noun
definition
A solid of revolution generated by rotating an ellipse about its major (prolate), or minor (oblate) axis.
example
UFOs are reported as being either oblate (saucer-shaped) or prolate (cigar-shaped) spheroids.
adjective
definition
Of a shape similar to a squashed sphere.
Examples of spheroid in a Sentence
Legendre was also the author of a memoir upon triangles drawn upon a spheroid.
An egg is more or less a prolate spheroid, and the difference between it and a sphere is quite obvious visually.
Using the mathematical model and the experimental evidence we show that the tumor cell size is reduced by solid stress inside the tumor spheroid.
The " tetrahedral theory " brought forward by Lowthian Green,' that the form of the earth is a spheroid based on a regular tetrahedron, is more serviceable, because it accounts for three very interesting facts of the terrestrial plan - (1) the antipodal position of continents and ocean basins; (2) the tri angular outline of the continents; and (3) the excess of sea in the southern hemisphere.
In his extant Conoids and Spheroids he defines a conoid to be the solid formed by the revolution of the parabola and hyperbola about its axis, and a spheroid to be formed similarly from the ellipse; these solids he discussed with great acumen, and effected their cubature by his famous "method of exhaustions."
A human breast tumor spheroid immunostained for the hypoxic cell marker, HIF-1 alpha (red staining).
They may be early generations in the disk, or a spheroid component, or perhaps a close companion.
The spheroid body did not rotate, but the ring appeared to be spinning at fantastic speed.
Geographical latitude, which is used in mapping, is based on the supposition that the earth is an elliptic spheroid of known compression, and is the angle which the normal to this spheroid makes with the equator.
Mystic 8 Ball Ask a question of this foretelling spheroid and it will dispense its infinite wisdom in reply.
Dynamo models of our Galaxy as a flattened spheroid have been investigated, using asymptotic analytic methods and high resolution numerical techniques.
The shape of the planet is a markedly oblate spheroid with a polar diameter some 10% smaller than that at the equator.
A human breast tumor spheroid immunostained for the hypoxic cell marker, HIF-1 alpha (red staining ).
Granting that the geoid or mean surface of the ocean is a uniform spheroid, the distribution of land and water approximately indicates a division of the surface of the globe into two areas, one of elevation and one of depression.
Legendre, in 1783, extended Maclaurin's theorem concerning ellipsoids of revolution to the case of any spheroid of revolution where the attracted point, instead of being limited to the axis or equator, occupied any position in space; and Laplace, in his treatise Theorie du mouvement et de la figure elliptique des planetes (published in 1784), effected a still further generalization by proving, what had been suspected by Legendre, that the theorem was equally true for any confocal ellipsoids.
Finally, in a celebrated memoir, Theorie des attractions des spheroides et de la figure des planetes, published in 1785 among the Paris Memoirs for the year 1782, although written after the treatise of 1784, Laplace treated exhaustively the general problem of the attraction of any spheroid upon a particle situated outside or upon its surface.
In the other extreme case the oblate spheroid becomes a circular disk when e = i, and then the capacity C2 = 2a17r.
Foucault invented in 1857 the polarizer which bears his name, and in the succeeding year devised a method of giving to the speculum of reflecting telescopes the form of a spheroid or a paraboloid of revolution.
To show the cause of this motion, let BQ represent a section of an oblate spheroid through its shortest axis, PP. We may consider this spheroid to be that of the earth, the ellipticity being greatly exaggerated.
A slight deformation of the earth will thus result; and the axis of figure of the distorted spheroid will no longer be PP, but a line P'P' between PP and RR.
Elie de Beaumont, in his speculations on the relation between the direction of mountain ranges and their geological age and character, was feeling towards a comprehensive theory of the forms of crustal relief; but his ideas were too geometrical, and his theory that the earth is a spheroid built up on a rhombic dodecahedron, the pentagonal faces of which determined the direction of mountain ranges, could not be proved.'
A rotifer may be regarded as typically a hemisphere or half an oblate spheroid or paraboloid with a mouth somewhere on the flat end ("disk" or "corona"), which bears a usually double ciliated ring, the outer zone the "cingulum," and inner the "trochus".