Compare and contrast reflection, refraction, and dispersion. Please help, I don't understand, my teacher said I could do it in a table.

To effectively compare and contrast these three things, you need to show how they are all alike and how they are different.  For the "alike" part, they are all properties light waves demonstrate.  The "different" part gets a little more detailed.

Reflection is the return of the light wave from the media it interacted with back to the media it came from.  It does not enter the new media; rather, it is "bounced" off of...

To effectively compare and contrast these three things, you need to show how they are all alike and how they are different.  For the "alike" part, they are all properties light waves demonstrate.  The "different" part gets a little more detailed.

Reflection is the return of the light wave from the media it interacted with back to the media it came from.  It does not enter the new media; rather, it is "bounced" off of it.  This is what happens with most shiny, chromed surfaces.  They reflect the light right back into the air.

Refraction is the bending of light as it interfaces between two different media, each having a different speed for the the light wave involved.  A good example here would be a glass of water half full, with a drinking straw in it.  The straw will appear broken or disjointed, because of the two different speeds of light, in air and water.

Finally, dispersion is what happens when visible light is separated into it's constituent colors by a triangular prism of glass.  A rainbow of colors is produced, each color having it's own wavelength and frequency.  The pattern usually follows the ROYGBIV mnemonic, with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and blue colors being produced.

As far as a table is concerned, two headings should be listed at the top, one for "alike" and one for "different."  List each characteristic to the left, then fill in the space under the "alike/different" descriptors with the information listed above.

When did Jonas first lie to his parents in The Giver?

Jonas lies to his parents in the end of Chapter 16, after they ask him if he understands that love is a vague concept.

No one in the community is allowed to lie, as far as Jonas knows.  Precision of language is very important.

He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie. It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech. (Ch. 9)

The community values Sameness, and the entire goal of his civilization seems to be avoiding discomfort.  They want to ensure that everyone is toeing the line.  That means that children are indoctrinated from a young age to the community’s procedures and expectations.

When Jonas is selected for the prestigious assignment of Receiver of Memory, one of his instructions is that he can lie.  This confuses and horrifies him.  It never occurred to him that anyone in his community might lie.  He wonders if anyone else has the same instruction, and begins to doubt from that point on if anyone in his community is telling the truth.

This is a pivotal moment in Jonas’s character development.  It is the first time when he begins to wonder about his community.  Jonas will soon learn that his entire community is a lie, in a way.  It professes to be perfect and orderly, with content citizens and no negatives.  Jonas soon learns that the community has carefully constructed this illusion by keeping its citizens almost completely cut off from the human experience.

No one in the community feels any emotion at all.  They are carefully trained from birth to avoid attachment.  Jonas learns through the memories that attachment is part of being human. He realizes that his people do not experience humanity because they are cut off from love and joy as well as suffering.

When Jonas experiences the concept of love, he has already seen many memories of things that the community has stamped out.  The concept of family bothers him the most though.  He enjoys the connectedness that he feels in the memory, and he realizes that it is important.  In an effort to see if any of that connectedness is there, Jonas asks his parents if they love him.  He knows that he is not likely to get expressions of love back, but is totally unprepared for confusion and amusement.

His parents both explain to him that “love” is an imprecise word that has come to be meaningless.

Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.

"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,' " his mother said. (Ch. 16, p. 160)

When Jonas’s parents ask him if he understands, he lies and says he does.  He lies because he knows that they are the ones who do not understand.  Since no one in the community can experience real affection, or attachment, there is no way that they can understand love.  His entire community has been carefully constructed to avoid it.

While different versions of the book will have different page numbers, you should easily be able to find this incident because it is near the end of Chapter 16.  In my edition of the book, it can be found on page 160.

How does the police patrol carry out its task?

In 1984, the police patrol uses helicopters to carry out its task. These helicopters can hover in between buildings in order to allow the police to look in through people's windows. Snooping allows the police to keep track of everyone and to maintain control over the populace.

In the story, young spies like Parsons' children work hand in hand with the police patrols. Parsons relates to Winston that his seven year old daughter actually followed...

In 1984, the police patrol uses helicopters to carry out its task. These helicopters can hover in between buildings in order to allow the police to look in through people's windows. Snooping allows the police to keep track of everyone and to maintain control over the populace.

In the story, young spies like Parsons' children work hand in hand with the police patrols. Parsons relates to Winston that his seven year old daughter actually followed a strange man for two hours one afternoon before handing him over to the patrols. When Winston questions why his daughter would do such a thing, Parsons proudly proclaims that his daughter must have found the stranger suspicious in some way. At the very least, he appeared to be a foreigner of some sort, as his daughter claimed that he wore strange shoes. From Parsons' story, we can infer that it really doesn't take very much to turn someone in; even extremely superficial claims can be enough to incriminate someone.

In many areas, the police patrol walk the streets in order to ensure that everyone maintains complete obedience to the dictates of the state. Anyone who appears to be doing anything out of the ordinary, even if it means just taking a different route home, can be stopped by the patrols if they run into them. The police will then demand to see proper identification and will proceed to question the individual extensively if someone has informed on the said individual's change of plans.

Sometimes, the police patrols also wait at railway stations where they will cross-examine Party members and demand to see their identification.

In Chapter Seven of Animal Farm, how does Squealer attempt to rewrite history?

One way that Squealer rewrites history is to declare that Snowball, who has become Public Enemy Number One on the farm, was responsible for a series of acts of vandalism. Indeed, Squealer tells the animals, he had never been a true revolutionary--he had been in league with Jones the whole time. He claims that Snowball had turned on the animals at the Battle of the Cowshed, a confusing interpretation of events for many of that...

