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Specific gravity   /spəsˈɪfɪk grˈævəti/   Listen
Specific gravity

noun
1.
The density of a substance relative to the density of water.






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"Specific gravity" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the lead was 9 lbs., and the tubs, being lashed longitudinally together, rolled in a tideway unfettered, being anchored by the usual lines and heavy stones. The leads sank the casks to the bottom in 2-1/2 fathoms of water, but at that depth they in specific gravity so nearly approximated to their equal bulk of fluid displaced that they could scarcely be felt on the finger. The leads were cast in moulds to the size required, and could be repeatedly used for the same purpose, and it was thought that ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... Specific Gravity, 2.9-3.1. Hardness, 5.6. Long bladed crystals; also columnar and fibrous. Color, white and grayish. Sometimes nearly transparent. Found in the ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... strength of which is so immense that the walls of the bell can be made to remit the pressure even at a depth of six miles. From my previous experiments I am confident that there will be no difficulty in sinking and afterward raising this apparatus. It is only necessary that the mean specific gravity of the bell shall be greater than that of the water at a given depth, and you know that as far back as the end of the nineteenth century your own countrymen sent down sounding apparatus more than six miles in the Pacific Ocean, near ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... pan of the scales to go down. To again establish equilibrium, I had to add 35 grains. With this figure I divided the actual weight of the gold, which gave me 18.9, and this I remembered was close to the specific gravity of pure gold. ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... differences are the size and shape of bones and other body structures, the more plentiful haemoglobin in male blood during the reproductive period, and such blood peculiarities as the production of more carbonic acid or the higher specific gravity in the male. The greater percentage of fat as compared with muscle in women[19], if it is generally true, is what we should expect from a lower metabolism and a tendency to store materials. The long list of diseases which are more or less sex-limited [20; 14, pp.160f.; ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... long translation—all the way from the south of France to Upper Savoy, he may think then of a very fine sorting over by differences of specific gravity—but in such a fine selection, larvae would be separated from ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... assured him that there was, and the volume on steam was followed by a treatise on specific gravity, which gave Mr. Harrington food for reflection for several days. Nevertheless, the discovery that others had been before him did not depress him in the least. He gave the Sunday editor an insight into his views on one occasion when that ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect—in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in specific gravity, in chemical composition—differs so greatly that no visible resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other—changed so gradually that at no moment ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... simple one. Take a pail, half-filled with ova, and then fill up with water, and with a small lading-can lift some of the water out, and pour it back again, so as to cause a downward current, which will agitate the ova. Their specific gravity being greater than that of water, they immediately retire again to the bottom of the pail, and by at once pouring off as much water as is practicable, any floating particles of moss, etc., may be carried off. Should any be left, the process should be repeated, and it may even be necessary to ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker

... accurate; I use it on board," he said. "Well, I got the specific gravity of gold, zinc and copper from my pocket-tables, and made a few experiments with some bearing metals. They're all brasses; alloys of copper and zinc, with a little lead and tin in some. I weighed and measured two or three small ingots ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... in almost all cases at the time of the menopause the amount of urine passed is below normal, the specific gravity is increased, and that the urine contains urates and almost always uric acid in excess. Further, that the functions of digestion and assimilation and the various metabolic changes are so largely under the control ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... to be eliminated as far as possible, since the atmosphere has nothing to do with gravitation. The old fashioned "guinea and feather experiment" illustrates that in a vacuum things entirely different in specific gravity or surface drop ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... bladder,—were it not that the loss of control is so apt to spread to the rectum as well. There is no evidence that the urine is peculiarly irritating. Indeed, such evidence as we have goes to show that, as in some other neuroses, the urine in enuresis is unduly copious, and of very low specific gravity. Incidentally, we have in this polyuria a further argument against the view recently advanced that a small and contracted irritable bladder is the cause of enuresis. We do, of course, meet with cases of irritable ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... of universal histories and of the history of culture are like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific gravity of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more than that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is deceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle. As gold is gold only if it is serviceable ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... of the head; in fact; the cleverest practitioner is he who can swim with the current and keep his head well above the stream of events which he appears to control, a man's fitness for this business varying inversely as his specific gravity. But in this particular art or craft, as in all others, you shall find a thousand mediocrities for one man of genius; and in spite of Chatelet's services, ordinary and extraordinary, Her Imperial Highness could not procure a seat in the Privy Council for ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... Women and children unlike any women and children you ever saw; close caps with butterfly wings for the former, little black skull bonnets for the latter, in shape both alike, much resembling those toys which, if placed on their heads, by their superior specific gravity and extensive sacrifice of their lower projections instantly revolve and settle upon ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... universal law, Newton was enabled not only to determine the weight which the same body would have at the surface of the sun and the planets, but even to calculate the quantity of matter in the sun, and in all the planets that had satellites, and even to determine the density or specific gravity of the matter of which they were composed. In this way he found that the weight of the same body would be twenty-three times greater at the surface of the sun than at the surface of the earth, and that the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... force, investigating fully all the positions of rest and stability of a right segment of a paraboloid floating in a fluid according (1) to the relation between the axis of the solid and the parameter of the generating parabola, and (2) to the specific gravity of the solid in relation to the fluid; the term 'specific gravity' is not used, but the idea is fully expressed in ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... micaceous cleavage parallel to the basal plane, on which plane the lustre is pearly. The colour is sulphur-yellow, and this enables the mineral to be distinguished at a glance from the emerald-green torbernite. Hardness 2-2 1/2; specific gravity 3.05-3.19. Autunite is usually found with pitchblende and other uranium minerals, or with ores of silver, tin and iron; it sometimes coats joint-planes in gneiss and pegmatite. Falkenstein in Saxony, St Symphorien near Autun (hence the name of the species), and St Day ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... up to its place over the starboard quarter, someone had so cut the tackles which held it there, that a moderate strain would at once part them. Bembo's weight had answered the purpose, showing that the deserters must have ascertained his specific gravity to a fibre of hemp. There was another boat remaining; but it was as well to examine it before attempting to lower. And it was well they did; for there was a hole in the bottom large enough to drop a barrel through: she had ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... more practical to build a large diesel than a large gasoline engine. Large airplanes would therefore need fewer engines if diesel powered. Smaller fuel tanks could be used because of the greater fuel economy of the diesel, and also because of the high specific gravity of fuel oil as compared to gasoline. Furthermore, these smaller tanks could be placed in more convenient locations. Not having a carburetor the engine could not backfire, further reducing the fire hazard. The exhaust note was lower because of the diesel's higher expansion ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer

... Their great specific gravity, also, makes the precious metals easy of transportation. Thus Cazeau calculates that a given value of gold is 17,222 times as easy to transport as the same value in wheat. But as, where the weight is the same, the labor of transportation is inversely as the volume, this number must be multiplied ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... water may always be detected by the hydrometer, and in this respect it may be a useful appendage to household utensils. Pure milk has a greater specific gravity than water, being 103, that of water being 100. A very small proportion of water mixed with milk will produce a liquid specifically lighter than water.—Although the hydrometer is seldom applied to domestic uses, yet it might be used for many ordinary purposes which could scarcely be attained ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various

... and by its pointed extremities to favour progression. To say that these boats leak is a mistake; they are full of water, or rather, like a piece of cork, always half submerged: their floating is simply a question of specific gravity. The manner in which the boats are propelled adds greatly to the discomfort of the traveller. Two men sit in front, and one behind. They use long sticks, instead of oars, beating the water alternately to the right and left; at each ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... in the shop of a bookseller, I proposed this question: If two volumes of hydrogen and one of oxygen are mixed together in a vessel, and if by mechanical pressure they can be so condensed as to become of the same specific gravity as water, will the gases under these circumstances unite and form water? "What do you think they will do?" said Dr. W. I replied, that I should rather expect they would unite. "I see no reason to suppose it," said ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... north of their camp was a sandy beach which extended along the shore a considerable distance. It was here that the girls made their first under-water exploration. They tied a rough stone near one end of each of the poles to increase its specific gravity and then proceeded to "feel" for depth along the ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis

... the writer desires to protest against considering semi-aqueous masses, such as soupy sands, soft concrete, etc., as exerting hydrostatic pressure due to their weight in bulk, instead of to the specific gravity of the basic liquid. For instance, resorting again to the illustration of cubes and spheres, it may be assumed that a cubical receptacle has been partly filled with small cubes of polished marble, piled vertically in columns. When this ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem

