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 5 of 32: from “capacitor” to “clock skew”.
- capacitor noun An electronic component capable of storing electrical energy in an electric field; especially one consisting of two conductors separated by…
- capacitor plague noun Premature failure of an electrolytic capacitor, especially when several are beginning to fail at the same time in a piece of equipment…
- capillary noun A tube or channel having a very small internal diameter, through which liquid can rise or be drawn by capillary action.
- capillary action noun The drawing of a liquid (often against gravity) into or up narrow interstices due to surface tension
- capstan noun A rotating spindle used to move recording tape through the mechanism of a tape recorder.
- carbon burning noun The nucleosynthesis process, in stars of greater than 8 solar mass that have exhausted their helium supply, in which carbon is converted to…
- carbon-12 noun The most abundant of the two stable isotopes of carbon, 126C, having six protons and six neutrons; it is the standard for atomic weight and…
- carbon-14 noun A radioactive isotope of carbon, 146C, having six protons and eight neutrons; it is used in radiocarbon dating.
- carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle noun A group of nuclear reactions, involving the interaction of protons with carbon, nitrogen and oxygen nuclei, thought to be the main source…
- card clash noun The situation where two or more contactless payment cards are simultaneously detected by a card reader, possibly resulting in the incorrect…
- carrier noun A charge carrier.
- carrier wave noun A wave that can be modulated, either in amplitude, frequency, or phase, to carry or transmit images, music, speech, or other signals.
- cartridge ejector noun A mechanism to eject a cartridge from its housing or cartridge drive, often operating on a simple mechanical principle.
- Casimir force noun A physical force of attraction between very closely separated objects, due to random quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field in a…
- cat state noun A superposition of the most extreme states possible in a system, analogous with Schrödinger's cat, which is in a superposition of dead and…
- catadioptric adj Of or pertaining to optical systems that employ both reflective (catoptric) and refractive (dioptric) elements.
- catapult effect noun The phenomenon where a loose current-carrying wire is catapulted horizontally away in the presence of a magnetic field.
- cathode noun An electrode, of a cell or other electrically polarized device, through which a positive current of electricity flows outwards (and thus…
- cathode ray noun A ray consisting of a stream of electrons in a vacuum tube that are emitted by the cathode and accelerated towards the anode by an electric…
- cathode ray tube noun A vacuum tube that displays still or moving images (such as for a television), by controlling the direction of a cathode ray emitted…
- cathodic adj Relating to, functioning as, or occurring at a cathode.
- cathodoluminescence noun A form of luminescence produced by the bombardment of a metal or a phosphor by electrons (as in a traditional television).
- cationically adv In a cationic manner
- Cauchy horizon noun A lightlike boundary of the domain of validity of a Cauchy problem, in which one side of the horizon contains closed space-like geodesics…
- caustic noun The envelope of reflected or refracted rays of light for a given surface or object.
- caustic curve noun A curve to which the ray of light, reflected or refracted by another curve, are tangents, the reflecting or refracting curve and the…
- cavitation noun The formation, in a fluid, of vapor bubbles that rapidly collapse, especially in a rotating marine propeller or pump impeller.
- cavity magnetron noun A high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and subsequently in microwave ovens and in linear particle accelerators.
- CB noun Initialism of centre of buoyancy.
- CCD noun Initialism of charge-coupled device (digital camera cell technology).
- CD3 noun an 80-mm (3-inch) CD (compact disc)
- CD5 noun a 120-mm (5-inch) CD (compact disc)
- cdr noun Initialism of current divider rule or current division rule.
- center of gravity noun A point, near or within a body, through which its weight can be assumed to act when considering forces on the body and its motion under…
- center of pressure noun The specific point on a surface, such as an airfoil or submerged object, where the total sum of all aerodynamic or hydrostatic pressure…
- centre of mass noun A point, near, or within a body at which the object's mass can be assumed to be concentrated; it coincides with the centroid for a body of…
- centric adj Pertaining to a nerve centre.
- centrifugal force noun In a rotating reference frame, the apparent force that seems to push all bodies away from the centre of rotation of the frame and is a…
- centroid noun The point at which gravitational force (or other universally and uniformly acting force) may be supposed to act on a given rigid, uniformly…
- Cerenkov effect noun The emission of light (Cerenkov radiation) that occurs when a charged particle passes through an insulator at a speed greater than the…
- CG noun Initialism of center of gravity.
- chameleon noun A hypothetical scalar particle with a non-linear self-interaction, giving it an effective mass that depends on its environment: the…
- channel noun A connection between initiating and terminating nodes of a circuit.
- charge noun An electric charge.
- charge density noun The amount of electric charge per unit volume of space, unit area of a surface, or unit length of a curve.
- charged particle noun Any particle, especially a subatomic particle, that carries an electric charge.
- charm noun A quantum number of hadrons determined by the number of charm quarks and antiquarks.
- charm quark noun A quark having a fractional electric charge of +2/3 and a mass of about 1150 to 1350 MeV.
- charmed adj Of a particle: having nonzero charm.
- charmlet noun A charm quark or matter composed of charm quarks.
- charmlike adj Resembling or characteristic of charm (property of subatomic particles).