One way that Squealer rewrites history is to declare that Snowball, who has become Public Enemy Number One on the farm, was responsible for a series of acts of vandalism. Indeed, Squealer tells the animals, he had never been a true revolutionary--he had been in league with Jones the whole time. He claims that Snowball had turned on the animals at the Battle of the Cowshed, a confusing interpretation of events for many of that battle's veterans:

They all remembered, or thought they remembered, how 
they had seen Snowball charging ahead of them at the Battle of the Cowshed, how he had rallied and encouraged them at every turn, and how he had not paused for an instant even when the pellets from Jones's gun had wounded his back. At first it was a little difficult to see how this fitted in with his being on Jones's side.

Boxer even protests that Squealer's account is wrong, and Squealer responds that all of Snowball's apparently valiant contributions at the battle were in fact part of a big hoax. After some persuasion, Boxer and the other animals are convinced when Squealer tells them that Napoleon has "stated categorically" that Snowball was always a traitor. Accepting Napoleon's words as truth, the animals go about their business. Later, Boxer's skepticism is punished when Napoleon sends his dogs after him. Boxer successfully fends them off (unlike several unfortunate pigs, hens, geese, and sheep who confess to be traitors in league with Snowball) but the message is sent. Boxer, for one, responds to these purges with a promise to himself to work harder.

How often is the lottery held in "The Lottery"?

The lottery is held every year in the summer.

Every surrounding village has a lottery.  The village in the story is so small that the lottery can be held in one day. It is held on June 27.  Every year it is held in the summer at the same time.  Tradition is very important to the people of this village. They would never consider not having the lottery, just as they do not even want to change the box that is used!

Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything's being done.

You notice that no one needs to be told what to do.  Even the children are aware of the exact procedure and help gather stones.  Since everything is done the same way every year, there is no reason to tell people what to do.  They just accept what is happening.

The lottery being held in summer just adds to the irony.  In fact, there is a mention of children being out of school for the first time that year.

The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play…

The concept of liberty is in stark contrast with what is really going on here.  The children, and their families, are in fact being held hostage by the lottery.  They are enslaved to tradition.  As we find out, the “winner” or loser, if you will, is just an innocent housewife.  No one can escape the lottery.

Jackson slowly builds suspense as it becomes clear that something is wrong in this village.  The fact that the lottery is held every year is a closely guarded tradition.  Even as barbaric and immoral as the lottery is, they are forced to continue it by peer pressure and the absence of anyone willing to stand up for what’s right.

Verse 52, “The Spotted Hawk Swoops By,” completes Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” What do lines 7-16 suggest about the theme of Whitman’s...

Much has been said about the end of "Song of Myself" . It is true that Whitman is asserting his essential unity with everything, not just nature. From the beginning of the poem he asserts his union with his reader: 

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

So, at the end of the poem, when he says that 

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

He means that like the "spotted hawk" he also is of the wild, his poem an "untranslatable" cry. But the lines you mention give a slightly different twist on the ending of the poem, and perhaps Whitman's purpose in writing it. Lines 7-8:

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

Here Whitman describes the dissolution of his body into the air and dirt. His body permeates everything. Then,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Because of his dissolution into everything, his call to the reader to look for him "under his boot soles" is as good a place to seek the poet as anywhere. If we examine the dirt for him, probably we will "hardly know" who he is, or even if we have found him; nevertheless the good will of the poet will "filter and fibre" our blood. In the next lines:

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,

the poet encourages us to keep looking for him, even if we cannot at first find a trace; for

I stop somewhere waiting for you. 

Whitman's words point to something different than simply uniting with nature; first, this is a physical unity, not just a spiritual or metaphorical one. The essence of the poet, his "barbaric yawp," not only can be found in the dust beneath our feet or the clouds overhead, but somehow offers us protection. Whitman's title, "Song of Myself," is a bit of a joke because his point is that it is the song of everyone. Whitman's poem is an attempt to articulate the deep essential union of all things: man, nature, machinery, art, sex, work. These things form the essential and inescapable, and ultimately "untranslatable," fabric of existence. Whitman's final line, in which he is waiting somewhere for us, is a perfect end: it evokes the image of the poet, a person just ahead, waiting, but also of course works in the symbolic sense that, since poet and reader are the same spirit, it is really ourselves that is waiting for us, and the search we make for the poet really is best done if we look inside ourselves. 

To release the energy stored in coal, it is burned. The combustion of coal transforms its energy into ________and_______energy.

The phrasing of this question is ambiguous, and I think the missing blanks are items specific to your teacher's notes. Several terms and combinations of terms could be used to fill them. Instead, let me address what is happening in the burning of coal, and perhaps that will help you identify the terms your instructor intended to go in those slots.

Coal is principally composed of carbon, with numerous contaminants like sulfur and nitrogen. The...

The phrasing of this question is ambiguous, and I think the missing blanks are items specific to your teacher's notes. Several terms and combinations of terms could be used to fill them. Instead, let me address what is happening in the burning of coal, and perhaps that will help you identify the terms your instructor intended to go in those slots.

Coal is principally composed of carbon, with numerous contaminants like sulfur and nitrogen. The burning of coal is actually an oxidation reaction, where oxygen from the air is added to the carbon to form gaseous carbon dioxide. The oxidation reaction is exothermic, producing substantial heat, but it also breaks away individual carbon atoms from the solid coal to form gaseous carbon dioxide. This conversion from a dense solid to a voluminous gas also creates air pressure. The mechanical force of air pressure isn't directly used to create electricity in coal-fired power plants, although it is relevant in engines and generators that burn oil or natural gas. Instead, the heat from burning coal is used to boil water, and the steam from that reaction is used to turn the turbine of an electrical generator. Through understanding this process, we can deduct that two possible types of energy given off during the burning of coal are heat energy and light energy. 

A very nice animated schematic of coal power generation may be found at the Duke Energy website linked below.