title: T.O.P

text: T.O.P made his acting debut in 2007 through the TV series "I Am Sam" (2007), followed by "Iris" (2009) and the TV movie "Nineteen" (2009). He made his film debut with "" (2010), for which he received praise and won multiple accolades including Best New Actor at the 2010 Blue Dragon Film Awards and the 2011 Baeksang Arts Awards. Subsequently, he garnered lead roles in the films "Commitment" (2013), for which he was awarded New Asian Actor of the Year at the Busan International Film Festival and "" (2014).


title: T.O.P

text: Born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, Choi Seung-hyun is the great nephew of Korea's pioneering abstract art artist Kim Whanki and grew up in contact with art due to his family. Choi became interested in hip hop at a young age. He and fellow future Big Bang member Kwon Ji-yong were "neighborhood friend[s] from middle school" and often danced and rapped together. Although Kwon later moved away and the two "became distant", Choi was contacted by Kwon when YG Entertainment, Kwon's record label, was scouting for possible candidates to create a boy group. By then, Choi had already performed on many underground stages at hip hop clubs and established a reputation as an underground rapper with the stage name Tempo. In 2003 under the name of Tempo, he was the winner of KBS Radio's "Rap Battle". After contact,


title: T.O.P

text: Choi subsequently recorded several demos with Kwon and sent them to Yang Hyun-suk, CEO of YG Entertainment, who later asked he to audition. Choi was initially rejected by the record label, which deemed him too "chubby" to fit the "idealistic version" of an idol. He later "went home and exercised really hard because [he] wanted to join YG Entertainment," losing 20 kg in 40 days. Six months later, Choi returned for another audition and was signed.


title: T.O.P

text: Given the stage name of T.O.P. (Korean: 탑) by senior YG artist Seven, he became one of two rappers alongside G-Dragon (Kwon's stage name) in Big Bang. The two were paired with four others: Taeyang, Daesung, Seungri and Hyunseung and a documentary leading up to their debut was aired to promote them. Hyunseung was later dropped by Yang, and Big Bang made its official debut with five members. Their first studio album, "Big Bang Vol. 1 - Since 2007," received lukewarm receptions, and included T.O.P.'s first solo song "Big Boy". The group achieved mainstream success with the release of the song "Lies" (Korean: 거짓말; Revised Romanization: "Geojitmal") from the extended play "Always" (2007), which topped several charts upon its release. The singles, "Last Farewell" (Korean: 마지막 인사; rr: "Majimak Insa") from "Hot Issue" (2008) and "Day by Day" (Korean: 하루하루; rr: "Haru Haru") from "Stand Up" (2008), became chart-toppers as well.


title: T.O.P

text: Following the release of the band's albums and singles, T.O.P. began working on his solo career. In April 2007, he was featured with fellow Big Bang members Taeyang and G-Dragon on singer Lexy's single "Super Fly" for her album "Rush". Later that summer, he appeared as an actor in Red Roc's "Hello" music video. He became the first member of Big Bang to venture into acting, starring in the KBS2 drama "I Am Sam," portraying the school's top fighter, Chae Musin. Despite wanting to use his stage name when acting, believing it reflects his professional side more, he is often billed with his real name, with his stage name included in parenthesis. He also became a host of MBC's music program "Music Core".


title: T.O.P

text: While promoting his group's materials in 2008, T.O.P appeared on other artists' records, including Gummy for the song "I'm Sorry" for her album "Comfort", veteran singer Uhm Jung-hwa for her single "D.I.S.C.O." and ZiA for her single "I Only See You". The same year, he was admitted to Dankook University in the theatre department. The following year, T.O.P. portrayed the assassin Vick in the critically acclaimed Korean television drama "Iris" (2009)"." He also recorded the song "Hallelujah" for the drama's soundtrack with Taeyang and G-Dragon. Following "Iris", T.O.P. starred in the suspense film "19-Nineteen" along with fellow member Seungri. The duo released the single "Because" for the movie's soundtrack.


title: T.O.P

text: T.O.P's performance the 2010 war drama "" was well-received, earning him several Best New Actor awards at local award giving bodies. The movie also gained one million admissions in a week. Simultaneously, T.O.P began to prepare for his solo musical debut. During Big Bang's Big Show Concert in January 2010, T.O.P. performed his new single "Turn It Up". Released as a digital single, it peaked at number two, and sold over 1.3 million downloads by the end of 2010.


title: T.O.P

text: Later that year, T.O.P and bandmate G-Dragon formed a subunit to release the album "GD & TOP" (2010). Prior to the release of the album, the duo held a worldwide premiere showcase for their album at Times Square in Yeongdeungpo of Seoul, South Korea, which was also broadcast live on YouTube. Three singles were released in support of the album: "High High", "Oh Yeah", and "Knock Out". All three singles preceded the release of the album and attained commercial successes: "Knock Out" was a chart topper while "Oh Yeah" and "High High" both peaked at number two and number three respectively. The album was released on Christmas Eve, and debuted at number one with 200,000 pre-ordered copies.


title: T.O.P

text: From 2011 to 2012, T.O.P was extensively involved with Big Bang's promotional activities for their EPs "Tonight" (2011) and "Alive" (2012) which included a ten-month world tour that travelled to four continents. After group activities wrapped up, he focused his attention back to acting, starring in the film "Commitment" (2013), playing the son of a North Korean spy who is falsely accused. T.O.P first became attached to the role because he "felt sympathy for the main character, Lee Myung Hoon." While filming a combat scene for the movie, he injured the back of his hand on a glass fragment and was later admitted to the hospital for surgery. For his role, he won the Rookie Award at the Asia Star Awards, held during the Busan International Film Festival.


title: T.O.P

text: T.O.P was named one of the hottest sex symbols of 2013 by "Rolling Stone". That November, he released his second digital single, "Doom Dada." The song was performed for the first time at the 2013 Mnet Asian Music Awards in Hong Kong. "Doom Dada" earned the #1 position on "Dazed" magazine's Top 10 K-Pop tracks of 2013, where it was called "inviting and alienating... it's K-Pop but sly, frenetic and slippery." He later featured on English artist Pixie Lott's Japanese album alongside G-Dragon for the song "Dancing on My Own".


title: T.O.P

text: In 2014, T.O.P starred in the gambling film "", based on the manhwa of the same name. After debuting as a furniture designer in 2015 in collaboration with Vitra, he was awarded the Visual Culture Award at the Prudential Eye Awards. Later that year, he starred in CJ E&M's web drama "The Secret Message" alongside Japanese actress Juri Ueno. Despite being a rapper, he sang on the single "Hi Haruka" as part of the drama's soundtrack.


title: T.O.P

text: After spending the majority of 2015 touring and promoting Big Bang's materials for their album "Made" (2016), T.O.P was cast in the German-Chinese film "Out of Control" alongside Hong Kong actress Cecilia Cheung. The movie is scheduled for release in China.


title: T.O.P

text: T.O.P began his two-year mandatory military service on February 9, 2017, as a conscripted police officer, where he was set to be discharged on November 8, 2018, after completing the requirements. After news broke in June that he would be prosecuted without detention for use of marijuana, T.O.P was subsequently transferred to a different police division to await notice of prosecution, and was suspended from police duty pending verdict on his case. A few days after the announcement, T.O.P was found unconscious in police barracks due to a suspected anti-anxiety medicine overdose of prescribed benzodiazepine, and was hospitalized. On June 8, T.O.P's mother confirmed that he regained consciousness and was recovering.


title: T.O.P

text: On June 29, at his first trial for the marijuana usage charges at the Seoul Central District Court, T.O.P pleaded guilty, admitting that he did smoke marijuana in four instances in early October 2016 and received two years of probation. After undergoing a disciplinary review by the police to decide if T.O.P should return as a conscripted policeman or complete his service as a public service officer, T.O.P was eventually assigned reservist status by the Ministry of National Defense and transferred from the police department to complete his mandatory service as a public service worker. He resumed his mandatory service as public service officer at the Yongsan Arts and Crafts Center in central Seoul on January 26, 2018. Afterwards T.O.P was discharged on July 6, 2019. His dispensation took place officially two days later.


title: T.O.P

text: T.O.P. holds several records in the art world, becoming the first K-pop singer to be named to a list of 200 artists in the art world at Growse Magazine.


title: T.O.P

text: On March 3, 2020, T.O.P., under his legal name, donated 100 million won to the Hope Bridge National Disaster Association of Daegu, in the province of North Gyeongsang. The funds will be used to provide the medical staff of the area with personal protective equipment and to help in the fight against COVID-19.


title: T.O.P

text: On February 7, 2022, YG Entertainment announced that Big Bang would make their comeback with a new song on April 5. They also announced that T.O.P ended his exclusive contract with YG Entertainment, although he will continue to participate in group activities with the band.


title: T.O.P

text: T.O.P and Big Bang have been praised for their individuality and ability to fuse a pop sound with rap, R&B and dance elements. T.O.P possesses a bass vocal range. Columnist Jeff Benjamin of "Billboard K-Town" noted how he is known for his low-bass timbre rapping, while fellow journalist Tamar Herman, wrote that T.O.P's rap is "an integral part to the group's sound" and that he tends to favor an "confident, almost mocking, tone". Adrienne Stanley of "Kpop Starz" also praised the rapper for his "speed and accuracy" when delivering bars. Both his solo releases – "Turn It Up" and "Doom Dada" – are hip hop influenced, with the latter drawing critical acclaim for its "lyrical rhythms [that] are both inviting and alienating" from "Dazed" magazine, that declared that T.O.P was leading the evolution of K-Pop. Additionally, "Billboard" noted how the song's melody "is magnetizing with its whirring synths, tribal beats, and chanting, all of which pale in comparison to the rapper’s aggressive, multi-tonal delivery of his verses," affirming that T.O.P "revealed his true artistry" with the song.


title: T.O.P

text: While working on materials with G-Dragon for their subunit, the two experimented with different styles. Co-writing majority of the lyrics, the pair noted that as "rappers [...] we'd like to tell more stories for our fans to listen." In an attempt to create their own style away from their band, the duo opted for a more hip hop sound to contrast the Big Bang's current genre at the time, electronic music, though the influence of this genre along with R&B and acoustic was acknowledged. The duo also admitted to becoming "much more diverse [in their] attempts" to create their own style, preferring to mix several genres together in order to "bring out more of our character that we don't get to show when we're Big Bang."


