Guyana

Guyana (pronounced /ɡaɪˈɑːnə/ or /ɡaɪˈænə/), officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, is a sovereign state on the northern mainland of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, Brazil to the south and southwest, Suriname to the east and Venezuela to the west. With 215,000 square kilometres (83,000 sq mi), Guyana is the third-smallest country on mainland South America after Uruguay and Suriname.

The region known as "Guyana" comprised the large shield landmass north of the Amazon River and east of the Orinoco River known as the "Land of many waters". Originally inhabited by several indigenous groups, Guyana was settled by the Dutch before coming under British control in the late 18th century. It was governed as the plantation economy of British Guiana until independence in 1966, and officially became a republic within the British Commonwealth of Nations in 1970. The legacy of British rule is reflected in the country's diverse population, which includes Indian, African, Amerindian, and multiracial groups.

Fossil fuel

Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years. Fossil fuels contain high percentages of carbon and include coal, petroleum and natural gas. Other more commonly used derivatives of fossil fuels include kerosene and propane. They range from volatile materials with low carbon:hydrogen ratios like methane, to liquid petroleum to nonvolatile materials composed of almost pure carbon, like anthracite coal. Methane can be found in hydrocarbon fields, alone, associated with oil, or in the form of methane clathrates. The theory that fossil fuels formed from the fossilized remains of dead plants by exposure to heat and pressure in the Earth's crust over millions of years (see biogenic theory) was first introduced by Georg Agricola in 1556 and later by Mikhail Lomonosov in the 18th century.

The Energy Information Administration estimates that in 2007 the primary sources of energy consisted of petroleum 36.0%, coal 27.4%, natural gas 23.0%, amounting to an 86.4% share for fossil fuels in primary energy consumption in the world. Non-fossil sources in 2006 included hydroelectric 6.3%, nuclear 8.5%, and others (geothermal, solar, tidal, wind, wood, waste) amounting to 0.9%. World energy consumption was growing about 2.3% per year.

Filling station

A filling station is a facility that sells fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. The most common fuels sold in the 2010s are gasoline (gasoline or gas in the U.S. and Canada, generally petrol elsewhere) and diesel fuel. A filling station that sells only electric energy is also known as a charging station, while a typical filling station can also be known as a fuelling station, garage (South Africa and United Kingdom), gasbar (Canada), gas station (United States and Canada), petrol pump or petrol bunk (India), petrol garage, petrol station (Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and United Kingdom), service station (Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom), a services (United Kingdom), or servo (Australia).

Fuel dispensers are used to pump petrol/gasoline, diesel, CNG, CGH2, HCNG, LPG, LH2, kerosene, alcohol fuel (like ethanol, methanol, butanol, propanol), biofuels (like straight vegetable oil, biodiesel), or other types of fuel into the tanks within vehicles and calculate the financial cost of the fuel transferred to the vehicle. Fuel dispensers are also known as bowsers (in some parts of Australia),petrol pumps (in most Commonwealth countries) or gas pumps (in North America). Besides fuel dispensers, one other device that is noteworthy and is also found in filling stations and can refuel certain (compressed-air) vehicles is the air compressor, although generally they are used to just inflate car tyres. Also, many filling stations also have a convenience store, which tend to have power plugs (like most other buildings). Plug-in electric vehicles can hence also be recharged there.

Gas

Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or compound molecules made from a variety of atoms (e.g. carbon dioxide). A gas mixture would contain a variety of pure gases much like the air. What distinguishes a gas from liquids and solids is the vast separation of the individual gas particles. This separation usually makes a colorless gas invisible to the human observer. The interaction of gas particles in the presence of electric and gravitational fields are considered negligible as indicated by the constant velocity vectors in the image. One type of commonly known gas is steam.

The gaseous state of matter is found between the liquid and plasma states, the latter of which provides the upper temperature boundary for gases. Bounding the lower end of the temperature scale lie degenerative quantum gases which are gaining increasing attention. High-density atomic gases super cooled to incredibly low temperatures are classified by their statistical behavior as either a Bose gas or a Fermi gas. For a comprehensive listing of these exotic states of matter see list of states of matter.

University of Guyana

The University of Guyana, in Georgetown, Guyana, is a public university established in 1963 by the Guyanese government.

History

Cheddi Jagan, then Premier of British Guiana, considered that the University of the West Indies, to which his government had contributed since 1948, was not meeting the demand of his countrymen for higher education. On 4 January 1962, Jagan wrote to Harold Drayton, then in Ghana, to ask him to seek the advice of W.E.B. Du Bois on starting a new university.

Drayton returned to British Guiana in December 1962, and it was on his advice that Jagan wrote to socialist scholars in the United Kingdom and United States, including Joan Robinson at the University of Cambridge, Paul Baran at Stanford University, and Lancelot Hogben at Birmingham to involve them in the recruitment of staff.

The University opened on the grounds of Queen's College in late 1963. Its first chancellor was Edgar Mortimer Duke and its first Principal and Vice-Chancellor was the British biologist and mathematician Lancelot Hogben.