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Prism   Listen
noun
Prism  n.  
1.
(Geom.) A solid whose bases or ends are any similar, equal, and parallel plane figures, and whose sides are parallelograms. Note: Prisms of different forms are often named from the figure of their bases; as, a triangular prism, a quadrangular prism, a rhombic prism, etc.
2.
(Opt.) A transparent body, with usually three rectangular plane faces or sides, and two equal and parallel triangular ends or bases; used in experiments on refraction, dispersion, etc.
3.
(Crystallog.) A form the planes of which are parallel to the vertical axis. See Form, n., 13.
Achromatic prism (Opt.), a prism composed usually of two prisms of different transparent substances which have unequal dispersive powers, as two different kinds of glass, especially flint glass and crown glass, the difference of dispersive power being compensated by giving them different refracting angles, so that, when placed together so as to have opposite relative positions, a ray of light passed through them is refracted or bent into a new position, but is free from color.
Nicol's prism, Nicol prism. (Opt.) An instrument for experiments in polarization, consisting of a rhomb of Iceland spar, which has been bisected obliquely at a certain angle, and the two parts again joined with transparent cement, so that the ordinary image produced by double refraction is thrown out of the field by total reflection from the internal cemented surface, and the extraordinary, or polarized, image alone is transmitted.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prism" Quotes from Famous Books



... such foul canals and importunate children as Burano possesses it is well to listen to this lure. But Burano has charms, notwithstanding its dirt. Its squalid houses are painted every hue that the prism knows, and through the open doors are such arrays of copper and brass utensils as one associates with Holland. Every husband is a fisherman; every wife a mother and a lace maker, as the doorways bear testimony, for ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... at the prism of light that splayed out through the first floor window, and set a silver fire to the falling rain. "Suppose we'd better ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... only act as if they were focussed upon the point of hallucination, and in the case of a short-sighted subject they had to be altered to allow for the defect of vision. If the patient looks through a prism the image is seen duplicated, although the subject is absolutely ignorant of the properties of a prism, as well as of the fact that the glass is a prism. A photograph of the plain white card used when the photograph was suggested may be substituted, and on being shown to the patient, the hallucinatory ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... by looking at a long vertical slit through a simple prism, I noticed an elongated dark spot running up and down in the blue, and following the motion of the eye as it moved up and down the spectrum, but refusing to pass out of the blue into the other colours. It was plain that the spot belonged both ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... D{E} < D{X}, the weight of the total prism of the earth plus the water in the voids, plus the added pressure of the water above the ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem

... some gems allow the red rays only to pass and therefore appear red; others allow the blue rays only and these appear blue, and so on, through all the shades, combinations and varieties of the colours of which light is composed, as revealed by the prism. But this is so important a matter that it demands a ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... the appearance of a cattle herd, and both black curly and yellow driving it among its dust clouds, warmed my frozen attention as I lay in a sort of spell. I saw with apathy the mountains, extraordinary in the crystal prism of the air, and soon after the strangest scene I have ever looked on by the light of day. For as we went along the driver would give a cry, and when an answering cry came from the thorn-bush we stopped, and a naked Indian would appear, running, to receive a little parcel of salt or sugar or tobacco ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... the summer-heart of Poet, Flushing those that never know it. Tell me not the light thou viewest Is a false one; 'tis the truest; 'Tis the light revealing wonder, Filling all above and under; If in light you make a schism, 'Tis the deepest in the prism. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... quadrangle, quadrilateral; parallelogram; quadrature; polygon, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, oxygon[obs3], decagon. pyramid, cone. Platonic bodies; cube, rhomboid; tetrahedron, pentahedron, hexahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron, eicosahedron; prism, pyramid; parallelopiped; curb roof, gambrel roof, mansard roof. V. bend, fork, bifurcate, crinkle. Adj. angular, bent, crooked, aduncous[obs3], uncinated[obs3], aquiline, jagged, serrated; falciform[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Spectrum.—When a ray or beam of solar light is passed through a prism, it is broken up or decomposed into its constituent parts. This is called dispersion, and conclusively proves that the light from the sun is not a simple, but a compound colour. We have illustrations ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... beauties! Ah, the pretty little things! Yes, yes; these are the ones! This is the great Aracon—see, see, the six-sided prism terminated by the six-sided pyramid. But it must be cut—it must be cut to sell it, eh? Ah, it is too bad—too bad! And this, this one here, I know them all, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... look at woman through the prism of desire, and she looks at us in the same way; her beauty appears to us the more perfect the more it arouses our sexual desires—that is, the more voluptuous enjoyment the possession of her ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... thing," Porteous said happily. "Here." He dipped into the glittering litter on the tray and handed Harry Junior a translucent prism. "A neural distorter. We use it to train regressives on Rigel Two. It might be ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey

