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Brough, Louise

(Encyclopedia)Brough, Louise (Louise Brough Clapp) brŭf [key], 1923–2014, American tennis player, b. Oklahoma City. A champion in the 1940s and 50s, renowned for her powerful serve-and-volley game and crushing t...

Moore's Law

(Encyclopedia)Moore's Law, a projection of semiconductor manufacturing trends made by Gordon E. Moore, cofounder of the Intel Corp., in a 1965 magazine article. He observed that the number of transistors per square...

root, in mathematics

(Encyclopedia)root, in mathematics, number or quantity r for which an equation f(r)=0 holds true, where f is some function. If f is a polynomial, r is called a root of f; for example, r=3 and r=−4 are roots of th...

verb

(Encyclopedia)verb, part of speech typically used to indicate an action. English verbs are inflected for person, number, tense and partially for mood; compound verbs formed with auxiliaries (e.g., be, can, have, do...

division, in mathematics

(Encyclopedia)division, fundamental operation in arithmetic; the inverse of multiplication. Division may be indicated by the symbol ÷, as in 15 ÷ 3, or simply by a fraction, 15/3. The number that is being divided...

exponent

(Encyclopedia)exponent, in mathematics, a number, letter, or algebraic expression written above and to the right of another number, letter, or expression called the base. In the expressions x2 and xn, the number 2 ...

Erdös, Paul

(Encyclopedia)Erdös, Paul ĕrˈdös [key], 1913–96, Hungarian mathematician, b. Budapest. A child prodigy, he was mostly home-schooled by his parents—both teachers of mathematics—until he entered the Univ. o...

darmstadtium

(Encyclopedia)darmstadtium, artificially produced radioactive chemical element; symbol Ds; at. no. 110; mass number of most stable isotope 281; m.p., b.p., sp. gr., and valence unknown. Situated in Group 10 of the ...

proton

(Encyclopedia)proton, elementary particle having a single positive electrical charge and constituting the nucleus of the ordinary hydrogen atom. The positive charge of the nucleus of any atom is due to its protons....

decimal system

(Encyclopedia)decimal system [Lat.,=of tenths], numeration system based on powers of 10. A number is written as a row of digits, with each position in the row corresponding to a certain power of 10. A decimal point...