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noun
Axis  n.  (pl. axes)  
1.
A straight line, real or imaginary, passing through a body, on which it revolves, or may be supposed to revolve; a line passing through a body or system around which the parts are symmetrically arranged.
2.
(Math.) A straight line with respect to which the different parts of a magnitude are symmetrically arranged; as, the axis of a cylinder, i. e., the axis of a cone, that is, the straight line joining the vertex and the center of the base; the axis of a circle, any straight line passing through the center.
3.
(Bot.) The stem; the central part, or longitudinal support, on which organs or parts are arranged; the central line of any body.
4.
(Anat.)
(a)
The second vertebra of the neck, or vertebra dentata.
(b)
Also used of the body only of the vertebra, which is prolonged anteriorly within the foramen of the first vertebra or atlas, so as to form the odontoid process or peg which serves as a pivot for the atlas and head to turn upon.
5.
(Crystallog.) One of several imaginary lines, assumed in describing the position of the planes by which a crystal is bounded.
6.
(Fine Arts) The primary or secondary central line of any design.
Anticlinal axis (Geol.), a line or ridge from which the strata slope downward on the two opposite sides.
Synclinal axis, a line from which the strata slope upward in opposite directions, so as to form a valley.
Axis cylinder (Anat.), the neuraxis or essential, central substance of a nerve fiber; called also axis band, axial fiber, and cylinder axis.
Axis in peritrochio, the wheel and axle, one of the mechanical powers.
Axis of a curve (Geom.), a straight line which bisects a system of parallel chords of a curve; called a principal axis, when cutting them at right angles, in which case it divides the curve into two symmetrical portions, as in the parabola, which has one such axis, the ellipse, which has two, or the circle, which has an infinite number. The two axes of the ellipse are the major axis and the minor axis, and the two axes of the hyperbola are the transverse axis and the conjugate axis.
Axis of a lens, the straight line passing through its center and perpendicular to its surfaces.
Axis of a microscope or Axis of a telescope, the straight line with which coincide the axes of the several lenses which compose it.
Axes of coordinates in a plane, two straight lines intersecting each other, to which points are referred for the purpose of determining their relative position: they are either rectangular or oblique.
Axes of coordinates in space, the three straight lines in which the coördinate planes intersect each other.
Axis of a balance, that line about which it turns.
Axis of oscillation, of a pendulum, a right line passing through the center about which it vibrates, and perpendicular to the plane of vibration.
Axis of polarization, the central line around which the prismatic rings or curves are arranged.
Axis of revolution (Descriptive Geom.), a straight line about which some line or plane is revolved, so that the several points of the line or plane shall describe circles with their centers in the fixed line, and their planes perpendicular to it, the line describing a surface of revolution, and the plane a solid of revolution.
Axis of symmetry (Geom.), any line in a plane figure which divides the figure into two such parts that one part, when folded over along the axis, shall coincide with the other part.
Axis of the equator, Axis of the ecliptic, Axis of the horizon (or other circle considered with reference to the sphere on which it lies), the diameter of the sphere which is perpendicular to the plane of the circle.
Axis of the Ionic capital (Arch.), a line passing perpendicularly through the middle of the eye of the volute.
Neutral axis (Mech.), the line of demarcation between the horizontal elastic forces of tension and compression, exerted by the fibers in any cross section of a girder.
Optic axis of a crystal, the direction in which a ray of transmitted light suffers no double refraction. All crystals, not of the isometric system, are either uniaxial or biaxial.
Optic axis, Visual axis (Opt.), the straight line passing through the center of the pupil, and perpendicular to the surface of the eye.
Radical axis of two circles (Geom.), the straight line perpendicular to the line joining their centers and such that the tangents from any point of it to the two circles shall be equal to each other.
Spiral axis (Arch.), the axis of a twisted column drawn spirally in order to trace the circumvolutions without.
Axis of abscissas and Axis of ordinates. See Abscissa.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Axis" Quotes from Famous Books



... other than the one regularly in charge of my case, who at last relented and presented me with a good, whole lead pencil. By so doing he placed himself high on my list of benefactors; for that little shaftlike implement, magnified by my lively appreciation, became as the very axis ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... how to balance the so-called "strategy-force structure-budget" formula. Today, that formula has expanded to include "threat, strategy, force structure, budget, and infrastructure." Without a "clear and present danger" such as the Axis Powers in 1941 or, later, the Soviet Union to coalesce public agreement on the threat, it is difficult to construct a supporting strategy that can be effective either in setting priorities or objectives. Hence, ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... For his part, sitting at the turning of the world, he was rejoiced to see behind him the tragic splendor of the night, and, in front of him, the smile of young hope, the uncertain beauty of the fresh, fevered dawn. And he was at the stationary point of the axis of the pendulum while the clock was beginning to go again. Without following its onward march, he listened joyfully to the beating of the rhythm of life. He joined in the hope of those who denied his past agonies. What ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... however small, thrown at it; a thin jet of water only half an inch in diameter, if discharged at great pressure equivalent to a column of water of 500 metres, cannot be cut even with an axe, it resists as though it were made of the hardest steel; a thin cord, hanging from a vertical axis, and being revolved very quickly, becomes rigid, and if struck with a hammer it resists and resounds like a rod of wood; a thin chain and even a loop of string, if revolved at great speed over a vertical pulley, becomes rigid and, if allowed to escape ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... on the rocks quite clear of the ice, the Professor determined the direction of a supposed line perpendicular to the axis of the glacier. He then sought for a conspicuous and well-defined object on the opposite side of the valley, as near as possible to that direction. In this he was greatly helped by Captain Wopper, who, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... of the Americas falls under Axis domination, the shipbuilding facilities which the Axis powers would then possess in all of Europe, in the British Isles and in the Far East would be much greater than all the shipbuilding facilities and potentialities of all of the Americas—not only greater, but two or three times ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... were considered a task or day's work, and if any one failed to complete her task she received a whipping from the madam. At night when the spinners brought their work to the big house I would have it to reel. The reel was a contrivance consisting of a sort of wheel, turned on an axis, used to transfer the yarn from the spools or spindles of the spinning wheels into cuts or hunks. It was turned by hand and when enough yarn had been reeled to make a cut the reel signaled it with a snap. This process was continued until four cuts were reeled which made a hunk, and this was taken ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes

... very exact definition of terms. The same thing in the same relation cannot be affected in two opposite ways. But there is no impossibility in a man standing still, yet moving his arms, or in a top which is fixed on one spot going round upon its axis. There is no necessity to mention all the possible exceptions; let us provisionally assume that opposites cannot do or be or suffer opposites in the same relation. And to the class of opposites belong assent and dissent, desire and avoidance. And one form ...
— The Republic • Plato

... in generous honesty are but pale in goodness and faint-hued in sincerity. But be thou what thou virtuously art, and let not the ocean wash away thy tincture. Stand majestically upon that axis where prudent simplicity hath fixed thee; and at no temptation invert the poles of thy honesty that vice may be uneasy and even monstrous unto thee; let iterated good acts and long confirmed habits make virtue natural or a second nature in thee; and since few or none prove eminently ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... rivers into all the seas. The summit or highest level of it is in the southwest; longest diameter is from northwest to southeast. From Crossen, whither Friedrich is now driving, to the Jablunka Pass, which issues upon Hungary, is above 250 miles; the AXIS, therefore, or longest diameter, of our Ellipse we may call 230 English miles;—its shortest or conjugate diameter, from Friedland in Bohemia (Wallenstein's old Friedland), by Breslau across the Oder to the Polish Frontier, is about 100. The total area ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... passing Sestos runs almost from North to South with even a slight tendency to the East (hence {eurou} a few lines further on), so that ships lying in the stream would point in a line cutting at right angles that of the longer axis (from East to West) of the Pontus and Propontis. This is the meaning of {epikarsios} elsewhere in Herodotus (i. 180 and iv. 101), and it would be rash to assign to it any other meaning here. It is true however that the expression {pros esperes} is used loosely ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... position was determined. The Creator being intelligent, it is impossible to conceive them placed fortuitously. There must then be a link between Mars and Jupiter, because the law once established cannot be broken. The same law may be observed in the arrangement of leaves around the axis of a plant. If intelligence arranged them they must be arranged in some order, for intelligence never performs the least act without a purpose. Each leaf or pair of leaves is not a mere duplication of the previous leaf or pair ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter

... the same family as the Dinornis giganteus and the still larger Epyornis maximus of Madagascar—monstrous wingless birds now extinct. One of the eggs of the latter in a fossil condition is preserved in the museum of the Garden of Plants in Paris. Its longer axis is sixteen inches, I think. It is, for an egg, a most wonderful thing, and on account of its size the bird laying it has been supposed to be of very much greater size than even the Dinornis giganteus, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... mother the position of the child, for several weeks before birth, is one in which its long axis is parallel to the long axis of her body. This remains true no matter whether the head or the buttocks are to precede at the time of birth. In ninety-seven out of a hundred cases, however, the head lies lowermost and consequently is the first ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... carried, I placed the end on the triangle and calling two others to help me, we bore downwards with all our weight, and when we had thrust awhile on the staff the corner of the slab sank into the floor and it turned on a diagonal axis until it stood upright, leaving a three-cornered space large enough for a man's body to pass through easily. Then I made a sign to one ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith

... left hand, palm to the front, toward the left and away from the body slowly (motion of the buffalo when chased). Move right hand on wrist as axis, rapidly (man on pony chasing buffalo); then extend left hand to the left, draw right arm as if drawing a bow, snap the forefinger and middle finger of left hand, and thrust the right forefinger over ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... 1st, The employment of two separately adjustable cutter heads in a single machine, so that the axis of one cutter may be at the angle of the other at a different angle, and both cutters operating at the same time upon the same board, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... and squarely to the front, chin drawn in so that the axis of the head and neck is vertical; eyes straight ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... With occasional spurts of hopping the individual moves perhaps ten to twelve feet where it stops and begins to eat again. The area in which the individual forages is usually elongated with its long axis parallel to the edge except in areas of uniform habitat (such as large patches of coralberry) where the area covered tends to be more nearly circular. Cottontails observed foraging were estimated to utilize 10 to 20 per cent of the home range area in one evening. Paths or runways ...
— Home Range and Movements of the Eastern Cottontail in Kansas • Donald W. Janes

... and gives a very bad taste to the whiskey. In order to remedy this inconvenience, it has been imagined to stir the flour incessantly, by means of a chain dragged at the bottom of the still, and put in motion by an axis passing through the cap, and turned by a workman until the ebullition takes place. This axis, however well fitted to the aperture, leaves an empty space, and gives an issue to the spirituous vapors, which escaping with rapidity, thereby occasion a ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie

... observed was a huge seed in a broad and very shallow pot with cocoa-nut fibre as I suppose. It was named only Cycas. Was it Cycas pectinata? I suppose that I cannot be wrong in believing that what first appears above ground is a true leaf, for I can see no stem or axis. Lastly, you may remember that I said that we could not raise Opuntia nigricans; now I must confess to a piece of stupidity; one did come up, but my gardener and self stared at it, and concluded that it could not be a seedling Opuntia, but now that ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... wicker-ware, at least none yet found out; and as to a wheel-barrow, I fancied I could make; all but the wheel, but that I had no notion of, neither did I know how to go about it; besides, I had no possible way to make the iron gudgeons for the spindle or axis of the wheel to run in, so I gave it over; and so for carrying away the earth which I dug out of the cave, I made me a thing like a hod which the labourers carry mortar in, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... come to a deplorable state of depression, with regard to "matrimonial transactions;" it is now of vital importance to young ladies, who have an ambition to distinguish themselves at the altar of Hymen, that they take "masculine tastes," as the axis around which is to revolve, in graceful motion, the actions of their daily lives; but for this no one need think of censuring Ottawa's noble women, their conduct is not so servile or dependent as the unfair critic ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points, Wherein you burn... You of unknown voltage Whirling on your axis... Scrawling vermillion signatures Over the night's velvet hoarding... Insolent, towering spherical To ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... had been woman's lot since Eve. Her problem had been always one of physical strength and it was as physical perfection of force that her Venus had governed nature. The woman's force had counted as inertia of rotation, and her axis of rotation had been the cradle and the family. The idea that she was weak revolted all history; it was a palaeontological falsehood that even an Eocene female monkey would have laughed at; but it was surely true that, if her force ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... never relaxed his mental grip of a subject until it had yielded to his persistent inquisition. It was to these qualities that he owed his discoveries of the aberration of light and the nutation of the earth's axis. The first was announced in 1729. What is meant by it is that, owing to the circumstance of light not being instantaneously transmitted, the heavenly bodies appear shifted from their true places by an amount depending upon the ratio which ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... in the individual economy, is variously illustrated by Professor Draper, who points out the essential part they play in several departments of nature. To the merely mechanical inclination of the earth's axis of rotation toward the plane of her orbit of revolution around the sun, we owe the changing seasons and the method of life which is dependent on these. The alteration of that physical arrangement would involve ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... water-cooled Green, was mounted on bearers aft and drove a four-bladed pusher propeller. The petrol was carried in aluminium tanks attached by fabric slings to the axis of the envelope. ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... we used often laughingly to say, was his grand political principle, the one firm centre where all else went revolving. But internally the other also was deep and constant; and indeed these were properly his two centres,—poles of the same axis, negative and positive, the one ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... a fixed pole, we use a metal cylinder movable on its axis, we shall obtain a continuous rotatory motion of this part, and the direction of the movement will change when we interchange the difference of phase in the exciting currents. This rotatory movement is not due to the Foucault currents, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... along the straight high-road with its high-tangled hedge-rows on either side than she began to show symptoms of behaving very badly indeed. She bucked and pranced, and stood on her hind legs; she whipped suddenly round, pirouetted upon her own axis with the dexterity of a circus performer, and demonstrated very plainly that, if she only dared, she would like to take to her heels in the reverse direction to that which her ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... outlet. Compared with Goethe we feel that he lacks that serene impartiality of mind which results from breadth of culture; nay, he seems narrow, insular, almost provincial. He reminds us of those saints of Dante who gather brightness by revolving on their own axis. But through this very limitation of range he gains perhaps in intensity and the impressiveness which results from eagerness of personal conviction. If we read Wordsworth through, as I have just done, we find ourselves ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... countryside. The orderly fields stretched away toward gentle slopes on which cows were grazing. Here and there a village abruptly spread out its roofs, which rotated on the axis of a spire. All the windows gave back the light of late afternoon; and far off, against a hollow between two hills, like wine in a cup, there was a ruddy flash of water. It was the Sound; and beyond ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... bodies on the earth, the revolution of the planets in their orbits, their rotations round their axis, all this is mere motion. Now motion cannot perhaps be conceived any otherwise than by impulsion; therefore all those bodies must be impelled. But by what are they impelled? All space is full, it therefore is filled with a very subtile ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... NECK OF THE WOMB.—This condition is very uncommon in the mare, though occasionally seen in the cow, owing to the greater laxity of the broad ligaments of the womb in that animal. It consists in a revolution of the womb on its own axis, so that its right or left side will be turned upward (quarter revolution), or the lower surface may be turned upward and the upper surface downward (half revolution). The effect is to throw the narrow neck of the womb into a series of spiral folds, turning in the direction in which the womb has ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... Suppose we place an arrow, A, in front of a convex lens (Fig. 73). The ray AC, parallel to the principal axis, will pass through the lens and emerge as DE. The ray is always bent toward the thick portion of the lens, both at its entrance into the lens and its ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... definite amplitude modulation on the echo. That meant they were rotating slowly. He switched to circular polarization, to see if they presented a constant area to the radar beam. He compared the echoes for both modes of polarization. Five of the targets were skin fragments, spinning about an axis skewed with respect to the radar beam. These he rejected. Two more were structural spars. They couldn't conceal a warhead. He rejected them. After careful examination of the fine structure of the echo from the last object, he was ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino

... seems to drift into story-telling inevitably. John Ware once read a paper before the Indianapolis Literary Club to prove that this Hoosier trait was derived from the South. He drew a species of ellipsoid of which the Ohio River was the axis, sketching his line to include the Missouri of Mark Twain, the Illinois of Lincoln, the Indiana of Eggleston and Riley, and the Kentucky that so generously endowed these younger commonwealths. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... rivers; where, though its chase affords an endless resource to the sportsman, its venison scarcely equals in quality the inferior beef of the lowland ox. In the glades and park-like openings that diversify the great forests of the interior, the spotted Axis troops in herds as numerous as the fallow deer in England: but, in journeys through the jungle, when often dependent on the guns of our party for the precarious supply of the table, we found the flesh of the Axis[2] and the Muntjac[3] a sorry substitute for that of the pea-fowl, the jungle-cock, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... Vertebrates there is a vertebral column terminating in a prominent head; this column has an arch above and an arch below, forming a double internal cavity. The parts are symmetrically arranged on either side of the longitudinal axis of the body. In the Mollusks, also, the parts are arranged according to a bilateral symmetry on either side of the body, but the body has but one cavity, and is a soft, concentrated mass, without a distinct individualization of parts. In the Articulates ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... toward them, then wheeled and sped away in the direction that would lead them off Weary's trail. That is, he sped for ten rods or so. After that he seemed to revolve on an axis, and there was an astonishing number of ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... somebody else's sister I'm much too nervous and funky to say anything of the kind. But you must at least do Gautier the justice to observe that if I had described a circle round you, instead of allowing you to revolve once on your own axis, I shouldn't have been able to get the gloss on the satin in the sunlight as I do now that you turn the panniers toward the window. That, you must admit, is ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... with the shaft horizontal like an ordinary wood-turning lathe, while in others the tools were fixed on frames sliding in stationary grooves. A wood-planing machine[5] was constructed on the principle of this invention at Woolwich Arsenal, where it still continues in efficient use. The axis of the principal shaft was supported on a piston in a vessel of oil, which considerably diminished the friction, and it was so contrived as to be accurately regulated by means of a small forcing-pump. Although the machinery described in the patent ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... light, the cunningest spoil of the interiors. There were few passers, and of this Lorison was glad. He was not of the world. For a long time he had touched his fellow man only at the gear of a levelled cog-wheel—at right angles, and upon a different axis. He had dropped into a distinctly new orbit. The stroke of ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow delivered upon the apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top, which, when thus buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely retarded ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... Bunge's Neo-Vitalism and Aniela? Nevertheless, even when thinking of things far removed, it all brings me back to her. Science, art, nature, life,—all are carried back to the same denominator. It is the axis around which ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... The key to the comprehension of his works is contained in his "Hamlet and Don Quixote." His idea is that in these two types are incarnated all the fundamental, contrasting peculiarities of the human race—both poles of the axis upon which it revolves—and that all people belong, more or less, to one of these two types; that every one of us inclines to be either a Hamlet or a Don Quixote. "It is true," he adds, "that in ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... is 'deer-coursing.' This is one of the most delightful kinds of sport in Ceylon. The game is the axis or spotted deer, and the open plains in many parts of the low country afford splendid ground for both ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... orthodox Shint[o] commentators had learned science from the Dutch at Nagasaki, the stirring of the world mud by Izanagi's spear[7] was gravely asserted to be the cause of the diurnal revolution of the earth upon its axis, the point of the axis being still the jewel spear.[8] Onogoro-jima, or the Island of the Congealed Drop, was formerly at the north pole,[9] but subsequently removed to its present position. How this happened ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... own feverish excitement! And they make room for thee, and bid thee welcome, and then resettle to their hushed pursuits as if nothing had happened! Nothing had happened! while in thy heart, perhaps, the whole world seems to have shot from its axis, all the elements to be at war! And you sit down, crushed by that quiet happiness which you can share no more, and smile mechanically, and look into the fire; and, ten to one, you say nothing till the time comes for bed, and you take ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... fourth science, the three others being the three Vedas, Axis culture, and the science of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... events the excitement died away, the earth seemed to turn on its axis as usual, women were given in marriage, children were born, fires burned as brightly as ever at the domestic altars, and family life, to all appearances, was as stable ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... left— lightly, fantastically—all the tossing of arms and white twinkling of feet keeping faultless time to the measured syllabification of the chant. An immense wheel the dance is, with the Ondo-tori for its axis— always turning slowly upon his rice-mortar, under his open umbrella, as he sings the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... area covered by the cells of the rete Malpighii—i.e., by the development of secondary laminar ridges. If a section from a foal at term be examined, the processes will be found far advanced into the corium, and, occupying the axis of each process, will be seen a horny plate, continuous with the horn of the wall. No line of demarcation can be observed between the horn so formed and the intertubular material of the wall. They merge into and blend with each other, with no indication ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... place," said Sir Samuel, "you must observe, youngsters, that this device of the natives is neither more nor less than a floating windlass, where the buoyant power of the timber serves the purpose of a support to the axis. The men fixed by the slew-ropes to the cylinder, represent the handspikes or bars by which the windlass is turned round, and the hawser takes the place of the cable. But," continued he, "there appears to be no reason why the cylinder should be made equally ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... question consists of a revolving sheave or ring, with a sliding strip across its diameter; the said strip having a slot and clamping screw at one end, and a hole towards the other, through which passes the axis of the tool used in forming the lens,—the slot in the strip allowing the tool to give any stroke from 0 to 1.25 inch. The lens is carried on a revolving turn-table, with an arrangement to allow the axis of the lens to coincide with the axis of the table. The ratio of ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... ought to proceed continuously, and with gathering momentum; or, if it stands still for a space, the stoppage ought to be deliberate and purposeful. It is fatal when the author thinks it is moving, while in fact it is only revolving on its own axis. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... figure, bent over a straight line in it, has the two parts perfectly fitting on each other, the figure is symmetrical about that straight line, which may be called an axis of symmetry. Thus every diameter of a circle is an axis of symmetry: every regular oval has two axes of symmetry at right angles to each other: every regular polygon of an odd number of sides has an axis joining each corner to the middle of the opposite sides: every regular ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various

... short, right-angle bends. Between them was hung a hollow globe, pivoted on two short tubes projecting from its sides into the upright tubes. Two little L-shaped pipes projected from opposite sides of the globe, at the ends of a diameter, in a plane perpendicular to the axis. On fire being applied to the cauldron, steam was generated. It passed up through the upright, through the pivots, and into the globe, from which it escaped by the two L-shaped nozzles, causing rapid revolution of the ball. ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... framework of the planes consisted of hollow rods made of an aluminum alloy of high tensile strength, and the canvas stretched over the frames was laced with wire of the same material. To stiffen the planes, a bracket was clamped at the axis, and thin wire stays were strung top and bottom, as the masts of a yacht are supported. The airman was in some degree protected from the wind by a strong talc screen, also wire-laced; by means of this, and a light radiator worked by a number of accumulators, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... receives the same treatment as the Madonna. When the flower-stems grow up they throw out roots. A few lumps of horse manure should be placed round for these roots to lay hold of. They are increased by the tiny bulbs which form at the axis of the leaves of the flower-stem. When these fall with a touch they are planted in rich, light earth, about 6 in. apart. In four or five years' time they ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... footlights. He became aware that a very hot and red body, presumably himself, was bowing mechanically to a seething and clapping mass of hands and faces over the whole theatre. Backing out again, in the same semi-conscious fashion, with the universe generally reeling on more than one distinct axis all around him, he was seized and hand-shaken violently, first by the Progenitor, then by the manager, and then by half a dozen other miscellaneous and unknown persons. At last, after a lot more revolutions of the universe, he ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... something of this by the use of the compass, or electric needle. Opposed to these is centrifugal electric force, drawing objects from east to west, or in the opposite direction. This force is created by the whirl of the earth upon its axis, and is easily utilized, although your scientific men have as yet paid ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum

... only all the particulars I have mentioned, viz., the heart becoming erect, and making one continuous motion with its auricles; but farther, a certain obscure undulation and lateral inclination in the direction of the axis of the right ventricle, as if twisting itself slightly in performing its work. And indeed everyone may see, when a horse drinks, that the water is drawn in and transmitted to the stomach at each movement of the throat, which movement produces a sound and ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... the ground plan of the Cathedral. After the destruction of Wilfrid's Church, the site of his nave became that of the choir, and a nave was added westwards. Thus it came about that the crypt is now in the centre of the building. The central line or axis of the church in all stages of its history has probably always passed ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... whirlpool, which, in a light-hearted, maliciously joking way, hurled us tail first out of it into the current. Now the grand point in these canoes of having both ends alike declared itself; for at this juncture all we had to do was to revolve on our own axis and commence life anew with what had been the bow for the stern. Of course we were defeated, we could not go up any further without the aid of our lost poles and paddles, so we had to go down for shelter somewhere, anywhere, and down at a terrific ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that the time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth—running the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon its own axis'; and he can condense into six words the whole life-history and the soul's essential secret of Coleridge, when he says of him, in almost the last fragment of prose that he wrote, 'he had a ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... in the plane of this figure, but that these waves, being in truth spherical, have still an infinitude of similar tangents, namely all the straight lines which are drawn from the point B in the surface generated by the straight line BN about the axis BA. It remains, therefore, to demonstrate that there is no difficulty herein: and by the same argument one will see why the incident ray and the reflected ray are always in one and the same plane perpendicular to the reflecting plane. I say then that the wave AC, being regarded only as a line, ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens

... was Isabel, for now that Martin was gone my hopes and my fears, my love and my life, revolved on one axis ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... the world be conceived as a circle, then Jewish history occupies the position of the diameter, the line passing through its centre, and the history of every other nation is represented by a chord marking off a smaller segment of the circle. The history of the Jewish people is like an axis crossing the history of mankind from one of its poles to the other. As an unbroken thread it runs through the ancient civilization of Egypt and Mesopotamia, down to the present-day culture of France and Germany. Its divisions are measured by ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... the front stoop to the sidewalk just as Mrs. Kovner made a frenzied pass at him with the brush; and consequently, when he entered Kent J. Goldstein's office on Nassau Street an hour later, his black overcoat was speckled like the hide of an axis deer. ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... centuries, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds, but the second is the determining power of mechanical measurement, though it is derived mainly by the movement of the earth around the sun and the turning of the earth on its axis. Mechanically we have derived the second as the unit. It is easy for us to think in hours or days or weeks, though it may be the seconds tick off unnoticed {59} and the years glide by unnoticed; but it is ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... constricted. Although the surface is here and there broken by fractures, it is evident that the movement of the frozen current, though slow, is tolerably free. By placing stakes in a row across the axis of a glacier, and observing their movement from day to day, or even from hour to hour if a good theodolite is used for the purpose, we note that the movement of the stream is fastest in the middle parts, as in the case of a river, and that it slows toward either ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... roof to revolve with a touch, bringing the opening to bear on any desired part of the celestial vault. In the centre of the solid floor, levelled to the utmost perfection, was left a circular pillar supporting the polar axis of an instrument widely differing from our telescopes, especially in the fact that it had no opaque tube connecting the essential lenses which we call the eye-piece and the object-glass, names not applicable to their Martial substitutes. On my visit to the Observatory, however, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... and that it would not be absolutely at rest or, as he said, devoid of all motion. His words are: "Terra igitur, quae centrum esse nequit, motu omni carere non potest." He described very clearly how the earth moved round its own axis, and then he added, what cannot fail to be a surprising declaration for those in the modern times who think such an idea of much later origin, that he considered that the earth itself cannot be fixed, but moves ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... must necessarily be some part of the southern district of the province of Shen-si, called HAN-CHUNG, the axis of which is the River Han, closed in by exceedingly mountainous and woody country to north and south, dividing it on the former quarter from the rest of Shen-si, and on the latter from Sze-ch'wan. Polo's C frequently ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... weight, than the elongated rifle-shot, has a higher initial velocity with a given charge; and all the power applied to it is converted into velocity, while a part of the power applied to the rifle-shot is employed in spinning it on its axis. But, as compared with the rifle-shot, at long ranges, it quickly loses, 1st, velocity, because it presents a larger area to the resisting air; 2d, penetration, because it has to force a larger hole through the armor; and 3d, accuracy, because the spinning of the rifle-shot constantly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... shoulders, mocking, yet by no means disliking his own idiosyncrasies. It had been strange, indeed, that complete change of mental emphasis, that alteration of spiritual axis that had befallen him within the first weeks of his parliamentary life, nay, even before the Hurd agitation was over. That agitation had brought him vigorously and profitably into public notice at a convenient ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... into two successive other scenes, by means of the automatic rotation of the drums or rollers in the corners. These were divided into three sections, fitting into the angles of the mirrors and each supporting a decorative scheme that came into sight as the roller revolved upon its axis. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... time previous to the commencement of the game, the Automaton is wound up by the exhibiter as usual, an ear in any degree accustomed to the sounds produced in winding up a system of machinery, will not fail to discover, instantaneously, that the axis turned by the key in the box of the Chess-Player, cannot possibly be connected with either a weight, a spring, or any system of machinery whatever. The inference here is the same as in our last observation. The winding up is inessential to the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... c, the lower extremities of the parts at the sides, the metal is bent round, so as to clasp a wire which runs from c to c, the ends of which wire are bent at right angles and run into the board. The plate will consequently turn on this axis, as on a hinge. At the top of the plate d, a small projection of the tin turns inwards, and to this, one end of the cord m m is attached. This cord passes back from d to a small pulley at the upper part of the board, and at the ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... you the causes of this phenomenon of the Long Night. The earth revolves about the sun once every year, and rotates on its axis once in twenty-four hours, which makes ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... air obliquely, with the fins of the screw as it mounted on an inclined plane. These fins, or arms, are in reality wings, but wings disposed as a helix instead of as a paddle wheel. The helix advances in the direction of its axis. Is the axis vertical? Then it moves vertically. Is the axis horizontal? Then it ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... eighteen inches from the bank of the hedge into the field. Nothing seemed simpler. Yet when I landed on my feet one of them was caught in some mysterious way in a hole in the ground, and whilst it was held as in a vice, my body was wrenched round on the axis of my knee. To this day I do not understand how it happened. All I knew at the moment was that something had given way in the knee-joint, and that when I attempted to put my foot to the ground after extricating it from the hole in which it had been caught "the pains of hell gat hold ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... planets in the air, which are called the planetary system. Every one knows our globe goes upon its axis, and has two poles, but what is the axis, and what the poles are made of—whether of wood, or any other material—are matters which, as far as the mass are concerned, are involved in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... things, but as no one cared much for his monologues on the future of the town, the attendance was often light. He issued circulars referring to our village as "the Queen City of the Prairies," and on the circulars was a map, showing that the Queen City of the Prairies was "the railroad axis of the West." There was one road running into the town; the others old Alphabetical indicated with dotted lines, and explained in a foot-note that they were in ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... it at once and attempt to carry it, but lift one end and swing or shove it and then lift the other end and shove it. If you will watch expressmen at work you will notice that they roll boxes and trunks, holding them almost on end and tipping them just enough to turn them along their shortest axis. In this way the boxes carry themselves, so far as ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... longitude lengthens; Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east—America is provided for in the west; Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator, Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends; Within me is the longest day—the sun wheels in slanting rings—it does not set for months. Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon, and sinks again; Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plants, volcanoes, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... *buds* are small and slender compared with those of the other magnolia trees and are covered with small silvery silky hairs. The *habit* of the tree is to form a straight axis of great height with a symmetrical mass of branches, producing a perfect monopodial crown. The tree is sometimes known ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... worse,— The glowing angel, the outcast corse. Thou metest him by centuries, And lo! he passes like the breeze; Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy, He hides in pure transparency; Thou askest in fountains and in fires, He is the essence that inquires. He is the axis of the star; He is the sparkle of the spar; He is the heart of every creature; He is the meaning of each feature; And his mind is the sky. Than all it holds more ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... be made in the side of a limb or trunk the same procedure is followed except that it is necessary before making the slot to remove a notch of bark, at right angles to the axis of the trunk, so as to free the upper end ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... native Indian, or the almost as wild Backwoodsman, compose an extraordinary scene: the silence of the night is undisturbed, save by the gurgling noise of the paddles, as guided by the point of the spear; the canoe whirls on its axis with an almost dizzing velocity, or the sudden dash of the spear, followed by the struggles of the transfixed fish, or perhaps the characteristic "Eh," from the Indian steersman. In this manner, sometimes fifty or sixty fish of three or four pounds are speared in the course of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... of fractures: two forms predominate, the plate and the needle; these forms falling through air assume definite position—the plate falls horizontally swaying to and fro, the needle turns rapidly about its longer axis, which remains horizontal. Simpson showed excellent experiments to illustrate; consideration of these facts and refraction of light striking crystals clearly leads to explanation of various complicated halo phenomena such as recorded and such as seen by us ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... my doom, or be it life or death. Have I staked every hope on this one moment, Which gives thee to me thus at length alone, That idle fears should balk me of my purpose? No, queen! The world may round its axis roll A hundred thousand times, ere chance again Yield to my prayers a moment ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the economy arising from the increase of velocity becomes more striking. In converting cast into wrought-iron, a mass of metal, of about a hundredweight, is heated almost to white heat, and placed under a heavy hammer moved by water or steam power. This is raised by a projection on a revolving axis; and if the hammer derived its momentum only from the space through which it fell, it would require a considerably greater time to give a blow. But as it is important that the softened mass of red-hot iron should receive as many blows as possible ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... makes ready to resume his journey, he tells him a sovereign remedy for blistered feet. Now comes the noontide hour,—of all the hours nearest akin to midnight; for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the world begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of the day; when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things. The draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner, laden with wood from the Eastern forests, she sticks immovably, ...
— The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... micrometers, for vertical and horizontal observations. Another apparatus provides for the detection and measurement of the flexure of the tube. Much trouble was experienced in securing a good casting for the steel axis of the instrument. Three were found imperfect under the lathe, and the fourth was chosen; but even then the pivots were made in separate pieces, which were set in very deeply and welded. Dr. Gould said he had been requested by the gentlemen who ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... central line of the choir does not coincide with that of the nave; for, though the south wall of the choir is in a line with the south wall of the nave, the choir being 12 feet broader than the nave, the axis of the former is to the north of the axis of the nave. The view from the east end looking towards the nave is quite spoiled ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley

... tire of looking at a Viceroy. He is a being so heterogeneous from us! He is the centre of a world with which he has no affinity. He is a veiled prophet. [He wears many veils indeed.] He who is the axis of India, the centre round which the Empire rotates, is absolutely and necessarily withdrawn from all knowledge of India. He lisps no syllable of any Indian tongue; no race or caste, or mode of Indian life is known to him; all our delightful ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... it involved his personal emotions less, while observation was enabled to compass its vastness, and, as it were, perceive the whole spherical mass of the wretched girl's guilt impudently turning on its axis. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the Himalaya country, we encounter, in the plains south of this great chain, the Spotted Axis, so well-known from its beautiful markings, which resemble those of the fawn of our own fallow-deer. But it may be remarked that there are two or three species of spotted deer, and that they inhabit the plains of India—from the Himalayas southward to ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... into any shape desired. To make a boat with but one hide, a number of straight willows are cut about an inch in diameter, the ends sharpened and driven into the ground, forming a frame-work in the shape of a half egg-shell cut through the longitudinal axis. Where these rods cross they are firmly secured with strings. A stout rod is then heated and bent around the frame in such a position that the edges of the hide, when laid over it and drawn tight, will just reach it. This rod forms the gunwale, ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... Levant. Who can say? Many courses of the sun were needed before men could take the full historic measures of Luther, Calvin, Knox; the measure of Loyola, the Council of Trent, and all the counter-reformation. The center of gravity is forever shifting, the political axis of the world perpetually changing. But we are now far enough off to discern how stupendous a thing was done when, after two cycles of bitter war, one foreign, the other civil and intestine, Pitt and Washington, within a ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... the hairs of the middle region of the back about a third of the distance between the ears and the rump, one uncovers a prominent gland, elliptical in outline, with long axis longitudinal and about 9 millimeters in length. The gland presents a roughened and granular appearance, and fewer hairs grow upon it than elsewhere on the back. The hairs in the vicinity are frequently matted, as if with a secretion. ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor

... Darwin rejoins that it is a method usual in judging of the common events of life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers. The undulatory theory of light, for instance, has thus been arrived at; and the belief in the revolution of the earth on its own axis was, until lately, supported by scarcely any direct evidence. It is no valid objection to the Darwinian theory of the origin of species that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... consequence of the axis of the earth not being perpendicular to the plane of its orbit round the sun, the poles are alternately directed more or less towards that great luminary during one part of the year, and away from it during another part. So that far north the days during the one season grow longer ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... patent (the second of the steam-engine series), "for certain new methods of applying the vibrating or reciprocating motion of steam or fire engines, to produce a continued rotative motion round an axis or centre, and thereby to give motion to the wheels of mills or other machines." One of these methods was that commonly known as the sun-and-planet wheels; they were five in all. A favorite employment of his in the workshops at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... means the axis of the earth, on which it turns as on a hinge. The origin of hinge is hang. It is what anything ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... moving westward, and Sandy Hook advances to the northward, because the sea rolls in along the axis of the great bay between Long Island and New Jersey, and necessarily sweeps along the beaches, instead of taking the direction of a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... in time, just as a slight and negligible body cannot be in the sphere of a powerful motion without being affected by it, so Rosalie began to move sympathetically to the wheel but on her own axis. She moved round with the wheel but she was not of the wheel and she never became really incorporated with the wheel. The spokes were revolving with incredible rapidity when she first, began to notice them and they always remained relatively faster. There she was, sitting and watching ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... far below, I saw the lights Of distant cities, at the mountain's feet, Clustered like constellations.. . Over me, like the dome of some strange shrine, Housing our great new weapon of the sky, And moving on its axis like a moon Glimmered the new Uraniborg. Shadows passed Like monks, between it and the low grey walls That lodged them, like a fortress in the rocks, Their monastery of thought. A shadow neared me. I heard, once more, ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... perfectly clear that the stem is the axis of the plant, that is, it bears all the other organs. Roots grow from stems, not steins from roots, except in certain cases, like that of the Poplar mentioned above. This was seen in the study of the seedling. The embryo consisted of stem and leaves, ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell

... still, for in the movement people must slip off. But then what held it in the air? Cousin Chilian had a globe, but you see there was a strong wire through the middle, fastened to the frame at both ends. Perhaps the earth was fastened somewhere! She liked to make it revolve on its axis, and in imagination she crossed the oceans, and seas, and capes, and found ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... only spin will be on your own axis. We are to act as escort for a convoy train of fifty wagons and ten times fifty mules. We shall make six miles a day, and our tongues will be wholly corrupted by the language of the mule-drivers. And, in the end, we ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... but are complementary. He does not turn his eyes to God who has not turned them on himself, and seen there nothing to which to cling, nothing on which to lean. Astronomers tell us that there are double stars revolving round one axis and forming a unity, of which the one is black and the other brilliant. Self-distrust and trust in God are thus knit together and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... at one of the twelve junctions of the four-and-twenty hands; then wheeling, circling the bell, and retiring to its post, there to bide for another sixty minutes, when the same process was to be repeated; the bell, by a cunning mechanism, meantime turning on its vertical axis, so as to present, to the descending mace, the clasped hands of the next two figures, when it would strike two, three, and so on, to the end. The musical metal in this time-bell being so managed in ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... world's axis crack, the ruins will but crush a fearless head."—Horace, Od., iii. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... up a lively two-step, and soon the floor was covered with couples, each turning on its own axis, and all revolving around a common centre, in obedience perhaps to the same law of motion that governs the planetary systems. The dancing-hall was a long room, with a waxed floor that glistened with the reflection of the lights ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... sometimes thought that this old globe of ours is nothing more nor less than a golf ball, brambled with mountains and valleys, and scarred with ravines where the gods in their play have topped their drives. The spin around its axis causes it to slice about the sun. This strikes me as rather poetic, and when I write a golf epic I shall elaborate on ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... proposed a direct experiment for verifying the motion of the earth, viz., by observing whether or not bodies that fall from a considerable height descend in a vertical direction; for if the earth were at rest the body would describe exactly a vertical line; whereas if it revolved round its axis, the falling body must deviate from the vertical line ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... last he had gained the topmost floor. It was hardly worth his while to ascend to the roof itself, and so he walked into a room that faced the north and consequently commanded a view of the city along its longitudinal axis. He gazed long and earnestly into the obscurity, and far in the distance he caught the faint twinkle of a solitary light—a camp-fire, perhaps. He tried to fix its bearings in his mind; if it were a fire it must indicate the neighborhood of the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... detached the schoolroom globe from its brass axis: "I'm sorry, too," he said; "but I'm tired of lessons. Now, Mrs. Farren, watch me! I'm going to kick a goal from the field. Here, you hold it, Geraldine; Mrs. Farren, you had better try to block ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... between the moral powers and the powers that rule the worlds. So in this Sutra the fixed polestar is the eternal spirit about which all things move, as well as the star toward which points the axis of the earth. Deep mysteries attend both, and the veil of mystery is only to be raised by Meditation, by open-eyed vision of the awakened ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... an advantage," said Alice, who felt very glad to get an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. "Just think what work it would make with the day and night! You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis—" ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... came with arms outspread Like wings, revolving in the scene Upon his longer axis, and With no small ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost

... ones—as many as you please," she said. "I will not be 'rung up' by telephone. My servants may if they like. It is not my affair to deprive them of the modern inconveniences, if they find them convenient. My senility does not take the form of insisting that the world shall cease to revolve upon its axis. It formed that habit without my assistance, and it is to be feared that it would continue it in the ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... our one full day at Lubuagan, broke clear, bright, and hot, and so the day remained. Events during the next few hours had no particular axis. We looked on mostly, though, of course, here as elsewhere, business there was to be dispatched. The upper terrace was the scene of crowded activity, being packed with people from sunrise to sunset. Dancing went on the whole day; the sound of the gansa ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... the wires A and B are clamped separately below, we may impart a sudden molecular disturbance to either A or B by giving a quick to-and-fro (torsional) vibration round the vertical wire, as axis, by means of the handle. As the wire A is separate from B, disturbance of one will not affect the other. Vibration of A produces a current in one direction, vibration of B in the opposite direction. Thus we have means of verifying ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... mass, floating in the vast ethereal ocean of infinite space. It has the form of an orange, being an oblate spheroid, curiously flattened at opposite parts, for the insertion of two imaginary poles, which are supposed to penetrate and unite at the center; thus forming an axis on which the mighty orange turns with a ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... his customary perspicacity, made it plain that one of the chief causes of temptation was hot weather, which causes immoderate thirst. In order to lessen the amount of thirst in the population he suggested that it might be feasible to shift the axis of the earth, so that the climate of the United States would become perceptibly cooler and the torrid zone would be transferred to the area of the North Pole. This would have the supreme advantage of melting all the northern ice-cap and providing the temperate belts with a ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... method of moving a vessel on the water, by a machine worked within the vessel. I went to see it. He did not know himself the principle of his own invention. It is a screw with a very broad, thin worm, or rather it is a thin plate with its edge applied spirally round an axis. This being turned, operates on the air, as a screw does, and may be literally said to screw the vessel along: the thinness of the medium, and its want of resistance, occasion a loss of much of the force. The screw, I think, would ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the foetal Mysticetus now in the University Museum, the bodies of the axis and atlas have shrivelled up together, having evidently consisted of cartilage only; but the bodies of the five posterior cervical vertebrae are beautifully distinct, having well-formed osseous centres, which give them more of the configuration of the succeeding vertebral bodies ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... their passage at various stages noted. He thus found, correctly, that their velocity increased. It is also said that he observed that bodies always fell a little to the eastward of the plumb line, and thence concluded that the earth revolved on its axis. He made careful experiments with billiard balls, discovering that the {614} momentum of the impact always was preserved entire in the motion of the balls struck. He measured forces by the weight and speed of the bodies and arrived at an approximation of the ideas of mechanical ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... chap who made things hum! HE was the drumstick and the drum! HE was the shirt bosom and the starch! HE was the keystone in the arch! HE was the axis of the earth! Nothing existed before his birth! But when he was off from work a Nobody knew that ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... Via Cornelia, to rest upon them the left wing of the church, and built new foundations for the right wing only. His architect seems to have been rather negligent in his measurements, because the tomb of S. Peter did not correspond exactly with the axis of the nave, and was not in the centre of the apse, being some inches ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... something which he conceived to be a difficulty in the theory of lunar motion. His objection was on the face of it plausible. The true motions of the heavenly bodies are universally the opposite of the apparent motions. Mr. Symonds conceived that the moon could not revolve on its axis, because the same side of it was continually turned towards the earth; and if it were connected with the earth by a rigid bar—which, as he thought, would deprive it of power of rotation—the relative aspects of the two bodies would remain unchanged. He sent his views to the Times. He appealed ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... looped, barrel-rolled, side-slipped, and then plunged into a dizzy circle in which they flew round and round an imaginary axis, the radius of the circle growing ever shorter and shorter. Every action of the leading plane was immediately ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... cathedral was not due east and west, neither did it directly face Ludgate Hill. Owing to the lie of the land cleared away, both of these peculiarities were increased by the surveyor, and the axis of the New St. Paul's was swung some seven degrees further north than the Old. He thereby made the best of his somewhat cramped site, and avoided the foundations of the old walls. The excavations were not completed ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... fig. 8; but this circumstance mainly depends on the changed direction of the meatus. The inter-parietal bone (see fig. 9) differs much in shape in the several skulls; generally it is more oval, or has a greater width in the line of the longitudinal axis of the skull, than in the wild rabbit. The {118} posterior margin of "the square raised platform" [271] of the occiput, instead of being truncated, or projecting slightly as in the wild rabbit, is in most lop-eared rabbits pointed, as in fig. 9, C. The paramastoids ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... generally be detected a delicate, colorless sheath that surrounds it, and extends beyond the end cells (Fig. 6, c). The filament increases in length by the individual cells undergoing division, this always taking place at right angles to the axis of the filament. New filaments are produced simply by the older ones breaking into a number of pieces, each of which rapidly ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell

... not rest there, not the ten-thousandth part of a second. It would be snapped upward, as a drop of water from a grindstone. Upward and upward; but the heavier wheel would have deflected it a little from the vertical. Upward and northward it would rise, therefore, till it had passed the axis of the world. It would, of course, feel the world's attraction all the time, which would bend its flight gently, but still it would leave the world more and more behind. Upward still, but now southward, till it had ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... PLASTER.—You may, perhaps, wish to model an apple, peach, or plum, to place in the hands of some mounted object, such as a monkey. To do this, you take a natural fruit, which oil, and push it half way (on its longest axis) into a bed of damped and hard-pressed sand banked up all round. At some little distance from the edges of the fruit stick two or three small pegs of wood (points downwards) about half-an-inch long, leaving a quarter-of-an-inch out of the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... quantities, and become much accumulated over the poles of the earth; 2. the common air, or lower stratum of the atmosphere, will be much thinner over the poles than at the line; because if a glass globe be filled with oil and water, and whirled upon its axis, the centrifugal power will carry the heavier fluid to the circumference, and the lighter will in consequence be found round the axis. 3. There may be a place at some certain latitude between the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... of 2000 lbs. were hung to the lowest end of a vertical beam, so that the line of action of the weight and axis of the beam formed one and the same straight line—the tension on the beam would be 2000 lbs. But, if the beam were inclined, and the force acted in a vertical direction, then the strain would be increased in the ratio of the increase of the diagonal of inclination over the vertical;—suppose ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower

... up, and pegged about the room. "Faith! if the life we live is like the globe we inhabit—if it revolves on its own axis, and you're that axis—there's not a flaw in your philosophy; but IF—Now perish my impetuosity! I've frightened your dear mother away. May I ask, by the bye, if she has the good fortune to please ye, since the Maker of all souls made ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the stone from end to end, so that it could be worn upon a string; and cylinders are found in some of the earliest tombs which have been worn round the wrist in this way. In early times they may have been impressed by the hand; but afterwards it was common to place them upon a bronze or copper axis attached to a handle, by means of which they were rolled across the clay from one end to the other. The cylinders are frequently unengraved, and this is most commonly their condition in the primitive tombs; out there is some very curious evidence, from which it appears that the art of engraving ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson



Words linked to "Axis" :   pin, line, semimajor axis, stem, stalk, alliance, semiminor axis, rotor head, major axis, neck bone, stele, alinement, bloc, sterling bloc, alignment, coalition, rachis, principal axis, sterling area, scheduled territories, cervical vertebra



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