"Convexity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pressure. A sort of hail, preceded by a rumbling noise, hissed through the air and rattled on the covering of the Victoria. The latter, however, continued to ascend, while the lightning described tangents to the convexity of her circumference; but she bore on, right through the midst of ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... solid waves with their faces set edgeways to the valley of Plevna. To describe it in detail here would be impossible, but the positions of the attacking and defending armies were very simple. The Turkish positions were, roughly speaking, 'a horseshoe, with its convexity pointing east, and the town of Plevna standing about the centre of the base.' Another writer compares it to 'a reaping-hook, with the point opposite Bukova, the middle of the curve opposite Grivica, the junction ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... correct by instinct before he was so by discipline. In the whole as well as the parts he requires finish and proportion. Within him there is a momentum which fills out his thought and its worded envelope to warm convexity. Only he has the fine tact and discernment to know the full meaning of each word he uses. The best style is organic in its details as well as its structure; it shows modeling, a handling of words and phrases with the pliancy and plastic effects of clay ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... within certain degrees of latitude and longitude, an uphill and a downhill, made by the convexity of the globe, we, perhaps, may have reached the meridian of the great voyage, and may have begun to feel the inclination which will set us forward more swiftly to the end. The power of the great consummation will be waxing stronger and stronger. Men are looking to the cemeteries as places ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... his own hands into his trousers pockets, throwing back his coat from his comfortable frontal convexity. He presented a sort of full-rigged effect—giving the appearance of one of those handy-Jack "Emergency Eddies" who make personal equipment a fad: the upper pockets of his waistcoat bristled with pencils and showed the end of a folded rule and some calipers. He ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... Portsmouth or Southampton. Away on the right was the long line of white foam which marked the Winner Sands. The tide was in and the great mudbanks had disappeared, save that here and there their dun-coloured convexity rose above the surface like the back of a sleeping leviathan. Overhead a great flock of wild geese were flapping their way southward, like a broad arrow against the sky. It was an exhilarating, bracing scene, and accorded well with her own humour. She felt so full ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of a good hyacinth are clear bright colors, free from clouding or sporting, broad bold petals, full, large and perfectly doubled, sufficiently revolute to give the whole mass a degree of convexity: the stem strong and erect and the foot stalks horizontal at the base, gradually taking an angle upwards as they approach the crown, so as to place the flowers in a pyramidical form, occupying about one-half the length of ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the ball, is a sphere of comparatively large size with a small segment cut off it in front, and at this point there is applied to it the anterior portion, which, being a segment of a smaller sphere, projects at the front of the ball with a greater convexity than ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Eye-Glasses, or small Optick-Glasses, but not in making great ones; as we see, that an instrument composed of two Rulers, wherewith are traced Portions of Circles, succeeds well enough in small, but when there is no more than half a Line, a quarter of a Line, or less convexity, it will be no longer just at all, as he tells us to have made the proof of it in Circles drawn by the means of one of these Instruments, made by one of the best Workmen in his time, who, whilst he lived, esteemed them above price, although they ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... than from this plateau half-way down the sloping turf-clad cliff. On either side was ranked headland after headland, growing dimmer with the soft bruised hue of distance, while the plateau itself was set in an inward-curving stretch of cliff from which the whole line of the horizon made a vast convexity. Sometimes Ishmael would lie upon his back and, blotting the green protruding edge of the plateau from his mind, watch only the sky and sea, where, such was their expanse, it was often possible to glimpse three different weathers in one sweeping glance. Away to the left, where, far ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... in outline and evenly convex (Fig. 243). Many mushrooms during the early stages of their development have this form, which is variously changed by later growth. The convex pileus usually becomes plane or expanded as it grows. If the convexity is greater it is said to be campanulate (Fig. 245), conical hemispherical, etc., terms which need no explanation. The pileus is umbilicate when it has an abrupt, sharp depression at the center (Fig. 241), infundibuliform when the margin is much higher than the center, ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... other that science has ever applied. The usual argument by which we prove to our children the earth's rotundity is not purely geometric. When, standing on the seashore, we see the sails of a ship on the sea horizon, her hull being hidden because it is below, the inference that this is due to the convexity of the surface is based on the idea that light moves in a straight line. If a ray of light is curved toward the surface, we should have the