COMPETITIVE SITUATION Barnesandnoble.com launched its online business in March 1997 and has become one of the world’s largest web sites and the fourth largest e-commerce retailer, according to Media Metrix. Their primary target markets include books, music, software, magazines, prints, posters, and related products. The online business has capitalized on the recognized brand value of the Barnes & Noble name to become the second largest, and one of the fastest growing, online distributors of books. Barnesandnoble.com customers can choose from millions of new and out-of-print titles whether it’s the latest bestseller, a univers! ity press title, a hard-to find book, or a rare first edition. They also offer thousands of bargain books discounted up to 91%. In addition, Barnesandnoble.com offers the most popular software and magazine titles, as well as gift items for every occasion. In order to help their customer’s searches, Barnesandnoble.com provides book descriptions, reviews, and excerpts for thousands of titles, along with recommendations. They also provide live author chats in their Auditorium exclusively for their monthly readers. The Barnesandnoble.com music store features the first online classical music superstore with 16 categories of music with more than 1,000 subcategories. They also have hundreds of thousands of albums, more than 20,000 artist biographies, and more than 50,000 music reviews and album ratings. In just one month after launching their music store, Gomez Advisors Inc. ranked it as the second best among “Overall Online Music Stores”. Some of Barnesandnoble.com’s recent addition! s to the site are the Prints & Posters Gallery, a unique collection of images that can be produced on demand on museum-quality canvas or high-quality paper. Then there are the e-Cards with a selection of greeting card images that can be personalized and enhanced with animation and music. Borders.com is a sister company to Borders, Inc., an electronic commerce site that has access to nearly 700,000 titles and over 10 million books, music and video items in stock. Borders.com claims to be more than just a premier collection of books, music and video. But a terrific resource to search for specific or collection of titles by an artist or author. Customers can browse hot new titles, essentials, award winners, and best sellers in every subject. An Info Desk is available with experts to help you find that book, CD, or video that you can’t seem to remember the title of, even if you only remember certain descriptions of the item. Borders.com strives to provide a community to share your! thoughts on favorite titles, and get to know authors and artists through interviews and features. In the Netcafe provided, customers can find a schedule of coming events. In addition customers can chat at Talk City or join in Salon Magazine’s Table Review and review the titles that interest them. DISTRIBUTION SITUATION One of Amazon.com’s top priorities in 1999 was improving its distribution infrastructure. Their plan was to open one or more distribution centers to increase investment and in its existing infrastructure in order to increase efficiency. In doing so, Amazon.com will also increase its on hand inventory. As a result of expanding its distribution network, Amazon.com expects fulfillment costs to increase in 1999 as well as higher costs in the marketing and sales departments. In efforts to gain distribution independence, the decision was to lease an enormous distribution center in Coffeyville, KS. The new center is currently a 460,000 sq. ft. space that will later be! converted into 750,000 sq. ft. It will generate about 500 jobs and will house books, CDs, videos and other products. This will double Amazon.com’s existing capacity. It will also mark Amazon.com’s third effort in 18 months to expand its distribution. In 1997, they opened a 200,000 sq. ft. warehouse in New Castle, DE and in 1998 a 320,000 sq. ft. space in Fernley, NV. Amazon.com has already loosened its dependence on Ingram as its primary source for books. In 1998, Ingram accounted for 40% of its inventory purchases, compared to 60% in 1997. This dependence continued to drop more as Amazon.com continued to acquire more distribution space. This became a definite reality when Amazon.com opened two new warehouses in Kentucky for an additional 1.4 million sq. ft. in distribution capacity. This purchase brought their total space to more than 2.5 million sq. ft, several hundred thousand feet more than Ingram Book Group and nearly double that of Baker & Taylor Books. But Amazon.com d! oes acknowledge that there might be some under-utilization of space as they grow to fill their capacity. OPPORTUNITY AND ISSUE ANALYSIS Amazon.com’s Main Opportunities &Oslash; Amazon.com could build real world stores to allow customers to feel and experience products before making a purchase. &Oslash; Amazon.com could take advantage of the growing international markets that have yet to be tapped. &Oslash; There are untapped product markets that have strong potential for profitability. Amazon.com’s Main Threats &Oslash; BarnesandNoble.com, ranked number 2 and Borders.com ranked 4th as online bookseller create competition from the real-world book superstores who are expanding into the “dot com” environment. &Oslash; CDNow, a leader in music and MP3.com an Internet retailer of music that receives more than 5 million visitors per month are serious competition from other online web stores who have a dedicated following and are focused on a specific market. &Oslash; Fat Brain-Third as an online bookseller &Oslash; Wal-Mart- offer! s everything under one roof STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES ANALYSIS Amazon.com’s Main Strengths &Oslash; Amazon.com is in a strong position as market leader as an online retailer. &Oslash; Amazon.com continues to demonstrate superb customer service by developing a very loyal customer base. &Oslash; The company was a pioneer in E-commerce and has established a strong presence and brand name. &Oslash; The inventory management plan used by Amazon.com allows them to function in a “Just in Time” inventory environment resulting in lower inventory carrying costs. Amazon.com’s Main Weaknesses &Oslash; Amazon.com is the leading online retailer but has yet to turn a profit. &Oslash; There is a possibility that Amazon.com has over positioned themselves in too many target markets. &Oslash; Amazon.com’s lack of human capital could hamper support for expanding target markets. &Oslash; Distribution strategy that results in the purchase of massive spaces and under-utilizes them can drive operating costs up and reduce cash flow. &Oslash; There may be a possible! system exposure due to a limited disaster recovery plan that would ensure rapid recovery. OBJECTIVES Financial Objectives &Oslash; Produce net profits of $1 million by 2003 &Oslash; Achieve a break-even-point by June 2002 &Oslash; Bring total expenses to 90% of total revenue after taxes &Oslash; Produce an increase of cash flow of 20% by the year 2001 Currently Amazon.com is a publicly traded company operating at a loss. Although Jeffrey Bezos, the President and CEO, believes obtaining market share is more important than turning a profit, it is the opinion of this consulting firm that it is never too soon to make money. Since 1994 Amazon.com has been drastically increasing its gross profit but at the same time, it’s net loss has been triple their profit from 1995 to 1997. In 1998, net loss decreased to only double gross profit. However, in 1999 net loss far exceeded any profit made in that year, decidedly the worst year in the history of the company as far as becoming profitable. For a company of this s! ize, a net profit of $1 million should be viewed as a first step toward financial success. One of the first financial goals of Amazon.com should be to target a break-even point date and adjust expenditures accordingly. This goal will set the pace for the financial departments of Amazon.com to be more responsible in their expenditures. When news of a targeted break-even point reaches the public, stock value will most likely soar for a short time. If the target date is too far into the future, short-term investors will not be interested and Wall Street analysts may suggest that Amazon.com is dragging their feet or are not capable of making a profit. This would be detrimental to Amazon.com’s image and value. Currently, Amazon.com sells their merchandise at 20% above their cost of goods sold. Some products have more room for a profit margin without looking overpriced. Products that have very low wholesale prices may be the initial targets for increasing the consumer cost. By outso! urcing or deploying a Supplier Managed Inventory Program which allows for direct shipment from the original equipment manufacturer helps to drive down inventory costs. With fewer expenses, the prices of each product should be matched with the frequency of sales and priced to surpass expenditures by 20%. Distributing the overhead cost across all product lines with more emphasis on the cheaper products, Amazon.com can make a profit, have competitive low prices, increase stakeholder wealth, and retain and improve their market share. Creating a positive cash flow is very important. Amazon.com has over $300 million in long term debt that will come due several years in the future. Projecting backward from the 2008 due date of the loans, Amazon.com must have the cash on hand, in the form of profits, to pay them off. To create that level of profit Amazon.com must slowly work their way to that profit level over the course of the next several years. Moving too slowly, Amazon.com won’t h! ave the liquid capital necessary to pay off the loan and moving too quickly will mean higher prices and a quickly thinning customer base. Marketing Objectives &Oslash; Achieve a 200% increase in sales per year for books &Oslash; Achieve a 250% increase in sales per year for music &Oslash; Achieve a 275% increase in sales per year for movies &Oslash; Achieve a 100% increase in sales per year for electronics & software &Oslash; Achieve a 350% increase in sales per year for The percentage increase in sales for the above categories were determined by each category’s required strength minus the current strength of that product line all divided by the number of years left on the loan. This is the percent increase necessary per year for the specific product line to create enough profit to exactly pay off the loan. This chart shows the historical gross profit margin achieved by Amazon.com since its inception in 1994. Since then it has had tremendous growth, now hovering around 20%. This is a good level, both for the c! ompany, to create some profit and pay off debts, and their customers who benefit from the low prices. Because 20% is the target for the company, we have shown the desired goal for the years 2000 through 2003. The percentage markup for each category was determined by the markup needed with the category’s required strength to equal the loan amount minus the current markup on the products all divided by the number of years left on the loan. This is the percent markup required per year for the specific product line to create enough profit to exactly pay off the loan. Both the percentage markup and the increase in sales are dependent on each other and therefore there is no requirement that one be a certain value. If the increase in sales is higher than expected, the markup does not have to be as high, and vice versa. For any company to be successful, they have to be known to the public. Fortunately Amazon.com does not have a low profile. During Christmas last year Amazon.com’s reach climbed to 25.6% and unique visitors grew to 15.9 million surfers. Because of this, Opinion Research Corp rated Amazon.com the number one place to save money on the Internet. Ernst & Young rated Amazon.com the number one shopping destination for 42% of online shoppers during the holiday season. In the area of strengthening relationships with customers, Amazon.com announced that 1999 sales per customer who purchased in 1999 were $116, up from $106 for 1998. Amazon.com also operates two international Web sites: www.amazon.co.uk in the United Kingdom and www.amazon.de in Germany. Amazon.com has even invested heavily in leading Internet retailers that are improving the lives of customers by making shopping easier and more convenient. Some examples are: Greenlight.com, the only company that offers car buyers the con! trol of auto purchasing online with ongoing service and support from local dealerships; Drugstore.com, an online retail and information source for health, beauty, wellness, personal care and pharmacy; Pets.com, the online leader for pet products, expert information, and services: HomeGrocer.com, the first fully integrated Internet grocery-shopping and home-delivery service-with operations in Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and Southern California &Oslash; Gear.com, which offers brand-name sporting goods at prices from 20 to 90% off retail &Oslash; Ashford.com, the leading Internet retailer of luxury and premium products and the Web’s number one retailer of watches and jewellery Amazon.com also runs the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), the Web’s comprehensive and authoritative source of information on more than 150,000 movies and entertainment programs. There was one advertisement shown here and a small footnote at the bottom of the page showing that Amazon.com owned and operated the site! . With some controlling interest in popular Web sites, word-of-mouth from users, the ease of communication using e-mail and options such as gift certificates, Amazon.com has created one of the most popular home-shopping sites today. Jeffrey Bezos, the President and CEO of Amazon.com stated that he wants Amazon.com to be the one place a consumer can go to buy absolutely everything. So far Amazon.com only has six different categories of merchandise. Adding more product lines is just a matter of contracting with the manufactures and adding the products to the web site. There is no doubt that this is worth doing, but it is a matter of timing. The initial startup costs and the maintenance of the new pages may need to wait until well after the break-even date. Last year Amazon.com opened five new retail stores around the world and also started its auction site called sothebys.Amazon.com. As recently as 19 months ago, Amazon.com’s U.S. Books business represented 100% of Amazon.com’s! sales. Despite huge revenue growth, U.S. Books accounted for less than half of total company sales in the last quarter because customers around the world chose Amazon.com for an increasingly wide array of products. Amazon.com can also increase the number of suppliers to broaden its distribution channel. Amazon.com has already opened web sites in the UK and Germany and they have been rated the number one online retailer and in the top ten most popular sites in their respective countries. With the use of quick delivery services Amazon.com can ship merchandise anywhere in the world, but having more suppliers will reduce the chance of backorders and shipment delays. If a package takes too long to get from the manufacturer to the customer, only Amazon.com looks bad, not the delivery service and not the supplier. Therefore, the broader the base of suppliers in strategically located regions, the better the service is for the customer. This idea is separate from obtaining suppliers f! or new product lines, but should also be a guideline when new suppliers of new merchandise are acquired. MARKETING STRATEGY Target Market: Owners of Personal Computers & Shop At Home Consumers. When Jeffrey Bezos says he wants a customer to be able to buy anything from one place, he is required to use a virtual store such as Amazon.com because a real world store could never warehouse endless products for millions of people. The target market of Amazon.com is literally anyone who can see the pages and this means people with access to the Internet. The majority of these customers have their own personal computers, but there are students using school computers, professionals that use office computers, and even patrons of Internet bars that can sip a latte and surf the Internet together. Not only is Amazon.com targeting people with the necessary hardware to make Internet shopping possible but Amazon.com is also seeking out the type of person that likes to shop from home. Televisio! n channels have been dedicated to marketing towards this type of consumer for years. The QVC (Quality, Value, and Convenience) channel and the HSN (Home Shopping Network) channel are two examples, both of which have an Internet presence. Positioning: A One-Stop Shopping Environment for All Consumer Goods The idea that a customer could buy anything they ever wanted from one place has its appeal. Being able to order groceries for the week, purchase gifts for all the birthdays coming up, window shop for the coolest computer games, and buy the latest action thriller (books or movies) is a couch potato’s dream come true. Unlike an Internet mall where there are specific stores responsible for their specific merchandise, usually unrelated to other stores in the mall, Amazon.com acts as the only store selling everything you want. This distinguishes Amazon.com from Internet portals, a starting point where the consumer bounces in and out of different stores all with their own look and f! eel, security measures, and privacy statements. With Amazon.com the customer only deals with one owner of the merchandise, one payment system, one secured web site, and one privacy concern. The following chart shows twelve reasons why users choose to shop online. Some of them are complaints about shopping in “Brick & Mortar” stores such as crowds and the limited open hours, but the majorities are improvements in the shopping experience. Always being open for business, a better selection, and price are a few of the advantages of shopping online. Product Line: The Largest Selection of Select Retail Categories Amazon.com seeks to be the world’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they may want to buy online. Amazon.com’s All Product Search scours the Web to help customers find merchandise that is not available at Amazon.com, Amazon.com’s Auctions, or Amazon.com’s zShops, making Amazon.com the shopping destination to find anything. Current! ly there are only a few types of products available, books, music, toys, electronics, movies, and home improvement items. Branching into other areas such as automotive, apparel, jewelry, office equipment, and recreational merchandise, to name a few, is necessary to achieve Amazon.com’s goal of providing every type of product. Even though someone may want to buy a pack of gum online, Amazon.com needs to decide on boundaries for its product lines to prevent unprofitable maintenance of merchandise rarely purchased online. The harder an item is to find in the real world, the more profitable it would be to sell that product online. The following chart shows the total percent of sales Amazon.com took in for each category last year. For example, Amazon.com had 61.5% of total book sales over the Internet. The order of market share for each category, from highest to lowest, is the same as the order Amazom.Com began selling merchandise in each of the categories. Price: Price at a Low bu! t Profitable Margin The largest part of competition is generally the price of the product. A store that has the lowest price for something whose quality is the same (a name brand product) generally gets the sale. In the virtual marketplace, competition is literally global, forcing Internet businesses to have the lowest price of any other business. Startup Internet retailers often sell their merchandise at or below cost just to get the loyal customer base. Even though customers may buy the products, the retailer will have to eventually raise prices to make enough profit to pay off their loans and to satisfy stakeholders. Amazon.com has had below-cost prices for a long time and this has gained them global recognition, a form of advertising. Soon Amazon.com will have to start acclimating their client base to slightly higher prices and hope all the loyalty they bought pays off. Distribution Outlets: Advertise on the Top Ten Most Popular Web Sites Amazon.com has been rated the number one most popular Internet retailer and that’s a start. There are still nine other Internet sites listed in the top ten (not necessarily retail oriented) that Amazon.com could buy banner advertisement space and promote their retail web site. One group rated www.stockmaster.com as the number one most useful web site this month. The next few were Dialpad.com – making free long distance calls, didyouknow.com – interesting trivia, and dating911.com – getting dating advice and reading about dating disasters. Amazon.com’s Internet Movie Database site made number six and as shown above, there is already an advertisement there. There are a couple of options for obtaining popular advertising space. Amazon.com could buy popular sites and run them any they see fit. This is the case with the Internet Movie Database; a place used long before Amazon.com had popularity. The other option ! is to rent space or barter services with willing web sites. This is by far the least expensive means of advertising and just as effective. Sales Force: Keep at a Minimum The sales force should only consist of people creating banner advertisements and sales people getting contracts with suppliers and maybe distributors. If Amazon.com chooses to add real person online help for the customers through a chat window, staffing costs could go through the roof. How many people should be hired to support 20 million customers in a timely fashion? However customer support is handled, the sales force has an easy job when word of mouth is doing the work for you. Service: Efficient & Widely Available Service with Fast Turn-Around Every business wants the customer to be happy and every customer wants his or her merchandise cheaply and quickly. This is the ultimate goal of Amazon.com, as well it should be. One example from last Christmas, just before the cutoff deadline an order was placed by ! a customer at 8:05 p.m. on December 23, left the dock at 1:05 a.m. on December 24, and was delivered to the customer in Honolulu at 3:55 p.m. on December 24. It was a Deluxe Scrabble set. Sales Promotion: Develop an Advertising Campaign to Promote Consumer Awareness, New Products, and Better Distribution Even though a sales pitch says one thing, that doesn’t necessarily mean the product delivers. In the case of Amazon.com, they could advertise that they have the most popular site on the Internet, they have a constantly revolving inventory of products, and the best distribution network on the Internet. Once the consumer gets to the retailer’s site, the same old thing woos them. This is the current strategy of the sales pitch, getting the customer in the door. People go places with no intention of spending money, whether it be in the real world or virtual. So the goal of the marketing department is to get as many people to see the merchandise as possible, even if it means lying ! to the public. Honesty certainly doesn’t hurt, but it won’t put you on top of your ruthless competitors. Advertising: Decrease Sales Promotion Budget by 10% and Advertise on High Traffic Web Pages, Television, Newspaper, Radio, and New PC Owners Of Amazon.com’s total operating expenses, 54% was dedicated to marketing and sales. Now that Amazon.com is a household name, rated number one retailer in all three countries where they host a site, and rates in the top ten of all Internet sites combined, Amazon.com should ride the momentum and divert some funds to improving the web site. The large majority of Internet users are now aware of Amazon.com and a good number have actually made purchases from Amazon.com. Ten percent of all online purchases were made at Amazon.com for 1999. Having a little extra money to making the web site even better while maintaining the majority of the marketing and sales funds to broaden awareness may make for even happier customers. Adding a feature ever! yone finds irresistible will catch even more customers through