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electricity

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Electrical and radio symbols electricity, class of phenomena arising from the existence of charge. The basic unit of charge is that on the proton or electron—the proton's charge is designate...

airline industry

(Encyclopedia)airline industry, the business of transporting paying passengers and freight by air along regularly scheduled routes, typically by airplanes but also by helicopter. Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin set up ...

Rutan, Burt

(Encyclopedia)Rutan, Burt (Elbert Leander Rutan) ro͞oˈtăn [key], 1943–, American aerospace engineer, b. Portland, Oreg., grad. California Polytechnic Univ. (B.S. 1965). From 1965 to 1972 Rutan worked for the U...

Zhang Yimou

(Encyclopedia)Zhang Yimou, 1951–, Chinese film director. Sentenced to forced labor during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) because his father had been an officer in Chiang Kai-shek's army, he then studied at t...

constellation, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Constellations: Southern sky CE5 Constellations: Southern sky CE5 Constellations: Southern sky constellation, in common usage, group of stars that appear to form a configuration in the...

English horn

(Encyclopedia)CE5 English horn English horn, musical instrument, the alto of the oboe family, pitched a fifth lower than the oboe and treated as a transposing instrument. It has a pear-shaped bell, giving it a ...

hurdy-gurdy

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Hurdy-gurdy hurdy-gurdy, musical instrument with three strings that are caused to vibrate by a wooden wheel turned by a crank. Stopping is accomplished by keys that usually affect only the str...

angiosperm

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Life cycle of an angiosperm angiosperm ănˈjēəspûrmˌ [key], term denoting seed plants in which the ovules, or young seeds, are enclosed within the ovary (that part of the pistil specializ...

noun

(Encyclopedia)noun [Lat.,=name], in English, part of speech of vast semantic range. It can be used to name a person, place, thing, idea, or time. It generally functions as subject, object, or indirect object of the...

parabola

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Parabola parabola pərăbˈələ [key], plane curve consisting of all points equidistant from a given fixed point (focus) and a given fixed line (directrix) (see illustration). It is the conic...