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ON THIS DAY: KRAZY GEORGE HENDERSON LEADS FIRST CROWD WAVE
by findingDulcinea Staff

On October 15, 1981, professional cheerleader Krazy George Henderson led the first audience wave at an Oakland Athletics game.

THE FIRST WAVE
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As a sold-out crowd in the Oakland Coliseum watched the Oakland A's and the New York Yankees in the 1981 American League Championship Series, professional cheerleader Krazy George Henderson decided to lead his fellow 47,301 fans in the world's first crowdwide "human wave."

"I started with three sections, and it went about five or six sections down," Krazy George told KPIX-TV in San Francisco. "I did it again, and it went 11 and then all the way around. It was insane."

The wave takes place when the fans, one section at a time, stand and sit with their hands in the air, moving sequentially around the packed rows over and over again in what appears to be a fluid, moving wave of people.

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Krazy George invented the wave over a year before he unveiled it in Oakland and had been practicing it at various low-level sporting events. The original wave was created accidentally when he was leading a cheer for the Edmonton Oilers.

His job was to lead one side of the arena to jump and cheer and then have the other side respond. "One night in late 1980, there was a delayed response from one section of fans, leading to them jumping to their feet a few seconds later than the section beside them," writes Raygan Swan on NASCAR.com. "The next section of fans followed suit, and the first wave circled the Northlands Coliseum of its own accord."

The wave became widespread in the 80s and early 90s, and though its popularity has died down, it can still be seen at stadiums throughout the world. "The Wave that I created has become a worldwide sports phenomenon and certainly a piece of American pop culture," proclaims Krazy George on his personal Web site, KrazyGeorge.com.

BIOGRAPHY: KRAZY GEORGE
Henderson is a professional cheerleader known for his drum banging, short-shorts, and curly tresses. He began his cheerleading career in the 1960s when he joined the San Jose State University cheerleading team. At one football game, a roommate handed him a drum that he began banging to the delight of the crowd.

After college, he continued cheering at various Bay Area sporting events while working as a shop teacher. Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt saw him and offered him money to appear at a Chiefs game, thus beginning Krazy George's career as a professional cheerleader.

He has worked for a wide range of professional and collegiate sports teams, including the Oakland A's, Houston Oilers, Minnesota Vikings, British Columbia Lions, San Jose Earthquakes, and the USA men's and women's national soccer teams.

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Krazy George has occasionally stirred up trouble with his antagonism of opponents. Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll tried to have him banned from the NFL, and several Boston Bruins tried to jump into the stands at him after he taunted Terry O'Reilly.

WHO REALLY CREATED THE WAVE
There is some controversy over who invented the wave. Former Entertainment Tonight host Rob Weller claims he led the world's first wave on October 31, 1981, while he was a University of Washington cheerleader.

"Despite claims by others, the Wave can trace its origin back to Husky Stadium," says GoHuskies.com, the official Web site of Washington athletics. "It was October 31, 1981, when former cheerleader Rob Weller (yes, the same Rob Weller who once co-hosted Entertainment Tonight) was back on the sidelines and instructed the Washington crowd to start in one section and make a human wave that rolled around Husky Stadium. The original Wave saw Husky fans remain standing until a full circle was completed in the stadium."

"The A's season ended on October 15, 1981, and there I am on this video leading the wave," Krazy George writes on his Web site. "Rob Weller and UW claim to have started it on October 31, 1981. Unless you can show me how the calendar in 1981 got screwed up and actually put the 31st before the 15th, then this argument is over."

ESPN's Jim Caple, a Washington graduate who was in attendance for Weller's first wave, believes Krazy George's claim. However, he points out that Weller was working on a vertical wave back in the 1970s and that it was Washington's wave that inspired other fans to follow.

"The Wave didn't catch on after his Oakland game (mostly because the Athletics season ended that day in a 4-0 loss, not the sort of thing that builds momentum). It did, however, catch on after the Husky game because we continued to do it for the rest of the season and the next as well," he writes. "The Wave was a very intimidating thing for awhile until everyone copied us."

