Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

snail

(Encyclopedia)snail, name commonly used for a gastropod mollusk with a shell. Included in the thousands of species are terrestrial, freshwater, and marine forms. Some eat both plant and animal matter; others eat on...

cacomistle

(Encyclopedia)cacomistle kăkˈəmĭsˌəl [key], small New World mammal, genus Bassaricus, related to the raccoon. There are two species, one found in Mexico and the SW United States, the other in Central America....

Voznesensky, Andrei Andreyevich

(Encyclopedia)Voznesensky, Andrei Andreyevich əndrāˈ əndrāˈəvĭch vəznyəsyānˈskē [key], 1933–2010, Russian poet, b. Moscow. Voznesensky studied at the Moscow Architectural Institute and later became a...

weight

(Encyclopedia)weight, measure of the force of gravity on a body (see gravitation). Since the weights of different bodies at the same location are proportional to their masses, weight is often used as a measure of m...

Caroline Affair

(Encyclopedia)Caroline Affair. In 1837 a group of men led by William Lyon Mackenzie rebelled in Upper Canada (now Ontario), demanding a more democratic government. There was much sympathy for their cause in the Uni...

adaptation

(Encyclopedia)adaptation, in biology, has several meanings. It can mean the adjustment of living matter to environmental conditions and to other living things either in an organism's lifetime (physiological adaptat...

exobiology

(Encyclopedia)exobiology or astrobiology, search for extraterrestrial life within the solar system and throughout the universe. Philosophical speculation that there might be other worlds similar to ours dates back ...

electron

(Encyclopedia)electron, elementary particle carrying a unit charge of negative electricity. Ordinary electric current is the flow of electrons through a wire conductor (see electricity). The electron is one of the ...

loris

(Encyclopedia)loris, name for slow-moving, nocturnal, arboreal primates of the family Lorisidae, found Africa and Asia. True lorises, found in India, Sri Lanka, and SE Asia, have round heads, large round eyes, and ...

lottery

(Encyclopedia)lottery, scheme for distributing prizes by lot or other method of chance selection to persons who have paid for the opportunity to win. The term is not applicable when lots are drawn without payment b...