Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

chinook, warm, dry air mass

(Encyclopedia)chinook, warm, dry air mass that descends the eastern slopes of the U.S. and Canadian Rocky Mts. after having lost moisture by condensation over the western slopes. Chinooks occur mainly in winter. Th...

Miass

(Encyclopedia)Miass mēäsˈ [key], river (c.390 mi/630 km long), W Siberian Russia. It rises in the eastern slopes of the S Urals and flows N and NE past Chelyabinsk into the Iset, a tributary of the Ob River. The...

sackbut

(Encyclopedia)sackbut săkˈbət [key], Renaissance name for the slide trombone, probably derived from the old French word sacqueboute, which means “pull-push.” The instrument achieved its present form in the 1...

bass viol

(Encyclopedia)bass viol bās vīˈəl [key], properly, the largest instrument of the viol family. The term now refers most often to the double bass. ...

sonata

(Encyclopedia)sonata sənäˈtə [key], in music, type of instrumental composition that arose in Italy in the 17th cent. At first the term merely distinguished an instrumental piece from a piece with voice, which w...

Graham, George

(Encyclopedia)Graham, George, 1674?–1751, English instrument maker. A clockmaker by trade, Graham designed clocks and watches that earned him membership in the Royal Society and were still manufactured into the p...

rebec

(Encyclopedia)rebec rēˈbĕk [key], one of the earliest forms of the violin. It was pear-shaped, had from three to five strings, and possessed a strident tone. Its use, which began in the 13th cent., was to play m...

spectrophotometer

(Encyclopedia)spectrophotometer, instrument for measuring and comparing the intensities of common spectral lines in the spectra of two different sources of light. See photometry; spectroscope; spectrum. ...

stereopticon

(Encyclopedia)stereopticon stĕrēŏpˈtĭkən [key], optical projection instrument making multiple use of the magic lantern. The magic lantern uses lenses to throw on a screen a magnified image from a transparent ...

Biwa

(Encyclopedia)Biwa bēˈwä [key], lake, c.40 mi (60 km) long and from 2 to 12 mi (3.2–19 km) wide, Shiga prefecture, S Honshu, Japan. The lake, shaped like the biwa, a musical instrument, is the largest in Japan...