Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

conscription

(Encyclopedia)conscription, compulsory enrollment of personnel for service in the armed forces. Obligatory service in the armed forces has existed since ancient times in many cultures, including the samurai in Japa...

expansion

(Encyclopedia)expansion, in physics, increase in volume resulting from an increase in temperature. Contraction is the reverse process. When heat is applied to a body, the rate of vibration and the distances between...

mode, in music

(Encyclopedia)mode, in music. 1 A grouping or arrangement of notes in a scale with respect to a most important note (in the pretonal modes of Western music, this note is called the final or finalis), and the patter...

Dada

(Encyclopedia)Dada däˈdäĭzəm [key], international nihilistic movement among European artists and writers that lasted from 1916 to 1922. Born of the widespread disillusionment engendered by World War I, it orig...

Council for Mutual Economic Assistance

(Encyclopedia)Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON or MEA), international organization active between 1956 and 1991 for the coordination of economic policy among certain nations then under Communist domi...

correspondence principle

(Encyclopedia)correspondence principle, physical principle, enunciated by Niels Bohr in 1923, according to which the predictions of the quantum theory must correspond to the predictions of the classical theories of...

Huskisson, William

(Encyclopedia)Huskisson, William hŭsˈkĭsən [key], 1770–1830, British statesman. First elected to Parliament in 1796, he was secretary of the treasury (1804–5, 1807–9) but resigned with his close associate...

Harrison, Wallace Kirkman

(Encyclopedia)Harrison, Wallace Kirkman, 1895–1981, American architect and city planner, b. Worcester, Mass. Harrison designed the Trylon and Perisphere, the structures that came to symbolize the 1939 New York Wo...

Gary

(Encyclopedia)Gary, city (2020 pop. 69,093), Lake co., NW Ind., a port of entry on Lake Michigan; inc. 1909. Gary was founded by the U.S. Steel Corporation, which pur...

Jabotinsky, Vladimir

(Encyclopedia)Jabotinsky, Vladimir yăbˌətĭnˈskē [key], 1880–1940, Jewish Zionist leader, b. Russia. A fiery orator and an accomplished writer in several languages, he was a militant Zionist and a persistent...

Browse by Subject