Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Molecule   Listen
noun
Molecule  n.  
1.
One of the very small invisible particles of which all ordinary matter is supposed to consist.
2.
(Physics) The smallest part of any substance which possesses the characteristic properties and qualities of that substance, and which can exist alone in a free state.
3.
(Chem.) A group of atoms so united and combined by chemical affinity that they form a complete, integrated whole, being the smallest portion of any particular compound that can exist in a free state; as, a molecule of water consists of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. Cf. Atom.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Molecule" Quotes from Famous Books



... of carbon; and (c) that it contains 40 parts by weight of calcium combined with twice twelve, or 24, parts of carbon. It follows from (c) that the weight of one chemical part, now termed a molecule as the substance is a compound, of calcium carbide is (40 2 x 12) 64. By identical methods of calculation it will be found that the weight of one molecule of water is 18; that of acetylene, 26; and that of lime, 56. The general equation (1) given above, therefore, states in chemical ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... or so, of course, we'd have the one-man beetles and crewboats out, and the floodlights orbiting overhead, and Vesta would be as exposed to us as a molecule on a microscreen. Then work would start in earnest. But in the meantime—and as usual—Hargraves, Reiss and I were out prowling, our weighted boots clomping along in darkness. Captain Feldman had long ago given up trying to keep his science-minded charges from galloping off alone like this. In ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby

... remark: "With awe and wonder must the student of Nature regard that microscopic molecule of nervous substance which is the seat of the laborious, constructive, orderly, loyal, dauntless soul of the ant. It has developed itself to its present state through a countless series of generations." What an impressive ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... become what we used to call a spirit," I thought, bitterly, "and this is what it means. Better might one become a molecule, for those, at least, obey the laws of the universe, and ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... material designs are more or less radio-active—namely, changing into other elements, but some, like radium, polonium, &c., are active to an extraordinary extent. Each molecule or atom may be looked upon as an aperture, more or less open, through which we have flowing the equivalent of what may be called a leak from the Infinite, the changing of one element into another being represented by the change of shape or activity ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... the condensation of precipitation of matter from ether—whose existence is proved by the condensation of precipitation. The present trend of scientific thought is toward the theory of ions. The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion. A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... agree about the extreme importance of such men as Cohn [illegible] and Carter having observed apparent cases of heterogenesis. At present I should prefer any mad hypothesis, such as that every disintegrated molecule of the lowest forms can reproduce the parent-form, and that the molecules are universally distributed, and that they do not lose their vital power until heated to such a temperature that they decompose like dead ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... atoms to form molecules, and of the continuity between solution and electrical dissociation. However much these hypotheses may be modified as more light is shed on the geometry and the journeyings of the molecule, they have for the time being recommended themselves as finder-thoughts of golden value. These speculations of the chemist carry him back perforce to the days of his childhood. As he then joined together his black and white bricks he found ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... couple that had been cooked at a registry office, was a voice quite familiar to him. The only effect it had on his Sally-dazed mind was to make him wonder four hours after what it was that kept putting Julius Bradshaw into his head. If a brain-molecule could have been found not preoccupied with Sally he might have been able to give her next day a suggestive hint about a possibility ahead. But never a word said he to Sally; and when, on her return ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... creatures? Each of you Is perfect as an angel! wings and eyes Stupendous in their beauty—gorgeous dyes In feathery fields of purple and of blue! Would God I saw a moment as ye do! I would become a molecule in size, Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view The pearly secret which each tiny fly— Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs Hides in its little breast eternally From you, ye prickly, grim philosophers With all your theories ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... maid. But it also works on the grand scale in the guise of the law of Gravity which attracts and binds universes together, and regulates and controls the swing of inconceivable immensities. Look again and we may see love working as chemical affinity to attract molecule to molecule, or as cohesion to keep the very ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... him drop it gradually;" and they proceed to stir every molecule of alcohol in the system into vile activity by adding small doses of wine or spirit to the deadly accumulation. The man's brain is impoverished, and the mistaken doctors proceed to impoverish it more, so that a patient who should be cured in forty-eight hours ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... darkness that possessed his own blood. He was strangely secret. The whole world must be abolished. He maddened her with his soft, cajoling, vibrating tones. He wanted her to answer, to understand. A turgid, teeming