word of mouth compared to a marketing strategy. The above chart shows the potential number of customers from the given countries. This can be used as an indicator for choosing the next target country for Amazon.com’s Internet retail stores. R & D: Develop New Product Lines Such As Apparel, Jewelry, And Automotive Parts To become the one and only place where a consumer needs to go for any item Amazon.com must develop their merchandise portfolio. Apparel, jewelry, automotive parts, office equipment, office furniture, and recreational items are just a few ideas for product lines that are common enough where people buy these products on a daily basis. Researching competitors and their volume of sales over the Internet for products that Amazon.com currently does not offer would be a first step in deciding which product lines to pick up. Beginning with a rough idea about clothing, Amazon.com would research online distrib! utors of various clothing types and possibly start a product line dedicated to the top seller of the most successful competitor. Starting small with what has already proved to be the competitor’s best seller would be a step in the right direction. There is no need to begin a product line that has never been tested before unless there is real proof that it can be made successful. Currently, someone sells nearly all products over the Internet and now that Amazon.com is established they can afford to be a little more cautious. Marketing Research: Monitor Competitors More Closely & Explore Consumer Behavior of Internet Purchases Monitoring the competitors may allow Amazon.com to react in a positive way. Research may indicate that Barnes & Noble Online is debuting a new feature where the customer can hear the description of the book while continuing to look around the web site, Amazon.com could begin to offer the same thing and not lose any customer base over the new feature. If it! is believed that the new feature is more costly than beneficial, Amazon.com can wait and see how responsive the customers are before wasting additional funds on the idea. Another example might be Reel.com, a major competitor in movie sales, begins showing short movie clips to further entice would be customers. Again, having not thought of the idea themselves, Amazon.com could jump on the bandwagon and begin offering movie clips or hold back and assess the profit / loss of the idea. The point is that Amazon.com would have a choice to implement the same ideas. Not monitoring competitors closely enough and allowing competitors to steal the customer base away may be the most costly. ACTION PROGRAMS Name Recognition In an effort to expand the Amazon.com brand name we recommend that Amazon.com become a free e-mail provider. This service will benefit Amazon.com in two primary ways. The first way Amazon.com will benefit is customers that use the service will be forced to pass through! Amazon.com’s advertising space when reading or sending their mail. A user will logon to the Internet, go to the Amazon.com home page, where they login and check their e-mail. While they are checking their e-mail, they will see a banner that will display current promotions offered at the web site. Second, with every piece of mail they send Amazon.com can attach a signature encouraging the recipient to visit Amazon.com. As one Internet user sends their e-mail from the Amazon.com mail service they are essentially providing a positive word of mouth advertisement endorsing the retailer. This feature should be rolled out immediately to existing customers, by allowing them to create an account automatically when they make a purchase. Then the service is expanded to include any user with Internet access in the next six months. Amazon.com’s existing information technology department has already set up an internal e-mail strategy, and can expand these services to focus on external cust! omers as well. There will be a 3MB limit on incoming mailbox size to decrease the cost for storage space. Customers will be limited to keeping messages for no more than thirty days. The cost increase will be minimal, in the $250,000 to $500,000 range, with most of the costs incurred as a one time new hardware purchase for storing e-mail messages. Another way to increase Amazon.com’s name recognition would be to sponsor Internet radio broadcasts. The same way people listed to a regular radio, computer users attached to the Internet can listen to a radio broadcast that comes over the computer. The broadcasts are generally “talk radio” instead of music broadcasts but cover a very wide variety of topics. Sponsors are needed to fund the production of the Internet radio just as in traditional radio. Since Amazon.com’s primary target audience is computer users, we feel this is a niche market under utilized by advertisers even though the total Internet radio market is relatively small! . Increase Target Market Expand the accessibility of Amazon.com to include people that do not have Internet access, or even a personal computer. Currently Amazon.com’s customers must use a computer that is connected to the Internet to make purchases. This seriously limits its available market reach. To expand this market reach we recommend a three pronged approach that consists of telephone ordering system, building physical stores and allowing dial in access to its online store. Begin by expanding the number of phone operators. This is the easiest of the proposed plans to increase available market share. These people will accept dial up calls from a 1-800 number, and will place orders on the web site for the customers. These operators will be able to interact with the consumer, and can be taken from the same pool of employees that currently offer the customers a 24 hour per day 7 day a week technical support line. This pool of employees will be cross-trained to handle both t! ypes of calls (sales and support). By increasing the number of phone representatives it is possible to alleviate the concerns that first time buyers have regarding real time customer support. The cost to provide this service is approximately $500,000 per year, primarily from the increased headcount required to staff phones. This was figured by employing 24 people for 8 hours, paid at $6.50 per hour for the year. The increase in people will allow for faster and easier customer service calls, as there would be a larger pool of employees trained to handle the incoming call volume. Provide a dial up 1-800 number to an Amazon.com web site that will allow users who do not have Internet access the opportunity to shop online for no additional charge. Once online, the customer will be restricted to Amazon.com’s web space, and not allowed to browse the rest of the Internet. The intent is not to become an Internet service provider, but allow the consumer another means to make purchases a! t the store. Additional hardware costs will include the purchase of several modem banks to handle the incoming call volume, approximately $1 million. It will be necessary to contract with major PC manufacturers, including Dell, Gateway and HP, to have them put a link on the desktop of all new PC’s that will allow a user easy access to our online store. Finally, to reach the broadest market, it is recommended that real world stores be built. These stores will provide Amazon.com a presence in the off-line environment. These stores will not carry the goods that are available at the online store, but rather provide a portal to which customers can use PC’s provided by Amazon.com to browse the Internet aisle. These “Click & Mortar” stores will provide PC’s with Internet access in a user-friendly environment, including snacks, beverages and coffee that can be purchased while the user is browsing the web site, similar to the cyber-caf&eacute; concept. The shops will have a small footprint, a! veraging 2,000 sq. ft, and will be located in high foot traffic areas, such as local malls. These shops will also sell Amazon.com specific merchandise, such as T-shirts and coffee cups with the Amazon.com.com logo. These shops will also provide a real world place for consumers to return merchandise. One of the largest complaints of Internet shoppers is the inability to return items to a “Brick & Mortar” store. This expansion will move Amazon.com in to a “Click & Mortar” environment, though the initial cost may be high, the expansion can be rolled out within the next 5 to 10 years. The estimated cost is between $10 and $20 million dollars per year, primarily on the purchase of retail space and new employees to run the stores. Increase Product Marketing: Amazon.com’s goal is to become the largest online retailer, and needs to continue to introduce new product lines to maintain its impressive growth. To do this, expand the product lines even further to include grocery, apparel, j! ewelry, auto parts and travel items. To do this they will need to merge and/or acquire several other companies, as well as develop key partnerships with suppliers to provide a greater number of choices to their customers. The first area of expansion should be into the auto parts industry. Develop a partnership with key auto manufacturers including GM, Honda, Toyota and Ford that will allow Amazon.com to track the inventory of their parts. Amazon.com can then develop a page where consumers can search for available auto parts by manufacturer, model and year built. Customers will then be able to purchase factory parts for any car through Amazon.com’s web site. Customers will be able to locate hard to find parts using Amazon.com’s extensive database of parts, and have the parts shipped directly to their home without having to drive all over town in search of them. Another area for expansion is the food or grocery industry. There have been several startup companies, such as Home Gr! ocer that have begun to develop this service. Amazon.com should aggressively pursue the take over of companies and use their knowledge base to expand the product offering on a larger scale. Amazon.com can use its industry leading brand image to exploit this new area of E-commerce. By utilizing the existing resources of the company they acquire to more readily control this new market. Finally the last area that Amazon.com should branch into is the travel industry. The travel industry is one of the hottest fields currently available on the Internet. There are several hundred sites available to Internet users that lists travel specials and packages. However, one of the big complaints by Internet shoppers is that web sites are too difficult to find. By bringing travel services into the Amazon.com home page, it will provide an easier way for consumers to find the deals they are looking for. Again Amazon.com should not create another site from scratch, as this will prove too costly ! and time consuming. In this stage of Amazon.com’s development, they need to utilize their brand name by partnering with existing travel sites and consolidating their business into Amazon.com. Distribution Management: Amazon.com needs to create strategic alliances with its suppliers and shipping companies. Consumers have emphatically stated that the number one improvement for E-commerce is the price of shipping goods. Consumers are not excited about additional charges that are incurred when purchasing online. To this end, Amazon.com must aggressively pursue cheaper alternatives to delivering its goods and services. Begin by contracting with a greater number of distribution centers in the countries that have the greatest number of people using the Internet. Having more suppliers also means the customer is less likely to have to wait longer for a popular product purchased online. Book sales for Titanic, after the movie came out, were definitely above average and that caused longe! r wait times for the customer. Had there been additional suppliers in a more distributed area around the country, customer satisfaction for this product and Amazon.com’s service would have been higher. PROFIT AND LOSS Consolidated Statements of Operations (in thousands, Unaudited) Projected Actual Year Ended Year Ended December 31, December 31, 2001 2000 1999 1998 Net sales $9,000,000 $4,000,000 $1,639,839 $609,819 Cost of sales 7,200,000 3,200,000 1,349,194 476,155 Gross profit 1,800,000 800,000 290,645 133,664 Operating expenses: Total operating expenses 2,250,000 1,500,000 896,400 242,719 Loss from operations (450,000) (750,000) (605,755) (109,055) Interest income 100,000 70,000 45,451 14,053 Interest expense (400,000) (240,000) (84,566) (26,639) Net Profit (loss) $(750,000) $(920,000) $(719,968) $(124,546) Amazon.com net sales have grown at or around three hundred percent per year for the last two years. It will be impossible for Amazon.com to maintain this growth rate, an! d we expect it to approach 225% and maintain this rate for the next several years when our action plans are implemented. After generating a 65% market share in the online book sales category the book business branch of Amazon.com has finally begun to turn a profit. Since this was the first branch of business for Amazon.com, we expect the rest of the product lines to begin turning a profit in the next two to three years, similar to the maturity rate of book sales. For this reason we project that net loss for 2000 will approach $1 billion dollars, and will be the peak of loss rate for Amazon.com. Beginning in 2001, Amazon.com will see net losses drop to $750 million, and continue this trend as each of the product lines become profitable. Continuing at this rate, Amazon.com as a whole will turn its first profit in the summer of 2002. CONTROLS Name Recognition In an effort to ensure the Amazon.com action plans are providing a substantial benefit and are accomplishing the objective! s identified, each plan will be monitored. The global criteria applied to track each action plan’s success includes monitoring the volume of orders, orders over time, random surveying and a specific termination threshold for each action plan. The name recognition action plan identifies e-mail hosting and sponsoring/advertising on Internet radio stations as methods for increasing name recognition and order generation. The e-mail hosting service use of banners on e-mail accounts provides an immediate location for e-mail users to place orders, and keeps the Amazon.com name in front of potential customers. The banners placed on the e-mail hosting section will link directly to Amazon.com’s ordering sections and order databases. When users place an order through the web site, through the e-mail banner, the order database will track the orders origination from the banner ad. In tandem to the banner ad tracking, the database will record orders generated through the e-mail signature ap! plied systematically to all account users outgoing e-mail messages. These two in-points to the Amazon.com’s ordering system provide generous information on where orders and user interaction with the main site are coming from. Since the system will record order origination real-time in the main Amazon.com database, up to date reporting on order location can be provided to Amazon.com management. The report will be web-based and include information regarding the number of orders generated from individuals using the Amazon.com e-mail hosting and orders generated from e-mail recipients. The target threshold for orders per month generated through this action plan is targeted at 5,000. Based on the low level of investment required to deploy the e-mail hosting and the solution’s availability as an “out of the box” product from software vendors, 5,000 orders provides an achievable number. In conjunction with the real time recording of order origination, an enhancement to the Amazon.com! order page will include a simple questionnaire that polls customers on how they heard about the site. The poll will provide specific selections for customers to select to allow for quick quantification of the data. Management will track orders generated from the e-mail hosting action plan for a 6 month period and if orders do not approach the 5,000 mark or the order survey does not indicate the e-mail was the order catalyst, the e-mail action plan’s viability will be re-evaluated. The second portion of Name Recognition action plan is to sponsor Internet Radiobroadcasts that will be tracked through the order survey and an additional method. The Internet Radiobroadcasts will be run on several of the larger Internet Radio Stations, such as Microsoft’s Radio Station Guide web site. These sites can potentially communicate to an extremely large audience. In order to capture the effectiveness of this communication method, Amazon.com’s order information package will be changed. Curre! ntly, Amazon.com includes a package of information with each order. This package includes pamphlets on other services offered and a “post-it” note pad. A paper survey printed on a post card with pre-paid return postage will be included with the package. The post card will have several short multiple choice questions on the service level the customer received and how they heard about Amazon.com. By using two survey methods (on-line and paper) it provides a greater chance of a customer providing input as to where they heard about the company and allows for better measurement of the name recognition action plans. Since Internet Radio stations are a new service being utilized by Amazon.com, the target orders to be achieved will be 1,000 orders. If in a 6-month time 1,000 orders have not been generated through this name recognition program, the recommendation is to shutdown the Internet radio ad spots. Increase Target Market The second action plan is composed of 3 major components,! deploy an 800 phone ordering service, offer an Amazon.com ISP for direct dial-in orders and open “Click & Mortar” stores which provide a comfortable, coffee shop environment while allowing customer to purchase online. The second action plan proposal to increase the target market will be controlled and monitored through the use of a contracted 3rd party company, such as Price Waterhouse. The 3rd party firm will perform random samples in different geographic regions to determine the effectiveness of the 800 service, the ISP offering and the “Click & Mortar” Amazon.com coffee shops. The objective nature of the 3rd party, performing the market survey then quantifying the survey data with an unbiased and clinical approach, is necessary to manage these initiatives. Though the 800 phone order services is of relatively low cost, the investment to create an ISP function and physical coffee shop stores is highly capital intensive. The monitoring controls for each of the 3 components of! this action plan are separated due to the very different nature of each project. The 800-phone service will be measure on a quarterly basis and will be benchmarked against a 2% increase in target market growth. If the 800-phone service fails to broaden the core target market by 5% in 9 months (3 quarters) the service will be evaluated by the corporate management team and a recommendation by the 3rd party survey firm will be considered heavily as to whether the program should continue. Considering the slightly higher investment in the Amazon.com ISP initiative that program will continue for a minimum of 1 year and 6 months with the 3rd party performing sample polls on a quarterly basis. If this particular action plan does not yield a 5% increase in market share then the program will be reviewed for termination. The final component of this action plan, Amazon.com coffee shops will also be surveyed on a quarterly basis but the program will run a minimum of 2 years based on the e! xtremely high entry costs. This particular project represents the greatest opportunity for Amazon.com to capture market share. It provides the firm with the opportunity to compete directly with their “real-world” competitors (Barns and Noble and Borders Bookstores) and offer services not readily available through the web store, such as item returns. Price Waterhouse’s quarterly survey on market share increases will dedicate a substantial focus to the effectiveness of the “Click & Mortar” stores. The expected market increase from these stores is to be around 10 to 12%. If the stores do not achieve the estimated percentage increases in a 2-year time, no additional investment will be made and Amazon.com will return to a web-based model only. Increase Product Marketing The third action plan calls for an expansion of product marketing. Though Amazon.com has experience and has successfully branched beyond their initial book offering, the inventory intensive nature of this initiative! will require the firm to execute with caution. The success of the automotive parts offering will be measured on several factors. First, the initial success factor will be the number of partnerships the firm can establish with the automotive manufactures. The strong brand awareness and the automotive industry’s acceptance of web technology should allow Amazon.com to create partnerships with at least 2 U.S. domestic, 2 Japanese and 1 European automakers. If the firm is unable to establish this limited offering in a 6-month period the resistance of the automakers may make this project nonviable. With the establishment of the 5 automotive producers, Amazon.com will set an initial year revenue goal of 1.5 million dollars to be fulfilled by automotive products. This is a very low revenue goal, but should be attainable. Management will review order status on a monthly basis to compare and review auto products revenue versus the pervious month. The superstore nature of Amazon.com sho! uld allow the company to leverage its other stores in this area. For example, if a customer is looking at books on 1992 Geo Metros, the online site can cross sell by suggesting the customer look at the auto parts offerings. Measurement and control of success in one of the web based food stores will be considered based on Amazon.com’s level on investment in the company. A complete buy out of one of the online grocery stores, which represents a very new market, can be measured by an acceptable operating loss. Since consumers might have some strong reservations of purchasing food versus books online, Amazon.com will have to invest heavily in leveraging its strong online brand name to the online grocer. The online purchases will be monitored for strong cross shopping from Amazon.com’s existing customer base. These customers are already comfortable with online purchases and probably would be willing to try another type of online shop will little incentive. Amazon.com will look for ! 1 out of ten existing customers to make a purchase of $50 or more at the online grocer. New customers, ones that are not already making purchases from the Amazon.com stores, will be measured against making 20 purchases at $20 each within a 2-year period. Distribution Management Distribution management will be controlled and measured against two key indicators. First, a reduction in on-hand inventories. Amazon.com will review inventory-carrying costs monthly and will attempt to drive costs down by $800,000 in 1 year. The company will pursue this action plan by migrating to a just-in-time inventory management program and a supplier managed inventory program. The just in time program will allow Amazon.com to purchase products from its suppliers on an as needed basis and provided consumers a consolidated shipment (i.e. one package with books, toys, and games). The second inventory program, supplier managed inventories, will require Amazon.com’s suppliers to own the inventory in Am! azon.com’s warehouses without Amazon.com taking ownership of the inventory until the point of sale. An inventory management team will be created and over see the management of the inventory programs on a regular basis. The second, metric for ensuring the success of this action plan is the deployment of a Supplier Managed Inventory deployment team. The team will be chartered to migrate half of the existing Amazon.com suppliers to a supplier managed inventory program or a just-in-time inventory strategy within two years. The team will be measured against the number of supplier migrated each month and then a management review each quarter. The better Amazon.com manages information, the inventory levels

