Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Boyle, Willard Sterling

(Encyclopedia)Boyle, Willard Sterling, 1924–2011, Canadian-American solid-state physicist, b. Amherst, N.S., Canada, Ph.D. McGill Univ., Montreal, 1950. Boyle was a researcher at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill,...

tracery

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Types of tracery tracery, bands or bars of stone, wood, or other material, either subdividing an opening or standing in relief against a wall and forming an ornamental pattern of solid members...

sulfuric acid

(Encyclopedia)sulfuric acid, chemical compound, H2SO4, colorless, odorless, extremely corrosive, oily liquid. It is sometimes called oil of vitriol. Although sulfuric acid is now one of the most widely used c...

Makatea

(Encyclopedia)Makatea ôrôrˈə [key], island, South Pacific, one of the most northwesterly of the Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia. The center of the island was once a solid mass of phosphate that was mined ...

area

(Encyclopedia)CE5 area, measure of the size of a surface region, usually expressed in units that are the square of linear units, e.g., square feet or square meters. In elementary geometry, formulas for the areas...

Tharp, Marie

(Encyclopedia)Tharp, Marie, 1920–2006, American oceanographer and cartographer, grad. Univ. of Michigan (M.A. 1944). A geologist with experience in mapping, she came to Columbia Univ. as a geology research assist...

Sealyham terrier

(Encyclopedia)Sealyham terrier sēˈlēhămˌ [key], breed of short-legged terrier developed in Wales in the second half of the 19th cent. It stands about 10 in. (25 cm) high at the shoulder and weighs about 20 lb ...

Anderson, Philip Warren

(Encyclopedia)Anderson, Philip Warren, 1923–2020, American physicist, b. Indianapolis, Ind., Ph.D. Harvard, 1949. After graduation he worked at Bell Laboratories until 1984. From 1967 he also was on the faculty a...

polyurethanes

(Encyclopedia)polyurethanes pŏlˌēyo͝orˈəthānz [key], group of plastics that may be either thermosetting or thermoplastic. Polyurethane can be made into both flexible and rigid foams. The flexible foam is oft...

pyramid, in geometry

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Pyramid pyramid, in geometry, solid figure bounded by a polygon (the base, or directrix) and the surface generated by a moving line (the generator) passing through a fixed point (vertex) and c...

Browse by Subject