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Insulation   Listen
noun
Insulation  n.  
1.
The act of insulating, or the state of being insulated; detachment from other objects; isolation.
2.
(Elec. & Thermotics) The act of separating a body from others by nonconductors, so as to prevent the transfer of electricity or of heat; also, the state of a body so separated.
3.
The material or substance used to insulate from either electrical or thermal conduction; as, fiberglass is used as thermal insulation in the walls and roofs of houses.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Insulation" Quotes from Famous Books



... of most pieces of electrical apparatus. There are several ways of making them at home. To quickly make a good-looking one, a winder (App. 93) is required. We shall divide our electro-magnets into four parts: Core, washers, insulation, and coil. ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John

... insulation imposed on officers by their duties, the Army's leaders were achieving reforms far beyond those accepted elsewhere in American society. Few national organizations and industries could match the Army in 1948 for the number of Negroes employed, the breadth of responsibility ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... 1840, he deprecates the usual indifference to form, on the part of English writers, "the tendency of the national mind to value the matter of a book not only as paramount to the manner, but even as distinct from it and as capable of a separate insulation." As one of the great masters of prose style in this century, De Quincey has so served the interests of art in this regard, that in his own case the charge is sometimes reversed: his own works are read rather to observe his manner than to absorb his thought. Yet when ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... thin board walls, the boards often sprung apart and cracked by the dry winds; a thin layer of tar paper outside and a layer of building paper on the inside, which as a rule was stretched across the studding to provide insulation between the wall and lining. Some of these paper linings were thin and light, the average settler having to buy the cheapest grade he ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... rode back out to the Shed on the tailboard of the truck that carried the crates. The sun set as he rode. He was smudged and disheveled. The reek of charred wood and burnt insulation and scorched wrappings was strong in his nostrils. But he felt very much ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... received a new jacket of tanned jute yarn to protect it from the iron top coat yet to come. Its jute jacket on, it was then coiled away in tanks full of water, where it was constantly kept submerged and continuously tested for insulation. Last of all the top coat was put on. This consisted of ten wires of peculiarly fine and strong iron. Each of these ten wires had put on it a special coat of its own, made of tarred Manilla yarn, to protect ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... fellow-beings; but an excess of such experiences would interfere with our freedom and our happiness. It is our self-hood, properly balanced, which constitutes our dignity, our humanity. A certain degree, and a very considerable degree of insulation is necessary, that individual life and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... disconnection, sequestration, disjunction, dissolution, disengagement, disintegration, insulation, isolation, rupture, dissociation, divorce, analysis, decomposition, detachment, demarcation, severance, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... useless lever, which had controlled the outlet of gas from the holder, he ran out on deck. One glance told him what had happened. One of the electric wires had become short-circuited,— that is, the insulation had worn off and allowed the current to escape. This had produced a spark, which had exploded the gas which was in the pipe leading from the generator up into the aluminum holder. Fortunately there was an automatic cut-off for the supply of ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... silicone-wool insulation, he says. Plenty of material, and he'll use a solar mirror to get the heat he needs. Plenty of temperature to make silicones! How much area will we need to pull in four thousand gallons of ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... Nature, hear in the jarring note of Death only a jubilant proclamation of life eternal; while all are thus taught the longing for immortality, though only by their fear of the contrary. And so is the pure universal nature of man affirmed by these provocations of contrast and insulation on the surface. We feel the personality far more, and far more sweetly, for its being thus divided from our own. From behind this veil the pure nature comes to us with a kind of surprise, as out of another heaven. The joy of truth and delight of beauty are born ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... he said, holding the open canteen to her mouth. "Just summer change, that's all. It happens to us every year on Anvhar—only not that violently, of course. In the winter our bodies store a layer of fat under the skin for insulation, and sweating almost ceases completely. There are a lot of internal changes too. When the weather warms up the process is reversed. The fat is metabolized and the sweat glands enlarge and begin working overtime as the body prepares for two months of hard work, heat ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... his pen-knife, loosened two or three of the staples which held the wire in place, drew it out, scraped back the insulation, and ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... rule-of-thumb methods by scientific