... number of perspiratory glands is two million three hundred and eighty-one thousand two hundred and forty-eight, and the length of each glandular coil being 1/16 of an inch, we may estimate the length of tubing to be not less than two miles and a third. This secretion has a specific gravity of 1003.5, and, according to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... was very anxious to try the general experiment with sulphuric acid, of about specific gravity 1.783, containing that proportion of water which gives it the power of crystallizing at 40 deg. Fahr.; but I found it impossible to obtain it so that I could be sure the whole would congeal even at 0 deg. Fahr. A ten-thousandth part of water, more or less than necessary, would, upon cooling ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... should be for the worse. We are floating on a sea of beneficence, in which it is impossible for us to sink. But though one could not easily drown in the Dead Sea, one might starve. And when goodness is of too great specific gravity it is impossible to get on in it or out of it. This is disconcerting to one of an active disposition. It is comforting to be told that everything is completely good, till you reflect that that is only another way of saying that nothing can be made any better, and that ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... zone, cause a real movement of transition, which we do not observe in the heaviest tempests, because these last are circumscribed within a small space. When, in a great mass of water, the particles at the surface acquire a different specific gravity, a superficial current is formed, which takes its direction towards the point where the water is coldest, or where it is most saturated with muriate of soda, sulphate of lime, and muriate or sulphate of magnesia. In the seas of the tropics we find, that at great depths the thermometer ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... specific gravity referred to H as the standard, (Physics) is the ratio of the weight of a given volume of a gas or vapor to the weight of the same volume of H. A liter of steam weighs nine times as much as a liter of H. Its vapor density is therefore nine. For convenience, a definite volume ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... hard coal, is applied to those dry coals containing from 3 to 7 per cent volatile matter and which do not swell when burned. True anthracite is hard, compact, lustrous and sometimes iridescent, and is characterized by few joints and clefts. Its specific gravity varies from 1.4 to 1.8. In burning, it kindles slowly and with difficulty, is hard to keep alight, and burns with a short, almost ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... specific gravity is 3.51. It will be seen that since each substance always has, when pure, the same specific gravity, we have here a means of distinguishing precious stones. It is very seldom, if ever, the case that we find any two precious stones of the same specific gravity. A few stones have nearly the same specific gravities, and in such cases it is well to apply other tests also. In fact one should always make sure of a stone by seeing that two or three different tests point ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade

... the lungs, that organ commences the formation of carbon; thus increasing the amount originally deposited. Dr Brockmann sets forth, as grounds for this view, that "if the parenchyma of the lungs were filled with carbonaceous dust, their specific gravity ought to be increased; but this is not the case. A completely melanosed lung swims in water, both as a whole and when cut into parts." It is very evident from these remarks, that the author has not seen the disease as it is exhibited in the third division of morbid action ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar

... you are talking about?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before her, and precipitate the truth by specific gravity. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... or heartwood, the pervious portion the alburnum or sapwood. The original tissue is colourless; but according to the nature of the secretions deposited in it, the heartwood is either of a deeper colour, sometimes party-coloured, or at least of a much greater specific gravity than the sapwood. The removal of the juices by any solvent restores the wood to its primitive hue, and renders it again light. The difference of weight of a cubic foot of wood depends not merely on the different quantity of vegetable tissue compressed ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... because of the preservative influence of the sugar, which is too small in amount to prevent the action of germs, as in the case of preserves, but because the addition of sugar to the water or fruit juice increases its specific gravity, and thus raises the boiling point. From experiments made, I have found that the temperature of the fruit is ordinarily raised about 5 deg. by the addition of the amount of sugar needed for sweetening sub-acid fruit. By the aid of this additional degree of heat, the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... saccharine and mucilaginous principles, such an abundance of the scorched oils, as no fermentation can attenuate, no precipitants remove; for being themselves impediments to the action of fermentation, they lessen its efficacy; and being of the same specific gravity with the beer, they remain suspended in, and incorporated with, the body of it—an offence to the eye, and nausea to the palate, to the latest period. From this account it is evident the drying of malt is an article of the utmost consequence concerning the proper degree of ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... Test:—The fermentation test is the simplest quantitative test for sugar, and is quite accurate enough for clinical work. It is performed as follows: The specific gravity of the 24 deg. urine is taken, and 100 c.c. of it put into a flask, and a quarter of a yeast cake crumbled up and added to it. The flask is then put in a warm place (at about body temperature) and allowed to remain over night. ...
— The Starvation Treatment of Diabetes • Lewis Webb Hill

