Research Results For 'Pyramids'

SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD

The Seven Wonders of the World were: the pyramids of ancient Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, the tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the statue of the Greek god Zeus at Olympia, and the Pharaohs at Alexandria (a lighthouse built by Ptolemy II).
Research Seven Wonders of the World

GERBILLUS

Gerbillus is a genus of small burrowing rodents (the gerbils) of the family Muridae (mice). They have a long tail, which is tufted at the end. There are several, species, found in the sandy parts of Africa and Asia. The Egyptian gerbil (Gerbillus oegyptiacus), inhabiting Egypt around the pyramids, is the typical type. It is about the size of a mouse and of a clear yellow colour.
Research Gerbillus

GIOVANNI BELZONI

Givovanni Battista Belzoni was an Italian traveller. He was in 1778 at Padua in 1778 and died near Benin in 1823. In 1803 he emigrated to England, where, being endowed with an almost gigantic figure and commensurate strength, he for a time gained his living as an athlete. In 1815 he visited Egypt, where he made a hydraulic machine for Mehemet Ali. He then devoted himself to the exploration of the antiquities of the country, being supplied with funds by Mr. Salt, the British consul-general. He succeeded in transporting the bust of Memnon (Rameses II) from Thebes to Alexandria, from whence it came to the British Museum; explored the great temple of Rameses II at Abu-Simbel; opened the tomb of Seti I, from which he obtained the splendid alabaster sarcophagus bought by Sir John Soane for 2000 pounds; and he also succeeded in opening the second (King Chephren's) of the pyramids of Ghizeh. He afterwards visited the coasts of the Red Sea, the city of Berenice, Lake Moeris, the Lesser Oasis, etc. The narrative of his discoveries and excavations in Egypt and Nubia was received with general approbation. He died during a projected journey to Timbuctoo.
Research Giovanni Belzoni

GUSTAV RICHTER

Gustav Richter was a German painter. He was born in 1823 at Berlin and died in 1884. He was a member of the academies of Berlin, Munich and Vienna. He executed frescoes in the Berlin Museum and attracted attention by his ' Raising of Jarius' Daughter' and his 'Building of the Pyramids'.
Research Gustav Richter

CALYCES

The calyces are the recesses in the internal medulla of the kidney which enclose the renal pyramids. They are used to subdivide the sections of the kidney anatomically, with distinction being made between major calyces and minor calyces.
Research Calyces

RENAL PYRAMIDS

The renal pyramids are conical segments within the internal medulla of the kidney. The renal pyramids contain the secreting apparatus and tubules and are also known as the malphighian pyramids.
Research Renal Pyramids

ASTRONOMY

Astronomy is that science which investigates the motions, distances, magnitudes, and various phenomena of the heavenly bodies. That part of the science which gives a description of the motions, figures, periods of revolution, and other phenomena of the heavenly bodies is called descriptive astronomy; that part which teaches how to observe the motions, figures, periodical revolutions, distances, etc, of the heavenly bodies, and how to use the necessary instruments, is called practical astronomy; and that part which explains the causes of their motions, and demonstrates the laws by which those causes operate, is termed physical astronomy. In the 19th century new fields of investigation developed. The first of these - celestial photography - furnished us with invaluable light-pictures of the sun, moon, and other bodies, and recorded the existence of myriads of stars invisible even by the then best telescopes; while the second, spectrum analysis, revealed a knowledge of the physical constituents of the universe, revealing for the first time for instance that in the sun there exist many of the elements familiar to us on the earth. It has also been applied to the determination of the velocity with which stars are approaching to, or receding from, our system; and to the measurement of movements taking place within the solar atmospheric envelopes. From analysis of some of the unresolved nebulae the inference was drawn that they are not star-swarms but simply cosmical vapour; whence a second inference results favourable to the hypothesis of the gradual condensation of nebulae, and the successive evolutions of suns and systems.

The most remote period to which we can go back in tracing the history of astronomy refers us to a time about 2500 BC, when the Chinese are said to have recorded the simultaneous conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury with the moon. This remarkable phenomenon is found, by calculating backward, to have taken place 2460 BC Astronomy has also an undoubtedly high antiquity in India. The mean annual motion of Jupiter and Saturn was observed so early as 3062 years BC; tables of the sun, moon, and planets were formed, and eclipses calculated. In the time of Alexander the Great, the Chaldeans or Babylonians had carried on astronomical observations for 1900 years. They regarded comets as bodies travelling in extended orbits, and predicted their return; and there is reason to believe that they were acquainted with the true system of the universe. The priests of Egypt gave astronomy a religious character; but their knowledge of the science is testified to only by their ancient zodiacs and the position of their pyramids with relation to the cardinal points.

