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spontaneous combustion

(Encyclopedia)spontaneous combustion, phenomenon in which a substance unexpectedly bursts into flame without apparent cause. In ordinary combustion, a substance is deliberately heated to its ignition point to make ...

Onsager, Lars

(Encyclopedia)Onsager, Lars, 1903–76, American physical chemist, b. Oslo, Ph.D. Yale, 1935. Onsager taught at Brown Univ. from 1928 to 1933 and was on the faculty at Yale from 1933 until his retirement in 1972. H...

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...

cline

(Encyclopedia)cline, in biology, any gradual change in a particular characteristic of a population of organisms from one end of the geographical range of the population to the other. Gradients of characteristics us...

Geysir

(Encyclopedia)Geysir gāˈsĭr [key], hot spring, SW Iceland, c.75 mi (120 km) W of Reykjavík. Although in medieval times it erupted three times daily, weeks now elapse between eruptions. The height and temperatur...

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

(Encyclopedia)Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, private philanthropic organization established in 2000 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corp., and his wife Betty. The foundation funds projects in science and e...

D

(Encyclopedia)D, fourth letter of the alphabet. It corresponds to the Greek delta. It is a usual symbol for a voiced dental or, as in English, alveolar stop. The capital represents in musical notation a note in the...

Burhanpur

(Encyclopedia)Burhanpur bûrˈhänpo͞orˌ [key], city, Madhya Pradesh state, W central India, on the Tapi River. The ...

die-casting

(Encyclopedia)die-casting, process by which molten metal is forced by a plunger or compressed air into a metallic die and the pressure maintained until the metal has solidified. Die castings are accurate, are sharp...

Hauer, Josef Matthias

(Encyclopedia)Hauer, Josef Matthias yōˈzĕf mätēäs houˈər [key], 1883–1959, Austrian music theorist and composer. Primarily self-taught, Hauer devised a method of atonal composition that used the 12 tones ...
 

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