title: T.O.P

text: T.O.P often edits his lyrics "more than a hundred times," and draws inspirations from "things that don’t speak. [From] beautiful and pretty objects rather than people." While hip hop is his primary music consumption, he also listens to classical music and particularly enjoys the English rock band Pink Floyd. He also notes how his role as a musician influenced his acting to be more emotional. While internationally, Big Bang is often referred to as a "K-pop" group, T.O.P has expressed distaste with the label noting how "[y]ou don't divide pop music by who's doing it. We don't say, for instance, 'white pop' when white people make music."


title: T.O.P

text: In August 2014, T.O.P joined the Ice Bucket Challenge, an international campaign to develop medical treatment for Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He made a donation to the Seungil Hope Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides aid to Lou Gehrig patients. In October 2016, in partnership with British auction house Sotheby's, he curated a collection of contemporary art as part of a special charity auction in Hong Kong. The project was named #TTTOP, and it featured 28 works by both Asian and Western artists. The auction saw a sale of more than HK$ 135 million and a portion of the proceeds was donated to the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) to support emerging Asian artists. In March 2020, T.O.P donated 100 million won to the Hope Bridge Disaster Relief Association, which announced that it would use the donation to purchase supplies for the medical teams responsible for combating the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: T.O.P

text: On November 4, 2018, in celebration of his birthday, T.O.P's fans from four Asian countries donated ₩11 million (US$9,900) in his name to the Yongsan Welfare Foundation to help the less fortunate.


title: T.O.P

text: After applying, in 2022, T.O.P was selected to participate in a lunar spaceflight as part of the DearMoon project crew. The mission is scheduled to occur in 2023 aboard the SpaceX Starship.


title: Fez (hat)

text: The fez (, ), also called tarboosh (, derived from ), is a felt headdress in the shape of a short cylindrical peakless hat, usually red, and sometimes with a black tassel attached to the top. The name "fez" refers to the Moroccan city of Fez, where the dye to colour the hat was extracted from crimson berries. Despite its name, the original centre of production appears to have been in Tunis, not Fez. The modern fez owes much of its popularity to the Ottoman era.


title: Fez (hat)

text: The fez became a symbol of the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century. In 1827, Mahmud II mandated the fez as a modern headdress for his new army, the Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye. The decision was inspired by the Ottoman naval command, who had previously returned from the Maghreb having embraced the style. In 1829, Mahmud issued new regulations mandating use of the fez by all civil and religious officials. The intention was to replace the turban, which acted as a marker of identity and so divided rather than unified the population. The fez was subsequently outlawed in Turkey in 1925 as part of Atatürk's Reforms.


title: Fez (hat)

text: The word tarboosh is thought to be a loanword from Persian via the Turkish language, the word comes from Ottoman Turkish "terpos". Tarboosh is considered to be a Turkish word composed of two elements, "ter" "sweat" and "pošu" "a light turban cloth".


title: Fez (hat)

text: The Turkish fez got its name from the Moroccan city of Fez, this is because it was the source of the crimson berry once used to dye the felt.


title: Fez (hat)

text: The hat itself is either of ancient Greek, Tunisian, Moroccan or Turkish origin. It was popular especially during the later period of the Ottoman Empire and its use spread throughout the empire.


title: Fez (hat)

text: Initially, the fez was a brimless red, white, or black bonnet over which a turban was wrapped (similar to a wrapped keffiyeh). Later the turban was eliminated, the bonnet shortened, and the color fixed to red. Praying while wearing a fez—instead of a headdress with brim—was easier because Muslims put their heads to the ground during Salah (daily prayers).


title: Fez (hat)

text: The tarboosh was depicted as an element of Turkish clothing as early as around 1460. In 1826, Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire suppressed the Janissaries and began sweeping reforms of the military. The modernized military adopted Western style uniforms and, as headdresses, the fez with a cloth wrapped around it. In 1827, 50,000 fezzes were ordered from Tunis for the sultan's troops. In 1829 the Sultan ordered his civil officials to wear the plain fez, and banned the wearing of turbans. The intention was to coerce the populace at large to update to the fez, and the plan was successful. This was a radically egalitarian measure, which replaced the elaborate sumptuary laws that signaled rank, religion, and occupation, foreshadowing the Tanzimat reforms. Although tradesmen and artisans generally rejected the fez, it became a symbol of modernity throughout the Near East, inspiring similar decrees in other nations (such as Iran in 1873).


title: Fez (hat)

text: To meet escalating demand, skilled fez makers were induced to immigrate from Tunisia to Istanbul, where factories were established in the neighborhood of Eyüp. Styles soon multiplied, with nuances of shape, height, material, and hue competing in the market. The striking scarlet and merlot colors of the fez were initially achieved through an extract of cornel. However, the invention of low-cost synthetic dyes soon shifted production of the hat to the factories of Strakonice, Czech Republic (then in the Austrian Empire).


title: Fez (hat)

text: The 1908 Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina resulted in a boycott of Austrian goods, which became known as the "Fez Boycott" due to the near-monopoly the Austrians then held on the production of the hat. Although the headdress survived, the year-long boycott brought the end of its universality in the Ottoman Empire as other styles became socially acceptable.


title: Fez (hat)

text: The fez was a symbol not only of Ottoman affiliation but also of religious adherence to Islam. It was also the main headdress for Christians and Jews during the Ottoman Empire. Jewish men wore the fez and referred to it by the Arabic name "Tarboush", especially if they spoke Arabic (Egyptian, Syrian and Palestinian Jews). In southern Asia, the fez had been adopted due to its links with the Ottoman Empire.


title: Fez (hat)

text: Through the 19th and early 20th centuries the fez was the preferred headwear for Christians and Muslims in the Balkans, which at the time was still mostly under Ottoman suzerainty. There were variations on the fez in the Balkan states, mainly involving the addition of religious symbols on the front. In semi-independent Montenegro, a client state of the Ottoman Empire that enjoyed complete autonomy, its Orthodox citizens wore their fezzes with a Greek cross on the front. Supporters of the Illyrian movement among South Slavs, especially in Croatia, wore their fezzes with a star and crescent on the front irrespective of religion, believing that the symbol predated the introduction of Islam in the Balkans. In 1850, regulations in the newly-autonomous Principality of Serbia concerning uniforms of ministerial officers specified the wear of red fezzes displaying the Serbian coat of arms.


title: Fez (hat)

text: Over time, the fez came to be seen as part of an Oriental cultural identity. Seen as exotic and romantic in the west, it enjoyed a vogue as part of men's luxury smoking outfit in the United States and the United Kingdom around the turn of the 20th century. The fez had become so symbolic of tradition to the point that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk banned it in Turkey in 1925 as part of his modernizing reforms.


title: Fez (hat)

text: Today, the fez is worn by many, most prominently in Morocco. In Morocco, it became a more pronounced cultural symbol in the 20th-century against French colonization. It is still favoured among the royal court.


title: Fez (hat)

text: A version of the fez was used as an arming cap for the 1400–1700s version of the mail armour head protector (a round metal plate or skull-cap, around which hung a curtain of mail to protect the neck and upper shoulder). The red fez with blue tassel was the standard headdress of the Turkish Army from the 1840s until the introduction of a khaki service dress and peakless sun helmet in 1910. The only significant exceptions were cavalry and some artillery units who wore a lambskin hat with coloured cloth tops. Albanian levies wore a white version of the fez, resembling their traditional qeleshe. During World War I the fez was still worn by some naval reserve units and occasionally by soldiers when off duty. The Evzones (light infantry) regiments of the Greek Army wore their own distinctive version of the fez from 1837 until World War II. It now survives in the parade uniform of the Presidential Guard in Athens.


title: Fez (hat)

text: From the mid-19th century on, the fez was widely adopted as the headdress of locally recruited "native" soldiers among the various colonial troops of the world. The French North African regiments (Zouaves, Tirailleurs, and Spahis) wore wide, red fezzes with detachable tassels of various colours. It was an off-duty affectation of the Zouaves to wear their fezzes at different angles according to the regiment; French officers of North African units during the 1930s often wore the same fez as their men, with rank insignia attached. (Many volunteer Zouave regiments wore the French North African version of the fez during the American Civil War.) The Libyan battalions and squadrons of the Italian colonial forces wore lower, red fezzes over white skull caps. Somali and Eritrean regiments in Italian service wore high red fezzes with coloured tassels that varied according to the unit. German askaris in East Africa wore their fezzes with khaki covers on nearly all occasions.


title: Fez (hat)

text: The Belgian Force Publique in the Congo wore large and floppy red fezzes similar to those of the French Tirailleurs Senegalais and the Portuguese Companhias Indigenas. The British King's African Rifles (recruited in East Africa) wore high straight-sided fezzes in either red or black, while the West African Frontier Force wore a low red version. The Egyptian Army wore the classic Turkish model until 1950. The West India Regiment of the British Army wore a fez as part of its Zouave-style full dress until this unit was disbanded in 1928. The tradition is continued in the full dress of the band of the Barbados Regiment, with a white turban wrapped around the base.


title: Fez (hat)

text: While the fez was a colourful and picturesque item of uniform, it was in several ways an impractical headdress. If worn without a drab cover, it made the head a target for enemy fire, and it provided little protection from the sun. As a result, it was increasingly relegated to parade or off-duty wear by World War II. However, France's West African "tirailleurs" continued to wear a khaki-covered version in the field until about 1943. During the final period of colonial rule in Africa (approximately 1945 to 1962), the fez was seen only as a full-dress item in French, British, Belgian, Spanish, and Portuguese African units, being replaced by wide-brimmed hats or forage caps on other occasions. Colonial police forces, however, usually retained the fez as normal duty wear for indigenous personnel.


