This page gathers the 3,177 dictionary entries belonging to the domain “Physics”, as labelled by Wiktionary. Each word leads to its full entry: definitions, etymology, pronunciation, examples. Page 13 of 32: from “gyroperiod” to “hybridize”.
- gyroperiod noun The period of the circular motion of a charged particle in the presence of a uniform magnetic field.
- gyroradius noun The radius of the circular motion of a charged particle in the presence of a uniform magnetic field.
- gyrostatic adj Of or pertaining to gyrostatics
- gyrosynchrotron adj Describing electromagnetic radiation emitted by charged particles moving at close to light speed in a magnetic field
- gyrotron noun A type of microwave generator employing cyclotron resonance coupling between microwave fields and a beam of electrons.
- H-field noun An auxiliary vector field that describes the driving magnetic influence produced by free currents, independent of the material's response.
- hadrogenesis noun hadronization
- hadron noun A composite particle that comprises two or more quarks held together by the strong force and (consequently) can interact with other…
- half shell noun Any half of a roughly spherical-like object; any dome-shaped object.
- half-metal noun Any substance that acts as a conductor to electrons of one spin orientation, but as an insulator to those of the opposite orientation
- half-metallic adj Of or relating to a half-metal.
- half-silvered mirror noun A mirror that consists of an incomplete reflective coating, so that half of the incident light is reflected and the other half is…
- half-time noun The time taken for a physical quantity to halve the difference between its present value and its final value.
- Hall coefficient noun With regard to the Hall effect: the ratio of the induced electric field to the product of the current density and the applied magnetic…
- Hall effect noun the effect in which a conductor that carries an electric current perpendicular to an applied magnetic field develops a voltage gradient…
- Hamilton-Jacobi equation noun A mathematical formulation of classical mechanics in which the motion of a particle can be represented as a wave.
- Hamiltonian noun A function (of time), denoted H, that corresponds to the total energy of the system.
- Hamiltonian constraint noun A constraint arising from any theory that admits a Hamiltonian formulation and is reparameterization-invariant, such as that of general…
- hammer break noun An interrupter in which contact is broken by the movement of an automatically vibrating hammer between a contact piece and an…
- Hanbury-Brown-Twiss effect noun Any of a variety of correlation and anticorrelation effects in the intensities received by two detectors from a beam of particles.
- handedness noun The property that distinguishes an asymmetric object from its mirror image. For example, the essential difference between a left and right…
- hard adj Having the capability of being a permanent magnet by being a material with high magnetic coercivity (compare soft).
- hard error noun A type of error which persists even after power-cycling the equipment; associated with permanent physical damage to the equipment's…
- hard-wire verb To connect components by means of permanent electrical wires.
- hardness noun The penetrating ability of electromagnetic radiation, such as x-rays; generally, the shorter the wavelength, the harder and more…
- hardware description language noun Any language from a class of computer, modeling, or specification languages for formal description and design of analogue or digital logic…
- hardwired adj Designed to perform a specific task.
- harmonic noun A component frequency of the signal of a wave that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency.
- harmonic series noun The sequence of all positive integer multiples of a base frequency.
- Hartle-Hawking state noun A hypothetical state of the universe prior to the Planck epoch, in which time did not exist, only space.
- Hartree product noun The product of a series of solutions to the Schrödinger equation for individual electrons, used as an approximation in the Hartree equation.
- hassium-270 noun A doubly magic isotope of hassium - 270108Hs; it is the longest-lived one known, having a half-life of several seconds.
- Hawking energy noun A measure of the bending of ingoing and outgoing rays of light that are orthogonal to a 2-sphere surrounding a region of space whose mass…
- head noun A buildup of fluid pressure, often quantified as pressure head.
- headroom noun The ability of a system to reproduce loud sounds free of distortion; dynamic headroom.
- headwind noun A wind that blows directly against the course of a vehicle, like an aircraft, train, or ship.
- heat capacity noun The capability of a system to absorb heat energy; the amount of thermal energy required to raise the temperature of a system by one…
- heat capacity ratio noun The ratio of the heat capacity at constant pressure to the heat capacity at constant volume. It is typically denoted by γ or k.
- heat death noun The state of a thermodynamic system having reached a maximum entropy; temperature is uniform throughout, and no energy is available to do…
- heat exchanger noun Any device (such as a radiator) that transfers heat from one fluid to another via a separating wall.
- heat of fusion noun The amount of heat absorbed by unit mass of a material, at its melting point, that causes a phase transition from solid to liquid
- heat of vaporization noun The amount of heat needed to change a unit mass of material from a liquid to a gas at its boiling point
- heat sink noun An object, system or environment that absorbs and dissipates heat from objects in thermal contact (either direct or radiant) with it.
- heat-seeking adj Of a device, able to detect a source of infrared radiation.
- heating element noun A device used for the conversion of electric energy into heat, consisting of a heating resistor and accessories.
- heavy adj Containing one or more isotopes that are heavier than the normal one.
- heavy fermion noun A type of fermion found in metal that exhibits Fermi liquid behavior and high electrical resistance, often found in actinide and cerium…
- Heim theory noun A mathematical approach to developing a theory of everything in theoretical physics, based on quantizing spacetime into units called…
- helicity noun Any of certain measures of the extent to which vortex lines (in fluid flow) or field lines (in a magnetic or electromagnetic field) kink…
- helicon noun A low-frequency electromagnetic wave observed in various plasmas.
