Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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glassblowing ... gliding bacterium

glassblowing: the practice of shaping a mass of glass that has been softened by heat by blowing air into it through a tube. Glassblowing was invented by Syrian craftsmen in the area of Sidon, Aleppo, Hama, and Palmyra in the 1st ...
Glassboro: borough (town), Gloucester county, southwestern New Jersey, U.S. It lies 17 miles (27 km) south of Camden. Hollybush (1849), the home of the president of Rowan College of New Jersey (1923; formerly Glassboro State College), was the site of a ...
Glassco, John: Canadian author whose poetry, short stories, novels, memoirs, and translations are notable for their versatility and sophistication.
glassfish: any of about 24 small Indo-Pacific fishes of the family Ambassidae (or Chandidae, order Perciformes), most with more or less transparent bodies. Sometimes placed with the snooks and Nile perch in the family Centropomidae, glassfishes are found in freshwater and ...
glassware: any decorative article made of glass, often designed for everyday use. From very early times glass has been used for various kinds of vessels, and in all countries where the industry has been developed glass has been produced in a ...
glasswort: any of about 15 species of succulent herbs constituting the genus Salicornia, of the goosefoot family (Chenopodiaceae). They are annual plants native to salt marshes around the world. The jointed, bright-green stems turn red or purple in the fall. Glasswort ...
Glastonbury: town ("parish"), Mendip district, administrative and historic county of Somerset, England. It is situated on the slopes of a group of hills that rise from the Brue Valley to a tor (peak) of 522 feet (159 metres).
Glatigny, Albert-Alexandre: French poet of the Parnassian school, known for his small poems of satiric comment and for his peripatetic life as a strolling actor and improvisationalist.
Glatstein, Jacob: Polish-born novelist and literary critic who in 1920 helped establish the Inzikhist ("introspectivist") literary movement. In later years he was one of the outstanding figures in mid-20th-century American Yiddish literature.
Glauber's salt: colourless crystalline sulfate of sodium (q.v.).
Glauber, Johann Rudolf: German-Dutch chemist, sometimes called the German Boyle; i.e., the father of chemistry.
Glauber, Roy J.: American physicist, who won one-half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2005 for contributions to the field of optics, the branch of physics that deals with the physical properties of light and its interactions with matter. (The other half ...
glaucochroite: manganese-rich variety of the mineral monticellite (q.v.).
glaucoma: disease caused by an increase in pressure within the eye as a result of blockage of the flow of aqueous humour, a watery fluid produced by the ciliary body. (The ciliary body is a ring of tissue directly behind the ...
glauconite: greenish ferric-iron silicate mineral with micaceous structure, characteristically formed on submarine elevations ranging in depth from 30 to 1,000 metres (100 to 3,300 feet) below sea level. Glauconite is abundant only in sea-floor areas that are isolated from large supplies ...
glaucophane: common amphibole mineral, a sodium, magnesium, and aluminum silicate that occurs only in crystalline schists formed from sodium-rich rocks by low-grade metamorphism. It also forms from sedimentary rocks by the introduction of sodium oxide (Na₂O). Glaucophane typically occurs in folded ...
glaucophane schist facies: one of the major divisions of the mineral facies classification of metamorphic rocks, the rocks of which, because of their peculiar mineralogy, suggest formation conditions of high pressure and relatively low temperature; such conditions are not typical of the normal ...
Glaucus: (Greek: Gleaming), name of several figures in Greek mythology, the most important of whom were the following:
glaze: ice coating that forms when supercooled rain, drizzle, or fog drops strike surfaces that have temperatures at or below the freezing point; the accumulated water covers the surface and freezes relatively slowly. Glaze is denser (about 0.85 gram per cubic ...
Glazov: city and administrative centre of Glazov rayon (sector) in Udmurtiya republic, Russia. Founded in 1780 as a point of Udmurt settlement, it is on the Cheptsa River. Industrial activities include timber milling, woodworking, metal working, and food processing. Glazov has ...
Glazunov, Aleksandr: the major Russian symphonic composer of the generation that followed Tchaikovsky.
Gleason, Jackie: American comedian best known for his portrayal of Ralph Kramden in the television series The Honeymooners.
Gleason, Kate: American businesswoman whose resourceful management skills were largely responsible for the success of her family's machine-tool business and that of other companies and institutions.
glee: (from Old English gleo: "music" or "entertainment"), vocal composition for three or more unaccompanied solo male voices, including a countertenor. It consists of several short sections of contrasting character or mood, each ending in a full close. In style it ...
Gleim, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig: German Anacreontic poet.
Glen Eagles: narrow glen, Perth and Kinross council area, Scotland, running south through the Ochil Hills. Within the glen are the remains of Gleneagles Castle (14th century), which was superseded in 1624 by Gleneagles House as the home of the Haldane family. ...
Glen Ellyn: village, DuPage county, northeastern Illinois, U.S. It is a suburb of Chicago, lying 23 miles (37 km) west of downtown. Glen Ellyn's phases of development were marked by seven name changes: Babcock's Grove (1833), for the first settlers, Ralph and ...