title: Fez (hat)

text: Post-independence armies in Africa quickly discarded the fez as a colonial relic. It is, however, still worn by the ceremonial "Garde Rouge" in Senegal as part of their Spahi-style uniform, and by the Italian Bersaglieri in certain orders of dress. The Bersaglieri adopted the fez as an informal headdress through the influence of the French Zouaves, with whom they served in the Crimean War. The Italian Arditi in the First World War wore a black fez that later became a uniform item of the Mussolini Fascist regime. The Spanish Regulares (formerly Moorish) Tabors stationed in the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, in North Africa, retain a parade uniform that includes the fez and white cloaks. Filipino units organised in the early days of U.S. rule briefly wore black fezzes, and officers serving with Muslim personnel of the Philippines Constabulary were authorized to wear this headdress from 1909.


title: Fez (hat)

text: Bosnian infantry regiments in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire had been distinguished by wearing the fez until the end of World War I. They wore distinctive light blue or field grey uniforms, with a buckle showing an arm with a scimitar inside a shield as the symbol of Bosniak ethnicity. The primarily Bosniak Muslim 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar, which was recruited from Bosnia, used a red or field grey fez with Waffen SS cap insignia during the latter half of World War II.


title: Fez (hat)

text: Two regiments of the Indian Army recruited from Muslim areas wore fezzes under British rule (although the turban was the nearly-universal headdress among Hindu and Muslim sepoys and sowars). A green fez was worn by the Bahawalpur Lancers of Pakistan as late as the 1960s.


title: Fez (hat)

text: It is believed that the chechia originated in Uzbekistan. Unlike the fez, the chechia is shorter and crafted from less stiff material, and is, therefore, softer and more pliable. By the 17th century that the chaouachis, or chechia makers, had spread to the capital Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. By the 21st century, the procedure for making them remains the same, but the number of craftsmen who make them has decreased. While the market place in the Souk Ech-Chaouachine, hosted about 30,000 chaouachis during at its peak, that number had dropped by the 2010s to about 20, who struggle to keep the business alive. The modern chechia business is estimated to create jobs for over 2,000 artisans, with the remaining chechias are sold overseas, primarily to Libya, Nigeria, and Niger. Chechia colours vary by country. It is red in Tunisia, and sometimes lacks a tassel. In Libya, the chechia is normally black, except the Benghazi version, or "chenna," which is also red and includes a tassel. In Morocco, and some parts of Tunisia, it can also be seen in white or grey.


title: Fez (hat)

text: The fez appeared in the Nizam's rule when he visited Rome. The purpose of adopting this style was the VII Nizam, Nizam Osman Ali Khan had a mere height of 5 feet. He used to wear Rumi Topi while meeting foreign delegations or on special occasions. As per Himayat Ali Mirza, the great-grandson of the Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan never wore expensive clothes but used to wear Rumi topi to camouflage his physical stature and advised his son Moazzam Jah to wear the Rumi Topi.


title: Fez (hat)

text: The fez is known as the "Rumi Topi", which means "Roman Cap" (by virtue of the Ottoman Empire being seen as the successor state of the Eastern Roman Empire). It is worn by some sections of the Muslim aristocracy of South Asia. It was also a symbol of the support for the Ottoman Caliphate against the British Indian Empire during the Khilafat Movement. Later, it became associated with some leaders of the Muslim League, the political party that eventually created the country of Pakistan. The veteran Pakistani politician Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan was one of the few people in Pakistan who wore the fez until his death in 2003.


title: Fez (hat)

text: In Sri Lanka, the fez was frequently worn by the local Muslim Sri Lankan Moor population. Despite its use declining in popularity, the fez is still used in traditional marriage ceremonies. It continues to be worn by "" Sufi path followers. The songkok, on the other hand, is worn by the local Sri Lankan Malays.


title: Fez (hat)

text: A variation of the fez has been commonly worn in Maritime Southeast Asia since the 19th century when it was introduced by Muslims from South Asia. Known as a peci in Indonesian and songkok in Malaysian, this variant is black in colour with a more ellipse shape and sometimes decorated with embroidery. The Philippine varieties tend to be colorful and highly decorated.


title: Fez (hat)

text: Many fraternal orders are known for wearing fezzes. Shriners are often depicted wearing a red fez; the headgear became official for the Shriners in 1872. Members of the International Order of Alhambra wear a white fez. Members of the Mystic Order of Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm wear a black fez. The Knights of Peter Claver wear a blue fez. Members of the Ancient Mystic Order of Samaritans wear fezzes of various colors, based upon rank. The Knights of Khorassan wear a navy blue fez. Members of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World wear fezzes of various colors, based upon rank. The Loyal Order of Moose's second-degree body, the Moose Legion, wear a purple fez. In the Laurel and Hardy film "Sons of the Desert" members of the fictional order of the same name wear fezzes, and consequently, so do those of the Laurel and Hardy International Appreciation Society, which is itself named after and modelled on the one seen in the film.


title: Fez (hat)

text: British comedian Tommy Cooper adopted the fez as part of his comic act while serving in Egypt during the Second World War. The hat went on to become Cooper's hallmark, and an icon of 20th century comedy.


title: Lorentz force

text: In physics (specifically in electromagnetism) the Lorentz force (or electromagnetic force) is the combination of electric and magnetic force on a point charge due to electromagnetic fields. A particle of charge moving with a velocity in an electric field and a magnetic field experiences a force of


title: Lorentz force

text: (in SI units). It says that the electromagnetic force on a charge is a combination of a force in the direction of the electric field proportional to the magnitude of the field and the quantity of charge, and a force at right angles to the magnetic field and the velocity of the charge, proportional to the magnitude of the field, the charge, and the velocity. Variations on this basic formula describe the magnetic force on a current-carrying wire (sometimes called Laplace force), the electromotive force in a wire loop moving through a magnetic field (an aspect of Faraday's law of induction), and the force on a moving charged particle.


title: Lorentz force

text: Historians suggest that the law is implicit in a paper by James Clerk Maxwell, published in 1865. Hendrik Lorentz arrived at a complete derivation in 1895, identifying the contribution of the electric force a few years after Oliver Heaviside correctly identified the contribution of the magnetic force.


title: Lorentz force

text: In many textbook treatments of classical electromagnetism, the Lorentz force law is used as the "definition" of the electric and magnetic fields and . To be specific, the Lorentz force is understood to be the following empirical statement:


title: Lorentz force

text: "The electromagnetic force on a test charge at a given point and time is a certain function of its charge and velocity , which can be parameterized by exactly two vectors and , in the functional form": formula_2


title: Lorentz force

text: This is valid, even for particles approaching the speed of light (that is, magnitude of , ). So the two vector fields and are thereby defined throughout space and time, and these are called the "electric field" and "magnetic field". The fields are defined everywhere in space and time with respect to what force a test charge would receive regardless of whether a charge is present to experience the force.


title: Lorentz force

text: As a definition of and , the Lorentz force is only a definition in principle because a real particle (as opposed to the hypothetical "test charge" of infinitesimally-small mass and charge) would generate its own finite and fields, which would alter the electromagnetic force that it experiences. In addition, if the charge experiences acceleration, as if forced into a curved trajectory, it emits radiation that causes it to lose kinetic energy. See for example Bremsstrahlung and synchrotron light. These effects occur through both a direct effect (called the radiation reaction force) and indirectly (by affecting the motion of nearby charges and currents).


title: Lorentz force

text: The force acting on a particle of electric charge with instantaneous velocity , due to an external electric field and magnetic field , is given by (in SI units):


title: Lorentz force

text: where is the vector cross product (all boldface quantities are vectors). In terms of Cartesian components, we have:


title: Lorentz force

text: In general, the electric and magnetic fields are functions of the position and time. Therefore, explicitly, the Lorentz force can be written as:


title: Lorentz force

text: in which is the position vector of the charged particle, is time, and the overdot is a time derivative.


title: Lorentz force

text: A positively charged particle will be accelerated in the "same" linear orientation as the field, but will curve perpendicularly to both the instantaneous velocity vector and the field according to the right-hand rule (in detail, if the fingers of the right hand are extended to point in the direction of and are then curled to point in the direction of , then the extended thumb will point in the direction of ).


title: Lorentz force

text: The term is called the electric force, while the term is called the magnetic force. According to some definitions, the term "Lorentz force" refers specifically to the formula for the magnetic force, with the "total" electromagnetic force (including the electric force) given some other (nonstandard) name. This article will "not" follow this nomenclature: In what follows, the term "Lorentz force" will refer to the expression for the total force.


title: Lorentz force

text: The magnetic force component of the Lorentz force manifests itself as the force that acts on a current-carrying wire in a magnetic field. In that context, it is also called the Laplace force.


title: Lorentz force

text: The Lorentz force is a force exerted by the electromagnetic field on the charged particle, that is, it is the rate at which linear momentum is transferred from the electromagnetic field to the particle. Associated with it is the power which is the rate at which energy is transferred from the electromagnetic field to the particle. That power is


title: Lorentz force

text: Notice that the magnetic field does not contribute to the power because the magnetic force is always perpendicular to the velocity of the particle.


title: Lorentz force

text: where formula_9 is the force on a small piece of the charge distribution with charge formula_10. If both sides of this equation are divided by the volume of this small piece of the charge distribution formula_11, the result is:


title: Lorentz force

text: where formula_13 is the "force density" (force per unit volume) and formula_14 is the charge density (charge per unit volume). Next, the current density corresponding to the motion of the charge continuum is


title: Lorentz force

text: By eliminating formula_14 and formula_18, using Maxwell's equations, and manipulating using the theorems of vector calculus, this form of the equation can be used to derive the Maxwell stress tensor formula_19, in turn this can be combined with the Poynting vector formula_20 to obtain the electromagnetic stress–energy tensor T used in general relativity.


title: Lorentz force

text: where formula_24 is the speed of light and ∇· denotes the divergence of a tensor field. Rather than the amount of charge and its velocity in electric and magnetic fields, this equation relates the energy flux (flow of "energy" per unit time per unit distance) in the fields to the force exerted on a charge distribution. See Covariant formulation of classical electromagnetism for more details.