same appearance, although the earth might be perfectly flat. So the Koresh people professed to have determined the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... far from lonely Toller-Down—was one of the spots which suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth. It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil—an ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... absolutely straight lines and right angles, and certain optical illusions which their acute observation had detected. The long horizontal lines of the stylobate and cornice were made convex upward; asimilar convexity in the horizontal corona of the pediment counteracted the seeming concavity otherwise resulting from its meeting with the multiplied inclined lines of the raking cornice. The columns were almost imperceptibly inclined toward ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... describing the coast dunes of Gascony, observes that when, as sometimes happens, the sands are not heaped in a continuous, irregular bulwark, but deposited in isolated hillocks, they have a tendency to assume a crescent shape, the convexity being turned seawards, or towards the direction from which the prevailing winds proceed. This fact, the geological bearing of which is obvious, is not noticed by previous French writers or even by Andresen, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... arterial blood predominates. It is distinguished by convexity of features and sharpness of angles. The face is usually round in general outline and convex in profile, the forehead prominent at the eyebrows and retreating as it rises, the nose Roman, the mouth prominent, the teeth convex in form and arrangement and sharp, the chin ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... come to us from any distant part of the earth, as we had become acquainted with the difficulty or impossibility of bridging our very great distances with the resources then at human command, and with the unavoidable exigence of the earth's convexity. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... observe, however, that the convexity is to be very slight, and that the shaft is not to bulge in the centre, but to taper from the root in a curved line; the peculiar character of the curve you will discern better by exaggerating, in a diagram, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... powerfully electrized. The mercury will present the phenomenon of glow; a current of air will rush along the rod, and set off from the mercury directly downwards; and the form of the metallic drop will be slightly affected, the convexity at a small part near the middle and lower part becoming greater, whilst it diminishes all round at places a little removed from this spot. The change is from the form of a (fig. 135.) to that of b, and is due almost, if not entirely, to the mechanical force of the current ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... zinc plate to the full size of the ear—when flattened out—and inserting it between the skin, pushing it well up to the tip; afterwards it may be elevated or depressed, and moulded to any shape, or to any degree of convexity; a little clay placed at the base of each ear improves its shape, and assists ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... topographical relations with the mouth, it has been designated in English by the non-committal term stomochord. It is not a simple diverticulum of the collar-gut, but a complex structure possessing paired lateral pouches and a ventral convexity (ventral caecum) which rests in a concavity at the front end of the body of the nuchal skeleton (fig. 3). In some species (Spengelidae) there is a long capillary vermiform extension of the stomochord in front. The nuchal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the level of the glacier, and from which I assume its present retirement, a most striking scene opened. The ice filling an immense basin, several miles broad and long, formed a low dome,* [This convexity of the ice is particularly alluded to by Forbes ("Travels in the Alps," p.386), as the "renflement" of Rendu and "surface bombee" of Agassiz, and is attributed to the effects of hydrostatic pressure tending to press the lower layers of ice upwards to ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... ice cracks and opens in great fissures called crevasses. At an abrupt descent in the bed the ice is shattered into great fragments, which unite again below the icefall. Crevasses are opened on lines at right angles to the direction of the tension. TRANSVERSE CREVASSES are due to a convexity in the bed which stretches the ice lengthwise (Fig. 99). MARGINAL CREVASSES are directed upstream and inwards; RADIAL CREVASSES are found where the ice stream deploys from some narrow valley and spreads upon some more open space. What is ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... being exhaustive, will be sufficient to show that the walled-plains exhibit noteworthy differences in other respects than size, height of rampart, or included detail. Still another peculiarity, confined, it is believed, to a very few, may be mentioned, viz., convexity of floor, prominently displayed in ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... the convexity of the atmosphere; the particles of air and of water are blue; shadow by means of a candle in the day; halo round the moon in a fog; bright spot in the cornea of the eye; light from cat's eyes in the dark, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... more thoughtful of men did not fail to observe, and never forgot, that no ship could possibly depart from, or arrive at Europe, without passing within range of some one of the islands' guns. A row of eight lay an irregular crescent (its convexity facing Europe) from just outside the Straits of Gibraltar, where O'Hara admiraled