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planetary system

(Encyclopedia)planetary system, a star and all the celestial bodies bound to it by gravity, especially planets and their natural satellites. Until the last decade of the 20th cent., the only planetary system known ...

Germanic laws

(Encyclopedia)Germanic laws, customary law codes of the Germans before their contact with the Romans. They are unknown to us except through casual references of ancient authors and inferences from the codes compile...

gas laws

(Encyclopedia)gas laws, physical laws describing the behavior of a gas under various conditions of pressure, volume, and temperature. Experimental results indicate that all real gases behave in approximately the sa...

fair-trade laws

(Encyclopedia)fair-trade laws, in the United States, a former group of statutes that permitted manufacturers to specify the minimum retail price of a commodity. The first fair-trade law was adopted (1931) by Califo...

Bürgi, Joost

(Encyclopedia)Bürgi, Joost or Jost, 1552–1632, Swiss mathematician and instrument maker. As the official clockmaker (1579–92) to Duke Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassell, he developed the first clock with a minute han...

fugitive slave laws

(Encyclopedia)fugitive slave laws, in U.S. history, the federal acts of 1793 and 1850 providing for the return between states of escaped black slaves. Similar laws existing in both North and South in colonial days ...

Graz

(Encyclopedia)Graz gräts [key], city, capital of Styria prov., SE Austria, on the Mur River. The second la...

pure-food laws

(Encyclopedia)pure-food laws: see food adulteration. ...

celestial mechanics

(Encyclopedia)celestial mechanics, the study of the motions of astronomical bodies as they move under the influence of their mutual gravitation. Celestial mechanics analyzes the orbital motions of planets, dwarf pl...

Olbers, Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus

(Encyclopedia)Olbers, Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus hīnˈrĭkh vĭlˈhĕlm mätĕˈo͝os ôlˈbərs [key], 1758–1840, German astronomer and physician. He originated (1797) the first satisfactory method for calculat...