title: Lorentz force

text: If we separate the total charge and total current into their free and bound parts, we get that the density of the Lorentz force is


title: Lorentz force

text: where: formula_27 is the density of free charge; formula_28 is the polarization density; formula_29 is the density of free current; and formula_30 is the magnetization density. In this way, the Lorentz force can explain the torque applied to a permanent magnet by the magnetic field. The density of the associated power is


title: Lorentz force

text: The above-mentioned formulae use SI units which are the most common. In older cgs-Gaussian units, which are somewhat more common among some theoretical physicists as well as condensed matter experimentalists, one has instead


title: Lorentz force

text: where "c" is the speed of light. Although this equation looks slightly different, it is completely equivalent, since one has the following relations:


title: Lorentz force

text: where is the vacuum permittivity and the vacuum permeability. In practice, the subscripts "cgs" and "SI" are always omitted, and the unit system has to be assessed from context.


title: Lorentz force

text: Early attempts to quantitatively describe the electromagnetic force were made in the mid-18th century. It was proposed that the force on magnetic poles, by Johann Tobias Mayer and others in 1760, and electrically charged objects, by Henry Cavendish in 1762, obeyed an inverse-square law. However, in both cases the experimental proof was neither complete nor conclusive. It was not until 1784 when Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, using a torsion balance, was able to definitively show through experiment that this was true. Soon after the discovery in 1820 by Hans Christian Ørsted that a magnetic needle is acted on by a voltaic current, André-Marie Ampère that same year was able to devise through experimentation the formula for the angular dependence of the force between two current elements. In all these descriptions, the force was always described in terms of the properties of the matter involved and the distances between two masses or charges rather than in terms of electric and magnetic fields.


title: Lorentz force

text: The modern concept of electric and magnetic fields first arose in the theories of Michael Faraday, particularly his idea of lines of force, later to be given full mathematical description by Lord Kelvin and James Clerk Maxwell. From a modern perspective it is possible to identify in Maxwell's 1865 formulation of his field equations a form of the Lorentz force equation in relation to electric currents, although in the time of Maxwell it was not evident how his equations related to the forces on moving charged objects. J. J. Thomson was the first to attempt to derive from Maxwell's field equations the electromagnetic forces on a moving charged object in terms of the object's properties and external fields. Interested in determining the electromagnetic behavior of the charged particles in cathode rays, Thomson published a paper in 1881 wherein he gave the force on the particles due to an external magnetic field as


title: Lorentz force

text: Thomson derived the correct basic form of the formula, but, because of some miscalculations and an incomplete description of the displacement current, included an incorrect scale-factor of a half in front of the formula. Oliver Heaviside invented the modern vector notation and applied it to Maxwell's field equations; he also (in 1885 and 1889) had fixed the mistakes of Thomson's derivation and arrived at the correct form of the magnetic force on a moving charged object. Finally, in 1895, Hendrik Lorentz derived the modern form of the formula for the electromagnetic force which includes the contributions to the total force from both the electric and the magnetic fields. Lorentz began by abandoning the Maxwellian descriptions of the ether and conduction. Instead, Lorentz made a distinction between matter and the luminiferous aether and sought to apply the Maxwell equations at a microscopic scale. Using Heaviside's version of the Maxwell equations for a stationary ether and applying Lagrangian mechanics (see below), Lorentz arrived at the correct and complete form of the force law that now bears his name.


title: Lorentz force

text: In many cases of practical interest, the motion in a magnetic field of an electrically charged particle (such as an electron or ion in a plasma) can be treated as the superposition of a relatively fast circular motion around a point called the guiding center and a relatively slow drift of this point. The drift speeds may differ for various species depending on their charge states, masses, or temperatures, possibly resulting in electric currents or chemical separation.


title: Lorentz force

text: While the modern Maxwell's equations describe how electrically charged particles and currents or moving charged particles give rise to electric and magnetic fields, the Lorentz force law completes that picture by describing the force acting on a moving point charge "q" in the presence of electromagnetic fields. The Lorentz force law describes the effect of E and B upon a point charge, but such electromagnetic forces are not the entire picture. Charged particles are possibly coupled to other forces, notably gravity and nuclear forces. Thus, Maxwell's equations do not stand separate from other physical laws, but are coupled to them via the charge and current densities. The response of a point charge to the Lorentz law is one aspect; the generation of E and B by currents and charges is another.


title: Lorentz force

text: In real materials the Lorentz force is inadequate to describe the collective behavior of charged particles, both in principle and as a matter of computation. The charged particles in a material medium not only respond to the E and B fields but also generate these fields. Complex transport equations must be solved to determine the time and spatial response of charges, for example, the Boltzmann equation or the Fokker–Planck equation or the Navier–Stokes equations. For example, see magnetohydrodynamics, fluid dynamics, electrohydrodynamics, superconductivity, stellar evolution. An entire physical apparatus for dealing with these matters has developed. See for example, Green–Kubo relations and Green's function (many-body theory).


title: Lorentz force

text: When a wire carrying an electric current is placed in a magnetic field, each of the moving charges, which comprise the current, experiences the Lorentz force, and together they can create a macroscopic force on the wire (sometimes called the Laplace force). By combining the Lorentz force law above with the definition of electric current, the following equation results, in the case of a straight, stationary wire:


title: Lorentz force

text: where is a vector whose magnitude is the length of wire, and whose direction is along the wire, aligned with the direction of conventional current charge flow .


title: Lorentz force

text: If the wire is not straight but curved, the force on it can be computed by applying this formula to each infinitesimal segment of wire formula_36, then adding up all these forces by integration. Formally, the net force on a stationary, rigid wire carrying a steady current is


title: Lorentz force

text: This is the net force. In addition, there will usually be torque, plus other effects if the wire is not perfectly rigid.


title: Lorentz force

text: One application of this is Ampère's force law, which describes how two current-carrying wires can attract or repel each other, since each experiences a Lorentz force from the other's magnetic field. For more information, see the article: Ampère's force law.


title: Lorentz force

text: The magnetic force () component of the Lorentz force is responsible for "motional" electromotive force (or "motional EMF"), the phenomenon underlying many electrical generators. When a conductor is moved through a magnetic field, the magnetic field exerts opposite forces on electrons and nuclei in the wire, and this creates the EMF. The term "motional EMF" is applied to this phenomenon, since the EMF is due to the "motion" of the wire.


title: Lorentz force

text: In other electrical generators, the magnets move, while the conductors do not. In this case, the EMF is due to the electric force ("q"E) term in the Lorentz Force equation. The electric field in question is created by the changing magnetic field, resulting in an "induced" EMF, as described by the Maxwell–Faraday equation (one of the four modern Maxwell's equations).


title: Lorentz force

text: Both of these EMFs, despite their apparently distinct origins, are described by the same equation, namely, the EMF is the rate of change of magnetic flux through the wire. (This is Faraday's law of induction, see below.) Einstein's special theory of relativity was partially motivated by the desire to better understand this link between the two effects. In fact, the electric and magnetic fields are different facets of the same electromagnetic field, and in moving from one inertial frame to another, the solenoidal vector field portion of the "E"-field can change in whole or in part to a "B"-field or "vice versa".


title: Lorentz force

text: Given a loop of wire in a magnetic field, Faraday's law of induction states the induced electromotive force (EMF) in the wire is:


title: Lorentz force

text: is the magnetic flux through the loop, B is the magnetic field, Σ("t") is a surface bounded by the closed contour ∂Σ("t"), at time "t", dA is an infinitesimal vector area element of Σ("t") (magnitude is the area of an infinitesimal patch of surface, direction is orthogonal to that surface patch).


title: Lorentz force

text: The "sign" of the EMF is determined by Lenz's law. Note that this is valid for not only a "stationary" wirebut also for a "moving" wire.


title: Lorentz force

text: From Faraday's law of induction (that is valid for a moving wire, for instance in a motor) and the Maxwell Equations, the Lorentz Force can be deduced. The reverse is also true, the Lorentz force and the Maxwell Equations can be used to derive the Faraday Law.


title: Lorentz force

text: Let be the moving wire, moving together without rotation and with constant velocity v and Σ("t") be the internal surface of the wire. The EMF around the closed path ∂Σ("t") is given by:


title: Lorentz force

text: NB: Both dℓ and dA have a sign ambiguity; to get the correct sign, the right-hand rule is used, as explained in the article Kelvin–Stokes theorem.


title: Lorentz force

text: The above result can be compared with the version of Faraday's law of induction that appears in the modern Maxwell's equations, called here the "Maxwell–Faraday equation":


title: Lorentz force

text: The Maxwell–Faraday equation also can be written in an "integral form" using the Kelvin–Stokes theorem.


title: Lorentz force

text: The two are equivalent if the wire is not moving. Using the Leibniz integral rule and that , results in,


title: Lorentz force

text: Faraday's law of induction holds whether the loop of wire is rigid and stationary, or in motion or in process of deformation, and it holds whether the magnetic field is constant in time or changing. However, there are cases where Faraday's law is either inadequate or difficult to use, and application of the underlying Lorentz force law is necessary. See inapplicability of Faraday's law.


title: Lorentz force

text: If the magnetic field is fixed in time and the conducting loop moves through the field, the magnetic flux linking the loop can change in several ways. For example, if the -field varies with position, and the loop moves to a location with different -field, will change. Alternatively, if the loop changes orientation with respect to the B-field, the differential element will change because of the different angle between and , also changing . As a third example, if a portion of the circuit is swept through a uniform, time-independent -field, and another portion of the circuit is held stationary, the flux linking the entire closed circuit can change due to the shift in relative position of the circuit's component parts with time (surface time-dependent). In all three cases, Faraday's law of induction then predicts the EMF generated by the change in .


title: Lorentz force

text: Note that the Maxwell Faraday's equation implies that the Electric Field is non conservative when the Magnetic Field varies in time, and is not expressible as the gradient of a scalar field, and not subject to the gradient theorem since its rotational is not zero.


title: Lorentz force

text: The and fields can be replaced by the magnetic vector potential and (scalar) electrostatic potential by


title: Lorentz force

text: (Notice that the coordinates and the velocity components should be treated as independent variables, so the del operator acts only on formula_52, not on formula_53; thus, there is no need of using Feynman's subscript notation in the equation above). Using the chain rule, the total derivative of formula_52 is:


title: Lorentz force

text: The Lagrangian for a charged particle of mass and charge in an electromagnetic field equivalently describes the dynamics of the particle in terms of its "energy", rather than the force exerted on it. The classical expression is given by:


title: Lorentz force

text: where and are the potential fields as above. The quantity formula_60 can be thought as a velocity-dependent potential function. Using Lagrange's equations, the equation for the Lorentz force given above can be obtained again.


