Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

money

(Encyclopedia)money, term that refers to two concepts: the abstract unit of account in terms of which the value of goods, services, and obligations can be compared; and anything that is widely established as a mean...

conservation of natural resources

(Encyclopedia)conservation of natural resources, the wise use of the earth's resources by humanity. The term conservation came into use in the late 19th cent. and referred to the management, mainly for economic rea...

Scholes, Myron Samuel

(Encyclopedia)Scholes, Myron Samuel, 1941–, Canadian-American economist, b. Timmins, Ont., Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1969. He was a professor at the Univ. of Chicago (1968–83) and at Stanford (emeritus since 1996...

land-grant colleges and universities

(Encyclopedia)land-grant colleges and universities, U.S. institutions benefiting from the provisions of the Morrill Act (1862), which gave to the states federal lands for the establishment of colleges offering prog...

Legal Tender cases

(Encyclopedia)Legal Tender cases, lawsuits brought to the U.S. Supreme Court involving the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Act of 1862, which was passed to meet currency needs during the Civil War. The act ha...

Allegheny Plateau

(Encyclopedia)Allegheny Plateau, dissected plateau, western part of the Appalachian Mts., extending c.500 mi (800 km) SW from N Pa. to SW Va., rising to c.4,860 ft (1,480 m) at Spruce Knob, the highest peak in West...

Mackay, Lake

(Encyclopedia)Mackay, Lake məkīˈ [key], large, usually dry, saline lake, 1,829 sq mi (4,737 sq km), 65 mi (105 km) long, 40 mi (64 km) wide, W central Australia, on the border of Western Australia and the Northe...

Brinton, Crane

(Encyclopedia)Brinton, Crane (Clarence Crane Brinton), 1898–1968, American historian, b. Winsted, Conn. He received his Ph.D. from Oxford in 1923 and began teaching at Harvard the same year, becoming full profess...

Limfjørd

(Encyclopedia)Limfjørd lēmˈfyördˌ [key], waterway, c.110 mi (180 km) long, cutting across N Jutland, Denmark, and connecting the North Sea with the Kattegat. It is very irregular in shape, forming Løgstør, a...

Ghats

(Encyclopedia)Ghats gŏts [key] [Hindi,=steps], two mountain ranges of S India, paralleling the coasts of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal and forming two sides of the Deccan plateau. Anai Mudi (8,841 ft/2,695...
 

Browse by Subject