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sciatica

(Encyclopedia)sciatica sīătˈĭkə [key], severe pain in the leg along the sciatic nerve and its branches. It may be caused by injury or pressure to the base of the nerve in the lower back, or by metabolic, toxic...

oil gas

(Encyclopedia)oil gas, any of a group of fuel gases produced from oil by exposing it to high temperatures. High-Btu oil gas is so called because of its high heating value; it is often used to supplement natural gas...

Langley, Samuel Pierpont

(Encyclopedia)Langley, Samuel Pierpont, 1834–1906, American scientist, b. Roxbury, Mass., received only a high school education but continued his studies in science in Boston libraries. He became, in 1866, profes...

free energy

(Encyclopedia)free energy or Gibbs free energy, quantity derived from the relationships between heat and work studied in thermodynamics and used as a measure of the relative stability of a physical or chemical syst...

furnace

(Encyclopedia)furnace, enclosed space for the burning of fuel. There are many kinds of furnaces, the type depending upon the fuel and the use to which the heat produced within it is put. Most familiar are the furna...

coke

(Encyclopedia)coke, substance obtained by the destructive distillation of bituminous coal. Coke bears the same relation to coal as does charcoal to wood. A hard, gray, massive, porous fuel, coke is the solid residu...

Huntington Beach

(Encyclopedia)Huntington Beach, city (2020 pop. 198,711), Orange co., S Calif., on the Pacific coast, across from Santa Catalina Island, in an oil-producing area; inc...

Rowland, Henry Augustus

(Encyclopedia)Rowland, Henry Augustus rōˈlənd [key], 1848–1901, American physicist, b. Honesdale, Pa., grad. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1870. He was professor of physics at Johns Hopkins from 1875. Rowl...

Reynolds, Osborne

(Encyclopedia)Reynolds, Osborne, 1842–1912, British mechanical engineer. He was educated at Cambridge and became (1868) the first professor of engineering at the Univ. of Manchester, where his courses attracted a...

liquid air

(Encyclopedia)liquid air, ordinary air that has been liquefied by compression and cooling to extremely low temperatures (see liquefaction). Its commercial preparation involves purification by washing to remove solu...