Though the true inventor of the wave may never be definitively known, Krazy George is most commonly credited. As he points out on his Web site, "Hollywood Squares asked the question: 'Who created The Wave?' The answer was (of course) 'Krazy George.' Put an X on that square!"

THE SCIENCE OF THE WAVE
In 2002, University of Budapest scientists studied waves at the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico City, where the wave was so popular that it became known as "The Mexican Wave."

They determined that 25 to 35 people were needed to start a wave and that waves were typically started during flat periods of the game. They also found that an average wave moves at 12 meters (20 seats) per second at an average width of 6-12 meters (15 seats).

"It is generated by no more than a few dozen people standing up simultaneously and subsequently expands through the entire crowd as it acquires a stable, near-linear shape," said the scientists, who also found that waves usually move in a clockwise direction.

FROM MARBLES TO MACHINES
by Kerrily Sapet

People have dropped marbles into baskets, drawn X's by names, colored in dots, and pulled levers to elect their leaders during the past 2,000 years. Early voters used simple, inexpensive objects to cast their votes. Ancient Greeks, the first known voters, placed black and white pebbles into pots. Roman soldiers tossed small clay balls into their helmets. Early colonists in the Americas used colored beans and kernels of corn. Today's elections and terms have ancient roots. Voters now often mark ballots, or pieces of paper, to cast their votes. The term comes from the Italian word ballotta, meaning "little ball."

Today, people in countries around the world vote in many different ways. Some methods resemble early elections, while others are highly technical. Whether voters use beans or machines, the process is designed to be fair. Each person gets to cast only one vote, which must be accurately counted. Also important is the idea that a person's vote is private.

Ancient Romans sometimes voted out loud, or viva voce. In some areas, like Appenzell, Switzerland, people still gather in the town square to voice their votes, as they have done for hundreds of years. But some feel it can be intimidating to state your choices aloud, and therefore the individual may not express his or her true opinion. The idea of voting privately by paper ballot is said to have originated in Australia and is sometimes called kangaroo voting. Most people around the world, though, use secret ballots, marking their choices behind curtains or screens or inside voting booths.

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Whatever method voters use to make their choices, they want to know that their vote counts and that no one can change it. Many different styles of voting machines have been invented to make counting more accurate. They've featured mechanical levers, switches, buttons, and hole punchers. Today, computers can scan the voter's marks on a ballot and record the vote. Machines are often used because they are faster and more precise than counting votes by hand.

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Mechanical voting machines can cause problems, though. Sometimes voters get confused by the directions. If they fill out the ballot incorrectly or even use a pen insteadof a pencil, the machine won't count it. Machines can break down or jam, leaving the final vote count unknown. People also worry that machines can be tampered with or illegally adjusted to change the results of the election.

Just as voters want to know that their vote counts, they also want to know that everyone has an equal say. Each person gets only one vote. For years, election officials around the world have devised ways to make sure no one votes more than once. In
ancient Rome, voters walked one at a time across a narrow bridge. In many countries today, poll workers check off the voter's name before handing out a ballot. Other methods rely on sight and sound. Voters in a recent election in southwestern Africa had their arms painted green after they voted. Iraqis dipped a finger in a jar of purple ink. Gambian voters dropped a clear glass marble into a colored drum. When the marble fell, a bell sounded so officials could hear if a voter dropped in more than one marble. Because the bell sounded like a bicycle bell, they banned bikes near the polls.

Election officials around the world consider the needs of their voters when choosing a voting system. In many areas of the world, people can't read or write, so officials use more traditional methods. In Afghanistan, officials paste stamp-sized pictures next to the names of candidates. Indonesians vote by piercing a picture of the candidate with a nail. In many countries, voters make ink thumbprints or draw the letter X beside a candidate's name. Braille ballots, audio ballots, and ballots printed in different languages also help voters.

Election officials also consider where voters live and how easily they can get to polling places. Many communities around the world provide transportation to the polls. In rural Brazil, instead of taking voters to the polls, officials recently brought the polls to the voters. They canoed voting machines powered by car batteries up the Amazon River to reach voters in remote villages. Today, soldiers and other citizens overseas can vote by sending in special absentee ballots. Some countries are experimenting with voting over the Internet.