title: Lorentz force

text: The potential energy depends on the velocity of the particle, so the force is velocity dependent, so it is not conservative.


title: Lorentz force

text: The action is the relativistic arclength of the path of the particle in spacetime, minus the potential energy contribution, plus an extra contribution which quantum mechanically is an extra phase a charged particle gets when it is moving along a vector potential.


title: Lorentz force

text: This formula is the Lorentz force, representing the rate at which the EM field adds relativistic momentum to the particle.


title: Lorentz force

text: The calculation for (force components in the and directions) yields similar results, so collecting the 3 equations into one:


title: Lorentz force

text: This is precisely the Lorentz force law, however, it is important to note that is the relativistic expression,


title: Lorentz force

text: The electric and magnetic fields are dependent on the velocity of an observer, so the relativistic form of the Lorentz force law can best be exhibited starting from a coordinate-independent expression for the electromagnetic and magnetic fields formula_89, and an arbitrary time-direction, formula_90. This can be settled through Space-Time Algebra (or the geometric algebra of space-time), a type of Clifford algebra defined on a pseudo-Euclidean space, as


title: Lorentz force

text: formula_93 is a space-time bivector (an oriented plane segment, just like a vector is an oriented line segment), which has six degrees of freedom corresponding to boosts (rotations in space-time planes) and rotations (rotations in space-space planes). The dot product with the vector formula_90 pulls a vector (in the space algebra) from the translational part, while the wedge-product creates a trivector (in the space algebra) who is dual to a vector which is the usual magnetic field vector.


title: Lorentz force

text: The relativistic velocity is given by the (time-like) changes in a time-position vector formula_95, where


title: Lorentz force

text: The proper (invariant is an inadequate term because no transformation has been defined) form of the Lorentz force law is simply


title: Lorentz force

text: Note that the order is important because between a bivector and a vector the dot product is anti-symmetric. Upon a spacetime split like one can obtain the velocity, and fields as above yielding the usual expression.


title: Lorentz force

text: In the general theory of relativity the equation of motion for a particle with mass formula_98 and charge formula_99, moving in a space with metric tensor formula_100 and electromagnetic field formula_101, is given as


title: Lorentz force

text: where formula_108 is the Christoffel symbol (of the torsion-free metric connection in general relativity), or as


title: Lorentz force

text: In its manifestation as the Laplace force on an electric current in a conductor, this force occurs in many devices including:


title: Brian Tee

text: , known professionally as Brian Tee, is a Japanese film and television actor. He is known for playing Dr. Ethan Choi on the NBC medical drama "Chicago Med" and its spin-offs, and has starred in such films as "" (2006), "The Wolverine" (2013), "Jurassic World" (2015), and "" (2016).


title: Brian Tee

text: Tee was born Jae-Beom Takata (Japanese: 高田 ジェボム, Korean Hangul: 재범 타카다) in Okinawa Prefecture. His father was Japanese-American and his mother was from South Korea. His father was born in an internment camp during World War II. His mother was living in Japan working as a reporter.


title: Brian Tee

text: At the age of two, he moved to Hacienda Heights, California, and was raised in Southern California. He attended Glen A. Wilson High School where he was an Associated Student Body president and captain of the football team. While in high school, he worked at Blackjack Pizza in Hacienda Heights.


title: Brian Tee

text: Tee graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a degree in theater and performing arts. Not long after graduating, he adopted his "culturally ambiguous" stage name Brian Tee after being rejected by a Korean director at an audition for having a Japanese last name.


title: Brian Tee

text: Tee played Kazu, the owner of Sushi Rox, on Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101". He played Eddie Choi in "Crash". He starred as Akira Kimura on "Grimm" and Takeda on "Burn Notice". He appeared in the season 4 episode "The Girl in the Mask" as Ken Nakamura on the series "Bones". He played Dwayne Archimedes in the indie Feature film "Roswell FM". Tee appeared in an episode in the first season of the television series "Dark Blue" as a Korean criminal. He had a short part in "Austin Powers in Goldmember" as a pedestrian ("Run! It's Goldzilla!"; "Still we should run like it is Godzilla!"). Brian can also be seen as a contestant on an episode of "Hollywood Squares" hosted by Tom Bergeron. He played in 1999 against a woman named Heidi.


title: Brian Tee

text: In James Mangold's "The Wolverine" (2013), starring Hugh Jackman, Tee played Noburo Mori, a sadistic minister of justice arranged to marry the daughter of Yakuza Boss Shingen Yashida (Hiroyuki Sanada).


title: Brian Tee

text: One of Tee's most famous roles was as "D.K." Takashi "Drift King" in the 3rd installment of the Fast & Furious series "" (2006).


title: Brian Tee

text: Tee appeared in the Television film "The Gabby Douglas Story" on October 18, 2013, where he played her coach Liang Chow, which aired in 2014 on Lifetime.


title: Brian Tee

text: Tee co-starred in the 2015 film "Jurassic World" where he played Hamada, a high-ranking commander who works for the Asset Containment Unit (ACU).


title: Brian Tee

text: Tee played Shredder in "", the 2016 sequel to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" where the role was previously portrayed by Tohoru Masamune.


title: Brian Tee

text: On July 20, 2015, Tee signed on to co-star in the NBC medical drama "Chicago Med" as Dr. Ethan Choi. He had previously appeared on its sister show "Chicago P.D." as a Chinese gangster in season 2.


title: Brian Tee

text: Besides English, Tee speaks fluent Japanese and proficient Korean. He is married to actress Mirelly Taylor and has a daughter named Madelyn Skyler Takata, born in 2015.


title: Eurydice

text: Eurydice (; Ancient Greek: Εὐρυδίκη 'wide justice') was a character in Greek mythology and the Auloniad wife of Orpheus, who tried to bring her back from the dead with his enchanting music.


title: Eurydice

text: Several meanings for the name "Eurydice" have been proposed such as "true judgement" or "profound judgement" from the Greek: "eur dike". Fulgentius, a mythographer of the late 5th to early 6th century AD, gave the latter etymological meaning. Adriana Cavarero, in the book "Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood", wrote that "the etymology of Eurydice seems rather to indicate, in the term "eurus", a vastness of space or power, which, joining to "dike" [and thus "deiknumi", to show], designates her as 'the one who judges with breadth' or, perhaps, 'she who shows herself amply'".


title: Eurydice

text: Eurydice was the Auloniad wife of musician Orpheus, who loved her dearly; on their wedding day, he played joyful songs as his bride danced through the meadow. One day, Aristaeus saw and pursued Eurydice, who stepped on a viper, was bitten, and died instantly. Distraught, Orpheus played and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs and deities wept and told him to travel to the Underworld to retrieve her, which he gladly did. After his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone, his singing so sweet that even the Erinyes wept, he was allowed to take her back to the world of the living. In another version, Orpheus played his lyre to put Cerberus, the guardian of Hades, to sleep, after which Eurydice was allowed to return with Orpheus to the world of the living. Either way, the condition was attached that he must walk in front of her and not look back until both had reached the upper world. Soon he began to doubt that she was there, suspecting that Hades had deceived him. Just as he reached the portals of Hades and daylight, he turned around to gaze on her face, and because Eurydice had not yet crossed the threshold, she vanished back into the Underworld. When Orpheus was later killed by the Maenads at the orders of Dionysus, his soul ended up in the Underworld where he was reunited with Eurydice.


title: Eurydice

text: The story in this form belongs to the time of Virgil, who first introduces the name of Aristaeus and the tragic outcome. Other ancient sources however, speak of Orpheus's visit to the underworld in a more negative light; according to Phaedrus in Plato's "Symposium", the infernal deities only "presented an apparition" of Eurydice to him. Plato's representation of Orpheus is that of a coward; instead of choosing to die in order to be with the one he loved, he mocked the deities by trying to go to Hades to get her back alive. Since his love was not "true"—meaning he was not willing to die for it—he was punished by the deities, first by giving him only the apparition of his former wife in the underworld and then by being killed by women.


title: Eurydice

text: The story of Eurydice may be a late addition to the Orpheus myths. In particular, the name "Eurudike" ('she whose justice extends widely') recalls cult-titles attached to Persephone. The myth may have been derived from another Orpheus legend in which he travels to Tartarus and charms the goddess Hecate.


title: Eurydice

text: The story of Eurydice has a number of strong universal cultural parallels, from the Japanese myth of Izanagi and Izanami, the Mayan myth of Itzamna and Ixchel, the Indian myth of Savitri and Satyavan, to the Akkadian/Sumerian myth of Inanna's descent to the underworld. The biblical story of Lot's wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back at the town she was fleeing, is "often compared to the story of Orpheus and his wife Eurydice."


title: Eurydice

text: The story of Orpheus and Eurydice has been depicted in a number of works by artists, including Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, Nicolas Poussin, and Corot. More recently, the story has been depicted by Bracha Ettinger, whose series, "Eurydice", was exhibited in the Pompidou Centre ("Face à l'Histoire", 1996); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam ("Kabinet", 1997), and The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp ("Gorge(l)", 2007). The story has inspired ample writings in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, art, and feminist theory. In the game Hades (2020), the aftermath of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is told throughout a playthrough of the game.


title: Eurydice

text: The myth has been retold in operas by Jacopo Peri, Monteverdi, Charpentier, Gluck, Yevstigney Fomin, Harrison Birtwistle, and Matthew Aucoin.


title: Kathy Baker

text: Katherine Whitton Baker (born June 8, 1950) is an American actress. Baker began her career in theater and made her screen debut in the 1983 drama film "The Right Stuff". She received the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for her performance in "Street Smart" (1987). Baker also has appeared in over 50 films, including " Jacknife" (1989), "Edward Scissorhands" (1990), "The Cider House Rules" (1999), "Cold Mountain" (2003), "Nine Lives" (2005), "The Jane Austen Book Club" (2007), "Last Chance Harvey" (2008), "Take Shelter" (2011), "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013), and "The Age of Adaline" (2015).


