Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Mondrian, Piet

(Encyclopedia)Mondrian, Piet pēt mônˈdrēän [key], 1872–1944, Dutch painter. He studied at the academy in Amsterdam and passed through an early naturalistic phase. In 1910 he went to Paris, where the influenc...

Kropotkin, Piotr Alekseyevich, Prince

(Encyclopedia)Kropotkin, Piotr Alekseyevich, Prince pyôˈtər əlyĭksyāˈĭvĭch krəpôtˈkĭn [key], 1842–1921, Russian geographer and anarchist. He came from a wealthy princely family and as a boy was a pag...

vortex

(Encyclopedia)vortex vôrˈtĕks [key], mass of fluid in whirling or rotary motion. To simplify the analysis, vortex motion usually describes motions in a frictionless fluid. In such cases the absence of friction w...

Veblen, Thorstein

(Encyclopedia)Veblen, Thorstein thôrˈstīn vĕbˈlən [key], 1857–1929, American economist and social critic, b. Cato Township, Wis. Of Norwegian parentage, he spent his first 17 years in Norwegian-American far...

Thomson, Sir Joseph John

(Encyclopedia)Thomson, Sir Joseph John, 1856–1940, English physicist. From 1884 to 1919 he was Cavendish professor of experimental physics at Cambridge. J. J. Thomson was one of the founders of modern physics. Wi...

Zeeman effect

(Encyclopedia)Zeeman effect, splitting of a single spectral line (see spectrum) into a group of closely spaced lines when the substance producing the single line is subjected to a uniform magnetic field. The effect...

accounting

(Encyclopedia)accounting, classification, analysis, and interpretation of the financial, or bookkeeping, records of an enterprise. The professional who supplies such services is known as an accountant. Auditing is ...

field, in algebra

(Encyclopedia)field, in algebra, set of elements (usually numbers) that may be combined under the operations of addition and multiplication so that it constitutes an additive group, the nonzero elements form a mult...

motion

(Encyclopedia)motion, the change of position of one body with respect to another. The rate of change is the speed of the body. If the direction of motion is also given, then the velocity of the body is determined; ...

meson

(Encyclopedia)meson mēˈzŏn [key] [Gr.,=middle (i.e., middleweight)], class of elementary particles whose masses are generally between those of the lepton class of lighter particles and those of the baryon class ...

Browse by Subject