The ISO (International Standards Organisation) assigns a two character code to each country name. These codes are used by Internet 'whois' databases (these two character abbreviations are the whois country codes) and also other applications.
The metric system is a system of measurement based on the decimal system. It was first formalised in France at the end of the 18th century and by the 1830s was being widely adopted in Europe. In Britain, bills for its compulsory adoption were defeated in 1871 and 1907 and Imperial units remained supreme until 1963, when the yard was redefined as 0.9144 metre and the pound as 0. 45359237 kilogram. The Metrication Board set up in 1969 failed to achieve its target of the metrication of British industry by 1975 and metrication now proceeds on a voluntary basis, in which it was correctly envisaged that pints of beer, miles per hour, yards, and feet would persist until the end of the century, they have and perhaps will continue for many years to come. However, the Weights and Measures Act (1985) lists certain units that may no longer be used for trade: these include the hundredweight, ton, bushel, square mile, cubic yard, and cubic foot. It is hoped that before the end of the century such units as the therm and British thermal unit will have been abandoned. For all scientific purposes and many trade and industrial purposes the form of the metric system known as SI units is now in use. In the USA metrication has been even slower than in the UK. The metre was intended to be equal to one ten-millionth part of the distance from the pole to the equator, but was found to have been made too short and so is now set upon a certain length of iridio-platinum. Research Metric System
The radian is the SI unit (symbolrad) of plane angles, an alternative unit to the degree. It is the angle at the centre of a circle when the centre is joined to the two ends of an arc equal in length to the radius of the circle. There are 2 pi (approximately 6.284) radians in a full circle (360 degrees). One radian is approximately 57 degrees, and 1 degree is pi/180 or approximately 0.0175 radians. Radians are commonly used to specify angles in polar co-ordinates. Research Radian
Galileo Galilee was an Italian physicist. He was born in 1564 at Pisa and died in 1642. The son of a Florentine nobleman, his father intended him to go into medicine and procured for him an excellent education in literature and the arts, and in 1581 he entered the University of Pisa.
At nineteen the swinging of a lamp in Pisacathedral led him to investigate the laws of the oscillation of the pendulum, which he subsequently applied in the measurement of time; and in 1586 the works of Archimedes suggested his invention of the hydrostatic balance. He now devoted his attention exclusively to mathematics and natural science, and in 1589 was made professor of mathematics in the University of Pisa.
In 1592 he was appointed professor of mathematics in Padua, where he continued eighteen years, and his lectures acquired European fame. Here he made the important discovery that the spaces through which a body falls, in equal times, increase as the numbers 1, 3, 5, 7. If he did not invent he improved the thermometer, and made some interesting observations on the magnet. To the telescope, which in Holland remained not only imperfect but useless, he gave a new importance. He noted the irregularity of the moon's surface, and taught his scholars to measure the height of its mountains by their shadow.
A particular nebula he resolved into individual stars, and conjectured that the Milky Way might be resolved in the same manner. His most remarkable discovery was that of Jupiter's satellites in 1610, and he observed, though imperfectly, the ring of Saturn. He also detected the sun's spots, and inferred, from their regular advance from east to west, the rotation of the sun, and the inclination of its axis to the plane of the ecliptic.
In 1610 Cosmo II, grand-duke of Tuscany, appointed him grand-ducal mathematician and philosopher, and with increased leisure he lived sometimes in Florence, and sometimes at the country seat of his friend Salviata, where he gained a decisive victory for the Copernican system by the discovery of the varying phases of Mercury, Venus, and Mars. In 1611 he visited Rome for the first time, where he was honourably received; but on his return to Florence he became more and more involved in controversy, which gradually took a theological turn.
The, monks preached against him, and in 1616 he found himself again obliged to proceed to Rome, where he is doubtfully said to have pledged himself to abstain from promulgating his astronomical views. In 1623 Galileo replied to an attack upon him in his Saggiatore, a masterpiece of eloquence, which drew upon him the fury of the Jesuits. In 1632, with the permission of the pope, he published a dialogue expounding the Copernican system as against the Ptolemaic. A congregation of cardinals, monks, and mathematicians, all sworn enemies of Galileo, examined his work, condemned it as highly dangerous, and summoned him before the tribunal of the Inquisition. The veteran philosopher was compelled to go to Rome early in 1633, and was condemned to renounce upon his knees the truths he had maintained. At the moment when he arose, he is said (but this is doubtful) to have exclaimed, in an undertone, stamping his foot, 'E pur si muove!' (and yet it moves!). Upon this he was sentenced to the dungeons of the Inquisition for an indefinite time, and every week, for three years, was to repeat the seven penitential psalms of David. After a few days' detention his sentence of imprisonment was commuted to banishment to the villa of the Grand-duke of Tuscany at Rome, and then to the archiepiscopal palace at Sienna.
He was afterwards allowed to return to his residence at Arcetri, near Florence, where he employed his last years principally in the study of mechanics and projectiles. The results are found in two important works on the laws of motion, the foundation of the present system of physics and astronomy. At the same time he tried to make use of Jupiter's satellites for the calculation of longitudes; and though he brought nothing to perfection in this branch, he was the first who reflected systematically on such a method of fixing geographical longitudes. He was at this time afflicted with a disease in his eyes, one of which was wholly blind and the other almost useless, when, in 1637, he discovered the libration of the moon.