night, heavy with fecundity in which every molecule of matter grew big with increase, secretly urgent with fecund desire, seemed to come to pass. She quivered, taut and vibrating, almost pained. And gradually, he ceased telling her of Africa, there came a silence, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... nutshell, using significant examples, the real object, just as it exists before us, and its true history. Claude Bernard one day remarked to me, "We shall know physiology when we are able to follow step by step a molecule of carbon or azote in the body of a dog, give its history, and describe its passage from ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... mystery—not only governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter rolling in space, but transmits its influence—not successively, but instantly and without diminution—to the smallest conceivable molecule on the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a "correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of demonstration, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... nitrobenzene thus obtained, the aniline which is now used so extensively is prepared. The component atoms of a molecule of aniline are shown in the formula C{6}H{5}NH{2}. It is also known as phenylamine or amido-benzole, or commercially as aniline oil. There are various methods of reducing nitrobenzene for aniline, the object being to replace the oxygen of the former by an equivalent number of ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... "Worker of iniquity!" and woke with a great start. From that moment truths began to be facts to him. The beginning of the change was indeed very small, but every beginning is small, and every beginning is a creation. Monad, molecule, protoplasm, whatever word may be attached to it when it becomes appreciable by men—being then, however, many stages, I believe, upon its journey—beginning is an irrepressible fact; and, however far from good ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... &c (small size) 193; tenuity; paucity; fewness &c (small number) 103; meanness, insignificance (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight^, whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... water," he said, "is the sole obstacle to the success of my project. In the entire gallery, made of lava, schist, and coal, it is true we found not one liquid molecule. It is quite possible that we may be more fortunate ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... which had not worn or chilled him, because, as he would have cheerfully admitted, he had recognised the facts and lowered his personal hopes of achievement—lowered them with a heroism which took account of himself as no more than a spiritual molecule rightly inspired and moving to the great future, already shining behind coming aeons, of the universal Kingdom. Indeed, his humility was scientific; he made his deductions from the granular nature of all change, moral and material. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... of all known existences,—these laws are among the assured results of scientific study. Now, the entire science of chemistry in all its branches is built upon the axiom that molecules are absolutely unalterable and that molecules of the same kind are always absolutely identical. A molecule of water is always and invariably composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. A molecule of sulphuric acid invariably contains two atoms of hydrogen, one of sulphur, and four of oxygen. A molecule ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... chlorine atoms, and so on. His general endeavor seemed to be to convince his auditors that in most basic salts oxygen is divalent, being in direct combination with the acidifying constituent of the molecule, but that when oxygen is not so directly related to this constituent in basic ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... is shown by the radiation of heat by all bodies. When the molecules are combined into a mass, this interaction ceases, so that the lightest objects fly through the ether without resistance. Why is this? Why does ether act on the molecule and not the mass? When we can produce the latter, and when the mutual action can be controlled, then may gravitation be overcome and then may men build, not merely airships, but ships which shall fly above the air, and transport their ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... same dynamic laws, and that they act upon one another in accordance with these laws. Until, therefore, it is absolutely disproved, it must remain the simplest and most probable assumption that they are finally made of the same stuff, that the material molecule is some kind of knot ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... largely of a nature that the chemist knows as decomposition changes. By this is meant that the bacteria, seizing hold of ingredients which constitute their food, break them to pieces chemically. The molecule of the original food matter is split into simpler molecules, and the food is thus changed in its chemical nature. As a result, the compounds which appear in the decomposing solution are commonly simpler than the original food molecules. Such products are in general ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn

... hydrogen. The atom of sulphur, for instance, is 32 times as heavy as the atom of hydrogen, and the atomic weight of sulphur is 32. The molecular weight is the sum of the atomic weights of the group. The molecule of pyrites contains two atoms of sulphur and one of iron: on referring to the table of atomic weights it will be seen that the atomic weights are—sulphur 32, and iron 56. The molecular weight, therefore, is 323256—that is, 120. The meaning of this is, 120 ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... detonate when the above changes take place instantaneously, the action being transmitted with the speed of electricity by a sort of molecular rhythm from molecule to molecule throughout the entire substance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... is not the right comparison. Consider it mud, invisible, impalpable, but heavy as mud. Nay, it goes beyond that. Consider every molecule of air to be a mud-bank in itself. Then try to imagine the multitudinous impact of mud-banks. No; it is beyond me. Language may be adequate to express the ordinary conditions of life, but it cannot possibly express any of the conditions of so enormous a blast of wind. ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... Lamarck I am not disturbed by the bogey of teleology, or the ghost of mysticism. I am persuaded that there is something immanent in the universe, pervading every atom and molecule in it, that knows what it wants—a Cosmic Mind or Intelligence that we must take account of if we would make any headway in trying to understand the world in ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... few years ago, when Schutzenberger, emulator and forerunner of Fischer, Armand Gautier, Kossel, first disjointed the albuminoid molecule, to examine one by one its divers parts, the composition of the various albumins was very little known. Whether, therefore, albumins of the blood, or those of meat or eggs, were in question, these bodies were hardly ever separated, except through physical circumstances, amongst ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... transacting his particular affairs with the narrow pertinacity of a respectable ant, he subserves an economy larger than any purpose of his own. Society is happily not dependent for the growth of fellowship on the small minority already endowed with comprehensive sympathy: any molecule of the body politic working towards his own interest in an orderly way gets his understanding more or less penetrated with the fact that his interest is included in that of a large number. I have watched several political molecules being educated ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... notice that individual life is maintained only by the production and destruction of organic particles, death being necessarily the condition of life; and that a similar process occurs in the existence of a nation, in which the individual represents the organic molecule, whose production, continuance, and death in the person, answers to the production, continuance, and death of a person in the state. In the same manner that individuals change through the action of physical agencies and submit to impressions, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... focus of your attention. You can be and actually are anywhere you please or everywhere at once. Time does not exist. Space does not exist. There is no such thing as opacity; everything is perfectly transparent, yet every molecule of substance is perceptible in its relationship to every other molecule in the cosmos. Senses do not exist. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, sathura, endovix—all are parts of the one great ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... fathers. We have spoken of the size of the molecules themselves, and the numbers of them that might be huddled together on the point of a cambric needle without jostling. Let us now consider the size of a molecular machine. For each molecule runs its own machine, and is provident enough to see that they do not jostle. In fact, it is a very nice question in physics, whether the machines do not run the molecules, instead of the prevailing opposite opinion that the molecules ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... sand that was fine-grained and smooth, not wrinkled like beach sand, which preserves the impressions left by the waves. This dazzling carpet was a real mirror, throwing back the sun's rays with startling intensity. The outcome: an immense vista of reflections that penetrated every liquid molecule. Will anyone believe me if I assert that at this thirty-foot depth, I could see as ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... molecules of a mixture are only placed beside each other, so that an atom of gunpowder may be saltpetre, charcoal, or sulphur, dependent on its fellow-atoms for power to act; whereas a chemical compound is such a perfect union of substances, that each ultimate molecule is complete in its definite proportions of the four elements, and therefore ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... of a sound wave must not, however, be confounded with the motion of the molecules which at any moment form the wave; for during its passage every molecule concerned in its transference makes only a small excursion to and fro, the length of the excursion being the amplitude of vibration, on which the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... relations of essential weight and effective area do not altogether apply in practice as they stand in theory. Paucton's dream, in some modified form, may yet become reality—it is only so short a time ago as 1896 that Lord Kelvin stated he had not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation, and since the whole history of flight consists in proving the impossible possible, the helicopter may yet challenge the propelled plane surface for ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... stinks. It has been known to produce an off flavor in peaches, and it could very easily make an off flavor in pecans. In tests before this on Meadow spittle bugs on crops which might be used for food they did not use BHC, which would be cheaper. There are four or five different forms of the molecule that are important in making that and this gamma is the most important. We used a pound of this 25% gamma lindane and that apparently was the most successful. I didn't get this idea out of a clear sky. I talked to Dr. G. C. Decker and read ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... Serviss. "We admit that any material substance remains inexplicable. The molecule lies far below the line of visibility. We only push the zone of the known a little farther into the realm of the unknown; but how does that ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... The protein molecule is made up of a number of organic units known as amino acids. There are 30 or 40 different kinds of amino acids of which less than 20 enter into the formation of the proteins of the human body. These 18 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... double sliding things the Martians had used, was closed. Selim von Ohlmhorst tried it, but it was stuck fast. The metal latch-parts had frozen together, molecule bonding itself to molecule, since the door had last been closed. Hubert Penrose came over with the jack-hammer, fitting a spear-point chisel into place. He set the chisel in the joint between the doors, braced ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper

... of it were present, and it must be remembered that the spectroscope had already gone far beyond ordinary chemical analysis in detecting the presence of substances in minute quantities. Since these discoveries we can recognise a single molecule, bearing an electric charge. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... proportional to the mass of substance still left at the moment, and independent of its state of concentration or dilution. This type of reaction is well known in chemistry to mark a mono-molecular change, where each molecule is dissociated or altered in structure independently. If two or more molecules were concerned simultaneously, the rate of reaction would depend on the nearness of the molecules to each other, that is, to the concentration of the material. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... of ozone is the absorption by oxygen molecules (O2) of relatively short-wavelength ultraviolet light. The oxygen molecule separates into two atoms of free oxygen, which immediately unite with other oxygen molecules on the surfaces of particles in the upper atmosphere. It is this union which forms ozone, or O3. The heat released by the ozone-forming process ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

... am the better entitled to perform the task that has been assigned to me—that of preparing the present edition—by reason of the fact that it was in my presence and at my instigation that the first efforts were made to penetrate the mystery previously enshrouding the ultimate molecule of matter. ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater

... motion or of acceleration, since the new system of propulsion acted upon every molecule of matter within the radius of activity of the bar, which had been set to include the entire hull. The passengers felt only the utter lack of all weight and the other peculiar sensations with which they were already familiar, as each had had previous ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... on the basis that one molecule of potassium permanganate will oxidize one and two-thirds molecules ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various

... now no thought beyond his work, and that was the thought of a madman. He had been stern and unyielding enough before, goodness knows, but now he was terrible. His restless energy permeated every molecule in the economic structure over which he presided, roused it to intense vibration. Not for an instant was there a resting spell. The veriest chore-boy talked, thought, dreamed of nothing but saw logs. Men whispered vaguely of a record cut. Teamsters looked ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... sulphureted hydrogen and sulphur dioxide through water, are based on the assumption that only one acid is present in the solution, and consequently do not establish the existence of pentathionic acid; as, for example, a mixture of one molecule of H2S4O6 and one molecule of H2S6O6 would give the same analytical results as H2S5O6. Moreover, no salt of pentathionic acid has been prepared in a pure state. The author has succeeded in preparing barium pentathionate thus: A Wackenroder solution was about ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... really paid attention to! Like you imply, their equipment is alive. So they work best with life—viruses, germs, vegetable-allergy substances. These are their inventing, developing and brewing bottles—for the numerous strains of Syrtis Fever virus. The living molecule chains split off from the inner tissue walls of the bottles, and grow and multiply in the free fluid. At least, that's how I ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... supreme power and intelligence, acting in and through every atom, molecule and cell in the human body, which is the true healer, the vis medicatrix nature, which always endeavors to repair, to heal and to restore the perfect type. All that the physician can do is to remove obstructions and to establish ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... has been taken away from the poets, and has been brought within the domain of true science. It may prove to be one of the great cosmic elementary forces. When the atom of hydrogen draws the atom of chlorine towards it to form the perfected molecule of hydrochloric acid, the force which it exerts may be intrinsically similar to that which draws me to you. Attraction and repulsion appear to be the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... unfoldment, not accretion; it manifests no material growth from molecule to mind, but an impartation of the divine Mind to man 68:30 and the universe. Proportionately as human generation ceases, the unbroken links of eternal, har- monious being will be spiritually discerned; and man, 69:1 not of the earth earthly but coexistent with God, will appear. The ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... must in her essence possess motion; which cannot be conceived without properties, from which result perpetual action and re- action; or those continual efforts which give birth to such a numerous train of circumstances; in which a single molecule cannot be found, that does not necessarily occupy the place assigned to it, by immutable and necessary laws—that is for an instant in an absolute state of repose. What necessity can there exist to seek ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... existence from the debris of this city. Others have waded ankle-deep in the crowd; but he, a grimy, infinitesimal molecule, had been at the bottom wholly