It was among the Greeks that astronomy took a more scientific form. Thales of Miletus (born in 639 BC) predicted a solar eclipse, and his successors held opinions which are in many respects wonderfully in accordance with modern ideas. Pythagoras (about 500 BC) promulgated the theory that the sun is the centre of the planetary system. Great progress was made in astronomy under the Ptolemies, and we find Timochares and Aristyllus employed about 300 BC in making useful planetary observations. But Aristarchus of Samos (born in 267 BC) is said, on the authority of Archimedes, to have far surpassed them, by teaching the double motion of the earth around its axis and around the sun. A hundred years later Hipparchus determined more exactly the length of the solar year, the eccentricity of the ecliptic, the precession of the equinoxes, and even undertook a catalogue of the stars. It was in the second century after Christ that Claudius Ptolemy, a famous mathematician of Pelusium in Egypt, propounded the system that bears his name, viz that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun, moon, and planets revolved around it in the following order: nearest to the earth was the sphere of the moon; then followed the spheres of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; then came the sphere of the fixed stars; these were succeeded by two crystalline spheres and an outer sphere named the primum mobile or first motion, which last was again circumscribed by the coelum empyreum, of a cubic shape, wherein happy souls found their abode.

The Arabs began to make scientific astronomical observations about the middle of the eighth century, and for 400 years they prosecuted the science with assiduity. Ibn-Yunis (around 1000 AD) made important observations of the disturbances and eccentricities of Jupiter and Saturn. In the sixteenth century Nicholas Copernicus, born in 1473, introduced the system that bears his name, and which gives to the sun the central place in the solar system, and shows all the other bodies, the earth included, revolving around him. This arrangement of the universe came at length to be generally received on account of the simplicity it substituted for the complexities and contradictions of the theory of Ptolemy. The observations and calculations of Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer, born in 1546, continued over many years, were of the highest value, and claim for him the title of regenerator of practical astronomy. His assistant and pupil, Johann Kepler, born in 1571, was enabled, principally by the aid he received from his master's labours, to arrive at those laws which have made his name famous: 1. That the planets move, not in circular, but in elliptical orbits, of which the sun occupies a focus. 2. That the radius vector, or imaginary straight line joining the sun and any planet, moves over equal spaces in equal times. 3. That the squares of the times of the revolutions of the planets are as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun, Galileo, who died in 1642, advanced the science by his observations and by the new revelations he made through his telescopes, which established the truth of the Copernican theory.

Isaac Newton, born in 1642, carried physical astronomy suddenly to comparative perfection. Accepting Kepler's laws as a statement of the facts of planetary motion he deduced from them his theory of gravitation. The science was enriched towards the close of the eighteenth century by the discovery by Herschel of the planet Uranus and its satellites, the resolution of the Milky Way into myriads of stars, and the unravelling of the mystery of nebulae and of double and triple stars. The splended analytical researches of Lalande, Lagrange, Delambre, and Laplace, mark the same period. The nineteenth century opened with the discovery of the first four minor planets; and the existence of another planet (Neptune) more distant from the sun than Uranus, was, in 1845, simultaneously and independently predicted by Leverrier and Adams. Of later years the sun attracted a number of observers, the spectroscope and photography having been especially fruitful in this field of investigation. From transit observations carried out at the end of the 19th century the former calculated distance of the sun has been corrected, and is now given as 92,560,000 miles. The two satellites of Mars, and of others belonging to Jupiter were also discovered towards the end of the 19th century.

The objects with which astronomy has chiefly to deal are the earth, the sun, the moon, the planets, the fixed stars, comets, nebulae, and meteors. The stellar universe is composed of an unknown host of stars, many millions in number, the most noticeable of which have been formed into groups called constellations. The nebulae are cloud-like patches of light scattered all over the heavens. Some of them have been resolved into star-clusters, but many of them are but masses of incandescent gas. Of the so-called fixed stars, many are now known to be by no means fixed, but revolve in company with another or others. Variable stars and non-luminous stars are also known. The fixed stars preserve, at least to unaided vision, an unalterable relation to each other, because of their vast distance from the earth. Their apparent movement from east to west is the result of the earth's revolution on its axis in twenty-four hours from west to east. The planets have not only an apparent, but also a real and proper motion, since, like our earth, they revolve around the sun in their several orbits and periods.

