Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) poster, placard designed to be posted in some public place for purposes of commercial announcement or propaganda. Advertising makes wide use of posters, as do charitable and political organizations. I...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Equilibrium equilibrium, state of balance. When a body or a system is in equilibrium, there is no net tendency to change. In mechanics, equilibrium has to do with the forces acting on a body. ...

(Encyclopedia) free energy or Gibbs free energy, quantity derived from the relationships between heat and work studied in thermodynamics and used as a measure of the relative stability of a physical or chemical syst...

(Encyclopedia) Pritzker Prize, officially The Pritzker Architecture Prize prĭtˈskər [key], award for excellence in architecture, given annually since 1979. Largely modeled on the Nobel Prize, it is the premier ar...

(Encyclopedia) loran lôrˈănˌ [key], long-range, accurate radio navigational system used by a ship or aircraft to confirm or to determine its geographical position. The term loran is derived from the words long-r...

(Encyclopedia) open education, also known as open classroom, type of educational reform. The central tenet of this informal system is that children want to learn and will do so naturally if left to their own initiat...

(Encyclopedia) osprey ŏsˈprē [key], common name for a fish-eating bird of prey found near water in most parts of the world. The osprey, or fish hawk, Pandion haliaetus, has brown upperparts and a grayish white he...

(Encyclopedia) Mary II, 1662–94, queen of England, wife of William III. The daughter of James II by his first wife, Anne Hyde, she was brought up a Protestant despite her father's adoption of Roman Catholicism. In...

(Encyclopedia) Peter Damian, Saint dāˈmēən [key], Ital. Pietro Damiani, 1007?–1072, Italian reformer, Doctor of the Church, b. Ravenna. He became a Camaldolese monk at Fonte-Avellino (near Gubbio) and because ...

(Encyclopedia) Morris, Wright (Wright Marion Morris), 1910–98, American writer, b. Central City, Nebr. He was for many years professor of English at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State Univ.). Fro...