Einstein’s development of his famed equations and theories caused the scientific society to look at classical physics at a whole new perspective. At the same time of the discovery of relativity, modernistic physicists were developing a new theory called quantum theory. This new-sprung theory is ‘based on using the concept of the quantum unit describe the dynamic properties of subatomic particles and the interactions of matter and radiation.’ Max Planck is often called the ‘founder’ of quantum theory who stated that ‘energy can be emitted or absorbed by matter in only small, discrete units called quanta.’ Quantum theory solved many problems that baffled classical scientists who received current and detailed observations that did not comply with the rules of classical physics. First, scientist believed that light was emitted over a broad spectrum of light (wavelength). As observations showed, certain light was only emitted in specific, narrow wavelengths. Next, the corpuscular (particle) theory, hypothesizes light as a stream of particles, and the wave theory, hypothesizes light as electromagnetic waves, coexisted as the early twentieth century theories of light. Lastly, there was an absence of a molecular basis for thermodynamics. Most classical physicists conceded the impossibility of framing a theory of molecular action that embraced the phenomena of thermodynamics, radiation, and electrical phenomena as they were then understood (‘Quantum Theory’ 1). Einstein used Planck’s concept of a quantum to explain certain properties of the photoelectric effect–an experimentally observed phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from metal surfaces when radiation falls on these surfaces (‘Quantum Theory’ 2-3). With the classical physics explanation, energy was proportional to the intensity of the radiation. Einstein determined the intensity of radiation was independent of the intensity of radiation which was dependent on the frequency of the radiation. A critical frequency, where any frequency below that point the object emitted no electrons, was discovered by Einstein’s research of the photoelectric effect (‘Quantum Theory’ 4). The publication of the theories of relativity reformed the world of the quantum. When scientists dissected his theories, they found that they broke down under great gravitational forces and minuet lengths. These discrepancies motivated physicists to search for new hypothesizes about the behavior and existence of particles and objects of a very diminutive size such as subatomic particles. These modern studies were the establishment of quantum mechanics (Motz and Weaver 282-3).

