(My browser history was no help in determining where I found this. I don’t think it was the SDMB, and my searching here didn’t find it. But this is the only site I visit regularly that’s likely to mention a fact like this. Apologies if this is a duplicate.)
In materials science, a disappearing polymorph is a form of a crystal structure that is suddenly unable to be produced, instead transforming into a different crystal structure with the same chemical composition (a polymorph) during nucleation.[2][3] Sometimes the resulting transformation is extremely hard or impractical to reverse, because the new polymorph may be more stable.[4] It is hypothesized that contact with a single microscopic seed crystal of the new polymorph can be enough to start a chain reaction causing the transformation of a much larger mass of material.[5] Widespread contamination with such microscopic seed crystals may lead to the impression that the original polymorph has “disappeared.”
This also sounds a lot like the reverse side of the thesis that some compounds are often discovered simultaneously by multiple teams of chemists because the compound having being sythesized once for the first time “seeds” the world with the capacity to be synthesized again. The concept of multiple discovery is an interesting one and has some merit, but not, I believe, in this case.
Technically, she’s wearing a broken shackle and chains to symbolize American freedom from the European monarchies and oppression that migrants were leaving.
[ Technically, she’s wearing a broken shackle and chains to symbolize American freedom from the European monarchies and oppression that migrants were leaving.]
A broken shackle and chain lie at the Statue’s right foot. The chain disappears beneath the draperies, only to reappear in front of her left foot, its end link broken.
So how does that contradict the statement that she’s wearing a broken shackle and chains?
I am noting why she is wearing it according to the National Park Service. My first post regarding this was a link to Google images of the shackles and chains.
Again my first post regarding this was multiple Google images of the shackle and chain, of which the image Commasense posted was the first image. Where did I say it was not there?
Did you not follow the National Park Service link I provided?
That link was where I went to confirm the brokenness of the shackles. Here’s the full paragraph.
When Laboulaye’s Statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World” was completed, it not only represented democracy but also symbolized American independence and the end of all types of servitude and oppression. A broken shackle and chain lie at the Statue’s right foot. The chain disappears beneath the draperies, only to reappear in front of her left foot, its end link broken. However, although the broken shackle is a powerful image, the meaning behind it was not yet a reality for African Americans in 1886.
And here’s Wiki on Laboulaye:
At the war’s conclusion in 1865, he became president of the French Emancipation Committee that aided newly freed slaves in the U.S. The same year he had the idea of presenting a statue representing liberty as a gift to the United States, a symbol for ideas suppressed by Napoleon III. The sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, one of Laboulaye’s friends, turned the idea into reality.
Yes, the recent freeing of American slaves was very much in the air at that time. At the same time, Laboulaye was living in a world that had seen uprisings, class wars, and the resumption of monarchical governments. Can we agree that he may have had both in mind? Can we also agree that the Statue has turned into a symbol primarily for immigrants?
I’m only pointing out there are multiple “whys” for the shackles and chains, nor advocating for any of them. I just don’t understand how any of my posts could have been interpreted as denying the chains and shackles were there.