Whether a voter drops a marble into a drum or points and clicks on the Internet, voting is an important process all around the world. By giving people the opportunity to vote, countries make sure that their leaders reflect the people's true choice.

THE HOTTEST SOUP IN NEW YORK
by Stephen Ornes

This winter has been a season of breaking records. Last month, athletes at the winter Olympic games in Vancouver broke sports records. A few weeks before that, record-breaking amounts of snow fell on the eastern and southern United States. And
on February 15, scientists announced in Washington, D.C., that they had broken another record-for the highest temperature ever reached in a laboratory.

That new record is 4 trillion degrees Celsius (that's 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit). By doing experiments at that temperature, scientists hope to study what happened just after the universe was born. Four trillion degrees Celsius is 250,000 times hotter than the hottest part of the sun, and probably close to the temperature of the universe right after the Big Bang, the birth of the universe.

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The hot stuff is called a quark-gluon plasma, and scientists found it at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y. Using a giant instrument called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, the scientists zoomed two gold atoms through a ring that is 2.4 miles around and smashed the atoms together-and then watched to see what came out. There was so much energy in the crash that the atoms, in a way, melted.

As temperatures climb, most solids melt into liquids, and then the liquids become gas. (Some solids may go straight to gas if the conditions are right.) Ice becomes liquid water at 0º Celsius (32º Fahrenheit). At 100ºC (212ºF), liquid water boils into water vapor. Compared to other substances, water's melting and boiling points are mild: Tungsten, a material used in light bulbs, doesn't melt until 3,410ºC (6,800ºF).

That temperature is freezing compared to 4 trillion degrees C. At that temperature, atoms can break apart-and parts inside an atom can break apart-and then the tiny particles inside those parts can break apart. Think of an atom as a set of nesting dolls. When the largest, outer doll breaks apart, there's another, smaller doll inside. And when that doll breaks apart . . . surprise! There's another doll inside.

Similarly, at the center of every atom is the nucleus. Inside the nucleus are particles called protons and neutrons. And inside protons and neutrons are even smaller particles called quarks. Quarks are held together thanks to another kind of particle called gluons. (Gluons help to "glue" the particle together.)

The hot stuff produced at Brookhaven is a quark-gluon plasma, and it spills out like a soup made of quarks and gluons. The quark-gluon plasma is a new type of matter that's unlike solid, liquid, or gas-but it kind of behaves like a liquid.

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"We are extremely anxious to find out how this works," Barbara Jacak told Science News. "Why is it a liquid?"

Jacak works at Stony Brook University in New York and is one of the scientists working on the project at Brookhaven. She helped take the plasma's temperature. That was a difficult task because it's hard to measure things that small. The plasma only existed for about one-trillionth of a trillionth of a second, and it was tiny, about one-trillionth of a centimeter across.

It was a very small piece of space that was super hot for a very short amount of time. In other words, you can't just put a thermometer in it, Jacak says.

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To take the temperature, the researchers watched it glow. A hot iron rod changes color from red to yellow to white as it heats up. In a similar way, the colors of light coming from the plasma changed. Based on what colors of light the soup emitted, the team figured out that the substance had reached the 4-trillion-degree record.

By studying these kinds of super-hot temperatures, scientists hope to learn more about how the universe formed. The quark-gluon plasma may look a lot like the hot and heavy goo that existed in the universe right after the Big Bang.

Experiments such as those at Brookhaven may help us understand what happened at the very beginning of the universe. But there's a lot of work to be done, says scientist Chris Quigg of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. "These are very early days," he told Science News. "Like many good observations, this opens up many questions."

Measures 1 skill from
Grade 7
English
North Carolina Standard Course of Study

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Measures 1 skill fromGrade 7EnglishNorth Carolina Standard Course of Study

Our brand new solo games combine with your quiz, on the same screen

Measures 1 skill from
Grade 7
English
North Carolina Standard Course of Study