About a decade after the theorization of relativity, scientists began to build a unique field of physics explaining the subatomic world of electrons, protons, neutrons, and eventually quarks. Physicists named this subatomic field, quantum mechanics. The basis of quantum mechanics actually started to form around the time of the discovery of relativity (Motz and Weaver 282). In 1911, Ernest Rutherford detected that atoms consisted of negatively charged particles revolving around a positively charged nucleus. Using James Clerk Maxwell’s equations, scientists speculated that the electrons would continuously emit electromagnetic energy, and lose all of its energy, then fall into the nucleus. Two years later, Niels Bohr solved the instability of the Rutherford model by hypothesizing the electrons moved in fixed orbits due to emitting or absorbing quantum radiation. The scientific world accepted this theory, but some doubt and inconsistency arose from the Bohr model of the atom. First of all, Bohr’s model contained both classical and quantum physics, which were two entirely different fields of science. Also, the model was only in accordance with the hydrogen atom, and not any other of the atoms (‘Quantum Theory’ 3).

The incorrect models of atoms and particles propelled scientists to explore new and unfamiliar fields of science to discover new theories and models. Einstein’s discovery of the photoelectric effect and relativity launched scientists forward to expand on his theories and thoughts. The Emission Theory was one of the first to further develop Einstein’s photoelectric effect. Throughout the past couple decades, physicists discovered that light has both wave and particle properties. In 1924, the Emission Theory answered this problem by combining the ideas within the photoelectric effect and the theories of relativity to fuse together the corpuscular and the wave theories of light (Motz and Weaver 282-3). In the same year, Louis de Broglie suggested that because electromagnetic waves show particle characteristics, so in contrast, particles should show some wave characteristics. De Broglie’s wave theory is often thought as the foundation of quantum mechanics. He stated that quantum mechanics must have its own set of rules and concepts, not sharing some rules from classical and quantum theory (‘Quantum Theory’ 2). This concept of the wave theory led to Erwin Schrõdinger developing a wave equation that describes the wave properties of a particle, more importantly atoms. Schrõdinger’s wave equation only gave certain discrete solutions, now called quantum numbers. They are integers developed in particle physics to give the magnitudes of characteristic quantities of particles. This equation worked on all elements, unlike the Bohr atom, and was in agreement with earlier quantum theories (‘Quantum Theory’ 4). Another important quantum mechanical field was matrix mechanics, developed by Max Born and Ernst Jordan. They solved that the momentum and position of an electron were represented by infinite matrices. Different matrices exist for different properties, such as energy and angular momentum. The matrices could be solved to make predictions of other properties (‘Quantum Theory’ 3). With the founding of matrix mechanics, Werner Heisenberg postulated that scientists could not specify the position and velocity of the electron, because the disturbance of measuring the electron would completely throw off the observations. This assumption was named the Uncertainty Principle. These theories and equations constructed the foundation of quantum mechanics and quantum theory. Quantum mechanics and theory had tremendous effects on scientific thought and theory, which is analogous to relativity on its effects (‘Quantum Theory’ 5).