- chemical shift noun The change in the nuclear magnetic resonance frequency of a nucleus depending on its electronic environment; used in NMR spectroscopy to…
- chicken bit noun A bit on a chip that can be used to disable one of the features of the chip if it proves faulty or negatively impacts performance.
- chinook noun The descending, warm, dry wind on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains that generally blows from the southwest and can rapidly increase…
- chip noun A circuit fabricated in one piece on a small, thin substrate; a microchip.
- chipless adj Without microchips.
- chirped-pulse amplification noun Technique for achieving greater amplification of a laser pulse by stretching ("chirping") it, amplifying it, and then compressing it…
- chirplet noun A wavelet whose frequency rises or falls at a constant rate.
- chlorine-35 noun The major stable isotope of chlorine, 3517Cl, having seventeen protons and eighteen neutrons; it amounts to about 76% of the element in…
- chlorine-36 noun A long-lived radioactive isotope of chlorine, 3617Cl, having seventeen protons and nineteen neutrons, and a half-life of 3x10⁵ years; it…
- chlorine-37 noun The minor stable isotope of chlorine, 3717Cl, having seventeen protons and twenty neutrons; it amounts to about 24% of the element in nature
- choke noun A choking coil.
- cholesteric adj Of or relating to the chiral nematic phase of some liquid crystals in which the molecules are arranged in parallel planes with adjacent…
- chopper noun Any of various electronic switches used to interrupt one signal under the control of another.
- Christiansen effect noun The reduced scattering of multi-phase microstructures at wavelengths where their refractive indices match.
- Christiansen filter noun A narrow bandpass or monochromatic optical filter which consists of an optical cell which is filled with a crushed substance (e.g. glass)…
- chromatic adj Having the capacity to separate spectral colours by refraction.
- chromatic aberration noun An optical aberration in which an image has coloured fringes, caused by differential refraction of light of different wavelengths.
- chromatics noun The science of colours; the branch of optics that deals with the properties of colours.
- chromatism noun chromatic aberration
- chromium-52 noun The major stable isotope of chromium, 5224Cr, having 24 protons and 28 neutrons; it amounts to about 84% of the element in nature
- chromium-53 noun A minor stable isotope of chromium, 5324Cr, having 24 protons and 29 neutrons; it amounts to about 9% of the element in nature
- chromium-54 noun A minor stable isotope of chromium, 5424Cr, having 24 protons and 30 neutrons; it amounts to about 2% of the element in nature
- chromo- prefix color; property of quarks and gluons that is related to the particles' strong interactions in the theory of quantum chromodynamics
- chromodynamics noun The study of the relationship between those quarks that possess the quantum property of color, and exchange gluons; more fully quantum…
- chromophobic adj Tending to avoid interactions with gluons or participate in the strong nuclear force.
- circle of confusion noun An optical spot caused by a cone of light rays from a lens not coming to a perfect focus when imaging a point source.
- circuit noun Enclosed path of an electric current, usually designed for a certain function.
- circuit breaker noun An electrical switch capable of opening and closing an electrical circuit in all operating conditions, including fault situations.
- circuit topology noun The form of an electronic circuit taken by the network of its components.
- circular state noun Any of those quantum states of an atom, which has a high principal quantum number n, and a magnetic quantum number m_l with the maximum…
- circularization noun The act of driving an atom into a circular state.
- circularly polarized light noun Light (or other electromagnetic radiation) whose electric or displacement vector rotates in a plane perpendicular to the propagation…
- circulator noun A passive electronic component with three or more ports, in which the ports can be accessed in such a way that when a signal is fed into…
- cirrocumulus noun A principal high-level cloud type appearing as a thin, white patch of cloud without shadows, composed of very small droplets in the form of…
- clamp noun An electronic circuit that fixes either the positive or the negative peak excursions of a signal to a defined value by shifting its DC…
- clamper noun A circuit that restricts the amplitude of a waveform.
- classical adj Pertaining to models of physical laws that do not take quantum or relativistic effects into account; Newtonian or Maxwellian.
- classical hadrodynamics noun The study of classical relativistic equations of motion for actions involving extended nucleons interacting with massive, neutral scalar…
- classical mechanics noun All of the physical laws of nature that account for the behaviour of the normal world, but break down when dealing with the very small (see…
- classicality noun The degree to which a system or phenomenon may be explained by classical mechanics
- Clausius-Clapeyron relation noun A way of characterizing a discontinuous phase transition between two phases of matter of a single constituent. It gives the slope of the…
- clean adj Allowing an uninterrupted flow over surfaces, without protrusions such as racks or landing gear.
- clearance time noun The amount of time from when a fault is detected to when a circuit is automatically reopened.
- Clebsch-Gordan coefficient noun Any of a class of numbers that arise in angular momentum coupling in quantum mechanics. They appear as the expansion coefficients of total…
- clipper noun A circuit which prevents the amplitude of a wave from exceeding a set value.
- clock noun An electrical signal that synchronizes timing among digital circuits of semiconductor chips or modules.
- clock out verb To transmit individual bits of data under the control of a clock.
- clock rate noun The rate of clock pulses in an electronic circuit.
- clock skew noun A phenomenon in synchronous digital circuit systems in which the same sourced clock signal arrives at different components at different…