Word: perpendicularity
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This is the season for trisecting angles and other such exercises. This is how you do it: Construct an angle, any angle. Bisect it. At a point, any point, on the line of bisection, draw lines to sides of angle and perpendicular to bisector. You have now got a straight angle within the original angle. Using the point as center and length of equal perpendiculars as radius, describe a semi-circle upon the straight angle and within the original angle. Trisect the straight angle by trisecting the semi-circle. The points of trisection of the straight angle will also trisect...
...eclipse day. Earth rotates eastward at about 1,040 m.p.h. at the Equator. The moon's eastward orbit carries the lunar shadow in the same direction at just about twice that speed, so that it rapidly overtakes the terrestrial rotation. At noon, when the shadow is perpendicular, the speed is 1,060 m.p.h.; earlier and later, when the cone of darkness impinges at an angle, it goes faster-depending on the acuteness of the angle...
...horse is thus a successful animal partly because it is a fine piece of natural engineering. Man is a grappling bridge upended on its rear towers. This experiment in posture has been fairly successful, although strains and maladjustments resulting from the perpendicular positions are still visible in the human makeup. Among the apes, gibbons run on two legs; gorillas and chimpanzees can take a few upright steps without using their arms as crutches. These apes, "living fossils" which have changed little in 12,000,000 years, have failed to adjust their centres of gravity to the upright posture...
Richard Upjohn, a bearded, sanctimonious Briton, was a carpenter & cabinet maker with a nice appreciation of Perpendicular Gothic, who settled in New Bedford, Mass, in the late 1820's. A contractor friend one day passed his shop with a roll of drawings for a New England courthouse. Each one was labeled, "Alexander Harris, architect...
Bordeaux was a British city for 300 years. Its cathedral is perpendicular English Gothic. The Plantaganet lion is still on the city shield and a certain amount of British phlegm remains in the Bordelais temperament. Its shipping is crippled. Repeal has had practically no effect in relieving its wine industry. Before the War Germany bought 16 times as much Bordeaux wine as the U. S. High tariffs have cut U. S. Repeal imports far below expectations, and the German market has completely disappeared. Yet the Bordelais are not ready to revolt. Should there be elections tomorrow their chief interest would...