When early twentieth century scientists solved Einstein’s equations, many theories and concepts originated from their minds, and the concept of a black hole was one of the most significance ideas. Shortly after Einstein published his general theory of relativity, Karl Schwarzschild developed the concept of a black hole in 1916. A black hole is an extremely dense object that the escape velocity of it is so great that nothing can escape from its vicinity, not even light. Black holes form at the end of the stellar evolution cycle. As the star ends its life, it runs out of fuel, and it cannot support the gravitational force that it is putting on itself. Depending on the star’s core mass, it can either become a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole. The core mass has to be at least 1.7 solar masses to collapse into a black hole. In accordance with general relativity, the gravitation of the black hole severely alters space and time near itself. For instance, when matter travels closer to the black hole, time slows down. Once an object enters the Schwarzschild radius (3km multiplied by mass, in solar units) or horizon, time completely stops. An ergosphere forms outside the horizon that consists of matter that is forced to rotate around the black hole and by theory it can emit light and energy. Nothing can escape outside the horizon; therefore, the black hole appears totally black, and all that is visible is the ergosphere. The former star now collapses into a singularity, a dimensionless object with infinite density (‘Black Hole’ 1). At the center of the black hole, the gravitational force is so immense, electrons would be ripped from their nuclei and nuclei would be torn apart. In 1963, Roy Kerr assumed that the collapsing star would be spinning, like any other star, changing the properties of the singularity. The star would collapse into a ring instead of a point. The altered properties include the curvature and gravitational force would be finite, comparing with infinite gravitational force and curvature of the Schwarzschild model. At the center of a Schwarzschild black hole, the infinite curvature would make objects in the black hole would appear to be at stand-still as viewed by by-standers. The travelers would never escape the depths of the black hole. To flee from it, an object would have to travel faster than the speed of light, impossible by Einstein’s equations (mass becomes infinite). Even if some being successful traveled through the black hole, communication is impossible through the horizon. By theory, the black hole has a companion connected by the Einstein-Rosen bridge. It is often considered a mathematical quirk, and it is necessary for the theory to be mathematically consistent. The Einstein-Rosen bridge acts like a wormhole within the universe, but the Kerr black hole behaves like a gateway to another universe. The concept of the black hole deduced that the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. When this event occurs, light actually orbits in a circle around the singularity. Light can only bend as space is bending with light itself. This can only happen when an object has completely pinched off a piece of space-time along with it. The light beam is circulating in a hypersphere, a four-dimensional sphere. Space itself has now been ‘ripped’ from the space-time continuum (Kaku 223-6).

During the 1970′s, physicists theorized a new type of black holes. Especially one scientist, Stephen Hawking, extensively researched and developed the ideas and theories about primordial black holes. Based on observations from the SAS-2 satellite, a satellite that measures cosmic background of gamma radiation, it is estimated that in the Milky Way, there are a density of 200 million primordial black holes per cubic light-year. This density amounts to the closest black hole is probably at least as far away as Pluto. Primordial black holes are diminutive, a radius of 10-13cm (about the size of a proton or neutron), with a mass of a billion tons (mass of a mountain). With a colossal amount of mass inside a tiny area, the black hole has a very high temperature of 120 billion Kelvin, which corresponds to a rate of 6,000 megawatts (six nuclear power plants). Primordial black holes can create electron-positron pairs and no-mass particles, like photons, gravitons, and neutrinos, with such a high temperature. The equations for the emission of energy also apply to black holes, which is emission of energy is proportional to the surface gravity and inversely proportional to the mass. In other words, as the mass becomes smaller, the greater the energy emitted. For example, a dense black hole emits very few particles, but particles can escape rapidly from primordial black holes. When black holes or any object emits particles, the mass and size steadily decrease. So in ample time, black holes will evaporate; normal black holes (one solar mass) will evaporate in 1066 years, and primordial black holes will evaporate in 1010 years. They do not just disappear when it is evaporated. But as the mass travels closer to zero, the energy emitted is so great, a tremendous explosion occurs. The magnitude of this explosion would depend on the number of existing species of elementary particles (e.g. quarks, leptons, pions, etc.). Six types of elementary particles are know today. With six particles in the explosion, it would be around ten million one-megaton hydrogen bombs. Stephen Hawking explains how the big bang could be a black hole explosion on a very large scale:

The big bang resembles a black-hole explosion but on a vastly larger scale. One therefore hopes that an understanding of how black holes create particles will lead to a similar understanding of how the big bang created everything in the universe. In a black hole matter collapses and is lost forever but new matter is created in its place. It may therefore be that there was an earlier phase of the universe in which matter collapsed, to be re-created in the big bang (6).

R. Hagedorn hypothesized that there is an infinite number of particles at higher mass. When the black hole becomes smaller and denser, it may produce many other particles not found anywhere else but in dying primordial black holes. The explosion with this hypothesis would be 100,000 times as large as the explosion with only six particles.

