Capacity is the ability to hold a fluid, very similar to volume.
Capacity may also refer to:
- Capacity utilization, in economics, the extent to which an enterprise or a nation actually uses its potential output
- Capacity (law), the legal ability to engage in certain acts, such as making a contract
- In decision theory, a capacity is a subjective measure of likelihood of an event, similar to a membership function in fuzzy logic
- Capacity of a set, in mathematics, one way of measuring a set's size
- Battery capacity, in electrical engineering, a measure of a battery's ability to store electrical charge
- Heat capacity, in physics and chemistry, the amount of heat required to change a substance's temperature
- Carrying capacity, in biology, the ability of an environment to sustain populations
- Channel capacity, in communications
- Combining capacity, in chemistry, number of chemical bonds formed by the atoms of a given element
- Nameplate capacity, in power plants, the general number of Megawatts technically available
- Capacity factor, in power plants, an operations ratio
Famous quotes containing the word capacity:
“What, then, is the basic difference between today’s computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern—a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.”
—Rudolf Arnheim (b. 1904)
“There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness—to bring him down to the miserable level of “good” men i.e., of stupid, cowardly and chronically unhappy men.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Information about child development enhances parents’ capacity to respond appropriately to their children. Informed parents are better equipped to problem-solve, more confident of their decisions, and more likely to respond sensitively to their children’s developmental needs.”
—L. P. Wandersman (20th century)