title: Kathy Baker

text: On television, Baker starred as Dr. Jill Brock in the CBS drama series "Picket Fences" (1992–1996), for which she received three Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards. She later received three additional nominations and a Primetime Emmy Award for her performances in "Touched by an Angel", "Boston Public", and "Door to Door".


title: Kathy Baker

text: Baker was born in Midland, Texas, and raised a Quaker in New Mexico, the daughter of John Seawand Baker, a geologist and educator, and his French-born wife, Helene Andree (née Whitton). She attended high school at Mills High School in Millbrae, California. She graduated in 1968. Her drama instructor, Allen Knight, was a major influence in her desire to become a professional actress. She attended the Boston University School of Fine Arts Acting program and studied acting at the California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s. She later earned a B.A. degree in French in 1977 from UC Berkeley.


title: Kathy Baker

text: Baker began her acting career at San Francisco's Magic Theatre, performing in several of Sam Shepard's plays before getting her break in an off-Broadway production of "Fool for Love" (1983) opposite Ed Harris. She won an Obie Award for this role. In the same year she was cast as Louise Shepard, Alan Shepard's wife, in the drama film "The Right Stuff". She later had dramatic performances as a prostitute in "Street Smart" (1987) and a recovering alcoholic and victim of domestic abuse in "Clean and Sober" (1988). For her performance in "Street Smart", Baker has won National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress and Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female nomination. She later starred in films "Dad", "Jacknife" and "Edward Scissorhands".


title: Kathy Baker

text: From 1992 to 1996, Baker starred as Jill Brock, a small-town doctor, in the CBS critically acclaimed drama series "Picket Fences" created by David E. Kelley. For her performance in the series she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series three times: in 1993, 1995 and 1996, Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama in 1994, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series in 1995. She later appeared in David E. Kelley's dramas "Ally McBeal", "The Practice" and had the recurring role as Meredith Peters in "Boston Public", for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series in 2001. Baker also received Emmy Award nominations for her guest performance in "Touched by an Angel" and in the category Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for "Door to Door".


title: Kathy Baker

text: Baker has appeared in over 50 theatrical films in supporting and leading roles. She starred in two movies directed by Rodrigo García: "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her" (2000) and "Nine Lives" (2005). Her other major credits include "The Cider House Rules" (1999), "Cold Mountain" (2003), "13 Going on 30" (2004), "The Jane Austen Book Club" (2007), "Last Chance Harvey" (2008), "Take Shelter" (2011) and "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013). She starred opposite Tom Selleck in the "Jesse Stone" made-for-TV film series in the 2000s. Also on television she guest-starred on "Nip/Tuck", "", "Grey's Anatomy", and "Medium". She also starred in the short-lived Lifetime drama series "Against the Wall" in 2011.


title: Kathy Baker

text: She lives in Southern California with her second husband, director/producer Steven Robman, whom she married in 2003. She has a son and daughter with her first husband, Donald Camillieri.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Rings (known in Japan as The Ring: Rebirth and in Latin America as The Ring 3) is a 2017 American supernatural horror film directed by F. Javier Gutiérrez, written by David Loucka, Jacob Aaron Estes and Akiva Goldsman and starring Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan and Vincent D'Onofrio. It is the third and final installment in "The Ring" series, following "The Ring" (2002) and "The Ring Two" (2005). It is based on elements of "Spiral" by Kōji Suzuki.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Paramount Pictures had initially planned a third film, originally titled "The Ring 3D", in early 2014, with Gutiérrez signed to direct the film from a screenplay written by Goldsman, Loucka, and Aaron Estes.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: "Rings" was released in the United States on February 3, 2017, and opened #2 in the box office. Despite being critically panned, it grossed $83million worldwide against its $25million budget.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: In 2013, on an airplane bound for Seattle, Carter reveals that he has watched Samara Morgan's cursed videotape. Kelly reveals she has seen the tape too, and asks Carter if he made a copy; he replies that he did not. Moments later, Samara causes the airplane to crash, and kills Carter.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Two years later in 2015, a college professor, Gabriel Brown, buys a VCR, discovering the videotape inside. Elsewhere, a student, Julia, sees her boyfriend, Holt, off to college, but she grows concerned when he ghosts her. Soon, a panicked girl, Skye, contacts her, she too is concerned about Holt. When Julia goes looking for Holt, she meets Gabriel, and finds a group of people known as the Sevens, who are involved in an experiment involving the cursed video. The Sevens film themselves watching the video before passing the footage to another person called a "tail".


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Julia recognizes Skye instantly. She goes with Skye to her apartment to unknowingly watch the video. When Skye tries to force her to watch the video, Julia locks herself in the bathroom. Samara kills Skye in the apartment. Julia tries to rush out of the apartment, and when finally opening the door, she finds Holt on the other side. Holt reveals that he has watched the tape as well, and has 12 hours left. Julia watches his copy, and when she picks up the phone, she experiences a vision of a door. The phone burns a mark into her hand. Julia's version of the video cannot be copied, and contains additional images of a mysterious woman. She realizes they must cremate Samara's physical remains.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Gabriel photocopies the mark on Julia's hand and sends them to Sacrament Valley, where Samara was given a proper burial after the residents of Moesko Island refused to accept the remains. Julia and Holt find an unmarked tomb, but when they break in, they find it empty. They are caught and taken to a blind man named Galen Burke, who claims Samara's body was entombed by a local priest, but a flood came, leading the priest to rebury her in a potter's field outside town.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: On the way to the field, Julia and Holt come upon a car crash, and learn that Gabriel was involved. He had realized the mark on Julia's hand is Braille and translated it. However, he is killed by a falling utility pole before he could warn them. After experiencing a vision of Evelyn, Julia and Holt return to town. Julia goes to the church, and discovers a hidden chamber beneath the bell tower. She finds evidence that Evelyn was imprisoned there while pregnant: held in captivity by the priest after being raped. She escaped eight months into the pregnancy.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Holt learns that Galen is the priest. Julia separately visits Galen, and explains her findings. He attacks her, revealing he is the priest as well as Samara's biological father. He blinded himself to escape the reach of her powers. Julia pushes him down the stairs, temporarily incapacitating him. Holt rushes to Galen's house, where he is knocked unconscious. Julia discovers Samara's skeleton behind a wall, and Galen tries to strangle her to prevent her from cremating Samara's remains. He claims that the cremation would unleash an unspeakable evil upon the world, and that he has killed several people who previously attempted to do the same. Suddenly, a swarm of cicadas fly in, summoning Samara through Julia's phone. Samara cures Galen's blindness, and kills him. Holt recovers and rushes to Julia's aid. That night, he and Julia cremate Samara's corpse, in an attempt to appease her spirit once and for all, and return home.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: While Julia is in the shower, Holt notices a voicemail from Gabriel, who warns him of the Braille, which Holt begins to translate. In the bathroom, Julia peels away the skin where the mark was, revealing grey skin underneath. She begins to cough up black hair, from which a cicada is born. Meanwhile, Julia's copy of the cursed video is sent to everyone on her contact list, eventually going viral, despite Holt's futile attempts to disconnect the computer. As his computer glitches, the Braille translation is revealed to be "rebirth". Samara is reborn in Julia, who sees Samara's face in her mirror instead of her own.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: In 2014, Paramount Pictures announced the originally titled "The Ring 3D", with F. Javier Gutiérrez directing, after vacating the "Crow" remake. In August, Paramount was in talks with Akiva Goldsman to write a third draft of the screenplay, which had previously been worked on by David Loucka and Jacob Aaron Estes. In November, Gutiérrez posted an Instagram photo that showed that the title of the sequel had been changed to "Rings".


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Matilda Lutz was cast in the lead role, while Alex Roe was cast as the male lead. Aimee Teegarden joined the cast and Johnny Galecki was cast as Gabriel, a professor who mentors and helps both Holt and Julia.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Principal photography on the film began on March 23, 2015, in Atlanta, and wrapped on May 31. Reshoots took place in July 2016.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Paramount Pictures originally set the film for a November 13, 2015, release, but the film was pulled from the schedule, and rescheduled the release date to April 1, 2016. The film was rescheduled again for release on October 28, 2016, to take the place of Paramount's previous October horror release staple, the "Paranormal Activity" series, which ended in 2015 with "" at the time. The film was delayed to February 3, 2017, most likely to avoid competition with "", leaving the latter as the only horror film that debuted around Halloween 2016.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Paramount released two trailers to promote the film. The second international trailer contained new footage. In addition, Paramount released a prank video where an actress dressed as Samara jumped out of a television to scare unwitting patrons at an electronics store. The video garnered 200million views in 24 hours on Facebook.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: "Rings" was released on digital HD on April 21 and on Blu-ray and DVD on May 2, 2017. The digital HD and Blu-ray releases include behind-the-scenes interviews with the cast & crew, deleted/extended scenes, and an alternate ending.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: "Rings" grossed $27.8million in the United States and Canada and $55.3million in other territories for a worldwide total of $83.1million, against a production budget of $25million.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: In North America, the film was released alongside "The Space Between Us" and "The Comedian", and was projected to gross $12–14million from about 3,000 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $800,000 from its Thursday night previews. It went on to open to $13million, finishing second at the box office behind fellow horror film "Split".


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 8% based on 113 reviews and an average rating of 3.30/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Rings" may offer ardent fans of the franchise a few threadbare thrills, but for everyone else, it may feel like an endless loop of muddled mythology and rehashed plot points". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 25 out of 100 based on 23 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C−" on an A+ to F scale, lower than the B– and C+ earned by its respective predecessors.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Alex Gilyadov of IGN gave the film a score 4.5/10, stating that it "opts for lazy jump scares and a convoluted origins story no one asked for or needed", though not dismissing that it has "some chilling scenes and creepy visuals". Hernan Khatchadourian of Diario Popular described the movie as "more entertaining than the long movie by Verbinsky", praising the cinematography, direction, and acting. Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" gave the movie zero stars and called it a "botch job" that suffers from "demo-worthy awfulness in directing, writing and acting". Peter Sobczynski of RogerEbert.com gave a single star, calling it "more wearying than frightening". A.A. Dowd of "The A.V. Club" commented that the film was a pale imitation of the 2002 American remake in terms of visuals and plot structure. He also dismissed the film's characters as "bland nothings", citing their lack of development in the story. John Squires from Bloody Disgusting "dug "Rings" quite a bit", suggesting that "the movie itself is actually way better than its clearly-intended-for-teen-audiences marketing", and the reveal of the final scene in the trailer was "completely robbed of suspense by the marketing department".


