Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

368 results found

Chinese music

(Encyclopedia)Chinese music, the classical music forms of China. Throughout the political and social turmoil following World War I, Western (classical and popular) and Japanese sources dominated Chinese music. At...

European Southern Observatory

(Encyclopedia)European Southern Observatory (ESO), an intergovernmental organization for astronomical research with headquarters in Garching, near Munich, Germany. The ESO began in 1962 as a consortium among Belgiu...

temperature

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Temperature scales temperature, measure of the relative warmth or coolness of an object. Temperature is measured by means of a thermometer or other instrument having a scale calibrated in unit...

specific gravity

(Encyclopedia)specific gravity, ratio of the weight of a given volume of a substance to the weight of an equal volume of some reference substance, or, equivalently, the ratio of the masses of equal volumes of the t...

Byzantine music

(Encyclopedia)Byzantine music, the music of the Byzantine Empire composed to Greek texts as ceremonial, festival, or church music. Long thought to be only a further development of ancient Greek music, Byzantine mus...

Ferdinand II, king of Aragón

(Encyclopedia)Ferdinand II or Ferdinand the Catholic, 1452–1516, king of Aragón (1479–1516), king of Castile and León (as Ferdinand V, 1474–1504), king of Sicily (1468–1516), and king of Naples (1504–16...

Shinto

(Encyclopedia)Shinto shĭnˈtō [key], ancient native religion of Japan still practiced in a form modified by the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism. In its present form Shinto is characterized less by religiou...

polarization of light

(Encyclopedia)polarization of light, orientation of the vibration pattern of light waves in a singular plane. Unpolarized light can be converted into a single polarized beam by means of the Nicol prism, a device ...

radar

(Encyclopedia)radar, system or technique for detecting the position, movement, and nature of a remote object by means of radio waves reflected from its surface. Although most radar units use microwave frequencies, ...

Pan-Arabism

(Encyclopedia)Pan-Arabism, general term for the modern movement for political unification among the Arab nations of the Middle East. Since the Ottoman Turks rose to power in the 14th cent., there have been stirring...