Miranda
Miranda (late latin Miranda meaning to be admired at or “watchtower”, “vantage point”). Miranda is also a family name and a female given name. It may also refer to:
People
- Miranda Hart (born 1972), British actress and comedienne
- Miranda Krestovnikoff (born 1973), British television presenter
- Miranda Richardson (born 1958), British actress
Literature
- Miranda (Shakespeare), the daughter of Duke Prospero in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest
- Miranda (novel), a novel by Antoni Lange written in 1924
- Miranda Cornielle, a character in the webcomic User Friendly
- Miranda Priestly, a character in the novel and movie The Devil Wears Prada
Geography
- Miranda, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney
- Miranda, Mato Grosso do Sul, a town in the Mato Grosso do Sul state of Brazil named for sitting on a river of the same name
- Miranda, Cauca, a town in Cauca province
- Miranda, Italy, a city in the province of Isernia
- Miranda, New Zealand, historical fort and small village in the Firth of Thames, New Zealand, best known as the location of the Miranda Shorebird Centre
- Miranda do Corvo, town and municipality
- Miranda do Douro, a municipality
- Terra de Miranda, the historical name of a mesa in northeastern Portugal
- Belmonte de Miranda, also called Miranda in Asturian language, a municipality in Asturias
- Miranda de Arga, town and municipality in northern Spain
- Miranda de Ebro, an industrial city in the Burgos province of Spain
- Miranda (state), one of the twenty-three states of Venezuela
- Miranda, California, a census-designated place in Humboldt County, California
In biology
- The scientific name for the yellow garden spider is Miranda aurantia
- Miranda herba another name for the pitcher plant Nepenthes distillatoria
Other uses
- Miranda (moon), a moon of Uranus
- Miranda (programming language), a functional programming language
- Miranda IM, an open source multiprotocol instant messaging application for Microsoft Windows
- Miranda Camera Company, a former Japanese camera manufacturer which ceased operations in 1976
- Miranda House, a residential college for women, forming part of Delhi University, India
- Miranda Do Douro language, see Mirandese language spoken in parts of Portugal
- Miranda railway station in Sydney, Australia
- A character from British science fiction television series Doctor Who
- Miranda (TV series), British television series
Written for younger readers
Miranda, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: Solar System
Miranda is a moon of the planet Uranus. It is the smallest and innermost of Uranus’s five major moons. It is sometimes called “Uranus V”.
The first pictures of this moon from a spacecraft were taken on January 24, 1986, when Voyager 2 passed by the planet. Only the southern half of Miranda has been viewed in detail, and the rest of the moon has yet to be seen.
This moon has a diameter of only 472 km. This is slightly smaller than the asteroid Vesta, which is the second biggest object in the asteroid belt. Miranda would easily fit within the borders of the state of Arizona.
The surface of Miranda seems to be made almost entirely of ice. There are huge, deep canyons, some reaching over 19 km (12 mi) deep, and a lot of rugged ground, with some large, strange parallel grooves in parts the surface. There are also some craters on Miranda. This moon does not have any atmosphere and it is bitterly cold.
This moon takes the same time to orbit Uranus as it does to rotate around its axis. This means that it has become tidally locked. The gravity from Uranus has caused it to gradually slow its rotation until now it always keeps the same face toward the planet. The length of one orbit, and the length of a day on Miranda, is 1.41 days, or about 1 day and just under 10 hours.
This moon is made of frozen stuff such as water ice, and it has a core of rock on the interior.
Newtons describe how hard gravity is pulling you down. On Earth, if you weigh 51 kilograms or 112 pounds, your weight is 500 newtons. We only use newtons for some special purposes, when we are really interested in how hard we push down on something because gravity is pulling us.
Your weight in newtons would be less on Miranda, only about 1/124 of what it is on Earth. To find your weight in newtons as you stand on Miranda, just take your weight on Earth, and if that weight is in kilograms, multiply it by 0.079. Iff that weight is in pounds, divide it by 28 to get newtons. But then you’ll have to add in the weight of your spacesuit as well, because that is pressing down on the surface just like you are.
The English bard William Shakespeare wrote a play called “The Tempest”. In this play there is a sorcerer named Prospero who has a daughter called Miranda. Both the sorcerer and his daughter were stranded on an island for twelve years in the Adriatic sea.
The name of Shakespeare’s character Miranda comes from the Latin root “mira”, which means “to wonder”. In the play the daughter is often called “a wonder”.
This moon was discovered by the astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who was born and educated in Holland, but later came to the United States. He found this moon on February 16, 1948. He also found Neptune’s moon Neried just over a year later.
de:Wikijunior Sonnensystem/ Uranus/ Miranda
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Miranda” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.