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Other international critics applauded the film. Mike McCahill of "The Guardian" commented that the film "smoothly reinvents the wheel", pointing out that "the admirably loopy finale, involving blind Vincent d'Onofrio's swarming army of cicadas, is worthy of one of the better "Exorcist" sequels". Javier Jimenez Montoya of Vavel also praised the film, stating that "it's a step forward in the horror genre" and applauding "its strong, surprising ending".


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: The generally negative critical reception in the US, along with its lower-than-expected US box office intake, was partially blamed by some critics and fans for the cancellation of Paramount's newest installment of the "Friday the 13th" franchise.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: The final numbers in the global box office pushed Paramount to consider making another film in the "Ring" franchise.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: Speaking at CinemaCon, Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore said that should the film prove successful, more sequels could recur annually, taking the place of Paramount's "Paranormal Activity" series. These plans were left in doubt following Moore's departure from the company. In a post-release interview, Moore's successor, Megan Colligan, said that "time will tell" if another sequel is in the cards. Following Colligan's departure, there has been no update on a sequel.


title: Rings (2017 film)

text: In September 2019, "The Grudge" director Nicolas Pesce expressed interest in a crossover film between "The Grudge" and the American "The Ring" film series.


title: Visual acuity

text: Visual acuity (VA) commonly refers to the clarity of vision, but technically rates an examinee's ability to recognize small details with precision. Visual acuity is dependent on optical and neural factors, i.e. (1) the sharpness of the retinal image within the eye, (2) the health and functioning of the retina, and (3) the sensitivity of the interpretative faculty of the brain. The most commonly referred visual acuity is the far acuity (e.g. 6/6 or 20/20 acuity), which describes the examinee's ability to recognize small details at a far distance, and is relevant to people with myopia; however, for people with hyperopia, the near acuity is used instead to describe the examinee's ability to recognize small details at a near distance.


title: Visual acuity

text: A common cause of low visual acuity is refractive error (ametropia), errors in how the light is refracted in the eyeball, and errors in how the retinal image is interpreted by the brain. The latter is the primary cause for low vision in people with albinism. Causes of refractive errors include aberrations in the shape of the eyeball or the cornea, and reduced flexibility of the lens. Too high or too low refraction (in relation to the length of the eyeball and curvature of cornea) is, respectively, the cause of near-sightedness (myopia or minus power) or far-sightedness (hyperopia or plus power); normal refractive status is referred to as emmetropia (zero power). Other optical causes are astigmatism or more complex corneal irregularities. These anomalies can mostly be corrected by optical means (such as eyeglasses, contact lenses, refractive surgery, etc.).


title: Visual acuity

text: Neural factors that limit acuity are located in the retina or the brain (or the pathway leading there). Examples for the first are a detached retina and macular degeneration. Another common impairment, amblyopia, is caused by the visual brain not having developed properly in early childhood. In some cases, low visual acuity is caused by brain damage, such as from traumatic brain injury or stroke. When optical factors are corrected for, acuity can be considered a measure of neural well-functioning.


title: Visual acuity

text: Visual acuity is typically measured while fixating, i.e. as a measure of central (or foveal) vision, for the reason that it is highest in the very center.). However, acuity in peripheral vision can be of equal importance in everyday life. Acuity declines towards the periphery first steeply and then more gradually, in an inverse-linear fashion (i.e. the decline follows approximately a hyperbola). The decline is according to "E"/("E"+"E"), where "E" is eccentricity in degrees visual angle, and "E" is a constant of approximately 2 deg. At 2 deg eccentricity, for example, acuity is half the foveal value.


title: Visual acuity

text: Note that visual acuity is a measure of how well small details are resolved in the very center of the visual field; it therefore does not indicate how larger patterns are recognized. Visual acuity alone thus cannot determine the overall quality of visual function.


title: Visual acuity

text: Visual is a measure of the spatial resolution of the visual processing system. VA, as it is sometimes referred to by optical professionals, is tested by requiring the person whose vision is being tested to identify so-called optotypes – stylized letters, Landolt rings, pediatric symbols, symbols for the illiterate, standardized Cyrillic letters in the Golovin–Sivtsev table, or other patterns – on a printed chart (or some other means) from a set viewing distance. Optotypes are represented as black symbols against a white background (i.e. at maximum contrast). The distance between the person's eyes and the testing chart is set so as to approximate "optical infinity" in the way the lens attempts to focus (far acuity), or at a defined reading distance (near acuity).


title: Visual acuity

text: A reference value above which visual acuity is considered normal is called 6/6 vision, the USC equivalent of which is 20/20 vision: At 6 metres or 20 feet, a human eye with that performance is able to separate contours that are approximately 1.75 mm apart. Vision of 6/12 corresponds to lower performance, while vision of 6/3 to better performance. Normal individuals have an acuity of 6/4 or better (depending on age and other factors).


title: Visual acuity

text: In the expression 6/x vision, the numerator (6) is the distance in metres between the subject and the chart and the denominator (x) the distance at which a person with 6/6 acuity would discern the same optotype. Thus, 6/12 means that a person with 6/6 vision would discern the same optotype from 12 metres away (i.e. at twice the distance). This is equivalent to saying that with 6/12 vision, the person possesses half the spatial resolution and needs twice the size to discern the optotype.


title: Visual acuity

text: A simple and efficient way to state acuity is by converting the fraction to a decimal: 6/6 then corresponds to an acuity (or a Visus) of 1.0 (see "Expression" below), while 6/3 corresponds to 2.0, which is often attained by well-corrected healthy young subjects with binocular vision. Stating acuity as a decimal number is the standard in European countries, as required by the European norm (EN ISO 8596, previously DIN 58220).


title: Visual acuity

text: The precise distance at which acuity is measured is not important as long as it is sufficiently far away and the size of the optotype on the retina is the same. That size is specified as a visual angle, which is the angle, at the eye, under which the optotype appears. For 6/6 = 1.0 acuity, the size of a letter on the Snellen chart or Landolt C chart is a visual angle of 5 arc minutes (1 arc min = 1/60 of a degree). By the design of a typical optotype (like a Snellen E or a Landolt C), the critical gap that needs to be resolved is 1/5 this value, i.e., 1 arc min. The latter is the value used in the international definition of visual acuity:


title: Visual acuity

text: Acuity is a measure of visual performance and does not relate to the eyeglass prescription required to correct vision. Instead, an eye exam seeks to find the prescription that will provide the best corrected visual performance achievable. The resulting acuity may be greater or less than 6/6 = 1.0. Indeed, a subject diagnosed as having 6/6 vision will often actually have higher visual acuity because, once this standard is attained, the subject is considered to have normal (in the sense of undisturbed) vision and smaller optotypes are not tested. Subjects with 6/6 vision or "better" (20/15, 20/10, etc.) may still benefit from an eyeglass correction for other problems related to the visual system, such as hyperopia, ocular injuries, or presbyopia.


title: Visual acuity

text: Visual acuity is measured by a psychophysical procedure and as such relates the physical characteristics of a stimulus to a subject's percept and their resulting responses. Measurement can be by using an eye chart invented by Ferdinand Monoyer, by optical instruments, or by computerized tests like the FrACT.


title: Visual acuity

text: Care must be taken that viewing conditions correspond to the standard, such as correct illumination of the room and the eye chart, correct viewing distance, enough time for responding, error allowance, and so forth. In European countries, these conditions are standardized by the European norm (EN ISO 8596, previously DIN 58220).


title: Visual acuity

text: Daylight vision (i.e. photopic vision) is subserved by cone receptor cells which have high spatial density (in the central fovea) and allow high acuity of 6/6 or better. In low light (i.e., scotopic vision), cones do not have sufficient sensitivity and vision is subserved by rods. Spatial resolution is then much lower. This is due to spatial summation of rods, i.e. a number of rods merge into a bipolar cell, in turn connecting to a ganglion cell, and the resulting unit for resolution is large, and acuity small. Note that there are no rods in the very center of the visual field (the foveola), and highest performance in low light is achieved in near peripheral vision.


title: Visual acuity

text: The maximum angular resolution of the human eye is 28 arc seconds or 0.47 arc minutes, this gives an angular resolution of 0.008 degrees, and at a distance of 1 km corresponds to 136 mm. This is equal to 0.94 arc minutes per line pair (one white and one black line), or 0.016 degrees. For a pixel pair (one white and one black pixel) this gives a pixel density of 128 pixels per degree (PPD).


title: Visual acuity

text: 6/6 vision is defined as the ability to resolve two points of light separated by a visual angle of one minute of arc, corresponding to 60 PPD, or about 290–350 pixels per inch for a display on a device held 250 to 300 mm from the eye.


title: Visual acuity

text: To resolve detail, the eye's optical system has to project a focused image on the fovea, a region inside the macula having the highest density of cone photoreceptor cells (the only kind of photoreceptors existing in the fovea's very center of 300 μm diameter), thus having the highest resolution and best color vision. Acuity and color vision, despite being mediated by the same cells, are different physiologic functions that do not interrelate except by position. Acuity and color vision can be affected independently.


title: Visual acuity

text: The grain of a photographic mosaic has just as limited resolving power as the "grain" of the retinal mosaic. To see detail, two sets of receptors must be intervened by a middle set. The maximum resolution is that 30 seconds of arc, corresponding to the foveal cone diameter or the angle subtended at the nodal point of the eye. To get reception from each cone, as it would be if vision was on a mosaic basis, the "local sign" must be obtained from a single cone via a chain of one bipolar, ganglion, and lateral geniculate cell each. A key factor of obtaining detailed vision, however, is inhibition. This is mediated by neurons such as the amacrine and horizontal cells, which functionally render the spread or convergence of signals inactive. This tendency to one-to-one shuttle of signals is powered by brightening of the center and its surroundings, which triggers the inhibition leading to a one-to-one wiring. This scenario, however, is rare, as cones may connect to both midget and flat (diffuse) bipolars, and amacrine and horizontal cells can merge messages just as easily as inhibit them.