Glen Innes: town, northeastern New South Wales, Australia, in the New England district on the Northern Tableland south of the Queensland border. Founded in 1851 on Furracabad stock station, it became a municipality in 1872. Glen Innes serves a region of dairy ...
Glen Mor: valley in the Highland council area of north-central Scotland, extending about 60 miles (97 km) from the Moray Firth at Inverness to Loch Linnhe at Fort William. It includes Lochs Ness, Oich, and Lochy. The Caledonian Canal runs through the ...
Glencairn, Alexander Cunningham, 5th earl of: Scottish Protestant noble, an adherent of John Knox and a sometime supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Glencairn, William Cunningham, 4th earl of: Scottish conspirator during the Reformation.
Glencoe: glen (valley) south of Fort William in the Highland council area of western Scotland. From a relatively low watershed and pass to Glen Etive at an elevation of 1,011 feet (308 metres), Glencoe runs west for about 5 miles (8 ...
Glencoe, Massacre of: (Feb. 13, 1692), in Scottish history, the treacherous slaughter of the MacDonalds of Glencoe by soldiers under Archibald Campbell, 10th earl of Argyll. Many Scottish clans had remained loyal to King James II after he was replaced on the British ...
Glendale: city, Maricopa county, south-central Arizona, U.S., in the Salt River valley, just west of Phoenix. Founded in 1892, it is an agricultural trading centre (fruits, vegetables, cotton). It is the seat of Glendale Community College (1965), and the American Graduate ...
Glendale: city, Los Angeles county, California, U.S. Adjacent to Burbank and Pasadena, Glendale lies in the Verdugo Hills, at the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley. Laid out in 1887, the site was part of Rancho San Rafael, a Spanish ...
Glendalough, Vale of: valley, County Wicklow, Ireland. When St. Kevin settled there in the 6th century, Glendalough became an important monastic centre and, until 1214, the centre of a diocese. The series of churches in the valley, all in ruins except for the ...
Glendive: city, seat (1881) of Dawson county, eastern Montana, U.S., on the Yellowstone River. It was founded in 1881 after the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway and named for nearby Glendive Creek (said to be a corruption of "Glendale"). It ...
Glendower, Owen: self-proclaimed prince of Wales whose unsuccessful rebellion against England was the last major Welsh attempt to throw off English rule. He became a national hero upon the resurgence of Welsh nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Glenelg River: river in southwestern Victoria, Australia, rising on Mt. William in the Grampians east of Balmoral and flowing west and south to join its chief tributary, the Wannon River, at Casterton. It empties into Discovery Bay, where sand dunes have deflected ...
Glenmore: national forest park in the foothills of the Cairngorm Mountains, Highland council area, north-central Scotland. Established in 1948 and comprising 12,000 acres (5,000 hectares), the park extends upward from 1,000 feet (300 metres) near the town of Aviemore to include ...
Glenn, John H., Jr.: the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth, completing three orbits in 1962. (Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin, the first person in space, made a single orbit of the Earth in 1961).
Glenrothes: town, Fife council area and historic county, eastern Scotland. Scotland's second new town was established in 1948 to provide housing for coal miners near the experimental Rothes Colliery. When the coal-mining industry declined, new industries were developed, including the manufacture ...
Glens Falls: city, Warren county, east-central New York, U.S., on the Hudson River, 45 miles (72 km) north of Albany. Part of the Queensbury Patent (1759; now Queensbury town [township]), it was settled in the 1760s by Quakers as Wing's Falls (for ...
Glenview: village, Cook county, northeastern Illinois, U.S. It is a suburb of Chicago, located 20 miles (30 km) north of downtown, and lies on the north branch of the Chicago River. Illinois and later Potawatomi Indians were early inhabitants of the ...
Glenwood Springs: city, seat (1889) of Garfield county, west-central Colorado, U.S., at the confluence of Roaring Fork and Colorado rivers. It lies in a canyon at an elevation of 5,758 feet (1,755 metres) and is surrounded by the White River National Forest, ...
Gleysol: one of the 30 soil groups in the classification system of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Gleysols are formed under waterlogged conditions produced by rising groundwater. In the tropics and subtropics they are cultivated for rice or, after drainage, ...
Glidden, Joseph Farwell: American inventor of the first commercially successful barbed wire, which was instrumental in transforming the Great Plains of western North America.
glider: any of about six small phalangers-marsupial mammals of Australasia-that volplane from tree to tree like flying squirrels. Most have well-developed flaps of skin along the flanks; these become sails when the limbs are extended. An eastern Australian species, which feeds ...
glider: nonpowered heavier-than-air craft capable of sustained flight. Though many men contributed to the development of the glider, the most famous pioneer was Otto Lilienthal (1848-96) of Germany, who, with his brother Gustav, began experiments in 1867 on the buoyancy and ...
gliding: flight in an unpowered heavier-than-air craft. Any engineless aircraft, from the simplest hang glider to a space shuttle on its return flight to the Earth, is a glider. The glider is powered by gravity, which means that it is always ...
gliding bacterium: any member of a heterogeneous group of microorganisms that exhibit creeping or gliding forms of movement on solid substrata. Gliding bacteria are generally gram-negative and do not possess flagella. The complex mechanisms by which they move have not been fully ...