An adhesive is a mixture in a liquid or semi-liquid state that adheres or bonds items together. Adhesives may come from either natural or synthetic sources. The types of materials that can be bonded are vast but they are especially useful for bonding thin materials. Adhesives cure (harden) by either evaporating a solvent or by chemical reactions that occur between two or more constituents.

Aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. Aluminum is remarkable for the metal’s low density and for its ability to resist corrosion due to the phenomenon of passivation.

An astrolabe is a historical astronomical instrument used by astronomers, navigators, and astrologers. Its many uses include locating and predicting the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars; determining local time (given local latitude) and vice-versa; surveying; triangulation; and to cast horoscopes.

A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices, and are increasingly used for lighting. Introduced as a practical electronic component in 1962, early LEDs emitted low-intensity red light, but modern versions are available across the visible, ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, with very high brightness.

A liquid crystal display (LCD) is a thin, flat electronic visual display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals (LCs). LCs do not emit light directly.

A pendulum clock is a clock that uses a pendulum, a swinging weight, as its timekeeping element. From its invention in 1656 by Christian Huygens until the 1930s, the pendulum clock was the world’s most precise timekeeper, accounting for its widespread use.

A quartz clock is a clock that uses an electronic oscillator that is regulated by a quartz crystal to keep time. This crystal oscillator creates a signal with very precise frequency, so that quartz clocks are at least an order of magnitude more accurate than good mechanical clocks.

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe, this is a general use of the term.

A studio apartment, also known as a studio flat (UK), efficiency apartment or bachelor/bachelorette style apartment, is a self-contained, small apartment, which combines living room, bedroom and kitchenette into a single unit, barring a bathroom. “Bachelor” or “efficiency” apartments are sometimes smaller than studio apartments.

A sundial is a device that measures time by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from its style onto a flat surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day.

A water clock or clepsydra is any timepiece in which time is measured by the regulated flow of liquid into (inflow type) or out from (outflow type) a vessel where the amount is then measured.They are likely to be the oldest time-measuring instruments, with the only exceptions being the vertical gnomon and the day-counting tally stick.