As mentioned earlier, black holes cannot emit particles outside of the Schwarzschild radius. Physicists of the 1970′s conformed a hypothesis for this phenomena. Defined by quantum mechanics, pairs of ‘virtual’ particles and antiparticles are constantly annihilating each other in space. They are called virtual particles, because they cannot be detected with a particle detector, but the indirect effects can be observed. In the vicinity of the black hole, the gravitational force of the black hole rips apart the antiparticle and particle pair. The majority of the time, the antiparticle falls into the black hole. As the neutrality of the pair breaks apart, the antiparticle is now the complete opposite of a particle, as in time, mass, and velocity. When the pair are together, the particle’s forces overwhelm the antiparticle’s forces, therefore the antiparticle’s presence is undetectable by just common observations. While the antiparticle falls into the black hole, the antiparticle is actually traveling outside of the black hole as viewed by a by-stander. This world of the antiparticle can be thought as a video tape of the a antiparticle traveling into a black hole in the anti-world, but to imagine the path of the antiparticle in this universe, you would have to play the tape backwards to view the path of the antiparticle in this world. This phenomena is only possible in quantum mechanics, but impossible in classical physics (Hawking 35, 37-39).

While scientists solved Einstein’s relativity equations for different equations, concepts, and theories, they stumbled upon the fact that general relativity allows time travel. But Einstein’s equations only permit some sorts of time travel. For example, traveling near the speed of light is a form of time travel according to the general theory of relativity. Another popular theory is to twist time into a circle. But the energies necessary to perform that feat, Einstein’s equations break down, and quantum mechanics take over. As stated in general relativity, the curvature of space and time is determined by the matter-energy content of the universe. So it is possible to find configurations of matter-energy powerful enough to force time to bend and to allow time travel. Modern scientists believe when man masters the hyperspace theory, where Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum theory unites, man can incorporate the full power of wormholes and dimensional windows. But some scientists reject the theory of possible time travel in the future. For instance, if time-machines were abundant as carts, then havoc would erupt in our universe. People would try to change the course of history. History would cease to exist in that case. Stephen Hawking stated that with the evidence that future tourists have not bombarded us, time travel is not possible. But if time travel time is possible, people have many problems to contend with, especially paradoxes. In general, most paradoxes can be broken down into one of two principal types, either meeting your parents before you were born or the man with no past (Kaku 233-6). Here is an example of a man with no past:

A baby girl is mysterious dropped off at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945. ‘Jane’ grows up lonely and dejected, not knowing who parents are, until one day in 1963 she is strangely attracted to a drifter. She falls in love with him. But just when things are finally looking up for Jane, a series of disasters strike. First, she becomes pregnant by the drifter, who then disappears. Second, during the complicated delivery doctors find that Jane has both sets of sex organs, and to save her life, they are forced to surgically convert ‘her’ to a ‘him.’ Finally, a mysterious stranger kidnaps her baby from the delivery room. Reeling from these disasters, rejected by society, scorned by fate, ‘he’ becomes a drunkard and drifter. Not only has Jane lost her parents and her lover, but he has lost his only child as well. Years later, in 1970, he stumbles into a lonely bar, called Pop’s Place, and spills out his pathetic story to an elderly bartender. The sympathetic bartender offers the drifter the chance to avenge the stranger who left he pregnant and abandoned, on the condition that he join the ‘time travelers corps.’ Both of them enter a time machine, and the bartender drops off the drifter in 1963. The drifter is strangely attracted to a young orphan woman, who subsequently becomes pregnant. The bartender then goes forward 9 months, kidnaps the baby girl from the hospital, and drops off the baby in an orphanage back in 1945. Then the bartender drops off the thoroughly confused drifter in 1985, to enlist in the time travelers corps. The drifter eventually gets his life together, becomes a respected and elderly member of the time travelers corps, and then disguises himself as a bartender and has his most difficult mission: a date with destiny, meeting a certain drifter at Pop’s Place in 1970 (Kaku 236-7).

Time travel is a component of general relativity that has not been fully harnessed by man, but comparable to others, it is not alone. Right now, time travel is only measured in minuet fractions of a second, but many several centuries in the future, it will be measured in years and centuries.

Einstein shook the modern scientific world by the publication of relativity. Scientists became revolutionized by these unusual but mathematically complex equations and theories. A few of the major fields transformed by relativity were quantum theory and mechanics, concepts of black holes, and time travel. As the decades past, physicists expanded on that knowledge held within the theories of relativity. Eventually the ideas and concepts were taught in universities, and now even high school. Now at the closing of the twentieth century, the general public has the basic understanding of relativity. Einstein’s has spread from the highest areas of knowledgeable theoretical physics down to the majority of educated typical people. Einstein’s popularity has steadily increased from an average-minded patent clerk to the finest human mind of scientific and mathematical ability. Einstein’s discovery of relativity is man’s greatest accomplishment of the twentieth century, and is equivalent or greater than Newton’s laws of gravity and motion as the greatest human conception of the natural world for man’s history on earth.

Works Cited

‘Black Hole.’ Encarta `95. 1995 ed. CD-ROM. Redmond: Microsoft, 1995.

Hawking, Stephen W. ‘The Quantum Mechanics of Black Holes.’ Scientific American. New York: Scientific         American, Jan. 1977: 34-40.

Kaku, Michio. Hyperspace. New York: Doubleday, 1994.

Motz, Lloyd and Jefferson Hane Weaver. The Story of Physics. New York: Plenum, 1989.

‘Quantum Theory.’ Encarta `95. 1995 ed. CD-ROM. Redmond: Microsoft, 1995.

Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm Germany. He lived there with his parents,

Herman and Pauline. Einstein attended a Catholic School near his home. But, at age 10, Einstein

was transferred to the ‘Luitpold Gymnasium’, where he learned Latin, Greek, History, and

Geography. Einstein’s father wanted him to attend a university but he could not because he did not

have a diploma from the Gymnasium. But there was a solution to this problem over the Alps, in

Zurich. There was The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology which did not require a diploma to

attend. The one thing it did require was applicant to pass an entrance exam. But then yet another

problem arose most scholars were 18 when they entered the institute, and Einstein was only 16.

In Berne, on January 6, 1903; Einstein married Mileva Maric. The twowitnesses at the

small, quiet wedding, were Maurice Solovine and Conard Habicht. After the wedding, there was a

meal to celebrate at a local restaurant. But no honeymoon. After the meal, the newlyweds returned

to their new home. It was a small flat, about 100 yards away from Bere’s famous clock tower.

Upon returning home, a small incident occured, that was to occur many times throughout Einstern’s

life; he had forgotten his key. A year later, in 1904 they had a child, Hans Albert. In that same

year, he recieved a job at the swiss patent office.

In 1905, three of Einstein’s 4 famous papers; ‘about a ‘heuristical’ perspective about the

creation and modulation of light, about the movement of in still liquids mixed objects supported by

the molecularkinetical theory of heat and about the electrodynamics of moving objects’. In autumn

of 1922 Einstein received the Nobel Prize for Physics, for his work on the photoelectric effect. He

did not receive the prize for his ‘theory of relativity’ because it was thought that at the time it did

not meet the criteria of something that a Nobel Prize is awarded for. So when the prize was

awarded to him, they said it was awared to him for his work on the photoelectric effect, if his

theory of relativity is proven false, and if his theory of relativitywas proven correct, the prize was

for that.

Einstein died on April 18, 1955. He died of ‘leakage of blood from a hardened aorta’. And

he refused the surgery that could have saved his life. The doctors told him that he could go anytime

from a minute to a few days. And Einstein still refused the surgery. The day passed quietly, and on

Starurday morning, Einstein seemed to be better, but then Einstein began to have intense pain His

nurse called the doctor who arrived quickly, and persuaded Einstein that he would be better in a

hospital, an ambulance was called, and Einstein went the the hospital. On Sunday he told his

daugther ‘Don’t let the house become a museum.’ He died the next day.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to swim with the fish and explore the underwater jungle that covers two-thirds of the earth’s surface? I have always been interested in water activities; swimming, diving and skiing, and I felt that scuba was for me. My first dive took place while on a family vacation. I came across a dive shop offering introductory dives, which immediately caught my interest. After much convincing (my parents), with my solemn assurance that I would be careful, I was allowed to participate in a dive. I was ready, or so I thought. The slim basics such as breathing were explained and I was literally tossed in. Sounds easy enough, right!, well WRONG!!. From the moment I hit the water, my experience was much less than fun. I quickly sank to the bottom into a new world, with unfamiliar dangers. I really wasn’t ready for this experience. I was disorientated, causing me to panic, which shortened the length of my dive, not to mention my air supply. Let’s just say I would not do that again.

To start exploring the underwater world, one must first master a few skills. Certification is the first step of learning to dive. From qualified professionals one must learn how to use the equipment, safety precautions, and the best places to dive. This paper is designed to help give a general understanding of the sport and the importance that physics plays in it.

Self-contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, or SCUBA for short, is a hell of a lot of fun. However, there is considerably more to Diving than just putting on a wetsuit and strapping some compressed air onto ones back. As I quickly learned, diving safely requires quite a bit more in terms of time, effort, and preparation. When one goes underwater, a diver is introduced to a new and unfamiliar world, where many dangers exist, but can be avoided with proper lessons and understanding. With this knowledge the water is ours to discover.

The Evolution of Scuba Diving

Divers have penetrated the oceans through the centuries for the purpose of acquiring food, searching for treasure, carrying out military operations, performing scientific research and exploration, and enjoying the aquatic environment. Bachrach (1982) identified the following five principal periods in the history of diving which are currently in use. Free (or breath-hold) diving, bell diving, surface support or helmet (hard hat) diving, scuba diving, and, saturation diving or atmospheric diving (Ketels, 4)

SCUBA DIVING

The development of self-contained underwater breathing apparatus provided the free moving diver with a portable air supply which, although finite in comparison with the unlimited air supply available to the helmet diver, allowed for mobility. Scuba diving is the most frequently used mode in recreational diving and, in various forms, is also widely used to perform underwater work for military, scientific, and commercial purposes.

