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Plaster of Paris   /plˈæstər əv pˈɛrɪs/   Listen
Plaster of Paris

noun
1.
Any of several gypsum cements; a white powder (a form of calcium sulphate) that forms a paste when mixed with water and hardens into a solid; used in making molds and sculptures and casts for broken limbs.  Synonym: plaster.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Plaster of Paris" Quotes from Famous Books



... this colossal statue of Vulcan was first built in clay at Passaic, N.J., where Mr. Moretti carried on the work under adverse circumstances and through the zero weather of the winter of 1903-4. It was then cast in plaster of Paris in sections, which were braced and stayed with scantling on the inside of the shell, to be used as patterns in the foundry. The entire model was shipped to Birmingham, Ala., on seven flat cars, its bulk rendering it impossible ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... plains of Marathon? I began to trench the ground, to see what might be discovered; and the third day, sir, we found a stone, which I have transported to Monkbarns, in order to have the sculpture taken off with plaster of Paris; it bears a sacrificing vessel, and the letters A. D. L. L. which may stand, without much violence, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... Middle stretchers, lengthwise and crosswise, give added strength and rigidity. Upon this frame the slate bed is leveled by planing the frame wherever necessary. Slats are fastened to the bed by screws, the heads of which are countersunk so that they may be covered over even with plaster of paris. ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor

... mother, incredulity swiftly followed by a frozen knowledge; she tried with her lips, her mouth, to breath life into the flesh already meaningless, lost to her. Then the tragedy of existence drew her face into a mask universal and timeless, a staring tearless shocked regard as white and inhuman as plaster of Paris. Emotion choked at Lee's throat; and, in a sense of shame at having been so shaken, he admitted that Mina Raff had an extraordinary ability: he evaded the impressive reality by a return to the trivial fact. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... of the refugee, startling him so much out of the perpendicular that the superstructure of plastic art came to the ground with a crash, top-dressing the sterile soil of the Campus Martius with a coat of manufactured plaster of Paris. Marius, blubbering over the shattered chimney-stacks of Carthage, could not have displayed a more touching classical spectacle than did that modern Roman lamenting to and fro among the fragments of his collapsed martyrs and ruined saints; nor were his pangs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... to remain in the boiling water for fifteen minutes. The idea is to bring the juice inside the bottles to boiling point just before sealing up, but not to boil it. See that the bottles are full. Cork immediately on taking out of the pan, and then seal up. To seal mix a little plaster of Paris with water and spread it well over the cork. Let it come a little below the cork so as to exclude ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel

... thoroughly and dry it, finally polishing the inside with a piece of soft cloth or tissue paper. Place one ounce of cyanide of potassium into the bottle and pour in enough dry sawdust to cover the lumps of poison. Then wet some plaster of paris until it is the consistency of thick cream and quickly pour it over the sawdust, taking care that it does not run down the sides or splash against the bottle. Place the bottle on a level table ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... of value fed to milch cows or swine. It should be planted in April or May, but in many sections in June, on good mellow soil, first thoroughly plowed and harrowed, then furrowed three feet apart, and manured in the furrows with a mixture of ashes, plaster of Paris, and salt. The seed may be dropped in the furrows, one foot apart, after the drill system—or in hills, two and a half or three feet apart—to be covered with the plough by simply turning the furrows back, after which ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... practice of showing his curiosities; but understanding that they were Englishmen, and recommended to his friends, he was content to submit them to their perusal. So saying, he led them up a dark stair, into a small room, decorated with a few paltry figures in plaster of Paris, two or three miserable landscapes, the skins of an otter, seal, and some fishes stuffed; and in one corner stood a glass case, furnished with newts, frogs, lizards, and serpents, preserved in spirits; a human foetus, a calf with two heads, and about ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... am ten years old. I like to read YOUNG PEOPLE. The Post-office Box letters are nice. Katie R. P. says she collects insects. So does my papa. He puts lumps of cyanide of potassium, bought at the druggist's, in a bottle, and mixes plaster of Paris with water until it is like dough, and then pours it over the potassium. When it dries, the bottle is ready for use. Five cents' worth lasts a season, and is cheaper than ether, papa says, and works better. When the butterflies are dead, he ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... photographs can be sent by telegraph through the use of the photo-relief in plaster of Paris, or other suitable material, which travels backwards and forwards underneath a pointer, the rising and falling of which is accurately represented by thick and thin lines—or by the darker and lighter photographic printing of a beam of light of varying intensity—at the other ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... a defence against the Danes. Besides Hunkerville House, in London, which is a palace, he has Corleone Lodge at Windsor, which is another, and eight castlewards, one at Burton-on-Trent, with a royalty on the carriage of plaster of Paris; then Grumdaith Humble, Moricambe, Trewardraith, Hell-Kerters (where there is a miraculous well), Phillinmore, with its turf bogs, Reculver, near the ancient city Vagniac, Vinecaunton, on the Moel-eulle Mountain; besides nineteen ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... the room Huldy looked up and a faint smile lighted her face. Her usually rosy cheeks showed only a faint touch of pink. The helpless left arm, in its plaster of paris jacket, rested on the outside of the white quilt, the fingers on her little hand projecting beyond ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... ready with long shovels to push the sheet of glass into an oven, not very hot, where it can slowly cool. When taken out of the oven the glass is thick, and not perfectly smooth, and it has to be rubbed with sand, imbedded in plaster of Paris, smoothed with emery, and polished by rubbing it with a woollen cloth covered with red oxide of iron, all of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... essentials seem to be lost and the aim of the drama to imitate life with the greatest possible reality seems hopelessly beyond the flat, colorless pictures of the photoplay. Still more might we say that the plaster of Paris cast is a fair substitute for the marble statue. It shares with the beautiful marble work the same form and imitates the body of the living man just as well as the marble statue. Moreover, this product of the mechanical process has the same white color which the original ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... me. We would take a cast of it in plaster of Paris. This would give us the solid figure, and satisfy all our wishes. But how to do it? The movements of the creature would disturb the setting of the plastic covering, and distort the mold. Another thought. Why not give it chloroform? It had ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... water. It has about one-third of the strength of Portland cement, by which it is now almost entirely supplanted. Selenitic cement or lime, invented by Major-General H. Y. D. Scott (1822-1883), is lias lime, to which a small proportion of plaster of Paris has been added with the object of suppressing the action of slaking and inducing quicker setting. If carefully mixed in accordance with the instructions issued by the manufacturers, it will take a much larger proportion of sand ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... together, but they took it all out of the war flour, and put it into munitions. So everything you made with war flour was apt to be dry and crumbly. And when you made cakes with it, and war sugar, which was half full of queer stuff like plaster of paris, and egg substitute, because eggs—when you could get them—were eightpence halfpenny, and butter substitute (and very little of that)—well, they weren't exactly what you would ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... frequently crawl towards me, and would do so again and again when removed to a distance. As the weather became cold they always hibernated, closing the mouth of the shell with a thin, firm covering, or operculum, of chalk, which, mixed with their slime, made a substance like plaster of Paris. Thus enclosed they would lie as if dead until the warmth of the following spring made them push the door open and come out, with excellent appetites, ready to eat voraciously to make up for their long fast. These Roman snails were quite ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... (sulphate of lime) is composed of sulphuric acid and lime in combination. It is called 'plaster of Paris,' because it constitutes the rock underlying the city ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... with the skeleton enclosed therein. The bones were carefully removed and interred in this Chapel in the tomb you see before you. Into the vacant space within the block of concrete, after removal of the bones, liquid plaster of Paris was poured, as into a mould, and a perfect model of Geronimo's body was obtained and placed in the Museum. It was in recognition of this act of heroism in refusing to renounce the Christian faith that the martyr was canonized and the name of Geronimo was added to the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... ammonia with hydrochloric acid will give sal-ammoniac (chloride of ammonia). By a further treatment of these with lime, or, as it is chemically known, oxide of calcium, ammonia is set free, whilst chloride of lime (the well-known disinfectant), or sulphate of lime (gypsum, or "plaster of Paris" ), is the result. ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... theory too—a dreadful theory. It is embodied in two words—Laissez faire—Let alone. When people are poisoned by plaster of Paris mixed with flour, "Let alone" is the remedy. When Cocculus indicus is used instead of hops, and men die prematurely, it is easy to say, "Nobody did it." Let those who can, find out when they are cheated: Caveat emptor. When people live in foul dwellings, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... of fine tiniforni grain, but it is often associated with oxide of iron, which produces brown clouding and veining in the stone. The coarser varieties of alabaster are converted by calcination into plaster of Paris, whence they are sometimes known as ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... undergone oftener than once, for, first, we have there a fresh-water formation of clay and limestone beds; then, a marine-limestone formation; next, a second fresh water formation, in which the material of the celebrated plaster of Paris (gypsum) is included; then, a second marine formation of sandy and limy beds; and finally, a third series of fresh-water strata. Such alternations occur in other examples of ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... formed by the combination of some base with sulphuric acid, as Sulphate of copper, (blue vitriol or blue stone,) a combination of sulphuric acid with copper. Sulphate of iron: Copperas or green vitriol. Sulphate of lime: Gypsum or plaster of Paris. Sulphate of magnesia: Epsom salts. Sulphate of potash: A chemical salt, composed of sulphuric acid and potash. Sulphate of soda: Glauber's ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a Leaded Light.—The next process is the cementing of the light so as to fill up the grooves of the lead and make all weather-proof. This is done with a mixture composed as follows:— Whitening, 2/3 to plaster of Paris 1/3; add a mixture of equal quantities of boiled linseed-oil and spirit of turpentine to make a paste about as thick as treacle. Add a little red lead to help to harden it, some patent dryer to cause it to dry, and ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... perhaps the simplest of all methods is the application of a plaster-of-Paris bandage, which is made as follows: Strips of thin cheesecloth 3 inches wide and 8 or 9 feet long are laid flat on a board and on them is spread a layer of plaster of Paris about one-eighth of an inch thick; then, starting at one end, roll carefully so as to gather the plaster in between the layers of the bandage. It is of course important that the cloth be thin and the plaster of Paris fresh ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture



Words linked to "Plaster of Paris" :   calcium sulphate, gesso, gypsum, calcium sulfate, plaster



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