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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



... pistils are fused into two lateral bundles of three in each bundle, or into a single cylinder which encircles the true pistil. In a third set of cases these outer carpels are only four in number, two lateral and two antero-posterior, all fused in such a manner as to form around the normal pistil a prism-shaped sheath, with four sides presenting four parietal placentae, corresponding to the lines of junction of the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... < 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 earth prism, ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem

... Year 1666 (at which time I applied my self to the Grinding of Optick Glasses of other Figures than Spherical) I procured me a Triangular Glass-Prism, to try therewith the celebrated Phaenomena of Colours. And in order thereto, having darkened my Chamber, and made a small Hole in my Window-Shuts, to let in a convenient Quantity of the Sun's Light, I placed my Prism at its Entrance, that ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... and Electricity, dips into Rivers, draws science from Springs, goes into Volcanoes, through which he is drawn into a knot of Earthquakes, comes to the surface with Gaseous Emanations, and sliding down a Landslip, renews his journey on a ray of Light, goes through a Prism, sees a Mirage, meets with the Flying Dutchman, observes an Optical Illusion, steps over the Rainbow, enjoys a dance with the Northern Aurora, takes a little Polarized Light, boils some Water, sets a Steam-Engine in motion, witnesses the expansion of Metals, looks ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... and Desgenais, who could see us from his table, joined her. Before her was a large crystal glass cut in the shape of a chalice, which reflected the glittering lights on its thousand sparkling facets, shining like the prism and revealing the seven colors of the rainbow. She listlessly extended her arm and filled it to the brim with Cyprian and a sweetened Oriental wine which I afterward found so bitter on ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... dioptric system, the lantern is constructed with eight sides, which form an octagonal prism around the lamp in the centre. The centre of each side is occupied by a plano-convex lens, something similar to a burning-glass, having a diameter of about fifteen inches. This central lens is not sufficient to cover the entire side. Indeed, a ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton

... such a great distance from civilization, the early and enterprising managed to take on the trappings of luxury. Even thus early, plate-glass mirrors, expensive furniture, the gaudy, tremendous oil paintings peculiar to such dives, prism chandeliers, and the like, had made their appearance. Later, as will be seen, these gambling dens presented an aspect of barbaric magnificence, unique and peculiar to the time and place. In 1849, however gorgeous the trappings might have appeared to men long deprived of such things, ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... "Only the prism's obstruction shows aright The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light Into the jewelled bow from blankest white; So may a glory ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... poet could desire, Oblivion of life's tempest dire, Of friends the grateful intercourse— Oh, many a year hath run its course Since I beheld Eugene and young Tattiana in a misty dream, And my romance's open theme Glittered in a perspective long, And I discerned through Fancy's prism Distinctly ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... Paraense spoke, he pointed to some pericarps, large as cocoa-nuts, that were seen depending from the branches among which the galatea had caught. Grasping one of them in his hand, he wrenched it from the branch; but as he did so, the husk dropped off, and the prism-shaped nuts fell like a shower of huge hailstones on the roof of the toldo. "Monkey-pots they're called," continued he, referring to the empty pericarp still in his hand. "That's the name by which the Indians know them; because the monkeys are ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • 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 ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... He was an inventor. He had all the instincts and ambitions of this nineteenth century. But that only made his range of poetic thought wider as his outlook became larger. The world is opening to the poet with every question the crucible asks of the elements, with every spectrum the prism steals from a star. The old he has ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... rose the daedal Earth, Through the purple-hued abysm Glowing like a gorgeous prism, Heaven exulting o'er ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... thing, and that is the breaking up or dividing the light that comes from an object. Let me make this a little plainer. If a ray of sunlight is allowed to pass through an orifice into a darkened room, and in the transit through the opening it goes through a prism, or three-sided piece of glass, the light produced on the opposite wall will show the seven colors of which sunlight is composed. The drawing (Fig. 31) shows how this is arranged. Now iron shows these colors ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... highest end of man was that he should climb through every phase of human experience to that transcendental and super-sensual region where the true, the good, and the beautiful blend in the white light of God, yet the prism of his imagination forever resolved the ray into color again, and he loved to show it also where, entangled and obstructed in matter, it became beautiful once more to the eye of sense. Speculation, he tells ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... 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 greater offence than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... as the red disk of the sun appeared above the mist, and in one minute the grim grey misty moor was transformed into a vast jewelled plain spangled with myriads upon myriads of tiny gems, glittering in all the colours of the prism, and sending a flash of hopeful feeling ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... be more favourable for us up to the present time. The temperature 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 (Reaumur).—To ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... a stool and sat there watching Mam' Sarah. She was a nice person to watch. She had such kind eyes and such a pleasant mouth. Roberta thought Mam' Sarah's mouth was just made to say "honey." Just like a "prune" and "prism" mouth I've read of somewhere. Her skin was the color of coffee, with a little cream in it. She always wore a head-handkerchief, generally white, and one similar, folded over the bosom of her dress. Mam' Sarah was very tall, and she had the best lap ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea

... complexions. Women of the world who accepted him knowingly as they sometimes took champagne for its agreeable effect; sisters of charity and overworked shopgirls, who received him devoutly; withered women who had taken doctorate degrees and who worshipped furtively through prism spectacles; business women and women of affairs, the Amazons who dwelt afar from men in the stony fastnesses of apartment houses. They all entered into the same romance; dreamed, in terms as various as the hues of fantasy, the same dream; drew the same quick breath when he ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... suspected. As perfect a whole as any of its parts, must not the universe have a definable outline or shape,—one to which nothing amorphous can possibly belong? What is its figure? It can hardly be a cube, cylinder, or prism of any kind; indeed, we might as reasonably suppose it a three-sided figure as one bounded at all by straight lines. No one extending in one direction more than in another could have met the exigencies of creation; and that the universe is a sphere may also ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... round the roller and worked by a bow. Elsewhere the roller is put in motion by two men, who hold each one end of the cord and pull it backwards and forwards forcibly between them. Bulgarian shepherds sometimes kindle the need-fire by drawing a prism-shaped piece of lime wood to and fro across the flat surface of a tree-stump in the forest.[711] But in the neighbourhood of Kuestendil, in Bulgaria, the need-fire is kindled by the friction of two pieces of oak wood and the cattle are driven ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... of his play. It was an easy thing to do—it took considerably less of his time than a letter would have done; but she had inherited from her mother the sentimental vision of life which unconsciously magnifies the meaning of trivial attentions. She looked through her emotions as through a prism on the simple fact of his telegraphing, and it became immediately transfigured. How dear it was of him to realize that she would be anxious until she heard from him! How lonely he must be all by himself in that great city! How much he must have ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... observations and experiments of his own. He writes memoirs for the Academy of Sciences "On the Measure of Motive Forces," and "On the Nature and Diffusion of Heat." He handles Reamur's thermometer, Newton's prism, and Muschenbrock's pyrometer. In his laboratory at Cirey he has all the known apparatus for physics and chemistry. He experiments with his own hand on the reflection of light in space, on the increase of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... nature, which rarely employs such extreme accordances. Colouring like this, therefore, is more beautiful than true. It is as though a painter were to execute a landscape in the full light of day, as he saw it looking through a prism, so that every object glowed with rainbow hues. Such a picture would present a beautiful fairy scene, and be true as regards colours, but as respects nature, it ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... butter melting into yellow oil on the plate on the saloon table; the sickly smell of steam and grease and oil from the engine-room; the machine gun fixed at the stern with its waterproof hood; the increasing brilliance of the stars, and the rapid descent of evening upon the splendid colour-prism of a Mediterranean sunset—these, and thousands of other intimate commonplaces, are inlaid for ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... jealousies and misunderstandings arose, and led to estrangements, for the most part but temporary. Yet the winner of her heart was scarcely to be envied. She was apt—she has herself thus expressed it—to see people through a prism of enthusiasm, and afterwards to recover her lucidity of judgment. Great, no doubt, was her power of self-illusion; it betrayed her into errors that have been unsparingly judged. For her power of calm and complete disillusion ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... getting to that mannish stature in which every childlike quality is a shame to it; and the Venetian feeling for and cultivation of color are essentially childlike traits. No shadows of optics, no spectra of the prism clouded their passionate enjoyment of color as it was or as it might be, no uplifted finger of cold decorum frightened them into gray or sable gloom; they garbed themselves in rainbows, and painted with the sunset. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... which let me see all these beings is unknown to me; I can, with the help of a prism, dissect this light, and divide it into seven pencils of rays; but I cannot divide these pencils; I am ignorant of what they are composed. Light is of the nature of matter, since it has movement and makes an impression on objects; but it does not tend toward a centre like all bodies: on the contrary, ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... far removed from ordinary types as possible, in arrangement and appearance. After passing through a pyramidal room, with triangular sides that sloped to a point, she came to one in the shape of a polygonal prism. In a long, broad corridor she had to walk on a narrow path, bordered by sphinxes; and there she clung tightly to her guide, for on one side of the foot-way yawned a gulf of great depth. In another place she heard, above her head, the sound of rushing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... leap between the jaws of rocks whose vertical 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 projecting crag, I lay with my face turned into the ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... occurring modification of titanium dioxide, it crystallizes in the tetragonal system; but, although the degree of symmetry is the same for both, there is no relation between the interfacial angles of the two minerals, except, of course, in the prism-zone of 45 deg. and 90 deg. . The common pyramid {111} (fig. 1) of anatase,1 parallel to the faces of which there are perfect cleavages, has an angle over the polar edge of 82 deg. 9', the corresponding angle (111): (111) of rutile being 56 deg. 52 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... pass my sense's confines, Melt away to color or thin flame, Does it still malinger in the prism, Falsify the crucible ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... can tell the nature of a substance that is burning by splitting up the light which comes from it in the prism of a spectroscope. Well, these bright lines of different colours are the spectrum of ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... his Cambridge career his life became a series of great physical discoveries. At twenty-three he facilitated the calculation of planetary movements by his theory of Fluxions. The optical discoveries to which he was led by his experiments with the prism, and which he partly disclosed in the lectures which he delivered as Mathematical Professor at Cambridge, were embodied in the theory of light which he laid before the Royal Society on becoming a Fellow of it. His discovery of the law of gravitation had been made as early as ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... 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!" ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... it a prison," Hope could not refrain from saying. "It is a prism, and it re—it isn't respects the ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown

... said. "We shall have candles." She clapped her hands sharply, and again there entered the silent old serving-woman, who, obedient to a gesture, proceeded to light additional candles in the prism stands and sconces. The apartment was now distinct in all its details under this additional flood of light. Decently as I might I looked about. I was forced to stifle the exclamation of surprise which ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough

... pattern is 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

... not 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 ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... that which is man's. In all that thou doest, work from thine own heart, simply; for his heart is as thine, when thine is wise and humble; and he shall have understanding of thee. One drop of rain is as another, and the sun's prism in all: and shalt not thou be as he, whose lives are the breath of One? Only by making thyself his equal can he learn to hold communion with thee, and at last own thee above him. Not till thou lean over the water shalt ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... Solar 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 of this decomposition of pure white light in the rainbow, where the colours of the sunlight are revealed ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... gazing in a looking-glass; and it is vanity or some undisinterested force, and not any inspiration of truth or genius, that puts a man upon doing so. And, in the condition supposed, the mind becomes a prism to sophisticate and falsify the light of truth into striking and brilliant colours, instead of being a clear and perfect lens to concentrate that light in its natural whiteness and purity. For, assuredly, the proper worth, health, strength, virtue, joy, and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... ray of light stream in through a small hole. Then take a 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 many colours, so that you will have ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... up to the building of blue cylinders and carefully hid the gun and ammunition, as well as a sun compass, a pair of prism binoculars, and a few other articles ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... reflected. The former pass through the prisms, P{1}P{2}, and are focused to form a spectrum by a lens, L{3}, on D, a movable ground glass screen. The rays are collected by a lens, L{4}, tilted at an angle as shown, to form a white image of the near surface of the second prism on F. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... Flickering, unquiet lights, 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the illuminating system of lenses and is placed next to the lamp; the polarizing prism is at O, and the analyzing prism at H. The quartz wedge compensating system is contained in the portions of the tube marked F, E, G, and is controlled by the milled head M. The tube J carries a small telescope, through which the field of ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... my manure-heap in his retort, and Thomson painted for me the scene which is under my window to-day. Mowbray cures the pip in my poultry, and all the songs of all the birds are caught and repeated to the echo in the pages of the poets which lie here under my hand; through the prism of their verse, Patrick the cattle-tender changes to a lithe milkmaid, against whose ankles the buttercups nod rejoicingly, and Rosamund (which is the nurse) wakes all Arden (which is Edgewood) with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... prism or cube, this problem has several sides, but unlike these symbols, its various sides are unlike each other. The solution of it has always appeared to be different when viewed from different angles of vision. Observers in one part of our country unite in ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... love 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 point where ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... the act transfigured, spiritualized; for such scenes, having the fortune to fall on the minds of poets, are reproduced with joyful revelation of their inmost being, as sunbeams are through a crystal prism. Exhibiting material nature spiritualized, well do these passages show the uplifting character of poetic imagination. But this displays a higher, and its highest power when, striking like a thunderbolt into the core of things, it lays ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... 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