The mid-20th century saw great leaps in astronomical research with rockets, derived from the German terror weapons of the Second World War, being used to send probes and men into space for closer examination of the heavenly bodies. A retroreflector left on the Moon's surface by Apollo astronauts during the NASA Apollo missions returns a high-power laser beam emitted from the Earth, enabling researchers to carry out regular monitoring and measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon to an accuracy of a few centimetres.

We now know something of the planets in our solar system. We know that Mercury is too hot to retain an atmosphere, and that Venus' brilliant white appearance is the result of its being completely enveloped by thick clouds of carbon dioxide. Below the upper clouds Venus has a hostile atmosphere containing clouds of sulphuric acid droplets. The cloud cover shields the planet's surface from direct sunlight, but the energy that does filter through warms the surface, the heat being trapped by the dense clouds, resulting in a very high surface temperature of almost 480 degrees Centigrade. Radar can penetrate the thick Venusian clouds which obscure the surface from telescopes, and has been used to map the planet's surface. Yet, despite advances, the origins of the universe, the stars planets, and the planets' asteroids remains a matter of conjecture, theory and debate.
Research Astronomy

GEOMETRY

Geometry (from the Greek ge, earth, and metron, measure), as its name implies, was primarily the mathematical science which had for its object the measurement of portions of the earth's surface; but now geometry may be termed the science which treats of the properties and relations of definite portions of space, such as surfaces, volumes, angles, lines. The relation between the parts of the same figure may be of two kinds, of position or of magnitude; for example, two points in a straight line, four points on the same circle, two straight lines perpendicular to one another, a straight line tangent to a circle, are relations of position. On the other hand, the proportionality of homologous lines of two similar figures, the equality of the square constructed on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle to the sum of the squares constructed on the sides containing the right angle, that of the volumes of two pyramids on equal bases and of the same height, are relations of dimension. But the relations of position govern the relations of dimension, and vice versa; that is, the one set of relations depend upon the other. Thus it ia because a triangle is rectangular that the square constructed on one of its sides ia equivalent to the sum of the squares constructed on the other two, and, vice versa, that relation between the magnitudes of the squares on the three sides depends on the triangle being right-angled. The geometer may draw indifferently from the study of a figure either the knowledge of the relations of position or that of the relations of dimension, on the condition that he knows how to apply relations of the one kind to those of the other: and the principal aim of geometry is to examine into the connection between the relations of magnitude and those of position.

Geometry may be conveniently divided into several principal sections - elementary geometry, practical geometry, analytical geometry, infinitesimal geometry, etc.

Elementary geometry consists of two parts - plane geometry, the object of which is the study of the simplest figures formed on a plane by straight lines and circles; and solid geometry or geometry of three dimensions, which treats of straight lines and planes considered in any relative position whatever, of figures terminated by planes, of the cylinder, of the cone, and of the sphere.

Analytical geometry, either plane or solid, makes use of the method of co-ordinates introduced by Descartes and primarily applied to curves. In ancient times, though curves were studied and the principal properties of conic sections known, still no connection existed between these curves, nor was there any means of establishing one, so that the study of one was of no value to that of another. The first question in introducing the analytic method was then to fix upon some means which should serve to construct every curve by successive points as numerous and as closely brought together as is necessary in order to lay down the curve, Now the position of a point in a plane may be determined by two intersecting perpendiculars drawn from two fixed lines - the co-ordinate axes - at right angles to each other. An equation may then be found which states the relation between the co-ordinates of any point, that is, its distance from the two co-ordinate axes. The study of the curves will thus be simply the study of their equations. In this way a typical equation for a curve in a certain system may be got, so that if at another time the curve is represented under another definition in investigating its equation in the same system of co-ordinates, particularized so aa to simplify as much as possible the calculations, it will suffice to compare the particular equation with the general one to verify the identity of the curve, to give it its name, and to know all the properties of it which have been studied previously. In a similar way the analytical geometry of solid bodies is based on the fact that the position of any point in space can be determined by reference to three intersecting planes.

Infinitesimal geometry is simply a continuation of the analytical geometry of Descartes, of which it may indeed be said it forms a part; the difference consists simply in the nature of the questions which, as they involve the measurement of magnitudes, the incessantly variable elements of which cannot be summed up by finite parts, require the use of the infinitesimal calculus.

