A Dictionary of Science: Comprising Astronomy, Chemistry, Dynamics, Electricity, Heat, Hydrodynamics, Hydrostatics, Light, Magnetism, Mechanics, Meteorology, Pneumatics, Sound, and Statics; Preceded by an Essay on the History of the Physical Sciences

Front Cover
George Farrer Rodwell
E. Moxon, son, and Company, 1871 - 580 pages
 

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 54 - ... even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces, no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first creation.
Page 54 - All these things being considered, it seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties and in such proportion to space as most conduced to the end for which he formed them...
Page 285 - It is hardly necessary to add, that any thing which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue to furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance...
Page 54 - And therefore that Nature may be lasting, the Changes of corporeal Things are to be placed only in the various Separations and new Associations and Motions of these permanent Particles...
Page 161 - I had often, in the pride of half-knowledge, smiled at the means frequently employed by gardeners to protect tender plants from cold, as it appeared to me impossible that a thin mat or any such flimsy substance, could prevent them from attaining the temperature of the atmosphere, by which alone I thought them liable to be injured. But when I had learned that bodies on the surface of the earth become...
Page 54 - While the particles continue entire, they may compose bodies of one and the same nature and texture in all ages: but should they wear away, or break in pieces, the nature of things, depending on them, would be changed.
Page 323 - Change of motion is proportional to the impressed force and takes place in the direction of the straight line in which the force acts.
Page 359 - On partially liquefying carbonic acid by pressure alone, and gradually raising at the same time the temperature to 88° Fahr., the surface of demarcation between the liquid and gas became fainter, lost its curvature, and at last disappeared. The space was then occupied by a homogeneous fluid, which exhibited, when the pressure was suddenly diminished or the temperature slightly lowered, a peculiar appearance of moving or flickering striae throughout its entire mass. At temperatures above 88° no...
Page 496 - ... the ratio of the ovendry weight of a sample to the weight of a volume of water equal to the volume of the sample at some specific moisture content, as green, air-dry, or ovendry.
Page 510 - ... a red and a green, or a yellow and a blue one — must afford a planet circulating about either; and what charming contrasts and "grateful vicissitudes," — a red and a green day, for instance, alternating with a white one and with darkness, — might arise from the presence or absence of one or other, or both, above the horizon.

Bibliographic information