Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) button, knoblike appendage used on wearing apparel either for ornament or for fastening. Although buttons were sometimes used as fasteners by Greeks and Romans, they were more often merely ornamental ...

(Encyclopedia) cellulose, chief constituent of the cell walls of plants. Chemically, it is a carbohydrate that is a high molecular weight polysaccharide. Raw cotton is composed of 91% pure cellulose; other important...

(Encyclopedia) centering, the framework of wood or of wood and steel built to support a masonry arch or vault during its construction. The centering itself must be rigidly supported, either by posts from the ground ...

(Encyclopedia) china clay, one of the purest of the clays, composed chiefly of the mineral kaolinite usually formed when granite is changed by hydrothermal metamorphism. Usage of the terms china clay and kaolin is n...

(Encyclopedia) Huntington. 1 City (2020 pop. 17,022), seat of Huntington co., NE Ind.; inc. 1848. It is a farm trade center and an industrial city. Manufactures ...

(Encyclopedia) Covington kŭvˈĭngtən [key], city (2020 pop. 40,181), seat of Kenton co., N central Ky., at the ...

(Encyclopedia) fiber optics, transmission of digitized messages or information by light pulses along hair-thin glass or plastic fibers. Each fiber is surrounded by a cladding having a high index of refractance so th...

(Encyclopedia) Kao, Sir Charles Kuen, 1933–2018, British-American physicist, b. Shanghai, China, Ph.D. Imperial College London, 1965. Kao was an engineer and researcher at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories ...

(Encyclopedia) South Bend, city (1990 pop. 105,511), seat of St. Joseph co., N Ind., on the great south bend of the St. Joseph River, in a farming and mint-growing region; inc. as a city 1865. An industrial city, it...

(Encyclopedia) waterfowl, common term for members of the order Anseriformes, wild, aquatic, typically freshwater birds including ducks, geese, and screamers. In Great Britain the term is also used to designate speci...