Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Newcastle-under-Lyme

(Encyclopedia)Newcastle-under-Lyme, city (1991 pop. 73,208) and district, Staffordshire, W central England, on the Lyme River. Construction materials, apparel, computers, electric motors, and machinery are manufact...

tugboat

(Encyclopedia)tugboat, small, strongly built vessel, used to guide large oceangoing ships into and out of port and to tow barges, dredging and salvage equipment, and disabled vessels. Tugboats range in overall leng...

Adda

(Encyclopedia)Adda ädˈdä [key], river, 194 mi (312 km) long, rising in the Rhaetian Alps, N Italy, and flowing SW through Lake Como, then S into the Po River near Cremona. Its upper course furnishes much electri...

xerography

(Encyclopedia)xerography zərŏgˈrəfēˌ [key], also called electrophotography, method of dry photocopying in which the image is transferred by using the attractive forces of electric charges. A beam of light, us...

solar cell

(Encyclopedia)solar cell, semiconductor devised to convert light to electric current. It is a specially constructed diode, usually made of forms of crystalline silicon or of thin films (as of copper indium gallium ...

solid-state physics

(Encyclopedia)solid-state physics, study of the properties of bulk matter rather than those of the individual particles that compose it. Solid-state physics is concerned with the properties exhibited by atoms and m...

Chichester

(Encyclopedia)Chichester chĭˈchĭstər [key], city and district, West Sussex, S England. Chichester is an ...

Anaheim

(Encyclopedia)Anaheim ănˈəhīm [key], city (2020 pop. 346,824), Orange co., S Calif., SE of Los Angeles; inc. 1870. Anaheim was founded by Germans in 1857 as an experiment in communa...

Knudsen, William Signius

(Encyclopedia)Knudsen, William Signius no͞odˈsən [key], 1879–1948, American industrialist and U.S. government official, b. Copenhagen, Denmark. He emigrated to the United States at age 20, worked in various fa...

Plauen

(Encyclopedia)Plauen plouˈən [key], city (1994 pop. 69,387), Saxony, E central Germany, on the White Elster River and at the northwestern foot of the Erzgebirge. It has been a textile-milling center since the 15t...

Browse by Subject