In The Physical Sciences
- Polarization (waves), the orientation of oscillations in the plane perpendicular to a transverse wave's direction of travel which may include:
- Polarization (antenna), the orientation of electromagnetic waves from e.g. a radio antenna
- Dielectric polarization, charge separation in insulating materials:
- Polarization density, volume dielectric polarization
- Dipolar polarization, orientation of permanent dipoles
- Ionic polarization, displacement of ions in a crystal
- Maxwell-Wagner-Sillars polarization, slow long-distance charge separation in dielectric spectroscopy on inhomogeneous soft matter
- Polarization (electrochemistry), a change in the equilibrium potential of an electrochemical reaction
- Spin polarization, the degree by which the spin of elementary particles is aligned to a given direction
- Polarizability, an electrical property of atoms or molecules and a separate magnetic property of subatomic particles
- Polarization function, a feature of some molecular modelling methods
- Photon polarization, the mathematical link between wave polarization and spin polarization
- Vacuum polarization, a process in which a background electromagnetic field produces virtual electron-positron pairs
- Polarity in embryogenesis, during development, an embryo has an animal pole and a vegetal pole
Read more about this topic: Polarization
Famous quotes containing the words physical and/or sciences:
“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)
“The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)