Sur·face n.
 1. The exterior part of anything that has length and breadth; one of the limits that bound a solid, esp. the upper face; superficies; the outside; as, the surface of the earth; the surface of a diamond; the surface of the body.
    The bright surface of this ethereous mold.   --Milton.
 2. Hence, outward or external appearance.
    Vain and weak understandings, which penetrate no deeper than the surface.   --V. Knox.
 3. Geom. A magnitude that has length and breadth without thickness; superficies; as, a plane surface; a spherical surface.
 4. Fort. That part of the side which is terminated by the flank prolonged, and the angle of the nearest bastion.
 Caustic surface, Heating surface, etc. See under Caustic, Heating, etc.
 Surface condensation, Surface condenser. See under Condensation, and Condenser.
 Surface gauge Mach., an instrument consisting of a standard having a flat base and carrying an adjustable pointer, for gauging the evenness of a surface or its height, or for marking a line parallel with a surface.
 Surface grub Zool., the larva of the great yellow underwing moth (Triphoena pronuba). It is often destructive to the roots of grasses and other plants.
 Surface plate Mach., a plate having an accurately dressed flat surface, used as a standard of flatness by which to test other surfaces.
 Surface printing, printing from a surface in relief, as from type, in distinction from plate printing, in which the ink is contained in engraved lines.


 Con·den·sa·tion n.
 1. The act or process of condensing or of being condensed; the state of being condensed.
    He [Goldsmith] was a great and perhaps an unequaled master of the arts of selection and condensation.   --Macaulay.
 2. Physics The act or process of reducing, by depression of temperature or increase of pressure, etc., to another and denser form, as gas to the condition of a liquid or steam to water.
 3. Chem. A rearrangement or concentration of the different constituents of one or more substances into a distinct and definite compound of greater complexity and molecular weight, often resulting in an increase of density, as the condensation of oxygen into ozone, or of acetone into mesitylene.
 Condensation product Chem., a substance obtained by the polymerization of one substance, or by the union of two or more, with or without separation of some unimportant side products.
 Surface condensation, the system of condensing steam by contact with cold metallic surfaces, in distinction from condensation by the injection of cold water.

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