title: Visual acuity

text: Light travels from the fixation object to the fovea through an imaginary path called the visual axis. The eye's tissues and structures that are in the visual axis (and also the tissues adjacent to it) affect the quality of the image. These structures are: tear film, cornea, anterior chamber, pupil, lens, vitreous, and finally the retina. The posterior part of the retina, called the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is responsible for, among many other things, absorbing light that crosses the retina so it cannot bounce to other parts of the retina. In many vertebrates, such as cats, where high visual acuity is not a priority, there is a reflecting tapetum layer that gives the photoreceptors a "second chance" to absorb the light, thus improving the ability to see in the dark. This is what causes an animal's eyes to seemingly glow in the dark when a light is shone on them. The RPE also has a vital function of recycling the chemicals used by the rods and cones in photon detection. If the RPE is damaged and does not clean up this "shed" blindness can result.


title: Visual acuity

text: As in a photographic lens, visual acuity is affected by the size of the pupil. Optical aberrations of the eye that decrease visual acuity are at a maximum when the pupil is largest (about 8 mm), which occurs in low-light conditions. When the pupil is small (1–2 mm), image sharpness may be limited by diffraction of light by the pupil (see diffraction limit). Between these extremes is the pupil diameter that is generally best for visual acuity in normal, healthy eyes; this tends to be around 3 or 4 mm.


title: Visual acuity

text: If the optics of the eye were otherwise perfect, theoretically, acuity would be limited by pupil diffraction, which would be a diffraction-limited acuity of 0.4 minutes of arc (minarc) or 6/2.6 acuity. The smallest cone cells in the fovea have sizes corresponding to 0.4 minarc of the visual field, which also places a lower limit on acuity. The optimal acuity of 0.4 minarc or 6/2.6 can be demonstrated using a laser interferometer that bypasses any defects in the eye's optics and projects a pattern of dark and light bands directly on the retina. Laser interferometers are now used routinely in patients with optical problems, such as cataracts, to assess the health of the retina before subjecting them to surgery.


title: Visual acuity

text: The visual cortex is the part of the cerebral cortex in the posterior part of the brain responsible for processing visual stimuli, called the occipital lobe. The central 10° of field (approximately the extension of the macula) is represented by at least 60% of the visual cortex. Many of these neurons are believed to be involved directly in visual acuity processing.


title: Visual acuity

text: Proper development of normal visual acuity depends on a human or an animal having normal visual input when it is very young. Any visual deprivation, that is, anything interfering with such input over a prolonged period of time, such as a cataract, severe eye turn or strabismus, anisometropia (unequal refractive error between the two eyes), or covering or patching the eye during medical treatment, will usually result in a severe and permanent decrease in visual acuity and pattern recognition in the affected eye if not treated early in life, a condition known as amblyopia. The decreased acuity is reflected in various abnormalities in cell properties in the visual cortex. These changes include a marked decrease in the number of cells connected to the affected eye as well as cells connected to both eyes in cortical area V1, resulting in a loss of stereopsis, i.e. depth perception by binocular vision (colloquially: "3D vision"). The period of time over which an animal is highly sensitive to such visual deprivation is referred to as the critical period.


title: Visual acuity

text: The eye is connected to the visual cortex by the optic nerve coming out of the back of the eye. The two optic nerves come together behind the eyes at the optic chiasm, where about half of the fibers from each eye cross over to the opposite side and join fibers from the other eye representing the corresponding visual field, the combined nerve fibers from both eyes forming the optic tract. This ultimately forms the physiological basis of binocular vision. The tracts project to a relay station in the midbrain called the lateral geniculate nucleus, part of the thalamus, and then to the visual cortex along a collection of nerve fibers called the optic radiation.


title: Visual acuity

text: Any pathological process in the visual system, even in older humans beyond the critical period, will often cause decreases in visual acuity. Thus measuring visual acuity is a simple test in accessing the health of the eyes, the visual brain, or pathway to the brain. Any relatively sudden decrease in visual acuity is always a cause for concern. Common causes of decreases in visual acuity are cataracts and scarred corneas, which affect the optical path, diseases that affect the retina, such as macular degeneration and diabetes, diseases affecting the optic pathway to the brain such as tumors and multiple sclerosis, and diseases affecting the visual cortex such as tumors and strokes.


title: Visual acuity

text: Though the resolving power depends on the size and packing density of the photoreceptors, the neural system must interpret the receptors' information. As determined from single-cell experiments on the cat and primate, different ganglion cells in the retina are tuned to different spatial frequencies, so some ganglion cells at each location have better acuity than others. Ultimately, however, it appears that the size of a patch of cortical tissue in visual area V1 that processes a given location in the visual field (a concept known as cortical magnification) is equally important in determining visual acuity. In particular, that size is largest in the fovea's center, and decreases with increasing distance from there.


title: Visual acuity

text: Besides the neural connections of the receptors, the optical system is an equally key player in retinal resolution. In the ideal eye, the image of a diffraction grating can subtend 0.5 micrometre on the retina. This is certainly not the case, however, and furthermore the pupil can cause diffraction of the light. Thus, black lines on a grating will be mixed with the intervening white lines to make a gray appearance. Defective optical issues (such as uncorrected myopia) can render it worse, but suitable lenses can help. Images (such as gratings) can be sharpened by lateral inhibition, i.e., more highly excited cells inhibiting the less excited cells. A similar reaction is in the case of chromatic aberrations, in which the color fringes around black-and-white objects are inhibited similarly.


title: Visual acuity

text: Visual acuity is often measured according to the size of letters viewed on a Snellen chart or the size of other symbols, such as Landolt Cs or the E Chart.


title: Visual acuity

text: In some countries, acuity is expressed as a vulgar fraction, and in some as a decimal number. Using the metre as a unit of measurement, (fractional) visual acuity is expressed relative to 6/6. Otherwise, using the foot, visual acuity is expressed relative to 20/20. For all practical purposes, 20/20 vision is equivalent to 6/6. In the decimal system, acuity is defined as the reciprocal value of the size of the gap (measured in arc minutes) of the smallest Landolt C, the orientation of which can be reliably identified. A value of 1.0 is equal to 6/6.


title: Visual acuity

text: LogMAR is another commonly used scale, expressed as the (decadic) logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (MAR), which is the reciprocal of the acuity number. The LogMAR scale converts the geometric sequence of a traditional chart to a linear scale. It measures visual acuity loss: positive values indicate vision loss, while negative values denote normal or better visual acuity. This scale is commonly used clinically and in research because the lines are of equal length and so it forms a continuous scale with equally spaced intervals between points, unlike Snellen charts, which have different numbers of letters on each line.


title: Visual acuity

text: A visual acuity of 6/6 is frequently described as meaning that a person can see detail from away the same as a person with "normal" eyesight would see from 6 metres. If a person has a visual acuity of 6/12, he is said to see detail from away the same as a person with "normal" eyesight would see it from away.


title: Visual acuity

text: The definition of 6/6 is somewhat arbitrary, since human eyes typically have higher acuity, as Tscherning writes, "We have found also that the best eyes have a visual acuity which approaches 2, and we can be almost certain that if, with a good illumination, the acuity is only equal to 1, the eye presents defects sufficiently pronounced to be easily established." Most observers may have a binocular acuity superior to 6/6; the limit of acuity in the unaided human eye is around 6/3–6/2.4 (20/10–20/8), although 6/3 was the highest score recorded in a study of some US professional athletes. Some birds of prey, such as hawks, are believed to have an acuity of around 20/2; in this respect, their vision is much better than human eyesight.


title: Visual acuity

text: When visual acuity is below the largest optotype on the chart, the reading distance is reduced until the patient can read it. Once the patient is able to read the chart, the letter size and test distance are noted. If the patient is unable to read the chart at any distance, he or she is tested as follows:


title: Visual acuity

text: Various countries have defined statutory limits for poor visual acuity that qualifies as a disability. For example, in Australia, the Social Security Act defines blindness as:


title: Visual acuity

text: A person's visual acuity is registered documenting the following: whether the test was for distant or near vision, the eye(s) evaluated and whether corrective lenses (i.e. glasses or contact lenses) were used:


title: Visual acuity

text: So, distant visual acuity of 6/10 and 6/8 with pinhole in the right eye will be: DscOD 6/10 PH 6/8. Distant visual acuity of count fingers and 6/17 with pinhole in the left eye will be: DscOS CF PH 6/17. Near visual acuity of 6/8 with pinhole remaining at 6/8 in both eyes with spectacles will be: NccOU 6/8 PH 6/8.


title: Visual acuity

text: "Dynamic visual acuity" defines the ability of the eye to visually discern fine detail in a moving object.


title: Visual acuity

text: Visual acuity measurement involves more than being able to see the optotypes. The patient should be cooperative, understand the optotypes, be able to communicate with the physician, and many more factors. If any of these factors is missing, then the measurement will not represent the patient's real visual acuity.


title: Visual acuity

text: Visual acuity is a subjective test meaning that if the patient is unwilling or unable to cooperate, the test cannot be done. A patient who is sleepy, intoxicated, or has any disease that can alter their consciousness or mental status, may not achieve their maximum possible acuity.


title: Visual acuity

text: Patients who are illiterate in the language whose letters and/or numbers appear on the chart will be registered as having very low visual acuity if this is not known. Some patients will not tell the examiner that they do not know the optotypes, unless asked directly about it. Brain damage can result in a patient not being able to recognize printed letters, or being unable to spell them.


title: Visual acuity

text: A motor inability can make a person respond incorrectly to the optotype shown and negatively affect the visual acuity measurement.


title: Visual acuity

text: Variables such as pupil size, background adaptation luminance, duration of presentation, type of optotype used, interaction effects from adjacent visual contours (or "crowding") can all affect visual acuity measurement.


title: Visual acuity

text: The newborn's visual acuity is approximately 6/133, developing to 6/6 well after the age of six months in most children, according to a study published in 2009.