There were many steps in the development of a successful self-contained underwater system. In 1808, Freiderich yon Drieberg invented a bellows-in-a-box device that was worn on the diver’s back and delivered compressed air from the surface. This device, named Triton, did not actually work but served to suggest that compressed air could be used in diving, an idea initially conceived of by Halley in 1716. (Ketels, 9)

In 1865, two French inventors, Rouquayrol and Denayrouse, developed a suit that

they described as ‘self-contained.’ In fact, their suit was not self contained but consisted of a helmet-using surface-supported system that had an air reservoir that was carried on the diver’s back and was sufficient to provide one breathing cycle on demand. The demand valve regulator was used with surface supply largely because tanks of adequate strength were not yet available to handle air at high pressure. This system’s demand valve, which was automatically controlled, represented a major breakthrough because it permitted the diver to have a breath of air when needed.

The Rouquayrol and Denayrouse apparatus was described with remarkable accuracy in Jules Verne’s classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, which was written in 1869, only 4 years after the inventors had made their device public (Ketels, 10).

Semi-Self-Contained Diving Suit

The demand valve played a critical part in the later development of one form of scuba apparatus. In the 1920′s, a French naval officer, Captain Yves Le Prieur, began work on a self-contained air diving apparatus that resulted in 1926 in the award of a patent, shared with his countryman Fernez. This device was a steel cylinder containing compressed air that was worn on the diver’s back and had an air hose connected to a mouthpiece. The diver wore a nose clip and air-tight goggles that undoubtedly were protective and an aid to vision but did not permit pressure equalization.

The major problem with Le Prieur’s apparatus was the lack of a demand valve, which necessitated a continuous flow (and thus waste) of gas. In 1943, almost 20 years after Fernez and Le Prieur patented their apparatus, two other French inventors, Emile Gagnan and Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau, demonstrated their ‘Aqua Lung.’

This apparatus used a demand intake valve drawing from two or three cylinders, each containing over 2500 psig. Thus it was that the demand regulator, invented over 70 years earlier by Rouquayrol and Denayrouse and extensively used in aviation, came into use in a self-contained breathing apparatus which did not emit a wasteful flow of air during inhalation (although it continued to lose exhaled gas into the water). This application made possible the development of modern open-circuit air scuba gear (Ketels,11).

In 1939, Dr. Christian Lambertsen began the development of a series of three patented forms of oxygen rebreathing equipment for neutral buoyancy underwater swimming. This became the first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus successfully used by a large number of divers. The Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit (LARU) formed the basis for the establishment of U.S. military self-contained diving. This apparatus was designated scuba (for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) by its users. Equivalent self-contained apparatus was used by the military forces of Italy, the United States, and Great Britain during World War II and continues in active use today. (Ketels, 12).

A major development in regard to mobility in diving occurred in France during the 1930′s: Commander de Carlieu developed a set of swim fins, the first to be produced since Borelli designed a pair of claw-like fins in 1680. When used with Le Prieur’s tanks, goggles, and nose clip, de Carlieu’s fins enabled divers to move horizontally through the water like true swimmers, instead of being lowered vertically in a diving bell or in hard-hat gear. The later use of a single-lens face mask, which allowed better visibility as well as pressure equalization, also increased the comfort and depth range of diving equipment (Tillman, 27).

Thus the development of scuba added a major working tool to the systems available to divers. The new mode allowed divers greater freedom of movement and access to greater depths for extended times and required much less burdensome support equipment. Scuba also enriched the world of sport diving by permitting recreational divers to go beyond goggles and breath-hold diving to more extended dives at greater depths.

The physics of Scuba Diving

Upon entering the underwater world, one notices new and different sensations as one ventures into a realm where everything looks, sounds and feels different than it does above the water. These sensations are part of what makes diving so special.

Understanding why the underwater world is different helps you adapt and become accustomed to the changes. In the following pages I will attempt to explain two factors that greatly affect a diver under water: buoyancy and pressure.

Have you ever wondered why a large steel ocean liner floats, but a small steel nail sinks? The answer is surprisingly simple. The steel hull of the ship is formed in a shape that displaces much water. If the steel used to manufacture the ocean liner were placed in the sea without being shaped into a large hull, it would sink like the nail. The ocean liner demonstrates that whether an object floats depends not only on its weight, but on how much water it displaces (Ascher, 51).

The principle of buoyancy can be simplified this way: An object placed in water is buoyed up by the force equal to the weight of the quantity of water it displaces. The principle of buoyancy is that if an object displaces an amount of water weighing more than its own weight, it will float. If an object displaces an amount of water weighing less than its own weight then it will sink. If an object displaces an amount of water equal to its own weight it will neither float nor sink, but remain suspended. If an object floats, it is said to be positively buoyant; if it sinks, it is negatively buoyant; and if it neither floats nor sinks, it is neutrally buoyant (Kolezer, 16).

It is important for a diver to learn to use these principles of buoyancy so that the diver can effortlessly maintain his/her position in the water. One must control buoyancy carefully. When you are at the surface, you will want to be positively buoyant so that you could conserve energy while resting or swimming. Under water, you will want to be neutrally buoyant so that you are weightless and can stay off the bottom and avoid crushing or damaging delicate corals and other aquatic life. Neutral buoyancy permits a diver to move freely in all directions (Kolezer, 17).

Buoyancy control is one of the most important skills that a diver could master, but it is also one of the easiest. A diver, controls his/her buoyancy using lead weight and a buoyancy control device (BCD). The lead weight, which is incorporated into a weight system, such as a weight belt is negatively buoyant. The BCD is a device that can be partially inflated or deflated to control buoyancy (Kolezer, 19).

Another factor that affects the buoyancy of an object is the density of water. The denser the water, the greater the buoyancy. Salt water (due to its dissolved salts) is more dense than fresh water, so you’ll be more buoyant in salt water than in fresh water – in fact, when floating motionless at the surface, most divers need to exhale air from their lungs to sink. By exhaling, the volume of the lungs is decreased, and less water is displaced, resulting in less buoyancy (Kolezer, 19).

Thus, we can see, that changing the volume of an object changes its buoyancy. Divers primarily control buoyancy by changing the volume of air in their BCD’s.

Body air spaces and water pressure

Although usually not noticeable, air is constantly exerting pressure on us. An example being as simplified as when walking against a strong wind, what is actually felt its force pushing against our body. This demonstrates that air can exert pressure, or weight. One doesn’t usually feel the air’s pressure because our body is primarily liquid, distributing the pressure equally throughout our entire body. The few air spaces in our body are- in the ears, sinuses and lungs- These are filled with air equal in pressure to the external air. However, when the surrounding air pressure changes, such as when you change altitude by flying or driving through mountains, some of us can feel the change as a popping sensation in our ears (Tillman, 40).

Just as air exerts pressure on us at the surface, water exerts pressure when a person is submerged. Because water is much denser than air, pressure changes under water occur more rapidly, making one more aware of them.

The weight of the water above a person greatly compounds the amount of pressure one (ears, lungs, and the air in ones lungs) is under. While it takes the entire height of the atmosphere to contain a weight of air enough to give 1 atmosphere (1 ATM) of pressure (the pressure one is used to be under as one walks around daily), it only takes 33 ft. of water to make up an additional ATM of pressure. Of course, the air is still there too, so at a depth of 33 feet, a diver is subjected to two Atmospheres of pressure, fully twice what one is subjected to at the surface! (Resneck, 53)

A diver would have to go really, really deep before being in any danger of actually being crushed by pressure. It’s what the pressure does to the gases in your body that can be dangerous. Physics teaches us Boyle’s Law of gases, which suggests that the volume of a gas is proportional to its pressure. Thus, when one goes to a depth of, say, 33 feet (1 extra ATM) and fills ones lungs with a breath of air from a tank and then ascend to the surface without exhaling, the air in the lungs would expand to twice its volume, causing massive trauma to the lungs. Other more subtle problems occur with gas under pressure, such as the accumulation of residual nitrogen in the body’s tissues which can result in Decompression Sickness (DCS), commonly known as the bends (Tillman, 44).

As with air pressure, one doesn’t feel water pressure on most of ones body, but we can feel it in our body’s air spaces. When water pressure changes corresponding with a change in depth, it creates a pressure sensation one can feel. Through training and experience a diver will learn to avoid the problems associated with water pressure and the air spaces in our bodies.

As previously mentioned, pressure increases at a rate of one atmosphere (ATM) for each additional 33 feet of depth underwater. The total pressure is twice as great at 33 feet than at the surface, three times as great at 66 feet, and so on. This pressure pushes in on flexible air spaces, compressing them and reducing their volume. The reduction of the volume of the air spaces is proportional to the amount of pressure placed upon it.

When the total pressure doubles, the air volume is halved. When the pressure triples, the volume is reduced to one third, and so on (Tillman, 40).

The density of air in the air spaces is also affected by pressure. As the volume of the air spaces is reduced due to compression, the density of the air increases as it is squeezed into a smaller place. No air is lost; it is simply compressed. Air density is also proportional to pressure, so that when the total pressure is doubled, the air density is doubled. When the pressure is tripled the air density triples and so on.

To maintain an air space as its original volume when pressure is increased, more air must be added to the space. This is the concept of pressure equalization, and the amount of air that must be added is proportional to the pressure increased.

Air within an airspace expands as pressure is reduced. If no air has been added to the air space, the air will simply expand to fill the original volume of the air space upon reaching the surface (Ketels, 76).