... array? What plume from African deserts can rival the rich hues, the graceful curves, and the palm-like erectness of his tail? All his colors are tropical in depth and intensity. With every quick motion the tints change as in a prism, and each tint is more splendid than the last; green more beautiful than any green, except that of a duck's neck; brown infiltrated with gold, and ranging through the whole gamut of its possibilities. I am not sure that this last is correct in point of expression, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... graceful and sturdy designs, elaborate and simple, special period designs, and many which are appropriate for rooms of no particular period. There are charming lacquer sconces to go with lacquer furniture, and old-fashioned prism candelabra and sconces, and fixtures copied from choice old whale oil lamps in both brass and bronze. There are suitable designs for each and every room. The difficulty lies not in finding too few to choose from, but ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop

... cool and fresh beneath, and whose branches the rushing wind is rasping cheerily on the shingles of the roof—and oh, how passing sweet is the lullaby from the humming of numberless glancing bright—hued flies, of all sorts and sizes, sparkling among the green leaves like chips of a prism, and the fitful whirring of the fairy—flitting humming bird, now here, now there, like winged gems, or living atoms of the rainbow, round which their tiny wings, moving too quickly to be visible, form little haloes—and the palm tree at the house—corner ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... make out what she had written through her tears; little rainbows were quivering on the table, on the floor, on the ceiling, as though she were looking through a prism. She could not write, she sank back in her easy-chair and fell to thinking ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... were known to occupy definite positions in the spectrum, are really indicative of particular elementary substances. By means of the spectroscope, which is essentially a magnifying lens attached to a prism of glass, it is possible to locate the lines with great accuracy, and it was soon shown that here was a new means of chemical analysis of the most exquisite delicacy. It was found, for example, that the spectroscope could detect the presence of a quantity of sodium so infinitesimal as the one two-hundred-thousandth ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... various other natural things. The three intellectual passions correspond to the other three notes of the musical scale and to three other prismatic colors; and the five sensitive passions correspond to the five semi-tones, and also to five intermediate colors of the prism. Now this at first sight looks very much like a scheme or a notion, but the founder of this doctrine lays his claim to a higher judgment. He says practically, "These are facts founded in nature by God ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... in the nose of the ship, Roger removed the delicate astrogation prism from its housing and cleaned it with a soft cloth. Replacing it carefully, he turned to the radar scanner, checking the intricate wiring system and making sure that the range finders were in good working order. He then turned his attention to ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... him?" In the answer to that question lay Madame's solution of all difficulties, past and to come. To her, it was the divine reagent of all Life's complicated chemistry; the swift turning of the prism, with ragged edges breaking the light into the colours of the spectrum, to a ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... to me at the time; and not withstanding subsequent enquiries, I cannot find that it has been observed by any other person. I found that the light of the blue sky is partially polarised. When analysed with a Nichols prism, the contrast with the surrounding clouds is very remarkable; so much so, indeed, that clouds of extreme tenuity, which make no impression on the unassisted eye, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various

... electrodes of an active circuit are immersed in a solution of an electrolyte, a current passes electrolytically if there is a sufficient potential difference. The current passes through all parts of the solution, spreading out of the direct prism connecting or defined by the electrodes. To this portion of the current the above term is applied. If the electrodes are small enough in proportion to the distance between them the current transmission or creep outside of the line becomes the principal ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... I guess I'm a pixie sort of girl. Please don't expect 'prunes and prism' from me, for you won't ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... of cloud over the diluvial floods, the living beings of that age saw a spectrum—the glorious spectrum of rain and shine. Wherever the rays of light have been diffracted under given conditions by the agency of water drops, prism of glass or other such transparent medium, and the ray has fallen on a suitable screen, lo! there has been ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... adopted for compressive test pieces in the 10,000,000-lb. machine is a prism, having a base of 12 in. and being 24 in. high. The tests include not only those for compression or crushing strength, but also those for resistance to compressive strains of the prisms and cubes, when raised to high ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... concede that if we could have a sea-level canal with a prism of 300 to 400 feet wide, with the curves that must now exist reduced, it would be preferable to the plan of the minority, but the time and cost of constructing such a canal are in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... lyrical soul, and all his life was his sustenance and support. That he had no knowledge of the general state of the world is evident from every feature of his most authentic discourses, and he never conceived of aristocratic society, save as a young villager who sees the world through the prism of his simplicity. Although born at a time when the principles of positive science had already been proclaimed, he lived in entirely supernatural ideas. To him the marvellous was not the exceptional but the normal statf of things, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... bit of glass, cut so that it has at least three sides—a "drop" of cut glass from the lustre on the mantelpiece will do—and hold it up between you and the light. This little piece of glass, which is called a prism, because it has been sawn or cut, will do a wonderful thing, as you turn it about in the sunbeam. The ray of light, as it passes through the three-cornered bit of glass, will be turned out of its straight path, and this causes it to be split up into ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... the Trojans been chased again by the Achaians, dear to Ares, up into Ilios, in their weakness overcome, but that Prism's son Helenos, far best of augurs, stood by Aineias' side and Hector's, and spake to them: "Aineias and Hector, seeing that on you lieth the task of war in chief of Trojans and Lykians, because for every issue ye are ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... being made happy. Even if he had not been by nature purblind of intellect, his eyes were too dazzled by his new happiness to allow him to judge of the landlady, or to reflect on the limits which he ought to impose on their daily intercourse. Mademoiselle Gamard, seen from afar and through the prism of those material felicities which the vicar dreamed of enjoying in her house, seemed to him a perfect being, a faultless Christian, essentially charitable, the woman of the Gospel, the wise virgin, adorned by all those humble ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... lofty moralist and gay fifteen—[49] Yet genius still breaks through the encumbering phrase; His taste we censure, but the work we praise: There learning beams with fancy's brilliant dyes, Vivid as lights that gild the northern skies; Man's complex heart he bares to open day, Clear as the prism unfolds the blended ray: The picture from his mind assumes its hue; The shades too dark, but the design still true. Though Johnson's merits thus I freely scan, And paint the foibles of this wond'rous man; ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay

... ready? Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... open in the engraving, and on this lid are fitted three prisms which are the essential constituents of the instrument. When the lid is closed, these, with the compass and level, also attached to the lid, lie inside the metal box, and are thus thoroughly protected. The upper prism marked 1 is a right-angled one and is mounted with the right angle outward; looking into the left-hand corner of this prism one will see in it, by double reflection, objects lying on one's right hand. Below this is a second prism ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... Shine, sun, through prism of the waterfall, And build us here a rainbow arch to span The years, and hold the citadel Of her abiding ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... eye is the most marvellous prism that has ever been given us of the light and color of objects, of ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor

... prism of the eye piece has guaranteed optically plane surfaces and will not affect the definition of the telescope. ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.

... along with other studies for years; and may throughout be advantageously accompanied by those concrete applications of its principles which serve as its preliminary. After the cube, the octahedron, and the various forms of pyramid and prism have been mastered, may come the more complex regular bodies—the dodecahedron and icosahedron—to construct which out of single pieces of cardboard, requires considerable ingenuity. From these, the transition may naturally be made to ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... yesterday, Professor Merryweather? I am sure they must have. Everybody was talking about you at the hotel, and they said you had done something so remarkable,—something about a prism, wasn't it? You remember, Hilda, all the prisms on the chandeliers at Madame Haut Ton's! Do yours go on a ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... a pencil holder or a basket, as you may wish. It may be round or square on the bottom—in the latter case the sides are creased to form a square prism. Double twelve twenty-four-inch strips, weave eight right and left into four; finish one long edge for the top of the basket as you did the edge for the mat. Bend in the form of a ring and slip the ends as you did for the napkin ring, cutting them off. To make the bottom, crease all the projecting ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... artist in a world of dreams, His rainbow rising from his radiant task, To throw its magic prism beams O'er Fancy's changeful ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... to maunder away on here. As I read over what I have written the aspects of our situation multiply so in fact that I note again how one has only to look at any human thing very straight (that is with the minimum of intelligence) to see it shine out in as many aspects as the hues of the prism; or place itself, in other words, in relations that positively stop nowhere. I've often thought I should like some day to write a novel; but what would become of me in that case—delivered over, I mean, before my subject, to my extravagant ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... myself go scarlet. What a good thing one doesn't blush all colours of the rainbow!—for I had the sensation of a prism. "Tony Dalziel may be lucky," I stammered. "I hope he is. But his luck has nothing to do with me. Neither has he—except as a friend. ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... shook as I enveloped a drop of water with a thin coating of oil of turpentine, preparatory to its examination, a process necessary in order to prevent the rapid evaporation of the water. I now placed the drop on a thin slip of glass Under the lens, and throwing upon it, by the combined aid of a prism and a mirror, a powerful stream of light, I approached my eye to the minute hole drilled through the axis of the lens. For an instant I saw nothing save what seemed to be an illuminated chaos, a vast, luminous abyss. A pure white light, cloudless and serene, and seemingly limitless as space ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien

... enough with one eye, but still better with two eyes, and sometimes only by using both. If we look at a square piece of ivory with one eye alone, we cannot tell whether it is a scale of veneer, or the side of a cube, or the base of a pyramid, or the end of a prism. But if we now open the other eye, we shall see one or more of its sides, if it have any, and then know it to be a solid, and what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... the darkness of night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I could see clearly and without difficulty. But it was the negation of light; objects were presented to my eyes, if I may say so, without any medium, in such a manner that if there had been a prism in the room I should have seen no colours represented ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... A is the area of this zone, b the breadth of the bar, d the density of the metal, c its capacity for heat, and t-t0 the excess of the melting temperature of wax over the surrounding temperature, it is evident that, if we consider A as the base of a horizontal prism which is raised to the temperature t, the calorific effect ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... thrills the universal frame, Whereby the caverned crystal shoots, And mounts the sap from forest roots, Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells When Spring makes green her native dells? How feels the stone the pang of birth, Which brings its sparkling prism forth? The forest-tree the throb which gives The life-blood to its new-born leaves? Do bird and blossom feel, like me, Life's many-folded mystery,— The wonder which it is to be? Or stand I severed and distinct, From Nature's "chain of life" unlinked? Allied to all, yet not the less Prisoned in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... prism's obstruction shows aright The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light Into the jewelled bow from blankest white; So may a glory from defect arise: Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak Its insuppressive sense on ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... word. Sometimes he doesn't come for several days. The last time I saw him was a week ago. I must tell you about it. I felt all cramped and muggy, and as the day was fine, biked over to the aerodrome. When I arrived D'Aubigne was looking through a pair of prism glasses. 'Where's Carville?' I said as I got off. He handed me the glasses and pointed up between two masses of billowy clouds. I stared and finally focussed on a minute speck against the blue. It was incredible, and, I think, sublime. I must ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... height above it is more than six hundred feet, and more than nine hundred feet above the chasm into which it falls. Long before it reaches the base it is enveloped in spray, which is woven by the sun's rays into bows radiant with all the colors of the prism, and arching the face of the cataract with their glories. Five hundred feet below the edge of the canon, and one hundred and sixty feet above the verge of the cataract, and overlooking the deep gorge beneath, on the flattened summit of a ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... short distance across the water, and Rick could only manage to get Merlin and his small, insignificant-looking companion into the frame. What's more, they were upside down, as is common in reflecting telescopes. The boy knew there was an erecting prism in the case, a device that would put the image upright, but it couldn't be used with the camera. Anyway, it wouldn't matter, since the print could ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... goes, and takes it all in with practised eyes. Not a tint or a hint of the immense iridescence is lost upon it, and there are days of exquisite colour on which it may fancy itself the heart of the wonderful prism. We wave to it from the Salute steps, which we must decidedly leave if we wish to get on, a grateful hand across the water, and turn into the big white church of Longhena—an empty shaft beneath a perfunctory dome—where an American family and a ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... Universe universal egotism, That all 's ideal—all ourselves: I 'll stake the World (be it what you will) that that 's no schism. O Doubt!—if thou be'st Doubt, for which some take thee; But which I doubt extremely—thou sole prism Of the Truth's rays, spoil not my draught of spirit! Heaven's brandy, though our ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... of every shade and colour, but beautifully worked in, somehow, so as to lie quite smoothly and evenly, one colour melting away into another like those in a prism, so that you could hardly tell where one began ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth

... in the shade at 10.30 A.M. was 17.5 degrees (Reaumur), with a light breeze from south and a few small cirrocumulus clouds towards the north. I greatly feel the want of more instruments, the only things I have left being my watch, prism compass, pocket compass, and one thermometer ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... through the stem blood-red. Back in the plant's first stages, the crimson touch is to be found in seed-leaves and fresh shoots, and even in the hidden sprouts. Look at the acorn, for instance, as it breaks its shell, and see how the baby tree bears its birthmark: it is the blood-red in which the prism ray dawns out of the darkness, and the sunrise out of the night. The very stars, science now tells us, glow with this same colour as they are born into the universe out of the dying of former ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter

... temporary trouble with the steam shovel men over the question of wages. This trouble was settled satisfactorily to all parties and in July the total excavation advanced materially and in August the grand total from all points in the canal prism by steam shovels and dredges exceeded all previous United States records, reaching 1,274,404 cubic yards. In September this record was eclipsed and a total of 1,517,412 cubic yards was removed. Of this ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... a colored band by one prism, may have the process reversed by a second prism, so that the eye sees again only white light. But this would not be so, did not the balance of red, green, and violet-blue sensations remain undisturbed. All our ideas of color harmony are based upon this fundamental relation, ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell

... to take the hand of Seraphitus, hoping thus to draw him to her, and to lay on that seductive brow a kiss given more from admiration than from love; but a glance at the young man's eyes, which pierced her as a ray of sunlight penetrates a prism, paralyzed the young girl. She felt, but without comprehending, a gulf between them; then she turned away her head and wept. Suddenly a strong hand seized her by the waist, and a soft voice said to her: "Come!" She obeyed, resting her head, suddenly revived, upon the heart ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... to my surprise and amusement that the amiable confederate of the conjurer was no other than the physicist Kirchoff, then in fresh and brilliant fame as the inventor of the spectroscope and the initiator of the scientific method known as spectrolysis. The fact has long been known that a prism properly contrived will decompose a ray of white light into the seven primary colours, but the broad and narrow bands running across the variegated scheme of the spectrum had either escaped notice or been neglected as phenomena not significant. Now came, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... receptacle hewn out of a log,[31] and provided with a truncated prism lid of the same wood. It frequently has a few ornamental tracings of soot or other pigment, and where European cloth is procurable a few pieces may be employed as a wrapping. The corpse is wrapped in a mat and laid in the coffin, the head being placed upon a rude pillow ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... will be proof against bad luck," she said, as she undid the case, and drew out a prismatic compass. She adjusted the eye-piece, in which was a slit and a glass prism and lifted the sight-vane, down the centre of which a horsehair stretched perpendicularly to the card of the compass. Putting the instrument to her eye, Rose took the bearing of one of the twin forest-clad heights, and said, "Eighty degrees ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... of innumerable beams of every hue in intimate association. Every shade of red, of yellow, of blue, and of green, can be found in a sunbeam. The magician's wand, with which we strike the sunbeam and sort the tangled skein into perfect order, is the simple instrument known as the glass prism. We have represented this instrument in its simplest form in the adjoining figure (Fig. 17). It is a piece of pure and homogeneous glass in the shape of a wedge. When a ray of light from the sun or from any source falls upon the prism, it passes through the transparent ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... motion, as from a moderate push sideways. The lamp was wrought in bronze, antique of fashion and ornament. It had capacity for gallons of oil, and would burn for weeks without refilling. The altar beneath was a plain black marble prism, highly polished, resting upon a round base of alabaster. A handful of ashes crowned its top. Between the altar and the wall intervened a ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... took from a coffer a prism of rock-crystal. "This is one of the playthings my father gave me," she said. "Look how it makes the colors dance ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... yellowish and sandy, cleft apart by sharp indentations, and dry, winding arroyos, down which the buffalo trooped, thirsty, to the river. When the sun sloped westward, shadows lay clear in the hollows, violet and amethyst and sapphire blue, transparent washes of color as pure as the rays of the prism. The hills rolled back in a turbulence of cone and bluff and then subsided, fell away as if all disturbance must cease before the infinite, subduing calm of The ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... was ready, found him sitting in the darkness of the parlor; the old man was full of hospitable apologies for his Philippa's forgetfulness; "she did not remember the lamp!" he lamented; and making his way through the twilight of the room, he took off the prism-hung shade of the tall astral lamp on the center-table, and fumbled for a match to light the charred and sticky wick; there were very few occasions in this plain household when it was worth while to light the best lamp! This was one of them, for in those days the office dignified the man to ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland

... ways—by reflection, by transmission, but most commonly through what I have here, a prism of calcite, or Iceland spar, commonly called a Nicol prism. Light fully polarized consists of vibrations transverse to the direction of the ray, all in one plane. Ordinary light has transverse vibrations in all planes. Certain substances, ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... languid habit where tears swam in flood about the lids of her eyes, where the eyes were too heavy for clear sight and the very blood sluggish with sorrow. She grew pale again, hollow-eyed, diaphanous—a prism for an unearthly ray. Her beauty took on its elfin guise; she walked a ghost. Night and day she felt for the ring; though she knew it was not there, her hand was always in her vest, her bosom always numb and cold. Sometimes her urgent need was more ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... valuable data, for it gives, in addition to the dimensions, the moulded draught of water, the midship area, the displacement, the indicated horse power, the speed on trial, the coefficients for the lines both from the block or parallelopipedon, and also from the midship section prism, together with the length and angle of entrance obtained by Kirk's rule, the Admiralty displacement coefficient, together with the coal consumption per day and per indicated horse power ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various