... 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

... refraction is, as every one knows, the separation of ordinary light into rays of different colors—it is seen in any prism of glass. This property is known as the "dispersion" of light; and a stone which possesses great dispersion will exhibit a beautiful play of spectral colors—will exhibit a high degree of what is called ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... goblet, bumper, beaker, schooner, bocal; decanter; carafe; looking-glass, mirror, speculum, cheval glass, pier glass; lens, spyglass, microscope, telescope, binocular, binocle, opera glass, lorgnette, polyscope, altiscope, optigraph, prism, reflector, refractor; hourglass; barometer; hydrometer; pipette; graduate; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... 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

... certain ideas inherent in language itself, and that strictly speaking, every pleasure connected with art has in it some reference to the intellect. The mere sensual pleasure of the eye, received from the most brilliant piece of coloring, is as nothing to that which it receives from a crystal prism, except as it depends on our perception of a certain meaning and intended arrangement of color, which has been the subject of intellect. Nay, the term idea, according to Locke's definition of it, will extend ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... permanence of Christ's command to heal in all ages, this denial would dishonor that office and misinterpret [10] evangelical religion. Divine Science is not an interpo- lation of the Scriptures, but is redolent with love, health, and holiness, for the whole human race. It only needs the prism of this Science to divide the rays of Truth, and bring out the entire hues of Deity, which scholastic theol- [15] ogy has hidden. The lens of Science magnifies the divine power to human sight; and we then see the supremacy of Spirit and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... are! 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

... the field of vision was extremely narrow at the 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 be ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... time they seemed to spread to the right and the left, until they were simultaneously visible from both of the side windows of the car. Their colors were wonderful—red, green, purple, orange—all the hues of the prism. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... 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? ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... brave as any rover described in gay, romantic screeds, but, when my fitful life is over, no epic will narrate my deeds. Condemned to silent heroism, I go my unmarked way alone, and no one hands me prune or prism, as token that my deeds are known. But yesterday my teeth were aching, and to the painless dentist's lair I took my way, unawed, unquaking, and sat down in the fatal chair. He dug around my rumbling molars with drawing-knives and burglars' tools, and cross-cut ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... self-determining principle, as compared with its prearranged and impassable restrictions? A drop of water, imprisoned in a crystal; you may see such a one in any mineralogical collection. One little fluid particle in the crystalline prism of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... thirteen now and very tall for his years. His face and eyes were as beautiful as ever, and his fancy was still like a prism, separating everything that fell upon it into rainbows. He and Anne had delightful rambles to wood and field and shore. Never were there two more thoroughly ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... 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 falls upon it, it no longer has ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... sometimes adding to them short tubes of wax, and likewise making separate and very irregular rounded cells of wax. At the other end of the series we have the cells of the hive-bee, placed in a double layer: each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal prism, with the basal edges of its six sides bevelled 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 the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... encrease of the probability. Are not these as plain proofs, that the passions of fear and hope are mixtures of grief and joy, as in optics it is a proof, that a coloured ray of the sun passing through a prism, is a composition of two others, when, as you diminish or encrease the quantity of either, you find it prevail proportionably more or less in the composition? I am sure neither natural nor moral ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... returning; tall even among tall men. Look at him. He's in a great hurry, yet so polite, and doesn't want to bump against anybody. And now, Dorothy, don't you be afraid. I shall prove a perfect model of diffidence. You will be proud of me when you learn with what timidity I pronounce prunes and prism. I think I must languish a little at him. I don't know quite how it's done, but in old English novels the girls always languished, and perhaps an Englishman expects a little languishment in his. ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... hexagonal 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 ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... prism or solid figure contained under six parallelograms, the opposite sides of which are equal ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... standard decimeter, lm (Fig. 2), is put in place of the mirror, b. It consists of a prism of glass one decimeter long with one end, l, plane, and the other slightly convex, so that when it touches the plane, m, Newton's rings appear, and these serve to control any change in the distance, lm, which has been previously determined in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... 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

