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fiber optics

(Encyclopedia)fiber optics, transmission of digitized messages or information by light pulses along hair-thin glass or plastic fibers. Each fiber is surrounded by a cladding having a high index of refractance so th...

capillarity

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Capillarity: Water wets the walls of a capillary tube and thus rises, causing the upper surface, or meniscus, of the liquid to be concave; mercury does not wet the walls of a capillary tube and...

Murano

(Encyclopedia)Murano mo͞oräˈnō [key], suburb of Venice, NE Italy, on five small islands in the Lagoon of Venice. From the late 13th cent. it was the center of the Venetian glass industry, which reached a peak i...

Foster, Norman Robert, Baron Foster of Thames Bank

(Encyclopedia)Foster, Norman Robert, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, 1935–, British architect, b. Manchester, grad. Manchester Univ. school of architecture (1961), Yale school of architecture (M.A., 1962). Foster an...

window

(Encyclopedia)window, in architecture, the casement or sash, fitted with glass, which closes an opening in the wall of a structure without excluding light and air. It may have a square, round, or pointed head; may ...

Mayne, Thom

(Encyclopedia)Mayne, Thom, 1944–, American architect, b. Waterbury, Conn., grad. Univ. of Southern California (B.A., 1968), Harvard (M.A., 1978). In 1972 Mayne cofounded the firm Morphosis in Santa Monica, Calif....

Portland vase

(Encyclopedia)Portland vase, a Roman glass vase, known also as the Barberini vase. It is an unusually fine work of the late Augustan era (early 1st cent. b.c.). About 10 in. (25 cm) high and 22 in. (56 cm) in circu...

Breuer, Lee

(Encyclopedia)Breuer, Lee,1937-2021, American theater director, b. Philadelphia, PA, as Esser Leopold Breuer. Theatrical director and cofounder of experimental theater troupe, the Mabou Mines, along with composer ...

Leyden jar

(Encyclopedia)Leyden jar līˈdən [key], form of capacitor invented at the Univ. of Leiden in the 18th cent. It consists of a narrow-necked glass jar coated over part of its inner and outer surfaces with conductiv...

Glas, John

(Encyclopedia)Glas or Glass, John both: gläs, glăs [key], 1695–1773, Scottish minister, founder of an independent Presbyterian sect whose members were often called Glasites or Glassites. He believed that nation...