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tenor

(Encyclopedia)tenor, highest natural male voice. In medieval polyphony, tenor was the name given to the voice that had the cantus firmus, a preexisting melody, often a fragment of plainsong, to which other voices i...

Shire horse

(Encyclopedia)Shire horse, a breed of draft horse native to central England. It is equal in weight to the Belgian horse and is usually slightly taller. Widely used as a war horse during the Middle Ages, it was well...

Ghez, Andrea Mia

(Encyclopedia)Ghez, Andrea Mia, 1965–, American astrophysicist, b. New York City, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1992. She has been on the faculty at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles, since 1994. G...

Devrient, Ludwig

(Encyclopedia)Devrient, Ludwig lo͝otˈvĭkh dəvrēăNˈ [key], 1784–1832, German actor. He abandoned a commercial career in 1804 to join a traveling theatrical company. In Berlin he was a favorite in comedy and...

escape velocity

(Encyclopedia)escape velocity, the velocity a body must be given in order to escape the gravitational hold of some other larger body, e.g., the earth, moon, or sun. A body given less than the escape velocity will f...

Eunomius

(Encyclopedia)Eunomius yo͞onōˈmēəs [key], c.a.d. 333–a.d. 393?, bishop of Cyzicus (c.361), founder of the Eunomian heresy. He was a disciple and secretary of Aetius whose extreme Arianism he adopted. His fol...

Triceratops

(Encyclopedia)Triceratops trīsĕrˈətŏps [key] [Gr., = three-horn face], genus of ornithischian quadruped dinosaurs of the late Cretaceous period. Because of some variations in sample fossils, it was thought...

pyramid, in geometry

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Pyramid pyramid, in geometry, solid figure bounded by a polygon (the base, or directrix) and the surface generated by a moving line (the generator) passing through a fixed point (vertex) and c...

Ohm's law

(Encyclopedia)Ohm's law ōm [key] [for G. S. Ohm], law stating that the electric current i flowing through a given resistance r is equal to the applied voltage v divided by the resistance, or i=v/r. For general app...

foot-pound

(Encyclopedia)foot-pound, abbr. ft-lb, unit of work or energy in the customary English gravitational system; it is the work done or energy expended by a force of 1 pound acting through a distance of 1 foot. It is e...