If air has been added to an air space to equalize the pressure, this air will expand as pressure is reduced during ascent. The amount of expansion is again proportional to the pressure. In an open container, such as the bucket, the expanding air will simply bubble out of the opening, maintaining it original volume during ascent. In a closed flexible container, however, the volume will increase as the pressure is reduced. If the volume exceeds the capacity of the container, the container may be ruptured by the expanding air (Cramer, 51).

Now let’s take a look at how the relationship between pressure volume and density affect a diver while diving. Previously it has been mentioned that air spaces are effected by changes in pressure. The air spaces that a diver is concerned about are both the natural ones in your body and those artificially created by wearing diving equipment.

The air spaces within a diver’s body that are most obviously affected by increasing pressure are found in the ears and sinuses. The artificial air spaces most affected by increasing pressure is the one created by a divers mask.

During descent, water pressure increases and pushes in your body’s air spaces, compressing them. If pressure within these air spaces is not kept in balance with this increasing water pressure, the sensation of pressure builds, becoming uncomfortable and possibly even painful as the diver continues to descend. This sensation is the result of a squeeze on the air spaces. A squeeze is not only a scuba phenomena but may also be experienced in a swimmers ears when diving to the bottom of a swimming pool. A squeeze, then is a pressure imbalance resulting in a pain or discomfort in a bodies air space. In this situation, the imbalance is such that the pressure outside the air space is greater than the pressure inside (Ketels, 76-77).

Squeezes are possible in several places: ears, sinuses, teeth, lungs and ones mask. Fortunately, divers can easily avoid all these squeezes.

To avoid discomfort, pressure inside an air space must always equal the water pressure outside the air spaces. This is accomplished by adding air to the air spaces during descent, before discomfort occurs. This is called equalization.

Compared to the ear and sinus air spaces, the lungs are large and flexible. As a scuba diver, one automatically equalizes the pressure in the lungs by continuously breathing from the scuba equipment. When you skin dive, holding ones breath, the lungs can be compressed with no consequence as long as they are filled with air when one begins to descent. The lungs will be reduced in volume during decent and will re-expand during ascent to nearly the original volume when one reaches the surface (some of the air from the lungs is used to equalize the other body air spaces) (Ketels, 78).

In a healthy diver, blocking the nose and attempting to gently blow through it with the mouth closed will direct air into the ear and sinus air spaces. Swallowing and wiggling the jaw from side to side may be an effective equalization technique. Some divers even attempt a combination of the previous two methods.

As mentioned previously along with squeezes, the lungs experience no harmful effects from the changes in pressure when holding ones breath while skin diving. At the start of the skin dive, one takes a breath and descends; the increasing water pressure compresses the air in the lungs. During ascent, the air re-expands so that when reaching the surface, the lungs return to their original volume (Ketels, 78).

When scuba diving, however, the situation is different. Scuba equipment allows one to breathe under water by automatically delivering the air at a pressure equal to the surrounding water pressure. This means the lungs will be at their normal volume while at depth, full of air that will expand on ascent (Cramer, 51).

If a diver breaths normally, keeping the airway to you lungs open, the expanding air escapes during ascent and your lungs remain at their normal volume. But, by holding ones breath and then blocking the airway while ascending the lungs would over expand, much like the sealed bag. Expanding air can cause lung over-pressurization (lung rupture), the most serious injury that can occur to a diver. The most important rule in scuba diving is to breath continuously and never hold your Breath. Lung rupture will occur unless pressure is continuously equalized by breathing normally at all times (Cramer, 52).

Other physical Phenomena’s

As an air-breathing creature, we have evolved to live on land. Above the water, we see, hear and move about in a familiar and comfortable manner that seems normal because we have adapted to an air environment.

Under water, though, one enters a new world, where seeing, hearing, staying warm and moving are different. This is because water is 800 times more dense than air, affecting light, sound and heat in ways that we aren’t used to.

Sight seeing is a big part of what diving is all about. One dives for numerous reasons. A primary purpose is to see new environments, aquatic life and natural phenomena. Since underwater sight seeing is important, like buying a new camera, one must learn, how. Therefor when diving, one must know how the liquid environment affects vision.

To see clearly under water, a mask is needed because the human eye cannot focus without any air space in front of it. A mask provides the air space. Without the mask, you can see large objects, but they will be blurred and indistinct because your eyes cannot bring the rays of light into sharp focus. Only by wearing a mask can you see sharply (Ascher, 9).

Light travels at a different speed in water than in air. When light enters the air in your mask from the water, the change in speed causes its angle of travel to shift slightly. This causes a magnificent effect that makes objects under water appear 25% larger and closer (Ascher, 52).

Water has other effects on light. As you descend, there is less light. This is due to several facts: some light reflects off the water’s surface, some is scattered by particles in the water, and some is absorbed by the water itself. However, water does not absorb light uniformly.

White light, such as sunlight, is actually composed of various colors mixed together. The colors are absorbed one by one as depth increases: First red, followed by orange and yellow. Since each color is part of the total light entering the water, less light remains as depth increases and each color is absorbed. For these reason, deeper water is darker and less colorful. To see true colors, divers sometimes carry underwater lights with them (Resneck, 151).

Underwater Hearing

The underwater world is not a silent world. One can hear many new and interesting sounds, like snapping shrimp, grunting fish, and boat engines passing in the distance. Since sound travels farther in water than in air, one is able to hear things over much longer distances.

Sound also travels about four times faster in water than in air and because of this, one may have trouble determining the direction a sound is coming from (Cramer, 95).

Speech is virtually impossible under water because ones vocal cords do not work in a liquid environment, not to mention the addition of the tube in ones mouth. Communication by sound is usually limited to attracting the attention of another diver by rapping on the tank with a solid object, such as a knife. The diver will hear the rapping, but may not be able to tell where the sound is coming from.

Heat loss in water.

Diving stops being enjoyable when the diver gets cold. In fact, even a small loss of body heat has the potential to be a serious health threat. For these reasons, understanding about heat loss is important.

In air, body heat is lost as it rises from the skin into the air, as it is carried away by air currents, or as perspiration cools the skin through evaporation. Water conducts heat away from your body twenty times faster than air does, meaning that for a given temperature, water has a far greater cooling effect. Even seemingly warm 86F water can become chilly after a while (Cramer, 91).

The loss of body heat in water can quickly lead to a serious condition unless you use insulation to reduce the heat loss. Insulation through the use of exposure suits is recommended for diving in water 75F or colder. Just as one dresses according to the temperature and conditions to go outdoors, one must dress appropriately for diving.

Motion in water

One of the best aspects of diving is that it can be so relaxing. There’s little reason for hurrying. By learning how to move without breathlessness, cramping or fatigue, you learn to relax during a dive.

Due to the greater density of water, resistance to movement in water is much greater than in air. If you’ve ever tried to run waist-deep water, you’ve experienced this. In overcoming this increased resistance while diving, the best way to conserve energy is to move slowly and steadily. Avoid rapid and jerky movements that waste energy. Simply take your time. After all this is a sport to enjoy.

Conclusion

Several months after my vacation, I decided to give scuba diving a second chance. However, this time I decided to do it right. I signed up to take a P.A.D.I. certification, which is one of the many internationally recognized scuba associations. It was here, in a properly structured course, consisting of both theoretical and practical (in water) sessions where I was properly re-introduced to the sport.

Since my introductory dive from hell, I have had the chance to become quite the scuba enthusiast. Partaking in numerous dives not only in warmer climates (preferably) but in the colder Montreal waters as well, scuba diving has become part of my lifestyle. I participate in and enjoy every opportunity to re-visit the underwater world that once scared me away.

In this paper, I included some history of the evolution of the sport in order to point out that there is more to this particular sport than jumping into the water. Scuba is a complex sport and can not be enjoyed without some scientific knowledge. Scuba diving did not simply evolve, but it is the result of numerous inventions and physical properties. One could only imagine the difficulty that those historic divers (scientists) had in creating this sport.

My objective in writing this paper was not to deter people away from the sport, but to stress the importance of the knowledge that is required to properly and safely partake in it. Like everything else in life, one must work towards a goal, and this is no different. One will quickly see that the payoff is far greater than anything else ever experienced. Recreational scuba is meant to be a very enjoyable and relaxing sport. The scenery is magnificent and the sensations are truly indescribable.

Today, scuba diving is quickly becoming one of the expanding trades. Whether for military, research, business, or recreation, hundreds of thousands of people are heading for the depths, to experience the unknown. My advice for a new diver is to do it right. Get the proper certification and make each dive a safe one.

When a diver is fully trained, and in good mental and physical condition, safe diving can be one of the most enjoyable of experiences. The true beauty of the underwater world, coupled with the marvelous almost-weightlessness of floating with neutral buoyancy is an indescribable experience.

Bibliography/Further Reading

Ascher, Scott M. Scuba Handbook for Humans. Iowa : Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. 1975.

Cramer, John L. Ph.D. Skin and Scuba Diving: Scientific Principles and Techniques. N.Y.: Bergwall Productions, Inc. 1975.

Ketels, Henry & McDowell, Jack. Safe Skin and Scuba Diving, adventure in the underwater world. Canada : Little, Brown and Company (Canada) Ltd. 1975.

Koelzer, William. Scuba Diving, How to get started. Pennsylvania :Chilton Book Company. 1976.

Resneck, John Jr. Scuba, Safe and Simple. New Jersey : Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1975.

Tillman, Albert A. Skin and Scuba Diving. Iowa : Wm. C. Brown Company Publishers. 1966.