calculation, recognized the value of low voltage, good insulation and the avoidance of self-induction, with the result that the electro-pneumatic action has become (when properly made) as reliable as the ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... this hut is given here. It was 50 feet long, by 25 feet wide, and 9 feet to the eaves. The insulation, which was very satisfactory, was seaweed, sewn up in ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... kitchen a double trap-door led to the loft, where we intended to keep a quantity of provisions and outfit. The walls consisted of 3-inch planks, with air space between; panels outside and inside, with air space between them and the plank walling. For insulation we used cellulose pulp. The floor and the ceiling between the rooms and the loft were double, while the upper roof was single. The doors were extraordinarily thick and strong, and fitted into oblique ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... us met again, however, in Vienna, the insulation had been entirely rubbed off and we rushed madly into one another's arms and exchanged names and addresses; and, babbling feverishly the while, we told one another what our favorite flower was, and our birthstone and our grandmother's maiden name, and what we thought ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... in his entrance into this scene, man is now an insulation in it; he came in by no physical law, and his freewill is in utter contrast to that law. What can be more incomprehensible, more heterogeneous, a more ghostly resident in nature, than the sense of right ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... instinct, or perhaps attracted by the gleam of the white earthenware, they invariably select one of the porcelain insulators as the site of their future home, and proceed to coat it laboriously with clay, thus effectually destroying the insulation. Now the working of a single-line is entirely dependent on the telegraph, and the oven-birds, with their misplaced zeal, were continually interrupting telegraphic communication, so on the Great Southern Railway of Buenos Ayres every single telegraph-post was surmounted with a ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... ducts of the core to an opening at the top. The field core is, according to size, built up either of steel disks, each in one piece, or of steel forgings, so as to give high magnetic permeability and great strength. The coils are placed in radial slots, thereby avoiding side pressure on the slot insulation and the complex stresses resulting from centrifugal force, which, in these rotors, acts normal to the flat ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... microphones—I saw the bomb start upward. Slowly as a rocket it mounted—a blurred ball of glowing violet light, quite plain in the dim twilight. I knew that the tower platform at which it was directed would have time to throw out its insulation; I knew that the insulation would doubtless be effective—yet my heart leaped nevertheless. At my hand was a projector; but in those few seconds the tower just in advance of us in the line was quicker. Its ray darted ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... accorded him by contemporaries, as well as succeeding generations of scientists, was well merited. He was first to distinguish between magnetism and electricity, giving the latter its name. He discovered also the "electrical charge," and pointed the way to the discovery of insulation by showing that the charge could be retained some time in the excited body by covering it with some non-conducting substance, such as silk; although, of course, electrical conduction can hardly be said to have been more than ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... of this coil consists of a small length of comparatively stout wire; it would not surprise him were the lecturer to state that, in spite of this, the coil is capable of giving any potential which the best insulation of the turns is able to withstand: but although he may be prepared, and even be indifferent as to the anticipated result, yet the aspect of the discharge of the coil will surprise and interest him. Every one is familiar with the discharge of an ordinary coil; ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... the shadow of the groves, began to stir before me and to put on the lineaments of life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine struck upon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the hills shook; the earth, under that vigorous insulation, yielded up heady scents; the woods smouldered in the blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and delight run through the earth. Something elemental, something rude, violent, and savage, in the love ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... MINERALS. These are of great importance to certain industries. You will find them in insulation and filters. They are used extensively in the ceramic and chemical industries. They include sulfur, graphite (the "lead" in pencils), gypsum, halite (rock salt), borax, talc, asbestos and quartz. Undoubtedly, you'll ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... feet beyond the walls and formed a veranda which was boarded up, making an excellent store-room and work-room. This was a splendid idea of Dr. Mawson's, enabling us to work during the severest storms when there was no room in the hut, and incidentally supplying extra insulation and rendering the inside much warmer. The main walls and roof were double and covered with weather-proof felt. Daylight was admitted through four plate-glass skylights in ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... college education. It is possible, nay, it is common, to go through college and come out in any real sense