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Lumet, Sidney

(Encyclopedia)Lumet, Sidney lo͞o-mĕtˈ [key], 1924–2011, one of the great American film directors of the 20th cent., b. Philadelphia. A child actor in New York's Yiddish radio and theater and (1935–41) on Bro...

Kennedy, Joseph Patrick

(Encyclopedia)Kennedy, Joseph Patrick, 1888–1969, U.S. ambassador to Great Britain (1937–40), b. Boston, grad. Harvard, 1912. The founder of an American dynasty, he was the father of nine children, including Jo...

synodic period

(Encyclopedia)synodic period sĭnŏdˈĭk [key], in astronomy, length of time during which a body in the solar system makes one orbit of the sun relative to the earth, i.e., returns to the same elongation. Because ...

sundial

(Encyclopedia)sundial, instrument that indicates the time of day by the shadow, cast on a surface marked to show hours or fractions of hours, of an object on which the sun's rays fall. Although any object whose sha...

universal time

(Encyclopedia)universal time (UT), the international time standard common to every place in the world, it nominally reflects the mean solar time along the earth's prime meridian (renumbered to equate to civil time)...

star

(Encyclopedia)star, hot incandescent sphere of gas, held together by its own gravitation, and emitting light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation whose ultimate source is nuclear energy. The universe co...

sound recording

(Encyclopedia)sound recording, process of converting the acoustic energy of sound into some form in which it can be permanently stored and reproduced at any time. In 1855 the inventor Leon Scott constructed a devic...

computer graphics

(Encyclopedia)computer graphics, the transfer of pictorial data into and out of a computer. Using analog-to-digital conversion techniques, a variety of devices—such as curve tracers, digitizers, and light pens—...

conch

(Encyclopedia)conch kŏngk, kŏnch, kôngk [key], common name for certain marine gastropod mollusks having a heavy, spiral shell, the whorls of which overlap each other. In conchs the characteristic gastropod foot ...

gluon

(Encyclopedia)gluon, an elementary particle that mediates, or carries, the strong, or nuclear, force. In quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the quantum field theory of strong interactions, the interaction of quarks (to ...