Modern Meaning in The Physical Sciences
In the 17th century the word spectrum was introduced into optics, referring to the range of colors observed when white light was dispersed through a prism. Soon the term referred to a plot of light intensity or power as a function of frequency or wavelength, also known as a spectral density.
The term spectrum was expanded to apply to other waves, such as sound waves that could also be measured as a function of frequency. The term now applies to any signal that can be measured or decomposed along a continuous variable such as energy in electron spectroscopy or mass to charge ratio in mass spectrometry. Spectrum is also used to refer to a graphical representation of the as a function of the dependent variable.
Read more about this topic: Spectrum
Famous quotes containing the words modern, meaning, physical and/or sciences:
“The great British Library—an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or “pure English, undefiled” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.”
—Washington Irving (1783–1859)
“The superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the superman is to be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, be true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All cultural change reduces itself to a difference of categories. All revolutions, whether in the sciences or world history, occur merely because spirit has changed its categories in order to understand and examine what belongs to it, in order to possess and grasp itself in a truer, deeper, more intimate and unified manner.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)