... a prism Sir Isaac Newton unravelled the texture of solar light, and by the same simple instrument we can investigate the luminous changes of our platinum wire. In passing through the prism all its rays (and they are infinite in variety) are bent or refracted from their straight course; and, as different ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... Manning, Space Cadet! Breach of honor and violation of the Spaceman's Oath. Escaped from the Venus space station on a jet liner. But one of the best men on a radar scanner and astrogation prism in the whole alliance!" ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... for special occasions there may be pipes for soap-bubbles, a prism of some kind with which to make rainbows, a tiny mirror to make "light-birds" on the wall and ceiling, and a magnet with the time-honoured ducks and fish, if these are still to be bought, along with other articles, delicately made or coloured, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... but with no appreciable warmth, and for a little space his level rays shoot out and gild the tree tops and the distant hills. The snow springs to life. Dead white no longer, its dry, crystalline particles glitter in myriads of diamond facets with every colour of the prism. Then the sun is gone, and the lovely circle of rose pink over amethyst again stretches round the horizon, slowly fading until once more the pale primrose glows in the south against the purple sky with its silver stars. Thus sunrise and sunset form a continuous ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... method, not quite so learned, to convey an idea of the generation of colors, and the decomposition of the solar ray. Instead of examining them in a prism of glass, we shall consider them in the heavens, and there we shall behold the five primordial colours unfold themselves in the order which we ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... pale, Not any slenderest shaft and frail, A prism over glass—green gorges lone, Toppled; nor lace of traceries fine, Nor pendant drops in grot or mine Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down. Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled Circling one snow-flanked peak afar, But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed And crystal ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... been produced by placing in front of the telescope a large prism, thus returning to the method originally employed by Fraunhofer in the first study of stellar spectra. Four 15 deg. prisms have been constructed, the three largest having clear apertures of nearly eleven ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... who, by the aid of the heliometer or a double-refracting prism,* determines the diameter of planetary bodies; who measures patiently year after year, the meridian altitude and the relative distances of stars, or who seeks a telescopic comet in a group of nebulae, does not ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... steamer and fill myself with joy. She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room; when I looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing through a splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter, on every stateroom door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringed chandeliers; the clerk's office was elegant, the bar was marvelous, and the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost. The boiler deck (i.e. the second story of the boat, so to speak) was as spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and there ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... other words, because he cannot live the life of sensation without thought. But it is not the man, it is merely his mental machinery which is under this "necessity." This it is which translates, analyses, incorporates in finite images the boundless perceptions of the spirit: passing through its prism the White Light of Reality, and shattering it to a succession of coloured rays. Therefore the man who would know the Divine Secret must unshackle himself more thoroughly than ever before from the tyranny of the image-making power. As it is not by the ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism of a language many-coloured and richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... It is needless to say that these are "l'Amant" and "la Femme," or that they are happily united at the end: it may be more necessary to add that there is no scandal, but at the same time no prunes and prism, earlier. "Le Mari," M. Jenneville, is very much less of a success, being an exceedingly foolish as well as reprobate person, who not only deserts a beautiful, charming, and affectionate wife, but treats his lower-class loves shabbily, and allows himself ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... 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; Yet can I coolly ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay

... the presence of the minutest trace of blood, and it is practically infallible. It depends on the curious property, possessed by nearly all bodies, of absorbing certain parts of the light that passes through them. Sunlight passing through a prism is split up into the familiar seven colours of the rainbow. But if a little blood dissolved in water is placed in a glass tube, and if the light is made to pass through it on its way to the prism, the blood takes something out of it; for now among the seven ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... 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 ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... prism of time, I fancy this slaughter of the innocents may have been foolishly sentimental. But I had a great desire to lay all that I could by way of tribute of consolation at Betty's feet, and this little sacrifice of all my roses ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... Rays put out the Fire (Vol. vii., p. 285.).—It is known that solar light contains three distinct kinds of rays, which, when decomposed by a prism, form as many spectra, varying in properties as well as in position, viz. luminous, heating or calorific, and chemical ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various

... 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 ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... begun 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; and ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... bound me to thee, thy fireside, and thy altars! But I triumphed, and went abroad upon the earth with a heart expanding towards all the creatures of God, though thy image was still enshrined in its inmost core, shining in womanly glory, pure, radiant, and without spot, like the floating prism that forms the lustre of ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... 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