... than would be inferred from its outward appearance, since the pebbles on being broken, exhibit interiorly a loose and cellular structure, where grains of quartz and plates of mica are interspersed with the ore, and of course reduce its specific gravity ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... these large numbers depend, in part, on the extreme feebleness of the air; the power of aqueous vapour seems vast, because that of the air with which it is compared is infinitesimal. Absolutely considered, however, this substance, notwithstanding its small specific gravity, exercises a very potent action. Probably from 10 to 15 per cent. of the heat radiated from the earth is absorbed within 10 or 20 feet of the earth's surface. This must evidently be of the utmost consequence to the life of the world. Imagine ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... of a stone may be like an idea of another stone, or two stones may be like one another; but an idea of a stone is not like a stone; it cannot be thrown at anything, it occupies no room in space, has no specific gravity, and when we come to know more about stones, we find our ideas concerning them to be but rude, epitomised, and highly conventional renderings of the actual facts, mere hieroglyphics, in fact, or, as it were, counters or bank-notes, which serve to express and ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... the land, are the most striking features of the case; for this parallelism shows how equably the worms must have worked; the result being, partly the effect of the washing down of the fresh castings by rain. The specific gravity of the objects does not affect their rate of sinking, as could be seen by porous cinders, burnt marl, chalk and quartz pebbles, having all sunk to the same depth within the same time. Considering the nature of the sub-stratum, which at Leith Hill ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... seal, but a living girl of sixteen summers, in fleshings, who floated in the air, made revolutions, waved her hands, stood on her head, touching nothing, precisely as if she really were devoid of all specific gravity. Only when hand or foot touched the calico-rocks did these same rocks ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... as Barnay says?" he put it. "What if they should bag us all—who'll take back the glad news to the harbour? Lord, you can't tell what you're about walking into. You don't even know the specific gravity of the island," he suggested earnestly. "How do you know but your own weight will flatten you out ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... generally associated with alluvial gold. When such is the case there is no difficulty in saving the gold if you save the tin, for the yellow metal is of much greater specific gravity. As the natural tin is an oxide, and therefore not susceptible to amalgamation, the gold can be readily separated ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... much lighter as a material for the construction of receptacles of all kinds, on account of its great strength and tenacity, which allows of its being used in plates so thin that the quantity of the material employed is diminished much more than the specific gravity is increased by using the metal. There has been, however, hitherto a great practical difficulty in the way of using iron for such a purpose, namely that of giving to these metal plates a sufficient stiffness. A sheet of tin, for example, though stronger ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... slowness with which powders subside, depends partly on the specific gravity of the substance, and partly on the magnitude of the particles themselves. Bodies, in falling through a resisting medium, after a certain time acquire a uniform velocity, which is called their terminal velocity, with ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... placed under the microscope exhibits a series of curvilinear lines diverging from the centre and interlacing each other with great regularity and beauty, closely resembling in appearance the engine-turning of a watch. It possesses a specific gravity varying from 1.888 in the tooth of the walrus, to 2.843 in that of the elephant. Its mean gravity is therefore about two and a half times greater than water. The best, finest, and most valuable ivory is that obtained from the African elephant. When recently cut, it exhibits ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... average load of the Thibetan tea-carrier is, says Gill, from 240lbs. to 264lbs. Gill constantly saw "little boys carrying 120lbs." Bundles of calico weigh fifty-five catties each (73-1/3lbs.), and three bundles are the average load. Salt is solid, hard, metallic, and of high specific gravity, yet I have seen men ambling along the road, under loads that a strong Englishman could with difficulty raise from the ground. The average load of salt, coal, copper, zinc, and tin is 200lbs. Gill met coolies carrying logs, 200lbs. in weight, ten miles ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... is placed above the water-line, any water resting on it will be above the outside level of the sea, and will run out through the valves and tubes into the sea. As fluids always gain their level by specific gravity, the water passes through the valves until none remains above the surface of the deck. In the smaller lifeboats, which have no decks, the only way to relieve the boat is by bailing. It is important that a lifeboat should be well ballasted, especially the larger ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... emmenagogue, antispasmodic, anthelmintic, excitant, diaphoretic, antiseptic and abortive. It contains an essential oil, and rutinic acid (C25H28O15, Borntrager), starch, gum, etc. The essential oil is greenish-yellow, thick, acrid and bitter; specific gravity 0.911. It boils at 228, is slightly soluble in water, and soluble in absolute alcohol. It is promptly oxidized by nitric acid, and is converted into pelargonic acid and ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... attitudes in which the dog runs afford pleasing and satisfactory illustrations of the nature of the scent. Sometimes they will be seen galloping with their noses in the air, as if their game had flown away, and, an hour or two afterwards, every one of them will have his muzzle on the ground. The specific gravity of the atmosphere has changed, and the scent has risen ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... is the most limpid and agreeable river water I ever saw. Its specific gravity then, is about equal to rain water; but in its turbid state, it is much heavier than ordinary river water, for a boat will draw three or four inches less in it than in other rivers, with the same lading, and the human body will swim in it with but ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... the physical characters of soils has attracted little attention, and we owe all our present knowledge of the subject to a very elaborate series of researches on this subject, published by Schuebler, nearly thirty years ago. He determined 1st, The specific gravity of the soils; 2d, The quantity of water which they are capable of imbibing; 3d, The rapidity with which they give off by evaporation the water they have imbibed; that is, their tendency to become dry; 4th, The extent to which they shrink in drying; ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... (and, in many women, at each menstrual period), and which, there is good reason to believe, even has a favorable influence on fertility. He found that light-complexioned persons are more fertile than the dark-complexioned, and that at the same time the blood of the latter is of less specific gravity, containing less haemoglobin. Lloyd Jones also reached the generalization that girls who have had chlorosis are often remarkably pretty, so that the tendency to chlorosis is associated with all the sexual and reproductive aptitudes that make a woman attractive to a man. His ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... in character to the well-known Ross Barrier over which lay part of Scott's and Amundsen's journeys to the South Pole. Its height is remarkably uniform, ranging from sixty to one hundred feet above the water-level. When allowance has been made for average specific gravity, its average total thickness should approximate to six hundred feet. From east to west the formation was proved to be as much as two hundred miles, with one hundred and eighty miles between its ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... sheep from one-half to one and three-quarter pints. The normal color of the urine varies. In the horse it is yellow or yellowish-red; in cattle and sheep yellowish; and in the dog a straw yellow. The specific gravity varies with the quantity secreted and the ration fed. When the quantity of urine secreted is above the average, the specific gravity is ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... it: just as neither is water changed wherein meat and the like are boiled: except the substance boiled be so dissolved that the liquor be of a nature foreign to water; in this we may be guided by the specific gravity (spissitudine). If, however, from the liquor thus thickened plain water be strained, it can be used for Baptism: just as water strained from mud, although mud cannot ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... expansions of tracheal tubes in heavy insects, capable of inflation and supposed to lessen specific gravity. ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... It rises 23 feet 8 inches above the ground, and its base, which is bulbous, is riveted to two stone slabs two feet below the surface. Its diameter at the base is 16 feet 4 inches and at the capital is 12 inches. It is a malleable forging of pure iron, without alloy, and 7.66 specific gravity. According to the estimates of engineers, it weighs about six tons, and it is remarkable that the Hindus at that age could forge a bar of iron larger and heavier than was ever forged in Europe until a very recent date. Its history is deeply ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... estimate its weight by the eye? If he understands comparing masses of the same material but of different size, let him choose between masses of the same size but of different material. This will oblige him to compare them as to specific gravity. I have seen a well-educated young man who, until he had tried the experiment, would not believe that a pail full of large chips weighs less than it does when ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... only one or two minute glistening yellow scales, like pinheads, adhering from their specific gravity to the bottom; gold, indeed, but merely enough to indicate "the color," and common to ordinary prospecting in ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... near even to homes without sewers, homes where dirt and cold and often hunger came—the children were prone to hurry back to the Kingdom discouraged with their little earthly pilgrimages. For those who had dragged chains and hewed wood and drawn water in the town's first days seemed by some specific gravity of the social system to be holding their places at those lower levels—always reaching vainly and eagerly, but always reaching a little higher and a little further from them for that equality of opportunity which seemed to lie ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... Martian female brings forth about thirteen eggs each year, and those which meet the size, weight, and specific gravity tests are hidden in the recesses of some subterranean vault where the temperature is too low for incubation. Every year these eggs are carefully examined by a council of twenty chieftains, and all but about one hundred of the most perfect are destroyed out of each yearly supply. At the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... obtaining the results were a thermometer and a hydrometer. Water was drawn at about six feet below the surface and heated to a temperature of 200 deg. F., and the saturation, or specific gravity is shown by the depth to which the hydrometer sank in the water. As sea water commonly contains one part of saline matter to thirty-two parts of water, the instrument is marked in thirty-seconds, as 1/32, 2/32, etc., and the densities are ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... formed in the process. A. Fitz (Ber., 1878, 11 p. 52) found that the butyric fermentation of starch is aided by the direct addition of Bacillus subtilis. The acid is an oily liquid of unpleasant smell, and solidifies at -19 deg. C.; it boils at 162.3 deg. C., and has a specific gravity of 0.9746 (0 deg. C.). It is easily soluble in water and alcohol, and is thrown out of its aqueous solution by the addition of calcium chloride. Potassium bichromate and sulphuric acid oxidize it to carbon dioxide and acetic acid, while alkaline potassium permanganate oxidizes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... specific gravity of the blood and other fluids of the body; (2) to preserve the tissues from disorganization and putrefaction; (3) to enter into the composition of the teeth and bones. These are only a few of the uses of salts in the body, but are sufficient ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless

... construction, it can be readily seen that the use of metal, even aluminum, for the framework, is prohibited by its weight. While aluminum has double the strength of spruce wood it is vastly heavier, and thus the advantage it has in strength is overbalanced many times by its weight. The specific gravity of aluminum is 2.50; that of spruce ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... helium are gases, bromine is a liquid, and the remainder are solids. All the metals are solids at ordinary temperatures with the exception of mercury, which is liquid. The metals are mostly bodies of high specific gravity; they exhibit, when polished, a peculiar brilliancy or metallic lustre, and they are good conductors of heat and electricity; the non-metals, on the other hand, are mostly bodies of low specific gravity, and bad conductors of heat and electricity, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... class of bodies, known as the volatile oils, oil of turpentine, essence of lemons, oil of balsam of copaiba, oil of rosemary, oil of juniper, and many others, differing widely from each other in their odour, in their medicinal effects, in their boiling point, in their specific gravity, &c., are exactly identical in composition,—they contain the same elements, carbon and ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... Gosse, we may use the following formula: In every hundred parts of the solid ingredients, Common Salt, 81 parts; Epsom Salts, 7 parts; Chloride of Magnesium, 10 parts; Chloride of Potassium, 2 parts; and of Water about 2900 parts, although this must be accurately determined by the specific gravity. The mixture had better be allowed to stand several days before filling the tank; for thus the impurities of the chemicals will settle, and the clear liquor can be decanted off. The specific gravity should then be tested with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... manufacturers, with whom my manner of dealing with public questions was in particular favour. These were practical men; they rather patronized the Hon. Joseph, thus estimating, to a nicety, a mans value; or solidity, or specific gravity, it might better be said, since our universe was one of checks and balances. The Hon. Joseph and his like, skyrocketing through the air, were somehow necessary in the scheme of things, but not to be taken too seriously. Me they did take ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Has Dropped to 1.7 on Continuous Discharge. Why a Battery May Safely be Discharged to a Lower Voltage Than 1.7 Volts per Cell at High Rates of Discharge. Why Battery Voltage, Measured on "Open Circuit" is of Little Value. Changes in the Density of the Electrolyte. Why Specific Gravity Readings of the Electrolyte Show the State of Charge of a Cell. Conditions Which Make Specific Gravity Readings Unreliable. Why the Specific Gravity of the Electrolyte Falls During Discharge. Why the Discharge of a Battery Is Stopped When the Specific Gravity Has Dropped ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... N. gravity, gravitation; weight; heaviness &c adj.; specific gravity; pondorosity^, pressure, load; burden, burthen^; ballast, counterpoise; lump of, mass of, weight of. lead, millstone, mountain, Ossa on Pelion. weighing, ponderation^, trutination^; weights; avoirdupois weight, troy weight, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... experiments with absolute alcohol and with alcohol containing varying amounts of water showed no differences in the results, and hence it is now our custom to obtain the highest grade commercial alcohol, determine the specific gravity accurately, and burn this material. We use the Squibb pyknometer[28] and thereby can determine the specific gravity of the alcohol to the fifth or sixth decimal place with a high degree of accuracy. Using the alcoholometric tables of ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict

... different from that of natural crystallized CaSO4, known to mineralogists under the name of anhydrite. By the influence of a high temperature it appears probable that a molecular change is gradually induced with production of a crystalline structure, and probably an increase of specific gravity, resulting in the artificial reproduction of the mineral anhydrite. No determination appears to have been published of the specific gravity of plaster prepared by complete baking at a low temperature. The theory is, however, confirmed by the results obtained by workers on the subject ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... much as I am," said Stacy, "that this good fortune is rather crowding to us three alone. For myself, I know," he continued, with a backward glance towards a blanketed, covered pile in the corner of the cabin, "that I feel rather oppressed by—by its specific gravity, I calculate—and sort of crampy and twitchy in the legs, as if I ought to 'lite' out and do something, and yet it holds me here. All the same, I doubt if anybody will come up—except from curiosity. Our luck has made them rather sore down the hill, for all ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... worse instead of better. The "dissipation of motion" part of it is simple vagueness,—for what particular motion is "dissipated" when a man or state grows more highly evolved? And the integration of matter belongs only to stellar and geologic evolution. Neither heightened specific gravity, nor greater massiveness, which are the only conceivable integrations of matter, is a mark of the more evolved ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... jealous of Grace Noir—I don't know how to explain—you can't handle cobwebs without marring them." She paused. The gossamer shades of sensibility which she would have defined, threatened to become coarsened by the mere specific gravity of words—such words as have been knocked about the world so long that a sort of material odor clings ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... well-defined spherical air vesicles, and come presently to fill a considerable part of the hollow of the shell, thereby driving part of the protoplasm outside it. After from five to twenty minutes, the specific gravity of the arcella is so much lessened that it is lifted by the water with its pseudopodia, and brought up against the upper surface of the water-drop, on which it is able to travel. In from five to ten minutes the vesicles will now disappear, the last small point vanishing ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... The Specific Gravity is the relative weight of a body compared to an equal bulk of some other body taken as a standard. This standard is usually water, for all liquids and ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... whole surface of the body and extremities, quickly followed by a total subsidence of all the acute symptoms, leaving the patient free from pain and on the high road to convalescence. Under its influence the urine becomes copious, the muddy brickdust deposit disappears, and the normal specific gravity and action upon litmus paper is restored. The sudorific glands over the whole cutaneous surface receive a fresh stimulus, thus assisting to eliminate the materies morbi, and making the skin cool and moist, ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet

... yet be a boor or a shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them change places. Our social arrangement has this great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as they change specific gravity, without being clogged by layers of prescription. But I still insist on my democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man with the gallery of family portraits against the one with the twenty-five-cent daguerreotype, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... principle working under opposite conditions, the law, namely, that anything will float which bulk for bulk is lighter than the volume of water displaced by it, so that by including in our calculations the displacement of the vessel as well as the specific gravity of the material, we now make iron float by the very same law by which it sinks. This example shows that the function of the Personal Factor is to analyze the manifestations of Law which are spontaneously afforded by Nature and to discover the Universal Affirmative Principle which lies ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... himself, and evidently makes his statement upon hearsay; and takes it up as an admitted fact, without having his mind called to the physical impossibilities of floating a mass of earth that was of a greater specific gravity ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... thus reduced into mere automatic movements. Either standing, sitting, mounted on a horse, or even on a wire, they are able to keep three four, five, and even six balls in continual motion in the air. They use articles of the greatest difference in specific gravity in the same manner. A juggler called "Kara," appearing in London and Paris in the summer of 1895, juggled with an open umbrella, an eye-glass, and a traveling satchel, and received each after its course in the air with unerring precision. Another man called "Paul Cinquevalli," well known in this ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... the country for miles around, on the look-out for their carrion food. Like all birds that soar, both over sea and land, when it is calm the vultures are obliged to flap their wings to fly; but when a breeze is blowing they are able to use their specific gravity as a fulcrum, by means of which they present their bodies and outstretched wings and tails at various angles to the wind, and literally sail. How often, when becalmed on southern seas, when not ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... When now I presume: water has a body, it has a definite density, it has consistency, weight, etc., I will also presume that I may go on walking over its surface just as over the surface of the earth,—and that, simply because I am ignorant of its fluidity and its specific gravity. Liebman[1] summarizes the situation as follows. The causal nexus, the existential and objective relation between lightning and thunder, the firing of powder and the explosion, are altogether different from the logical nexus, i. e. the mere conceptual connection between antecedent ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... example, was then seventeen feet in circumference at breast-height, one hundred twenty-five feet in height and having a spread of one hundred fifty feet. The wood of the pecan is similar to that of the hickory in both toughness and specific gravity, although for practical purposes, such as being used for tool handles, the shagbark hickory is enough harder and tougher to make it ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... this paper the author refers to a glass instrument exhibited many years before by himself, "consisting of a bubble furnished with a long and slender stem, which was to be put into several liquors to compare and estimate their specific gravity." Boyle describes this glass bubble in a paper in "Philosophical Transactions," vol. iv., No. 50, p. 1001, 1669, entitled, "The Weights of Water in Water with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... king, made the scientific discoveries and inventions that have secured for him the honor of being the most celebrated mathematician of antiquity. He was equally skilled in astronomy, geometry, mechanics, hydrostatics, and optics. His discovery of the principle of specific gravity is related in the following well-known story: Hiero, suspecting that his golden crown had been fraudulently alloyed with silver, put it into the hands of Archimedes for examination. The latter, entering a bath-tub one day, and noticing that he displaced ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... breathing of inmates and the burning of candles, lamps, gas, &c. At present the only outlet of English rooms is the fire place or chimney opening near the floor. But all the impurities above referred to rise at once towards the cieling, because of the lessened specific gravity of air when heated, and there they would at once escape by a fit opening. Where there is no such opening, however, they become diffused in the upper air of the room, and can escape only slowly by diving under the ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... of the finer matter of the body, which by its specific gravity tends to float in the upper part of the ovoid; whereas bad thoughts, such as selfishness and avarice, are always oscillations of the grosser matter, which tends to gravitate towards the lower part of the ovoid. Consequently the ordinary man, who yields himself not ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater

... "2. Of the specific gravity of the air he seems to be amusingly uncertain,—making it first 833 times and afterwards 770 times less than that of water; and in the same connection he says, in chosen phrase, that 'density, or closeness, is another quality of the atmosphere,'—as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... existence of communities, and deduces from man's physical organization, and from the exigences of domestic society, the origin of measures of surface, distance, and capacity; and that of weight, from the difference between the specific gravity of substances and its importance in the exchange of traffic consequent on the multiplication of human wants, with the increase of the social relations. He then proceeds to state and analyze the powers and duties of legislators on the subject, with their respective limitations. The results of his ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... clay from the regions of the Lakes, ferruginous mud, and the various rock-formations of Abyssinia. These materials are not uniformly disseminated in the deposits; their precipitation being regulated both by their specific gravity and the velocity of the current. Flattened stones and rounded pebbles are left behind at the cataract between Syene and Keneh, while coarser particles of sand are suspended in the undercurrents and serve to raise the bed of the river, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... doubtless a very small, influence on the force and direction of greater atmospheric movements.] In the forest, the air is almost quiescent, and moves only as local changes of temperature affect the specific gravity of its particles. Hence there is often a dead calm in the woods when a furious blast is raging in the open country at a few yards' distance. The denser the forest—as, for example, where it consists of spike-leaved trees, or ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... from an Alp. Thus, and thus only, can we value our possession. In this estimate, mention is made of the greater historians, not because others are not worthy of notice, but because the scope of this essay does not allow, inasmuch as reference is here had to the specific gravity of the historian and the epoch of our history ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... discovered that gases unite with each other in definite proportions whenever they enter into combination. This theory led to important results; for by knowing the elements of a compound gas, we easily determine its specific gravity. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... had greatly advanced in my reign, and electric powers had been discovered by which the heaviest masses could be lightened temporarily, so that their specific gravity, called by us the "tenacious electricity," and its tendency to seek the sympathetic electricity of the earth was temporarily diminished, if not entirely neutralized, without injury to the mass ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... on our journey outward from the sun, we meet with a group of bodies widely different from the "inferior" or terrestrial planets. Their gigantic size, low specific gravity, and rapid rotation, obviously from the first threw the "superior" planets into a class apart; and modern research has added qualities still more significant of a dissimilar physical constitution. Jupiter, a huge globe ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... 3. The specific gravity of the entire Earth is 5.5 on the scale of water as one, whereas the density of the stratified rocks averages only 2.75; that is, the stratified rocks have but one half the density of the Earth as a whole. The basaltic rocks underlying ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86



Words linked to "Specific gravity" :   relative density



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