uneducated. But it is not possible to pass through college, even as a professional amateur in athletics or as an inveterate flapper, without rubbing off the insulation here and there, without knowing what thought is stirring, what emotions are poignant, what ideas are dominant among the fraction of humanity that leads us. Refined homes may not be better or happier than they used to be, but if they are intellectual at all, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... within the reach of every created being, it may readily be imagined, that it must have wielded a spell of unusual potency, and one well calculated to awaken boldness and energy in those already animated by schemes of ambition. In Ceylon, on the contrary, owing more or less to insulation and seclusion, Buddhism has survived for upwards of 2000 years as unchanged in all its leading characteristics as the genius of the people has remained torpid and inanimate under its influence. In this respect the Singhalese are the living mummies of past ages; and realise in their immovable ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... criticism by saying that "every knock is a boost." America does not play with ideas; generous speculation is regarded as insincere, and shunned as if it might endanger the optimism which underlies success. All this becomes such an insulation against new ideas that when the Yankee goes abroad he takes his ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... diameter, and cut three holes in its side about 2 in. from the back end, and in the positions shown in the sketch. Two of the holes are cut large enough to hold a short section of a garden hose tightly, as shown at AA. A piece of porcelain tube, B, used for insulation, is fitted tightly in the third hole. The hose insulation A should hold the carbon F rigidly, while the carbon E should rest ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... was on the way. The knocks which he had taken there in those few weeks had cracked the insulation of hopelessness which the frost of his profitless years had thickened upon him. Now it had fallen away, leaving him light and fresh ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... true feelings. He attempts to deny that he has them. But they are inside him, and you can pull them toward you if you bring your likableness to bear upon his heart. He will feel the tug, and will be drawn to you by your magnetic power. There is no insulation that can prevent the pull of human magnetism. So treat the crab with a feeling of real liking for the human nature inside, and don't be discouraged by his shell. Be more than ordinarily likable ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... gutta-percha was melted, so that the conductor which it was desired to insulate was so twisted by the coils that it was left quite bare in numberless places, thus weakening, and eventually, when the cable was submerged, destroying the insulation. The injury was partially discovered before the cable was taken out of the factory at Greenwich, and a length of about thirty miles was cut out and condemned. This, however, did not wholly remedy the difficulty, for the defective insulation became frequently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... walls, 4 inches thick, 12 inches apart, and about 18 inches in height. These walls are themselves perforated at intervals, and the whole is covered with hand-burned terra-cotta blocks, thus forming a cellular air space, which communicates with the exterior air and serves as an insulation against heat for the steelwork beneath. A single layer of firebrick completes the flooring of the interior area, which is also flush with the bottom of ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... lower than the work could have been accomplished in any other manner. Two wires were to be used to form a complete metallic circuit, for at that time it was not known, as was shortly afterward discovered, that the earth could be used to form one-half of the circuit. For purposes of insulation the wires were neatly covered with cotton-yarn and then saturated in a bath of hot gum-shellac, but this treatment proved defective in insulating properties, for when ten miles of line had been completed the wires were found to be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... why they go on hunting and fishing trips. Do they hunt? A few of the party, but the rest sit around and enjoy themselves, because they are a party of men. Women will never understand this feeling—this insulation, so to speak; it is the cause of much of the unhappiness we see. Most men fall short of the standard a woman demands from her husband. The first rapturous love, with its utterance and reciprocity, is expected to last after years of intimacy. In love, as in a dinner, comes the gradual ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... Two thousand miles per second relative is too fast for even an explosion to hurt much if there isn't any solid material in the way, and we passed through only the outer edges of the blast, but even so, the vaporized metal scoured our starboard plating down to the insulation. It was like a giant emery wheel had passed across our flank. The shock slammed us out of control and we went tumbling in crazy gyrations across space for several minutes before I could flip the "Lachesis" into Cth, check ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone

... walked over to a nearby bin, pulled it open, and looked inside. He closed it, pulled open another. He found the gadget on the third try. It was a plastic case, six by six by eight, and it still smelled of hot insulation, although the case ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... "The ceiling's got six inches of spaceship-insulation between it and the floor above; it'll take them a few minutes to burn through it." He stooped and pushed on the barricade, shoving it into the room. "Keep back; they'll probably drop a grenade or so through, first, before they jump down. ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper

... invented a machine for laying pipes, was chosen to supervise the running of the line. The conductor was a five-wire cable laid in pipes; but after several miles had been run from Baltimore to the house intended for the relay, the insulation broke down. Cornell, it is stated, injured his machine to furnish an excuse for the stoppage of the work. The leaders consulted in secret, for failure was staring them in the face. Some 23,000 dollars of the Government grant were spent, and Mr. Smith, who had lost his faith in the undertaking, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... the beauty of her form, as frankly defined beneath the silk as the forms of the naked bibis of the village; nor the alluring paleness of her face in contrast to the red lips; nor the drowning passion of her wide eyes. But they did not reach his senses. Were the insulation of his plain duty—which to Kingozi meant quite sincerely his whole excuse for existence in this puzzling life—were this to be withdrawn—he never even contemplated the thought. Reminders from that night of the moon prevented him ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... in China at the same latitudes. Spring and autumn are extremely agreeable seasons; the oppressive summer heat does not last long, and in winter the contrast between the nightly frosts and the midday heat, produced by considerable insulation but still more by the raw northerly winds, causes frequent chills, though the prevailing bright sky makes the season of the year much more endurable than in many other regions where the winter cold is equal. As a fact the climate of Japan agrees very well with ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... floor. He handed the headsets to the first officer, who in turn placed two of them at the feet of the Terrestrials, indicating to them that they were to follow his example in placing them upon their heads, outside the helmets. They did so, and even through the almost perfect insulation, and in spite of the powerful heaters of their suits, they felt a touch of frightful cold. The stranger turned a dial, and the two wanderers from Earth were instantly in full mental communication with Barkovis, the commander of ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... exposed to the vengeance of Russia on the north and east, and to that of the Italian Liberals on the South. An alliance with France and England, though only for a specified purpose, at least would relieve Austria from the appearance of insulation. She would be able to talk of the two greatest Powers in Europe as her allies, and would thus acquire a moral force which might save her from attack. He recalled, therefore, the old engagement to the recollection of Clarendon and Louis Napoleon, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... disassembled and checked, and the main leads, embedded in time-resistant plastic, would have to be examined. The most serious problem, however, wouldn't involve these things. The control board wiring and circuitry was where the trouble would lie. Normal insulation and printed circuitry wasn't designed to last for thousands of years. Each wired circuit would have to be removed, duplicated, and replaced. Every printed panel would have to be cleaned and receive a new coat of insulating varnish. ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... be stored, or mediums would not get at them as they do, the question is, What is its own structure? What is its inner topography? This question, first squarely formulated by Myers, deserves to be called "Myers' problem" by scientific men hereafter. What are the conditions of individuation or insulation in this mother-sea? To what tracts, to what active systems functioning separately in it, do personalities correspond? Are individual "spirits" constituted there? How numerous, and of how many hierarchic orders may these then be? How permanent? How transient? ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... hazardous. Draughts of air are also to be avoided. Bell-wires may generally be considered as protective, though too small to be effectual. Perhaps a hammock, in addition to the preceding precautions, will afford as much security as can be derived from insulation. But in a building having continuous iron walls, posts or pillars from top to bottom, or in one which is properly supplied with conductors in other forms, all the foregoing precautions may be neglected without apprehension. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... made itself felt by them; they were more sensible of the grim Doctor's uncouthness, his strange, reprehensible habits, his dark, mysterious life,—in looking at these things, and the spiders, and the graveyard, and their insulation from the world, through the crystal medium of this stranger's character. In remembering him in connection with these things, a certain seemly beauty in him showed strikingly the unfitness, the sombre and tarnished color, the outreness, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that the Telegraph has a literature of its own, complete the chief popular elements of the volume. The remainder is devoted mainly to a technical treatise on the proper method of constructing telegraphic lines, perfecting insulation, etc. In an Appendix we have a more careful consideration of Galvanism, and a more detailed examination of the qualities and capacities of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... of the ship in plastic was less than a two-hour job. The materials were at hand; a special foam plastic is used as insulation from the chill of the lunar substrata. The foam plastic was impregnated with ammonium nitrate and foamed up with pure oxygen; since it is catalyst-setting, that could be done at low temperatures. The outside of the form was ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett

... last that both the existence of Egypt itself, and its strange insulation in the midst of boundless tracts of dry and barren sand, depend upon certain remarkable results of the general laws of rain. The water which is taken up by the atmosphere from the surface of the sea and of the land by evaporation, falls again, under ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... rock to the head of that pool into which Langlois drove his pick. They ran a second wire to the base of the pool and connected the two to a heavy battery circuit. They had discovered that the pool rested upon a chalk rock which was good insulation. There was, therefore, no ground to it. But the damp spot on which Langlois was standing when he swung the pick was grounded. The minute he struck the pool the whole current ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell

... by dozens, the victims of their curiosity, Monkeys climbed the posts and ran along the lines, chattering, and dropping an interfering tail from one wire to another, which tended to confound the conversations of Calcutta. Parrots, with the same contempt for electrical insulation, fastened upon one string by the beak and another by the leg; and in one village, the complacent natives hung their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... before the lecture, and hardly show any change, yet the insulator is a rod of quartz only three-quarters of an inch long, and the air is kept moist by a dish of water. The quartz may even be dipped in the water and replaced with the water upon it without any difference in the insulation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... her hand to show him a strange jewel in her palm, hers and his for the looking. The intensity of her consciousness swept round him and enclosed him, she knew this profoundly, and had no thought of the insulation he had in his robe. The instant passed; he stood outside it definitely enough, yet some vibration in it touched him, for there was surprise ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... stood in little groups apart and associated only with each other to maintain the literary tradition of proper insulation from the realities of what was going on in the rest of the world. Obviously no first-rate writer could have afforded to appear in person not only because of damage to his stature lest it be noted he was doing his own spadework; but, more important, first-hand observation might ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... permanent cellars are provided with air spaces to furnish insulation; are provided with large ventilation shafts through the roof and cold air intakes under the floor. Thorough drainage is obtained by placing a line of tile around the outside wall and also by having the air intake serve as a drain for surplus ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... certain size), by simply printing a proof by contact on plain or albumenized silvered paper, and fixing, without toning, in a new solution of sodium thiosulphate, then washing as usual. The proofs thus obtained from designs drawn with an opaque ink, which allows a long insulation and, therefore, yields an intense reduction, are of a deep brick-red color, quite non-actinic, and give very good positives ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... President's chair at noon. This Allah person will be watching in, so I must be acting the part all morning. I will have the heaviest insulation I can get under the rug, and I'll have something to take the shot instead of myself. And perhaps, perhaps I will send a message back to the Eye of Allah that will be ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... foreign influence. Literature tends more and more to become a vast commonwealth, with no dividing lines of nationality. Any more Cids, or Songs of Roland, or Nibelungens, or Kalewalas are out of the question,—nay, anything at all like them; for the necessary insulation of race, of country, of religion, is impossible, even were it desirable. Journalism, translation, criticism, and facility of intercourse tend continually more and more to make the thought and turn of expression ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... the road, working mainly by night. They were stringing ground wires; we were afraid to put up poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. Ground wires were good enough, in both instances, for my wires were protected by an insulation of my own invention which was perfect. My men had orders to strike across country, avoiding roads, and establishing connection with any considerable towns whose lights betrayed their presence, and leaving ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... this point, when the luxuriant nature of the Pacific Islands arrested his attention. In fact, he had made up his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when a night's reflection induced him to abandon the idea. "Were I misanthropic," he said, "such a locale would suit me. The thoroughness of its insulation and seclusion, and the difficulty of ingress and egress, would in such case be the charm of charms; but as yet I am not Timon. I wish the composure but not the depression of solitude. There must remain with me a certain control over the extent and duration of my repose. There ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe



Words linked to "Insulation" :   corkboard, insulating material, protection, insulate, detachment, insulant



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