Domestic troubles and disease embittered the last years of Galileo's life. After his death his remains were ultimately deposited in the church of Sta. Croce, at Florence. Research Galileo
Si Joseph Edgar Boehm was a Hungarian sculptor. He was born in 1834 at Vienna and died in 1890. He studied art in Italy and Paris, and settled in England in 1862. He executed many statues for public monuments, including those to Bunyan at Bedford, Carlyle and Tyndall on the Thames Embankment, Beaconsfield and Stanley for Westminster, etc, besides many portrait-busts. In 1881 he was appointed sculptor-in-ordinary to queen Victoria. Research Joseph Boehm
Si Kenelm Digby was an Englisg courtier and scientist. He was born in 1603 and died in 1665. The eldest son of Sir Everard Digby he studied at Oxford, was knighted in 1623, and on the accession of Charles I was created a gentleman of the bed-chamber, a commissioner of the navy, and a governor of the Trinity House. He soon after fitted out at his own expense a small but successful squadron against the Algerines and Venetians.
In 1636 he became a Roman Catholic, was imprisoned as a Royalist from 1638 to 1643, when he was allowed to retire to the Continent. At the Restoration he returned to England, became a member of the Royal Society, and was much visited by men of Science. He wrote numerous works: a Treatise on the Nature of Bodies, a Treatise on the Nature and Operation of the Soul, Of the Cure of Wounds by the Power of Sympathy, etc. Evelyn calls him 'an arrant mountebank.' Research Kenelm Digby
Si Samuel White Baker was an English traveller. He was born in 1821 and died in 1893. He resided some years in Sri Lanka; in 1861 began his African travels, which lasted several years, in the Upper Nile regions, and resulted, among other discoveries, in that of Albert Nyanzalake in 1864, and of the exit of the White Nile from it. In Africa he encountered Speke and Grant after their discovery of the Victoria Nyanza. On his return home he was received with great honour and was knighted. In 1869 he returned to Africa as head of an expedition sent by the Khedive of Egypt to annex and open up to trade a large part of the newly explored country, being raised to the dignity of pasha. He returned in 1873, having finished his work, and was succeeded by the celebrated Gordon. Since then he travelled much. His writings include: The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon ; Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon; The Albert Nyanza, etc; The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia; Ismailia: a Narrative of the Expedition to Central Africa; Cyprus as I saw it in 1879; also, Cast up by the Sea, a story published in 1869. Research Samuel Baker
Si William Gell was an English antiquarian and classical scholar. He was born in 1777 and died in 1836. He was educated at Cambridge, and was for some time a fellow of Emanuel College in that university. In 1814 the Princess of Wales (afterwards Queen Caroline) appointed him one of her chamberlains, and he accompanied her on her travels for several years. His principal works are: The Topography of Troy, The Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca, The Itinerary of Greece, The Itinerary of the Morea, The Topography of Rome, and the interesting and beautiful work, Pompeiana, or Observations upon the Topography, Edifices, and Ornaments of Pompeii. Research William Gell
Acoustics is the experimental and theoretical science of sound and hearing, and especially the phenomena of sound in space, such as buildings.
Acoustics teaches the cause, nature, and phenomena of such vibrations of elastic
bodies as affect the organ of hearing; the manner in which sound is produced, its transmission through air and other media, the doctrine of reflected sound or echoes, the properties and effects of different sounds, including musical sounds or notes, and the structure and action of the organ of hearing, etc. The propagation of sound is analogous to that of light, both being due to vibrations which produce successive waves, and Isaac Newton was the first to show that its propagation through any medium depended upon the elasticity of that medium. Regarding the intensity, reflection, and refraction of sound, much the same rules apply as in light. In ordinary cases of hearing the vibrating medium is air, but all substances capable of vibrating may be employed to propagate and convey sound. When a bell is struck its vibrations are communicated to the particles of air surrounding it, and from these to particles outside them, until they reach the ear of the listener. The intensity of sound varies inversely as the square of the distance of the body sounding from the ear. Sound travels through the air at the rate of about 332 metres per second; through water at the rate of about 1433 metres.
Sounds may be musical or non-musical. A musical sound is caused by a regular series of exactly similar pulses succeeding each other at precisely equal intervals of time. If these conditions are not fulfilled the sound is a noise. Musical sounds are comparatively simple, and are combined to give pleasing sensations according to easy numerical relations. The loudness of a note depends on the degree to which it affects the ear; the pitch of a note depends on the number of vibrations to the second which produce the note; the timbre, quality, or character of a note depends on the body or bodies whose vibrations produce the sound, and is due to the form of the paths of vibrating particles. The gamut is a series of eight notes, which are called by the names Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do, and the numbers of vibrations which produce these notes are respectively proportional to 24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 40, 45, 48. The numerical value of the interval between any two notes is given by dividing one of the above numbers corresponding to the higher note by the number corresponding to the lower note. The intervals from Do to each of the others are called a second, a major third, a fourth, a, fifth, a sixth, a seventh, and an octave respectively. The interval from La to Do is a minor third. An interval of nine eights is a major tone; ten ninths is a minor tone; sixteen fifteenths is called a limma.
Gauss is the c.g.s. unit (symbolGs) of magnetic induction or magnetic fluxdensity, replaced by the SI unit, the tesla, but still commonly used. It is equal to one line of magnetic flux per square centimetre. The Earth' s magnetic field is about 0.5 Gs, and changes to it over time are measured in gammas (one gamma equals 10-5 gauss). Research Gauss
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Country Codes
