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pressure

(Encyclopedia)pressure, in mechanics, ratio of the force acting on a surface to the area of the surface; it is thus distinct from the total force acting on a surface. A force can be applied to and sustained by a si...

Vienna, Congress of

(Encyclopedia)Vienna, Congress of, Sept., 1814–June, 1815, one of the most important international conferences in European history, called to remake Europe after the downfall of Napoleon I. Although the territo...

Kansas-Nebraska Act

(Encyclopedia)Kansas-Nebraska Act, bill that became law on May 30, 1854, by which the U.S. Congress established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. By 1854 the organization of the vast Platte and Kansas river c...

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...

Vatican Council, Second

(Encyclopedia)Vatican Council, Second, popularly called Vatican II, 1962–65, the 21st ecumenical council (see council, ecumenical) of the Roman Catholic Church, convened by Pope John XXIII and continued under Pau...

Boxer Uprising

(Encyclopedia)Boxer Uprising, 1898–1900, antiforeign movement in China, culminating in a desperate uprising against Westerners and Western influence. By the end of the 19th cent. the Western powers and Japan had ...

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...

prisoner of war

(Encyclopedia)prisoner of war, in international law, person captured by a belligerent while fighting in the military. International law includes rules on the treatment of prisoners of war but extends protection onl...

liquid

(Encyclopedia)liquid, one of the three commonly recognized states in which matter occurs, i.e., that state, as distinguished from solid and gas, in which a substance has a definite volume but no definite shape. T...

food preservation

(Encyclopedia)food preservation, methods of preparing food so that it can be stored for future use. Because most foods remain edible for only a brief period of time, people since the earliest ages have experimented...