Word: notionally
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...this quiet account* of his doings, Digger Andrews makes plain what a sizable undertaking it has been. Other scientists pooh-poohed the notion of fossils lying in one of the globe's most desolate wildernesses. Travelers said that no fleet of Dodge, or any other, cars could go where even camels limp. China teemed with soldiers and brigands. Drought and sand storms were growing yearly worse. . . . But the Dodges pulled again. Urga was reached and passed again and again. Heady preparations, an invaluable caravan chief and keen diplomacy made life not merely possible but enjoyable. Good humor, good sportsmanship...
...obtained in his retorts "marine acid air" (hydrochloric acid gas), "vitriolic acid air" (sulphur dioxide), "fluor acid air" (silicon fluoride), "alkaline air" (gaseous ammonia). One day, he tried passing electric sparks through his "alkaline air" and found that it decomposed into nitro gen and hydrogen. Then, "having a notion" that ammonia and hydrochloric acid gas, mixed, might produce a "neutral air," he obtained some of the first pure crystals of sal ammoniac oy one more chance experiment...
Priestley did not know what he had made when he heated red oxide of mercury with a burning glass and collected the atmosphere caused by the process. He labored under an old notion that combustible substances had a constituent, "phlogiston," which departed from them when they burned (as soot, for example). Thus, when he found that a candle burned more brightly, and mice thrived, in the atmosphere created with his container of heated mercuric oxide, he thought this atmosphere was "dephlogisticated air." Fortunately, while touring Europe with a patron, he met the Frenchman, Lavoisier, and told him of his experiment...
...with but one stockaded stronghold of pioneer culture, Boston, and a single blockhouse, Harvard. Resolved to alter the basis for this conception, Dr. Eliot declined the treasurership of a big spinning company, taught at Boston Tech and wrote to the magazines attacking U. S. educational methods. He advanced the notion that their curse was uniformity. His pointed strictures drew the attention of the Harvard Corporation which, in 1868, was casting about for a successor to President...
...exhibited symptoms similar to those of small boys behind barns. On the contrary, the rats ran, jumped, squeaked more actively. Physiologist Field's object: to ascertain the probable effect of smoking on humans. After establishing that tobacco stimulates and produces increased activity, she proposed to investigate the popular notion that the after effects of smoking are depressing...