diffusion
IPA: dɪfjˈuʒʌn
noun
- The act of diffusing or dispersing something, or the property of being diffused or dispersed; dispersion.
- (physics) The scattering of light by reflection from a rough surface, or by passage through a translucent medium.
- (physics) The intermingling of the molecules of a fluid due to random thermal agitation.
- The spread of cultural or linguistic practices, or social institutions, in one or more communities.
- (marketing) The gradual spread and adoption of goods or services.
- (physics, weather) Exchange of airborne media between regions in space in an apparently random motion of a small scale.
- The movement of water vapor from regions of high concentration (high water vapor pressure) toward regions of lower concentration.
Advertisement
Examples of "diffusion" in Sentences
- An ID proponent, citing Dembski in No Free Lunch, insists that diffusion is not possible inside of living cells.
- The rate of diffusion is determined by the difference between the tension in the blood and that in the surrounding tissue.
- I like to use reflected light as much as possible, and the source can be anything as long as the angle and diffusion is good.
- The term diffusion applies both to dissemination of information about a new technology and dissemination of the technology itself; for instance, new cooking stoves.
- The simplest type of diffusion is Brownian motion, (also termed a Wiener process), which is a simple random walk in which the increments between random variables St have a normal distribution with a mean value of zero.
- Random diffusion is a type of stochastic process, so if the theory of cosmogenic drift is to be developed, and if observable predictions are to be derived from it, then it will be necessary to employ the mathematics of stochastic processes.
- Thus Jefferson's early, eloquent denunciations of slavery (whether sincere or half-hearted) gave way to cheerleading for what he called "diffusion" -- the proposition that, if slavery were expanded into the western territories, it would somehow dilute itself and go away, never mind the cost to its victims in the meantime.
- There is a need to anticipate technical characteristics - such as performance, cost, and diffusion - of new energy technologies such as photovoltaics, hydrogen production, and fuel cells; the long-term diffusion, transfer, and performance of these technologies depends on near-term RD&D and investment policies and decisions.
- We have direct evidence that only a small part of the acetylcholine so injected actually reaches the muscle end plates by diffusion from the vessels; and we argued that, in any case, it could not reach them simultaneously, but only in rapid succession; so that the response, in spite of its superficial resemblance to a rather slow twitch, must actually be
- Considering the manner in which acetylcholine must reach the motor end plates of the muscle fibres, if it were indeed the transmitter of motor nerve excitation - that it must appear with a flash-like suddenness, in high concentration, simultaneously at every nerve ending - we concluded that the ordinary method of injecting acerylcholine, so that it reached the muscle by slow diffusion from the general circulation, could not possibly reproduce this abrupt appearance at the points responsive to its action.
Advertisement
Advertisement