submerged, where the light of idealism is not supposed to penetrate. Grit had been a junkman; his business address—a vacant lot; his only asset—a junk-cart across the top of which he had strung a belt of jingling, jangling bells that ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... matter, the atom, yet, we can play around just about as we please with molecules and molecular forces. But it is molecular force that determines whether light and radiant energy of that caliber shall be reflected or transmitted. Take aluminum as an example. In the metallic molecule state, the metal will reflect pretty well. But volatilize it, and it becomes transparent. All gases are transparent, all metals reflective. Then the secret of perfect reflection lies at a molecular level in the organization of matter, and is within our reach. Well—this thing ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... abreast upon them. The better class of Cubans seldom walk, and the cabbys are freely called upon. The cab of Havana is a low Victoria holding two or three persons. Their tops come down so as to shade the eyes, and they have springs which keep every molecule of your body in motion while you ride in them. The horses use are hardy mongrel little ponylike animals, who look as though they were seldom fed ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... as, up to the present time, we have discovered no means of isolating it from the cells with success. In the presence of air this ferment oxidizes sugar by bringing oxygen to bear upon it; in the absence of air it decomposes the sugar by taking away oxygen from one group of atoms of the molecule of sugar and bringing it to act upon other atoms; on the one hand yielding a product of alcohol by reduction, on the other hand a product of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... may explain all the general properties of matter; and, by more and more complex arrangements, even the special chemical, electrical, and magnetic properties of special forms of matter.[I] Each chemical element will thus consist of a molecule formed of simple atoms, (or as Mr. Bayma terms them to avoid confusion, "material elements") in greater or less number and of more or less complex arrangement; which molecule is in stable equilibrium, but liable to be changed in form by the attractive or repulsive influences of differently constituted ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... must reflect the supreme individual Being, to be His image and likeness; and this individuality never originated in molecule, corpuscle, materiality, or mortality. God holds man in the eternal bonds of Science,—in the immutable harmony of divine law. Man is a celestial; and in the spiritual universe he is forever individual and ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... usually considered the most cogent sort of proof: yet when can the two sequent instances, before and after the introduction of a certain agent, be said to differ in nothing else? Are not earth and stars always changing position; is not every molecule in the room and apparatus always oscillating? It is true that our senses are now aided by elaborate instruments; but the construction of these depends on scientific theories, which ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... rushing to restless collision, burst continually into renewed life. All forms are in it, from the mightiest mammals to the protozoa which the microscope suspects rather than surely discovers. Every time molecule touches molecule in the depths, a new spark of tiny life must flare up, else never so many could inhabit the water. The coarser aggregations of these we see in bewildering profusion and variety every time the tides fall back and leave the rocks ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... doubt concerning the main result, so we do not suppose an alternative to lie before any atom of any molecule at any moment during the process of combination. This process is, in all probability, an exceedingly complicated one, involving a multitude of actions and subordinate processes, which follow one upon the other, and each ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... distant future when our globe, deprived of the atmospheric vapors that protect it, will perish of cold. The hypotheses of physics and chemistry in regard to atoms and molecules are not less reckless than the speculations of the Hindoo imagination. "Physicists have determined the volume of a molecule, and referring to the numbers that they give, we find that a cube, a millimeter each way (scarcely the volume of a silkworm's egg), would contain a number of molecules at least equal to the cube of 10,000,000—i.e., unity followed by twenty-one zeros. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... finger-ends. Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had. For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man's passion for one woman differ from his passion for another ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... was discovered that during the progress of digestion, the protein materials are reduced by the digestive juices of our stomachs and intestines to smaller chemical compounds, and that it is these smaller fragments of the protein molecule that are absorbed into the blood and are used to build up our muscles and tissues. These fragments or "building stones" as they have been fancifully called, are all of a distant class of chemical compounds known to chemists as amino acids. Eighteen of these acids have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... same dynamic laws, and that they act on one another in accordance with these laws. Until therefore it is absolutely disproved, it must remain the simplest and most probable assumption that they are finally made of the same stuff, that the material molecule is in some kind of knot or ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... I am sure is, that the distinction between the organic and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up of an association or corporation, than to start with inanimate molecules and smuggle life