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Streep, Meryl

(Encyclopedia)Streep, Meryl, 1949–, American actress, b. Summit, N.J., as Mary Louise Streep. She attended Yale Drama School and appeared in many Broadway and off-Broadway productions during the early 1970s. Movi...

Verne, Jules

(Encyclopedia)Verne, Jules vûrn; zhül vĕrn [key], 1828–1905, French novelist, originator of modern science fiction. After completing his studies at the Nantes lycée, he went to Paris to study law. He early be...

dynamics

(Encyclopedia)dynamics, branch of mechanics that deals with the motion of objects; it may be further divided into kinematics, the study of motion without regard to the forces producing it, and kinetics, the study o...

inertia

(Encyclopedia)inertia ĭnûrˈshə [key], in physics, the resistance of a body to any alteration in its state of motion, i.e., the resistance of a body at rest to being set in motion or of a body in motion to any c...

cam, mechanical device

(Encyclopedia)cam, mechanical device for converting a rotating motion into a reciprocating, or back-and-forth, motion, or for changing a simple motion into a complex one. A simple form of cam is a circular disk set...

audiovisual education

(Encyclopedia)audiovisual education, educational instruction by means of materials that use the senses of sight and hearing to stimulate and enrich learning experiences. The successful use of motion pictures and ot...

Chautauqua movement

(Encyclopedia)Chautauqua movement, development in adult education somewhat similar to the lyceum movement. It derived from an institution at Chautauqua, N.Y. There, in 1873, John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller propo...

clown

(Encyclopedia)clown, a comic character usually distinguished by garish makeup and costume whose antics are both humorously clumsy and acrobatic. The clown employs a broad, physical style of humor that is wordless o...

vortex

(Encyclopedia)vortex vôrˈtĕks [key], mass of fluid in whirling or rotary motion. To simplify the analysis, vortex motion usually describes motions in a frictionless fluid. In such cases the absence of friction w...

Brownian movement

(Encyclopedia)Brownian movement or motion, zigzag, irregular motion exhibited by minute particles of matter when suspended in a fluid. The effect has been observed in all types of colloidal suspensions (see colloid...