How does Roald Dahl portray the character of Mary Maloney in the short story "Lamb to the Slaughter"?

Mary is portrayed as a Madonna-like and innocent angel of the home as the story opens. She has a calm, composed, "slow smiling air" about her. She is six months pregnant and has a "soft" mouth, "translucent" skin, and "large" eyes. Her soft, gentle looks appear to be a mirror of a gentle, nurturing personality. She hangs her husband's coat and pours him a drink, wanting to serve him cheese and crackers. It is a "blissful" point in her day when he comes home from work.
In every way, Mary seems to be a loving, caring wife who wraps her life around her husband and his needs.
However, after her husband tells her he is going to divorce her and doesn't want her to make a fuss, we see a different side of Mary's character, one that is not all sweetness and light. She is in shock and feels "slight nausea and a desire to vomit."
At this point, a more decisive and murderous side to Mary comes into play. She whacks her husband on the back of the head with a frozen lamb chop, killing him.
The new Mary is still calm and composed, but she cleverly uses her seeming innocence and domesticity to hide her crime. Not only does she show quick-thinking resourcefulness in killing her husband with the weapon at hand, she is quick thinking and resourceful in serving the police the murder weapon for dinner. Mary, we discover, is a person who, beneath the facade, will look out for herself and solve problems in her own way.
The story is illustrating that appearances can be deceiving.

Mary Maloney is portrayed at the beginning of the story as a quintessential doting housewife. She exists to make sure her husband's every need is met. Readers can see evidence of this through the fact that she is patiently waiting for Patrick to come home from work. Once he is home, Mary springs into action. She gets Patrick his drink, and then she sits down to patiently wait for Patrick's next need or comment. We are told that this time spent with Patrick is one of her favorite things to do because she gets to luxuriate in his presence. It's actually somewhat gag-worthy that she can be so completely enamored with Patrick. Mary seems to exist to serve her husband, and that paints her as selfless but also as weak-willed. Her desires come secondary.
This initial portrayal of Mary is absolutely critical to her overall characterization because it makes her change that much more drastic. After she kills Patrick, readers see that she is both cunning and creative. Mary figures out a way to establish an alibi and dispose of the murder weapon. We see her thinking in a cold and logical manner that is free of any kind of emotional swooning that we might expect her to do. She is doing all of this for her own freedom as well as the protection of her unborn child, and readers see that she is capable of becoming that fierce and protective mother. She digs out strength reserves that readers were not made aware of in the story's initial paragraphs.

In the first part of "Lamb to the Slaughter," Dahl portrays Mary Maloney as the perfect, doting wife. He describes in detail, for example, how she prepares the home ahead of her husband's arrival from work and how she lovingly mixes his drink when he arrives. This ritualistic behavior emphasizes that she is a very capable housekeeper, as well as being totally committed to her husband.
When her husband breaks up with her, however, Mary's portrayal changes. Dahl switches his portrayal from a doting wife to a woman victimized by her husband. Her world is shattered by her husband's news (which Dahl does not reveal to the reader) and she is described as being nauseous, as though the whole thing is a bad dream or not quite real.
Once Mary kills her husband with the leg of lamb, her portrayal changes once again. This time, Dahl emphasizes her cunning as she makes her plans to cover up her role in his death. Her cunning is shown, for instance, by her ability to redo her hair and to go to the grocer's shop, acting as though her husband is safe and well.
By the final line of the story, Dahl has transformed Mary into an experienced murderess. As the detectives eat the leg of lamb, Mary can be found "giggling," delighting in the fact that she has literally gotten away with murder.

A rod of length L and mass M is attached to a pivot and suspended at an angle alpha from the vertical using a support wire, as shown in the diagram. A lump of clay of mass m is fired at the end of the rod with a velocity v . Just before the clay makes contact with the rod, the wire is cut. Assuming the clay and rod stick together after collision, what is the angular velocity of the system? (treat the lump of clay as a point mass)

We are going to use conservation of angular momentum for this problem. We are going to need the moment of inertia for a rod rotating about its end. I will derive it here using the formula for the inertia about an objects center of mass.
I_(cm)=int r^2 dm
Where r is the distance from the axis of rotation.
The moment of inertia through the center of mass for a rod on the x-axis with density lambda=M/L is:
I_(cm)=int x^2 dM=int_(-L/2)^(L/2) x^2 (lambda*dx)=lambda/3 x^3|_(-L/2)^(L/2)=1/12 lambda*L^3=12 ML^2
The parallel axis theorem states the the moment of inertia about the end of the rod will then be:
I_(rod)=I_(cm)+Mr^2
Where r is the distance from the center of mass.
I_(rod)=1/12 ML^2+M(L/2)^2=1/3ML^2
Now for conservation of momentum. Let the quantities with the subscript c be for the clay.
L_i=L_f
r xx p_c=I_(t o t) omega
omega=(r xx p_(c))/I_(t o t)
omega=(L*mv*sin(90^@ -alpha))/(I_(rod)+I_(c))
omega=(L*mv*cos(alpha))/(1/3ML^2+mL^2)
omega=(3mv*cos(alpha))/((M+3m)L)
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/amom.html

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mi2.html

How does Sodapop feel about being a Greaser?

All Greasers take some pride in being Greasers because they all take care of each other. Greasers are proud to belong to their group because they look out for each other. Darry, Soda, and Pony always left the door to their house open, even when they slept, because Darry wanted to provide shelter for boys who might have had nowhere else to go.
Soda accepts that he belongs with the Greasers and does not hesitate to rush to the aid of another member. He joins in on the rumbles against the Socs and enjoys the companionship of his friends. Soda is not hung up on being a Greaser; instead, he ignores it altogether and embraces his life as an individual and a member of the group.  

It wasn't fair for the Socs to have everything. We were as good as they were; it wasn't our fault we were greasers. I couldn't just take it or leave it, like Two-Bit, or ignore it and love life anyway, like Sodapop, or harden myself beyond caring, like Dally, or actually enjoy it, like Tim Shepard (Ch. 3).

How is "The Old Nurse's Story" by Elizabeth Gaskell similar to Gothic literature and how does it differ? In what ways is the book more Victorian rather than Gothic?

"Old Nurse's Story," by Elizabeth Gaskell, was written in 1852 during the Victorian era of literature. Gothic literature is more closely associated with the Romantic era, which ended about two decades earlier. The short story has many Gothic elements, but it shows the influence of the Victorian era as well.
Some of the Gothic elements of the story are the remote, isolated mansion; a locked east wing into which no one goes; secretive, long-time servants; the desolate fells surrounding the house (replacing the typical moors); an organ that plays by itself on stormy nights; a fireplace and chandelier that blaze and go out of their own accord; fits of passion, including an old man with "his hair streaming as in the blast of a furnace"; and ghosts.
The Victorians didn't abandon the Gothic, but they seemed unable to embrace it as freely as their Romantic counterparts had. They were more mature and wise, after all, than their emotion-ruled predecessors. So elements of realistic family drama, typical of Victorian novels, find their way into this story as well. The story features a controlling father, jealous sisters who both love the same man, a secret marriage, a hidden child, the father's wrath when the secret is discovered, and cruel violence. Telling the entire tale is a governess (called a nurse), a favorite Victorian character that appeared in novels such as Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre. The ancient Miss Furnivall, bitterly unable to move on from a past tragedy, anticipates Dickens's Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. It's notable that the nurse tells the story a generation after it occurred, as if to acknowledge that true Gothic action was a thing of the past during Victorian times. Another mark of the Victorian influence is the didactic ending. A true Gothic story would be content with providing enchantment to the reader without feeling the need to impart a life lesson, but Gaskell bludgeons readers with the tale's moral in the final lines of the story: "What is done in youth can never be undone in age!" And she has Miss Furnivall state it twice, just to make sure the lesson hits home.
Gaskell entertained her readers with plenty of Gothic elements but gave them a dose of Victorian wisdom at the same time, making the story a charming blend of Gothic and Victorian literature.

How does Vera’s narration in paragraph 14 help build suspense?