... purged from homebred vapours through humanitarian passion See that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism; Hands that rip the soul up, reeking from divine evisceration, Not with priestlike oil anoint him, but a ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... which they may not mention to women who lead refined and luxurious lives. Such women see things through a prism that gilds all men and their surroundings. Egoism leads them to take cheerful views, and fashion makes them cruel; they do not wish to reflect, lest they lose their happiness, and the absorbing nature of their pleasures absolves their indifference to the misfortunes ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... beam of light can be noticed by exposing it to a prism. If, in a dark room, a beam of light be admitted through a small hole in a shutter, it will form a white round spot upon the place where it falls. If a triangular prism of glass be placed on the inside of the dark room, so that the beam of light ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... place of embarkation, who, somewhat to our surprise, all entered the other vessel. A large boat in the centre, in which the baggage is deposited, was speedily filled, carpet bags being piled upon carpet bags, until a goodly pyramid arose, which the rising sun touched with every colour of the prism. The decks of the Dorade were now crowded with passengers, while two respectable-looking young women, in addition to ourselves, formed the whole ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... not leave Vanikoro without erecting a monument to the memory of his unfortunate fellow-countrymen. This humble memorial was placed in a mangrove grove off the reef itself. It consists of a quadrangular prism, made of coral slabs six feet high, surmounted by a pyramid of Koudi wood of the same height, bearing on a little plate of lead ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... impossible to be irritable to my dear wife. I cannot tell the precise time when it became possible. When does the dawn become the day upon the summer sky? When does the high tide begin to turn beneath the August moon? Rather, I might say, when does the blue become the violet, within the prism? Did I love her the less, because the distance of the worshipper had ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... of geology; at the romance of astronomy; at the romance of chemistry; at the romance of the telescope, and the microscope, and the prism. More wonderful than all, consider the story of how flying atoms in space became suns, how suns made planets, how planets changed from spheres of flame and raging fiery storm to worlds of land and water. How in the water specks of jelly became fishes, fishes reptiles, reptiles mammals, mammals ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... they make, indeed to photograph them, if necessary, and to hear and record every word they utter. You look surprised, but it is easily done. I will place my lenses there at the chink through which you were gazing and bring the image down into my camera obscura by a prism arranged for total internal reflection. As for the hearing, that is easier yet. I will carefully work away the plaster on this side to-night till I get through to the paper covering their wall. This I will ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... raindrops throw them up against that cloud, they are separated again, because some colors are more easily bent than others. The red, you see, is the highest and the violet the lowest in the bow. The raindrops make a prism. You have seen a prism. But through the prism the colors are turned the other way; the red is lowest ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm

... a singularly beautiful and delicate instrument, consisting, essentially, of a prism of glass, which, decomposing the light of any heavenly body to which the instrument is directed, presents a spectrum, or long bar of color. Crossing this are narrow, dark and bright lines produced by ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... by one man, improved by another, and perfected by a whole host of mechanical inventors. Numerous patents were taken out for the mechanical improvement of printing. Donkin and Bacon contrived a machine in 1813, in which the types were placed on a revolving prism. One of them was made for the University of Cambridge, but it was found too complicated; the inking was defective; ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... remarked that a skilful workman, with fitting tools and measures, would find it very difficult to make cells of wax of the true form, though this is effected by a crowd of bees, working in a dark room. Each cell, as is well known, is a hexagonal prism, with the basal edges of its six sides, beveled so as to join an inverted pyramid of three rhombs. These rhombs have certain angles, and the three which form the pyramidal base of a single cell on one side of the comb, enter into the composition of the bases of the three ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... staircase it shows a ladder of silver crusted with emeralds. The round-house, spars, masts, every spot where a peak or angle catches the light, have flushed into liquid, jeweled beauty; and each point, a prism and mirror, catches, multiplies and reflects the other splendor. A rainbow, a fleecy mist over the lake, made prismal by the sunlight, a bunch of sub-aqueous moss, a soap-bubble, are all examples ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... the senses, God is multiple, and the result is polytheism and its gods without number. For the reason, God is a dualism made up of matter and mind, as in the faith of Zoroaster and many other cults. But when the social life of man becomes the prism of faith, God is a trinity of Father, Mother, Child. Almost as old as human thought, we find the idea of the trinity and its triangle emblem everywhere—Siva, Vishnu, and Brahma in India corresponding to Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egypt. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... twenty-three the senses count for much in love; their fire produces a sort of prism between his eyes and the woman. From this point of view the clasp with which Beaumarchis' Cherubin seizes Marceline is a stroke of genius. But when we reflect that in the utter isolation to which poverty condemned poor Athanase, Mademoiselle Cormon was the only figure presented ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... the window, he stood for some moments, with his hands folded behind him, and as he noted the splendour of the spectacle presented by the risen sun shining upon temples and palaces of ice, prism-tinting domes and minarets, and burnishing after the similitude of silver stalactites and arcades which had built themselves into crystal campaniles, more glorious than Giotto's,—the pastor said: "The physical world, just ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... of science had long before analyzed the sunlight. They had broken it up into the rays of different color that together make the white light we see. Any boy can do it with a prism, and in the band or spectrum of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet that then appears, he has before him the cipher that holds the key to the secrets of the universe if we but knew how to read it aright; for the sunlight is the physical source of all ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... one." A low laugh startled Debby, though it was smothered like the babes in the Tower; and, turning, she beheld the trespasser scarlet with confusion, and sobered with a tardy sense of his transgression. Debby was not a starched young lady of the "prune and prism" school, but a frank, free-hearted little body, quick to read the sincerity of others, and to take looks and words at their real value. Dickens was her idol; and for his sake she could have forgiven a ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... fitted with a glass prism for reading by reflection, that the eye can simultaneously observe an object and read ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... know all about our sunbeams. See, I have here a piece of glass with three sides, called a prism. If I put it in the sunlight which is streaming through the window, what happens? Look! on the table there is a line of beautiful colours. I can make it long or short, as I turn the prism, but the colours always ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... seventeen, after reading his paper, I sought for the volume; and I remember also the strange sense of mental dazzle and bewilderment I experienced on the first perusal of it. I can only compare it to the first sight of a sunlit landscape through a prism; every object has a rainbow outline. One is fascinated to look again and ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... her essential being. When that had passed she gathered her decency around her like Susanna surprised. Positively she had the look of a temporary betrayal. So that, you see, was hidden in a cloak of hypocrisy. Then she had the impracticable conviction that I existed solely in her, that she was a prism through which every feeling and thought I had must be deflected. Fanny didn't express this openly, it had too silly a sound, but underneath, savagely, she fought and schemed and lied—more conventions—for ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... office door. He began scratching at the threshold, and emitted a perfect volley of barks. It did not sound like one dog, but a whole pack. Gordon, with an impulse which he could not understand, quickly put out the prism-fringed lamp which hung over his table. Then he sprang to the dog, and had the dog by the collar. "Be still, Jack," he said in a low voice, and the dog obeyed instantly, although he was quivering under his hand. Gordon could feel the muscles ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... to answer this question by a thousand instances, than by one definition, which can comprehend them all. What is Love? It is anything you please. It is a prism, through which the eye beholds the same object in various colours; it is a heaven of bliss, or a hell of torture; a thirst of the heart—an appetite which we spiritualize; a pure expansion of the soul, but which sooner or later becomes metamorphosed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... of Joseph A. Steinmetz, Phila. THE EYE OF THE SUBMARINE Diagram of a periscope, showing how, when its tip is lifted out of water, a picture of the sea's surface is reflected downward from a prism, through lenses, and then a lower prism, hence to the officer's eye. It turns ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... boscage that shelters it on this hand and on that, and struck direct on those Domes and two-and-forty Windows of the Ecole Militaire, and made them all of burnished gold,—saw he on his wide zodiac road other such sight? A living garden spotted and dotted with such flowerage; all colours of the prism; the beautifullest blent friendly with the usefullest; all growing and working brotherlike there, under one warm feeling, were it but for days; once and no second time! But Night is sinking; these Nights too, into Eternity. The hastiest Traveller Versailles-ward has drawn ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... first. primitivo primitive. principado principality. principe prince. principiar to begin. principio beginning, principle. prisa haste, promptness, celerity; de — in a hurry. prision f. prison, imprisonment, capture. prisionero -a prisoner. prisma m. prism. pristino pristine, original. probar to prove, try. problema m problem. procaz forward, petulant, insolent. procedencia source, derivation. procedente proceeding. proceder to proceed. procer man of distinction. proceso lawsuit. procurar to try; ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... the stars are set going by various impulses, that this light is not scattered, or carried along with the stars in their courses?' I replied: 'It does indeed move with them, but at a speed vastly greater on account of the difference of our point of view; as, for instance, when the prism is cast upon the wall by the sun and the crystal, then the least motion of the crystal will shift the position of the reflection to a great distance.' The King said: 'But how can this be done when no subjectum is provided? for in the case ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... through the passages which I have marked as appearing to me extra good, but I see that they are too numerous to specify, and this is no exaggeration. My eye just alights on the happy comparison of the colours of the prism and our artificial groups. I see one little error of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... are sometimes pleasing—to children and idiots always so—but in the embellishment of a room they should be scrupulously avoided. In truth, even strong steady lights are inadmissible. The huge and unmeaning glass chandeliers, prism-cut, gas-lighted, and without shade, which dangle in our most fashionable drawing-rooms, may be cited as the quintessence of all that is false in taste or preposterous ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... speak she now raised her full, light blue eyes, fixed them on Hester, and drawled out, "Who would have thought of seeing you again, Prunes and Prism?" ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... when the corner was fairly turned, in the lee of a home of many nets, where masses of foam-fleck had found a respite, and leisure to collapse, a bubble at a time. You could see the prism-scale each had to itself, each of the millions, if you looked close enough. Collectively, their appearance was slovenly. A chestnut-coloured man a year old, who looked as if he meant some day to be a boatswain, was seated on a pavement that cannot have soothed his unprotected flesh—flint pebbles ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged with the seven colours of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. The colours are ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... a splendid iridescent company, flaunting in its apparel every colour of the prism. There were great lords in silks and velvets of every hue, their legs encased in the finest skins of Spain; there were great ladies, in tall, pointed hennins or bicorne headdresses and floating veils, with embroidered gowns that swept ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... arise who would demonstrate all these paradoxes, and anatomise a single ray of light with more dexterity than the ablest artist dissects a human body. This man is come. Sir Isaac Newton has demonstrated to the eye, by the bare assistance of the prism, that light is a composition of coloured rays, which, being united, form white colour. A single ray is by him divided into seven, which all fall upon a piece of linen, or a sheet of white paper, in their order, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... motion, this saw could be made to whirl very swiftly, by pulling the two hands apart, and then letting them come together again,—the string twisting and untwisting alternately, all the time. There were various other articles of apparatus for performing philosophical experiments; such as a prism, a magnet, pipes for blowing soap bubbles, a syringe, or squirt-gun, as the boys called it, made of a reed, which may be said to ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott

... prunes and prism advice and surroundings seemed to dull the sparkle in Lorraine, nor daunt nor suppress fearless, outspoken, unmanageable Hal. In separate camps, with a nice little following each, to keep an even balance, they might merely have livened the free hours; but ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... with a circle and cross within it, and one straight wire. One solid cube. One Skeleton Wire Cube. One Sphere. One Cone. One Cylinder. One Hexagonal Prism. L2 2s. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... trace of silver,[EN22] where it meets the quartz and the granite. Standing upon the "old man" with which we had marked the top, I counted five several dykes or outcrops to the east (inland), and one to the west, cutting the prism from north to south; the superficial matter of these injections showed concentric circles like ropy lava. The shape of the block is a saddleback, and the lay is west-east, curving round to the south. The formation is of the coarse ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... down if we can only keep going," Wayland had said; as they set out again in the blistering wind; but to his dying day, he will never forget the traverse of the Desert in that mid-day sun. To his dying day he will never see the spectrum colors of white light split by a prism, or the spectrum colors of a child's soap bubble, without living over the tortures of that afternoon, for the air, whipped to dust by the hurricane wind, acted as a prism splitting the white flame of light to lurid reds and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... is awful slang. But what can you expect of a 'freshie'? I've got to make the most of my time, too, you know, for when I get to be a junior I'll have to begin the 'prune and prism' act," retorted the girl with a roguish wink. "Then"— suddenly straightening herself, drawing down the corners of her mouth, crossing her eyes, and assuming the air of a would-be prude—"the prospective ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... tells us that Democritus was the first to state, though he could not give a rigorous proof, that the volume of a cone or a pyramid is one-third of that of the cylinder or prism respectively on the same base and having equal height, theorems ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... both laughed again in sheer light-heartedness. Then, resting his broad shoulders against a prism of the parapet, St. George looked down at her ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... tired content on his shoulder, and together they watched the burning vault wherein the stars dimmed and vanished. Ebbing, flowing, pulsing to some tremendous rhythm, the prism colors hurled themselves in luminous deluge across the firmament. Then the canopy of heaven became a mighty loom, wherein imperial purple and deep sea-green blended, wove, and interwove, with blazing woof and flashing warp, till the most delicate of tulles, fluorescent and bewildering, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... which most surely catch the radiance of eternity they break. The white light was "blank" until shattered by refraction; and Browning is less Browning when he glories in its unbroken purity than when he rejoices in the prism, whose ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... the heart he rushes abroad to find her, but descries only the rainbow glimmer of her skirt on the far horizon. At night, in his dreams, she returns, but never for a season may he look on her face of loveliness. What, alas! have evaporation, caloric, atmosphere, refraction, the prism, and the second planet of our system, to do with "sad Hesper o'er the buried sun?" From quantitative analysis how shall he turn again to "the rime of the ancient mariner," and "the moving moon" that "went up the sky, and nowhere did abide"? From his window ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... of "Little Dorrit" will recall the exceedingly witty sketch of Mrs. General, who taught her young ladies to form their mouths into a lady-like pattern by saying "papa, potatoes, prunes, and prism." Dickens knew very little of society, and cared very little for its laws, and his ladies and gentlemen were pronounced in England to be as great failures as his Little Nells and Dick Swivellers were successes; but he recognized the universality of chaperons. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... blue vapour was descending the ravine: the distant sea had changed its intense blue for a sombre grey, while the surf rolled sullenly to the beach, as if in discontent that it could no longer reflect the colours of the prism as before, when it seemed to dance, with joy under the brilliant illumination of the god ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat



Words linked to "Prism" :   Rochon prism, polyhedron, optical device, prismatic, erecting prism, parallelepiped, telescope, parallelopiped, Nicol prism, parallelopipedon, parallelepipedon, triangular prism, quadrangular prism, scope, prism spectroscope, Wollaston prism, biprism, optical prism, spectroscope



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