Descriptive geometry consists in the application of geometrical rules to the representation of the figures and the various relations of the forms of bodies according to certain conventional methods. In the descriptive geometry the situation of points in space is represented by their orthographical projections, on two planes at right angles to each other called the planes of projection.
Research Geometry

STARGATE

Stargate is a sci-fi adventure starring Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Viveca Lindfors, Alexis Cruz and Mili Avital in a story about an Egyptologist asked to join a government project to investigate a strange structure located near to the Egyptian pyramids. Stargate was directed by Roland Emmerich in 1994.
Research Stargate

BILLIARDS

Billiards is a formerly well-known game, probably (like its name) of French origin, traditionally played with ivory balls, now plastic, on a flat table. The game of billiards was known in the 18th century, and evolved very quickly over the next one hundred years. Writing in 1768, the Encyclopaedia Britannica described billiards as 'an ingenious kind of game, played on a rectangular table, covered with green cloth, and played exactly level, with little ivory balls, which are driven by crooked sticks, made on purpose, into hazards or holes, on the edge and corners of the table, according to certain rules of the game.' The most striking evolution of the game during the next one hundred years was the replacement of the crooked sticks for straight, tapering sticks, which remain in use to this day.

Various modes of play, constituting many distinct games, were adopted, according to the tastes of the players, some being more in favour in one country, some in another. The common English billiard-table is a rectangle, about 12 feet by 6, covered with fine and very smooth green cloth, on a perfectly level bed of slate, and having a raised edge all round lined with cushions which are made tolerably firm and elastic, much of the skill of the game consisting in calculating the rebound of the balls in various directions from the cushions. Along the edges of the table are six semicircular holes arranged at regular intervals in the cushion, through which the balls are allowed to drop into small nets called pockets, under the sides of the table. The pockets are placed one at each corner of the table, and two opposite each other in the middle of the long sides. Each player is provided with a cue to strike the balls. The cue is a wooden rod from 4 or 5 to 6 or 8 feet long, rounded in form, and tapering gradually from 1.5 inch in diameter at the butt to .75 inch or less at the point, which is tipped with leather and rubbed with chalk to make the stroke smooth.

In the common game two players engage. Each has a white ball, and a red ball is common to the two. In beginning the game the red ball is placed on a spot near one end of the table, and equidistant from the corner pockets. A line drawn across the table at the other end marks off a space called baulk. In this space a semicircle is described, out of which the player, in commencing, must send his ball, either striking the red or giving his opponent a 'miss', that is, playing without striking the red ball, which scores one against him. When the game has commenced the player is at liberty to strike at either his opponent's ball or the red, and continues to play as long as he succeeds in scoring. The whole of an uninterrupted run of play is called a break. There are various modes of scoring. When a player strikes both balls with his own it is called a cannon, and counts two; when he pockets his own ball, after striking another, it is called a losing hazard, and counts two if made off his opponent's ball, three if off the red; when he pockets his opponent's ball it counts two; when he pockets the red, three. When the player fails to strike either ball, it scores one against him; if he goes into a pocket without striking, it scores three against him.

After the ordinary game the most favourite varieties were pyramids and pool. The former is so called from the position in which the balls are placed at the beginning of the game. It is played with fifteen balls; and the object of the players is to try who will pocket, or 'pot', the greatest number of balls.

Pool was also a game of 'potting', but is played somewhat differently. It is a favourite game with those who play for stakes, insomuch that it may be considered almost exclusively a gambling game. It embraces an indefinite number of players, each of whom is provided with a ball of a different colour from any of the others. They play in succession, and each tries to pot his opponent's ball. If he succeeds with one he goes on to the next; if he fails another player takes his turn, playing first on the ball of the last player. There are thus two points which a pool-player has to aim at: to pot as many balls as possible, and to keep his ball in a safe position relatively to that of the following player, as the player whose ball is potted has to pay the penalty prescribed by the game.

The common billiard-table used in France was smaller than the English, and has no pockets, the game being entirely a cannon game. This kind of table was very common in America after about 1900, and there a four-pocket table was also in use. The American term for cannon was 'carom' and in American play two red balls (or a red and a pink) and two white ones were commonly employed.
Research Billiards

	The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by Matt and Leela Probert ©1993 - 2009 The Probert Encyclopaedia Southampton, United Kingdom