... vague and indeterminate apart from revelation, soon lost its pantheistic unity in the wildest polytheistic variety. The primitive idea of unity, passing through the distorting prism of the fallen and corrupt human imagination, was divided, decomposed, clothed in a thousand colors and forms to allure and satisfy the senses. Thus there was no part of nature without its appropriate god, invested with supreme power over the class ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... 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 again, though ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... the left corner of his mouth, he, in course of time, had pressed it out a little, and had drawn it down to the left, so that the right side of his mouth looked as if he were continually saying "prunes and prism," while the left side looked as if he were in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... of a Prussian Majesty, what a bepainted, beribboned insulting Play-actor Majesty has he fallen in with!—"Hm, so? Hm, na!" and I see the face of him, all colors of the prism, and eyes in a fine frenzy; betokening thundery weather to some people! Instantly he orders 44,000 men to get on march; [Friedrich Wilhelm's "Manifesto" is in Mauvillon, ii. 210-215, dated "20th August, 1729" (the day after Kannegieseer's return).] ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... now made to light up the dark places of nature; the blowpipe and the prism are adding to our knowledge of the earth's crust; but the torch ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... seven nations, which combine in themselves the whole of humanity, will join together and amalgamate like the seven colors of the prism, in a radiant celestial arch; the marvel of Peace will appear eternal and visible above civilization, and the world, dazzled, will contemplate the immense rainbow of ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... at last in the laboratory, went over to a cabinet and took out a peculiar-looking apparatus, which seemed, as nearly as I can describe it, to consist of a sort of triangular prism, set with its edge vertically on a rigid platform attached to a ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

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

... through a prism, which is a triangularly shaped piece of glass, the rays on emerging will diverge from each other, and when they fall on a wall or screen the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... 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 ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... all right. In fact I've been able to improve it greatly. You remember the trouble I had with the refraction from the second prism. The adjustment of the angles—— The way the ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... pool of water there—do you get that? Now, that isn't silver-colored, as it's usually represented. It's a prism. Don't you see ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... with plaintive condescension, sponging for breakfast on an art-student of nineteen, a fallen Don Juan who had neglected to die at the propitious hour, had a colour of romance for young imaginations. His name and his bright past, seen through the prism of whispered gossip, had gained him ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

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

... for a depth of 29.5 feet of water and a bottom width of canal prism of about 98 feet, except at special places, where this width was increased. A dam was to be built near Bohio, which would thus form an artificial lake, with its surface varying from 52.5 to 65.6 feet above the sea. The location of this line was practically the ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden

... is possible to detect the potassium flame in such cases, however, in the following way. When light is allowed to shine through a very small hole or slit in some kind of a screen, such as a piece of metal, upon a triangular prism of glass, the light is bent or refracted out of its course instead of passing straight through the glass. It thus comes out of the prism at some angle to the line at which it entered. Yellow light is bent more than red, and violet more ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... 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. That's quite understood ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... soon as we have yielded to the infernal temptation, the lying prism vanishes, the halo disappears, and there only remains vice in all its hideousness and repulsive nudity. It is then that we hear a threatening voice mutter secretly in the depths of ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... intellectually and morally. We have demonstrated that the being who can ask the question, "How?" naturally belongs to the universe. Already he knows what stuff inconceivably distant stars are made of; and the "how" to know that he found in a small glass prism. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... Algernon Moncrieff Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D. Merriman, Butler Lane, Manservant Lady Bracknell Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax Cecily Cardew Miss Prism, Governess ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde

... a temporal wreck. But the thing of which we must divest our minds is to look partially upon others; all is to be viewed; and the creature judged, as he must be by his Creator, not dissected through a prism of morals, but in the unrefracted ray. So seen, and in relation to the almost omnipotent surroundings, who is to distinguish between F. and such a man as Dr. Candlish, or between such a man as David Hume and such an one as Robert Burns? To compare my poor and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... worked a hole in it as far down as my arm would reach, and found nothing but gold bars like this." Then, glancing around to see that none of the Africans were returning, he took from his pocket a yellow object about three inches in length and an inch in diameter, shaped like a rough prism, cast in a rudely constructed mortar or mould. "I brought away just one of them," he said, "and then I shut down the lid, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton



Words linked to "Prism" :   parallelopipedon, optical prism, prism spectroscope, telescope, triangular prism, prismatic, erecting prism, polyhedron, scope, spectroscope, Wollaston prism, parallelepipedon, biprism



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