- helimagnetism noun a property of some metals and of some salts of transition elements at low temperature in which the atomic magnetic moments are arranged in…
- heliochromism noun The property of certain photochromic materials of colouring in near-ultraviolet light and then fading in its absence; they are used in the…
- helion noun Any helium ion, the nucleus of any helium atom.
- helitron noun A tunable form of microwave oscillator.
- helium burning noun the nucleosynthesis process, in stars with temperatures over 10⁸K, in which helium is converted to carbon and then to oxygen, neon and…
- Helmholtz free energy noun A measure of the useful work obtainable from a constant temperature, constant volume thermodynamic system; more precisely, the difference…
- Helmholtz function noun The equation used to express Helmholtz free energy
- helping hand noun A jig used to help solder wires and electronics, consisting of a weighted base, a pair of adjustable arms ending in crocodile clips (the…
- heterogeneous adj Having more than one phase (solid, liquid, gas) present in a system or process.
- heteronuclear adj Having atoms or nuclei of different type
- heterotic adj Describing a hybrid form of string theory (See Heterotic string theory on Wikipedia)
- hexatic adj Describing several forms of liquid crystal that have in-plane short-range positional molecular order, weakly coupled two-dimensional layers…
- hidden variable noun Any parameter that would supplement quantum mechanics so as to make it like classical mechanics; local hidden variables have been proved to…
- Higgs noun Ellipsis of Higgs boson, named for Peter Higgs.
- Higgs boson noun An elementary particle in the Standard Model, namely a boson with zero spin, that gives mass to other particles.
- Higgs field noun A theoretical scalar field associated with electroweak symmetry breaking, the quantum of which is the Higgs boson; interaction with this…
- Higgs mechanism noun The proposed interaction between elementary particles and the Higgs field that imbues the particles with mass and breaks the electroweak…
- Higgs-like adj Imbuing elementary particles with mass through the breaking of electroweak symmetry and the interaction with some field.
- Higgsless adj Describing any system in which the Higgs boson/Higgs field/Higgs mechanism is not involved, or is presumed not to exist.
- high-energy adj Having an energy greater than 100,000 electron volts.
- high-frequency gravitational wave noun gravitational radiation, in the megahertz to gigahertz region, which is proposed to have been produced by the Big Bang or by the collision…
- high-level synthesis noun A design method that automatically transforms an algorithmic or behavioral description of a digital system, written in a high-level…
- high-powered adj Of an instrument, capable of great magnification.
- highpass adj Describing a filter, circuit, or system that rejects or attenuates a frequencies below a specified value while passing those above.
- Hodge dual noun The dual that results from exchanging the electric field and the magnetic field in Maxwell's equations, which describe electromagnetic…
- hodograph noun A curve described by the moving extremity of a line whose other end is fixed, this line being constantly parallel to the direction of…
- hodoscope noun A device, consisting of multiple detectors, that is used to track the path of cosmic rays and other subatomic particles
- Hofstadter's butterfly noun A graph of the spectral properties of non-interacting two-dimensional electrons in a perpendicular magnetic field in a lattice.
- hold time noun The minimum amount of time for which the data input should be held steady after the clock event for reliable sampling.
- hole noun In semiconductors, a lack of an electron in an occupied band behaving like a positively charged particle.
- hole state noun a vacant electron energy state near the top of the energy band of a solid; the movement of electrons between such states is the basis of…
- holography noun a technique for recording, and then reconstructing, the amplitude and phase distributions of a coherent wave disturbance; used to produce…
- holon noun One of three kinds of quasiparticle (the others being the spinon and orbiton) that electrons in solids are able to split into during the…
- holonomic constraint noun One of the equations/identities which define a variety within the configuration space, such that the state of the physical system being…
- home run noun A connection from a central distribution point or circuit breaker to a destination.
- homodyne adj Pertaining to two waves which originate from a single radiation source, or have exactly the same frequency.
- homopolar adj Having symmetrically equal distribution of polarity; characterized by uniform electric or magnetic properties.
- hopping noun A shift from one energy-state to another by an electron in an atom.
- hot chassis noun A metal chassis, used as a base for electrical equipment, that is live because it lacks a transformer to isolate the equipment from the…
- hot microphone noun A microphone that is activated (but not powered) by the sound of the user's voice, allowing it to pick up speech without having to be…
- hot spot noun Synonym of heiligenschein (“an optical phenomenon which creates a bright spot around the shadow of the viewer's head, when the surface on…
- hotel load noun The electrical load caused by all systems on a vehicle (especially a marine vessel or a truck) other than propulsion.
- hourly rating noun A measure of the maximum output, usually expressed in horsepower, that can be obtained from the motors of an electric locomotive for a…
- howlround noun A high-pitched squeal produced by feedback when a microphone is too close to its connected speakers.
- HSYNC noun The horizontal synchronization signal incorporated in a video transmission, such as for a TV broadcast.
- hubble noun A space telescope or spy satellite with a design like the Hubble Space Telescope.
- Hughes-Drever experiment noun Any of various spectroscopic tests of the isotropy of mass and space, originally to test Mach's principle and now understood to be…
- hybrid noun An electronic circuit constructed of individual devices bonded to a substrate or PCB.
- hybrid meson noun A meson composed of quarks, antiquarks, and nonvirtual gluons (instead of the usual quark-antiquark pair bound by virtual gluons).
- hybridize verb To combine atomic orbitals mathematically to form hybrid orbitals.