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safety lamp

(Encyclopedia)safety lamp, oil lamp designed for safe use in mines and other places where flammable gases such as firedamp (see damp) may be present. Its invention (c.1816) is usually attributed to Sir Humphry Davy...

heating

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Typical warm-air heating system heating, means of making a building comfortably warm relative to a colder outside temperature. Old, primitive methods of heating a building or a room within it ...

linseed oil

(Encyclopedia)linseed oil, amber-colored, fatty oil extracted from the cotyledons and inner coats of the linseed. The raw oil extracted from the seeds by hydraulic pressure is pale in color and practically without ...

safety valve

(Encyclopedia)safety valve, device attached to a boiler or other vessel for automatically relieving the pressure of steam before it becomes great enough to cause bursting. The common spring-loaded type is held clos...

cryogenics

(Encyclopedia)cryogenics: see low-temperature physics. ...

cold-blooded

(Encyclopedia)cold-blooded: see body temperature. ...

warm-blooded

(Encyclopedia)warm-blooded: see body temperature. ...

Flory, Paul John

(Encyclopedia)Flory, Paul John, 1910–85, American chemist, b. Sterling, Ill., Ph.D. Ohio State Univ., 1934. Flory was a researcher with the DuPont Company (1934–37) and a professor at the Univ. of Cincinnati (1...

dew

(Encyclopedia)dew, thin film of water that has condensed on the surface of objects near the ground. Dew forms when radiational cooling of these objects during the nighttime hours also cools the shallow layer of ove...

International System of Units

(Encyclopedia)International System of Units, officially called the Système International d'Unités, or SI, system of units adopted by the 11th General Conference on Weights and Measures (1960). It is based on the ...