into them; and that, therefore, what we call the inorganic world must be regarded as up to a certain point living, and instinct, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... otherwise, between molecular processes and atomic processes; but the reader must be guarded against supposing that Anaxagoras had any such thought as this in mind. His ultimate mixable particles can be compared only with the Daltonian atom, not with the molecule of the modern physicist, and his "infinite, self-powerful, and unmixable" particles are not comparable with anything but the ether of the modern physicist, with which hypothetical substance they have many points of resemblance. But the "infinite, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... A molecule, as matter, is not formed by Spirit; for Spirit is spiritual consciousness alone. Hence this spiritual consciousness can form nothing unlike itself, Spirit, and Spirit is the only creator. The material atom is an outlined falsity of consciousness, which ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy

... any hero of romance pledged to a flesh-and-blood abduction. The most fascinating female is apt to be encumbered with luggage and scruples: to take up a good deal of room in the present and overlap inconveniently into the future; whereas an idea can accommodate itself to a single molecule of the brain or expand to the circumference of the horizon. The Professor's companion had to the utmost this quality of adaptability. As the express train whirled him away from the somewhat inelastic circle of Mrs. Linyard's affections, ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... is the same powerful, unconscious, attractive force which impels the living spermatozoon to force an entrance into the ovum in the fertilisation of the egg of the animal or plant—the same impetuous movement which unites two atoms of hydrogen to one atom of oxygen for the formation of a molecule of water." ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... longer saw the wheel. Before his vision passed an enormous globe of bluish color, on which were marked the seas and continents with outlines like those he had seen on maps. It was the Earth! He, an imperceptible molecule in the immensity of space, an abject spectator of the stupendous representation of Nature, beheld the blue globe ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... black mica, there rhombs of a dark-green hornblende and a flesh-colored feldspar, yonder amorphous masses of a translucent quartz. It would add further, that at length, when the slow process was over, and the entire space had been occupied to the full by plate, molecule, and crystal, the red fiery twilight of the dream deepened into more than midnight gloom, and a chill unconscious night descended on the sleeper. The vast Palaeozoic period passes by,—the scarce less protracted Secondary ages come to a close,—the Eocene, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... unit of time is proportionate to the product of the number of impacts per second, or the frequency and the energy lost in each impact. But the energy of an impact must be proportionate to the square of the electric density of the sphere, since the charge imparted to the molecule is proportionate to that density. I conclude from this that the total energy lost must be proportionate to the product of the frequency and the square of the electric density; but this law needs experimental confirmation. Assuming the preceding considerations to be true, ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... mate, walking in his garden before him, veiled. She was his and he was hers. They were mated as two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, forming a molecule of water. All these years, her suffering had reacted upon him, kept him from being happy, and made him fight continually to keep her out of his remembrance. For having kept her out, he was paying, now, ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... marked allegro non assai (quick, but not too quick). In spirit it is noble, forceful, yet tender and extremely musical. The opening melody is itself made up thematically out of the first little molecule of two tones, or out of the first four tones, if you please. This is carried through sixteen measures in order to bring it to completion; it is immediately resumed with an added element of rhythmic motion and ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... produced by alcohol, and we clamoured for dinner. Dinner under such circumstances produces a delusive feeling of sobriety, and men think that they have killed the alcohol; but the stuff is still there, and every molecule of it is ready, as it were, to explode and fly through the blood when a fresh draught is added. At eleven o'clock we were at cards with Mr. Coney. At one we went out to admire the moon, and though one of us saw ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... oxygen, atom for atom, and form carbon monoxide (CO); or in the proportion of one atom of carbon to two of oxygen, and form carbon dioxide (CO2). The former gas is combustible—that is, will admit another atom of carbon to the molecule—but the latter is saturated with oxygen, and will not burn, or, to put it otherwise, is the product of perfect combustion. A properly designed furnace, supplied with a due amount of air, will cause nearly all the carbon in the coal burnt to combine with the full amount of ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... of inorganic matter with weapons so fine that only the microscope can fully reveal them to us. The animal world seizes its food in masses little and big, and often gorges itself with it, but the vegetable, through the agency of the solvent power of water, absorbs its nourishment molecule by molecule. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... you can haf all your wishes," asserted the Professor, still in the German lyric strain over his triumph. "It iss the box of enchantments. You haf but to will the change you would haf taig place—it iss done. The substance of the rocks, the molecule—all!" ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... of autumn leaves, the machine-gun snap of popping popcorn, the clink and jingle of falling coins, and the yelps, bellows, howls, roars, snarls, grunts, bleats, moos, purrs, cackles, quacks, chirps, buzzes, and hisses of a myriad of animals, that each molecule would have thought that it was being shoved in a hundred thousand different directions at once if it had had a ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... not only formed of electrons, which unite into atoms, but they are absolutely filled with free electrons; for every atom is surrounded with an envelope of free electrons, or, in other words, is the centre of a molecule of electrons, and carries its envelope of electrons precisely as the earth ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... atmosphere from the moon. What we call a gas has been found by modern research to be a collection of an immense number of molecules, each of which is in exceedingly rapid motion. This motion is only pursued for a short distance in one direction before a molecule comes into collision with some other molecule, whereby the directions and velocities of the individual molecules are continually changed. There is a certain average speed for each gas which is peculiar to the molecules of that gas at a certain temperature. When several ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... Chemical Change.—Cannot this smallest particle of sugar, the molecule, be separated into still smaller particles of something else? May it not be a compound body, and will not some force separate it into two or more substances? The next experiment ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... uniform impulse must be communicated to all the particles of the substance, so as to diminish the interval that separates them in an equal degree. If you wish to expand it, we should try to bring a uniform eccentric force to bear on every molecule; for unless we conform accurately to this law, we shall have breaches in continuity. The modes of motion, sir, are infinite, and no limit exists to combinations of movement. Upon what effect ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... molecule of a, I suppose, is combined with several particles of b, it seems to me that this molecule ought to be divided into as many particles; but, if it is divided, it ceases to be unity, the primordial molecule. In ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... rain,—when the distant hills are looking nigh. I take it on trust from the scientific people that there is then a quantity—almost to saturation—of aqueous vapor in the air, but it is aqueous vapor in a state which makes the air more transparent than it would be without it. What state of aqueous molecule is that, absolutely unreflective[12] of light—perfectly transmissive of light, and showing at once the color of blue water and blue ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... seal ourselves within, and charge it in such a way that it will be repelled by the magnetism of the earth, and it will be forced from it with equal or greater violence than that with which it is ordinarily attracted. I believe the earth has but the same relation to space that the individual molecule has to any solid, liquid, or gaseous matter we know; and that, just as molecules strive to fly apart on the application of heat, this earth will repel that projectile when electricity, which we are coming to look upon as another form of heat, is properly ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... be fully settled, and, although there can be no doubt that solution is, in many cases, attended by chemical processes, still we possess as yet no means of deciding, with certainty, how many molecules of water have bound themselves to a single molecule of the dissolved substance (solute). On the other hand, we possess exact methods of testing whether gases or solutes in dilute solution react one with another and of determining the equilibrium state which is attained. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... nine parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, swollen and expanded by the breath of popular admiration, were in a state of prodigious augmentation, beneath which disappeared, as though stifled, that imperceptible molecule of which we have just remarked upon in the constitution of poets; a precious ingredient, by the way, a ballast of reality and humanity, without which they would not touch the earth. Gringoire enjoyed seeing, feeling, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... course; neither can we check any of those moral movements that gravitate with irresistible force towards their center of attraction: Justice. The moral world is governed by the same laws as the physical world, and all the power of man being impotent to suppress a single molecule of the spaces required for the gravitation of the universe, it is still less able to prevent the generation of the ideas that take shape in the mind and strive to attain to fruition in the field of ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma

... were instituted with the object of determining the constitution of tannin, and E. Fischer succeeded in demonstrating its probable composition as being that of a glucoside containing 5 molecules of digallic acid per 1 molecule of glucose. ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... no means all that it gives to its possessor. He sees not only the inside as well as the outside of every object, but also its astral counterpart. Every atom and molecule of physical matter has its corresponding astral atoms and molecules, and the mass which is built up out of these is clearly visible to our clairvoyant. Usually the astral of any object projects somewhat beyond the physical part of it, and thus metals, stones ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... parlance, the creature is the lover and the Creator the Beloved: worldly existence is Disunion, parting, severance; and the life to come is Reunion. The basis of the idea is the human soul being a divin particula aur, a disjoined molecule from the Great Spirit, imprisoned in a jail of flesh; and it is so far valuable that it has produced a grand and pathetic poetry; but Common Sense asks, Where is the proof? And Reason wants to know, What does ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... inconceivably minute particle revolves round the centre of the atom in its own orbit. On its own scale it is complete in itself, and by co-operation with thousands of others forms the atom. The atom again is a complete whole, but it must combine with other atoms to form a molecule, and so on. But if the atom be imperfect as an atom, how could it combine ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... I had already lost my bearings, believing myself to be in Gray's Inn Square when I was only in South Square, Gray's Inn. Here I entered upon a hopeless search for the offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. Door after door had I tried in vain, and was beginning to realise my mistake, when a stray molecule of the population drifted in from Holborn as I had done, but with the quick step of the man who knows his way. I darted from a doorway to inquire mine, but he was across the square before I could cut him off, and as he passed through ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... a lot can and does go wrong with digestion. The body breaks down foods with a series of different enzymes that are mixed with food at various points as it passes from mouth to stomach to small intestine. An enzyme is a large, complex molecule that has the ability to chemically change other large, complex molecules without being changed itself. Digestive enzymes perform relatively simple functions—breaking large molecules into smaller parts ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... with molecular-sized switching elements. Designs for mechanical nanocomputers which use single-molecule sliding rods for their logic have been proposed. The controller for a ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... being the kind of proof demanded by science. If the independence of all the possible distances between the atoms of a molecule is absolutely required by theoretical chemical research, then science is really compelled, in dealing with molecules of more than four atoms, to make use of the idea of a space of more than ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... what the events in another brain may be we can never observe. As Bois-Reymond says somewhere: "If Laplace's ghost could build a homunculus according to the Leibnitzian theory, atom by atom and molecule by molecule, he might succeed in making it think, but not in knowing how it thinks.'' But if we know, at least approximately, the kind of mental process of a person who is as close as possible to us in sex, age, culture, position, experience, etc., we lose this ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... isolated particles or molecules, which are always in motion—vibrating, if you will. He must mentally magnify and visualize these particles till he sees them quivering before him, like tuning-forks held in the hand. Remember, then, that, like the tuning-fork, each molecule would, if left to itself, quiver less and less violently, until it ran down altogether, but that the motion thus lessening is not really lost. It is sent out in the form of ether waves, which can set up like motion in any other ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... having the power of linking itself with others to an extraordinary extent, so that it is no exceptional thing to find a substance which contains twenty or thirty atoms of carbon as well as other elements linked together in its molecule in a perfectly definite way, the molecule being still classifiable as that of a definite chemical compound. But there are also some non-elementary bodies which, although they are chemically complete and satisfied, retain a considerable vestige of power ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... scrap, crumb; mite, ace, scintilla, particle, whit, iota, tittle, grain, atom, jot, molecule, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... definitely known how much static caloric is occluded in either of the elementary bodies, but it is believed that hydrogen possesses the greatest amount and oxygen the least. Now if we take a molecule of hydrogen containing two atoms, and under proper conditions interpose these atoms between 16 atoms of oxygen (one molecule), the phenomenon of combustion is exhibited, and a molecule of water is formed containing 18 atoms; and if one pound of hydrogen is thus consumed, the atoms of hydrogen are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various

... all right motion," Brother Copas was saying, "is to get back to the point from which you started. Take the sun itself, or any created mass; take the smallest molecule in that mass; take the world whichever ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... I suppose, is combined with several particles of b, it seems to me that this molecule ought to be divided into as many particles; but, if it is divided, it ceases to be unity, the primordial molecule. In ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... to become magnetic. Any piece of soft iron placed in a magnetic field is found to exhibit magnetic properties. These are phenomena of induced magnetism. Poisson supposes the magnetism of iron to consist in a separation of the magnetic fluids within each magnetic molecule. Weber's theory differs from this in assuming that the molecules of the iron are always magnets, even before the application of the magnetising force, but that in ordinary iron the magnetic axes of the molecules are turned indifferently in every direction, so ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various



Words linked to "Molecule" :   grinding, particle, atom, EDTA, chemical chain, corpuscle, stuff, group, molecular, grain, chemistry, dipole molecule, material, long-chain molecule, gram molecule, chemical group, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, macromolecule, chemical science



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com