The key to answering this particular question lies in the way Saki's character, Vera, weaves her story: she hands out information only gradually, one piece at a time. This is an effect that can already be observed long before we actually reach the fourteenth paragraph. (In fact, I think the suspense present in paragraph 14 actively relies on the hooks that Saki has set up in the dialogue preceding it.)
Consider paragraph 10, where Vera creates a hook to capture Framton's imagination (while Saki, likewise, attempts to hook his readers'): in reference to her aunt, she tells Framton, "Her great tragedy happened just three years ago." If you notice, Vera does not really say anything. She merely alludes to some greater mystery. In so doing, however, she can continue building on Framton's own curiosity and expectations, dragging him further into her story.
From here, she can begin building her story, adding more details one piece at a time. In paragraph 12, she says, "You may wonder why we keep that window open on an October afternoon," which introduces only another layer to this mystery without resolving anything. Thus, the storytelling present in paragraph 14 actually builds upon hooks that were already set up earlier in the course of the dialogue, as to the yet unknown tragedy of her aunt and the mystery of the open window. These hooks entail a promise from Saki to his readers that these two questions (what was the tragedy and what does the open window have to do with it) will eventually be answered.
However, rather than answer immediately, he continues to build up additional details, creating a story within a story, as to the men who die within the bog, and the effect that their deaths have had on Vera's aunt. In the process, Saki is able to suspend that expected resolution, with the intention of drawing his readers deeper into this story-within-a-story he has provided.

Paragraph 14 of “The Open Window” builds suspense for the reader through a variety of ways. First, we must consider some background before this paragraph. The reader understands Vera to be “self-possessed,” meaning she is calm and confident. We have no reason to doubt her statements as being anything other than true. In addition, the reader knows that Mr. Nuttel has some difficulty with his nerves, giving us an indication that he may not be entirely stable.
In paragraph 14, Vera immediately calls attention to the window. The suspense begins when the reader now becomes aware of the importance of a window, which may not normally be of much concern. Next, the suspense builds when Vera says of her aunt, “three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back.” The reader has been given details of a terrible event, and we know how the event ended, but the story is not over. This leads the reader to question what could happen next. As Vera continues the story, her voice loses “its self-possessed note and became falteringly human.” This means more questions for the reader, wondering what could cause this confident girl to falter. Finally, Vera mentions the window again multiple times, continually enforcing the feeling that something will soon happen regarding the window. Unfortunately for Mr. Nuttel, something does happen with that window.

How do you find the provision of depreciation?

Provision of depreciation is an accounting method that is used in most countries to deal with the fact that most forms of physical capital (e.g. machines, computers, robots) decline in value over time. It allows businesses to include depreciation as an "expense" that businesses incur, which affects how their profits are reported and taxed. Without provision of depreciation, balance sheets would overestimate the value of a company, because they would essentially be assuming that everything the company owns is worth as much as it was when they bought it. They would also make even a good investment look like a bad idea, as the profits of the company would fall every time you buy a new asset.On an accounting statement, provision of depreciation is generally recorded in two ways: Depreciation Expense, where the loss in value of an asset that occurred during this accounting period is simply recorded as an expense, as if it were literally money that had to be paid out this accounting period.But we also want to keep track of the current value of the asset, which brings us to the other part, Accumulated Depreciation. The accumulated depreciation is the total lost value of the asset over the whole time it has been owned. So for example if you buy a $10,000 asset and depreciate it linearly over 5 years, you record a depreciation expense of $2000 each year, but the accumulated depreciation is $2000, then $4000, then $6000, then $8,000, and finally $10,000, at which point you stop adding depreciation expense.
https://bizfluent.com/about-5607812-provision-depreciation-.html

https://www.thebalance.com/depreciation-and-amortization-on-the-income-statement-357570

Can plants undertake respiration and photosynthesis at the same time?

Yes, plants can do photosynthesis and cellular respiration at the same time. When sunlight is available for the plant, the plant can use that energy to perform photosynthesis. The major product of photosynthesis is G3P, a 3 carbon molecule that the plant can use to make glucose (it's own food), or other substances like proteins or lipids that it needs for other life processes. Let's stick with the glucose for this example, though. 
As mentioned, a plant produces glucose as food for itself. In order to use this food for energy, the plant must perform cellular respiration. Just like in animals, glucose is broken down during cellular respiration in plants to produce energy in the form of ATP. This is chemical energy that the plant can use during chemical reactions in cells that require energy. 
So, not only do plants perform both photosynthesis and cellular respiration, but as long as there is sunlight they can perform both at the same time. 

Yes ,plants can undertake respiration and photosynthesis at the same time because the plants usually  respire all the time because their cells need energy to stay alive.On the other hand,plants can only photosynthesise when they are in the light.As a result in the presence of light,plants can do both of them .