the Mahomet, to the 55th of latitude, where the Goethe lay on the Quebec-Glasgow route: these commanding the European trade with the States and with S. America, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... with approach to the banks or with shallowing of the depth, very rapidly close to the banks, and was very small at the edges, possibly zero. The figure of the curve was found to be determined by the figure of the bed, a convexity in the bed producing a concavity in the curve and vice versa, and more markedly in shallow than in deep water. Curves on the same transversal, at the same site, and with similar conditions, but differing in general velocity, were nearly parallel projections. At the edges ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... plain green in color, overlaid the mail without a crease or wrinkle, except at the edge of the skirt. Chausses, or leggins, also of steel, clothed the nether limbs, ending in shoes of thin lateral scales sharply pointed at the toes. A slight convexity on top, and the bright gold-gilt band by which, with regular interlacement, the cope was attached, gave the cap surmounting the head a likeness ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... skin may be of importance in the diagnosis of internal disease. Wounds over the bony prominence, as the point of the hip, the point of the shoulder, and the greatest convexity of the ribs, occur when a horse is unable to stand for a long time and, through continually lying upon his side, has shut off the circulation to the portion of the skin that covers parts of the body that carry the greatest weight, and in this way has caused them ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... move from its orbit, but a light ripple of surprise appeared to cross its luminous convexity. The doctor ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... perforations, also, are sometimes either nearly circular, or elongated, as is often the case with carriers. The posterior perforations occasionally are not complete, being left open posteriorly. The marginal apophyses forming the anterior perforations vary greatly in development. The degree of convexity of the posterior part of the sternum differs much, being sometimes almost perfectly flat. The manubrium is rather more prominent in some individuals than in others, and the pore immediately under it varies ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... constructed does not imply much strength. Each stone, from five to ten feet in length, is cut so as to form a segment of the arch, and as, in such cases, there is no key-stone, ribs of wood fitted to the convexity of the arch are bolted through the stones by iron bars, fixed fast into the solid parts of the bridge. Sometimes, however, they are without wood, and the curved stones are morticed into long transverse blocks of stone, as in the annexed plate, which was drawn with great accuracy ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... before our bow. A huge, thin crescent, with the Sun off to one side behind it. A silver crescent, tinged with red. From this near vantage point, all of the little globe's disc was visible. The seas lay in gray patches. The convexity of the disc was sharply defined. So small a world! Fair and beautiful, ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... to the unpractised observer they appear precisely alike; it is, nevertheless, essential to the effect that the variation, though minute, should exist. With respect to the pseudoscope—which makes the outside of a teacup appear as the inside, and the inside as the outside; which transforms convexity into concavity, and the reverse; and a sculptured face into a hollow mask; which makes the tree in your garden appear inside your room, and the branches farthest off come nearest to the eye; and which, when you look ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... you there! 'T is a waterspout!" cried Fuller, pointing excitedly at the cloud, which, driven on with furious force by an upper current of wind unfelt below, was now bellying in a marked and abnormal fashion, while from the lowest point of the convexity appeared a spiral column of dense vapor rapidly elongating itself toward the sea whose waters assumed a black and sullen aspect, disturbed by chopping counter currents of short waves, which gradually, as the waterspout neared ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... clearness of grouping, so that each important figure may have its desired tactile value. Note in the "Madonna" we have been looking at, how the shadows compel us to realise every concavity, and the lights every convexity, and how, with the play of the two, under the guidance of line, we realise the significant parts of each figure, whether draped or undraped. Nothing here but has its architectonic reason. Above all, every line is functional; that is to say, charged with purpose. Its existence, its ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... would have been terrible if it failed in its aim, and being carried beyond the disc should be launched into interplanetary space. At that moment, the moon, instead of appearing flat like a disc, showed its convexity. If the sun's rays had struck it obliquely, the shadow thrown would have brought out the high mountains, which would have been clearly detached. The eye might have gazed into the crater's gaping abysses, and followed the capricious fissures which ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... that, Forbes," remarked Kennedy, as he pulled the piece of paraffin from his pocket and laid it on the table with the other exhibits, "don't forget that a concave nose built out to hook-nose convexity by injections of paraffin, such as the beauty-doctors everywhere advertise, is a poor thing for ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve |
