PHYSICS DICTIONARY

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Spectrum

 It is colored pattern obtained on screen after dispersion of light.

Speed

Distance per unit time.

Speed of Light

It is denoted by ‘C’ and its value in vacuum is 2.99792458 x 108 m/sec.

Sphere of Influence

 A sphere drawn with a molecule as centre and molecular range as radius is called sphere of influence.

Spherical Aberration

Spherical mirrors have an aberration. There is an intrinsic defect with any mirror that takes on the shape of a sphere. This defect prohibits the mirror from focusing the entire incident light from the same location on an object to a precise point. The defect is most noticeable for light rays striking the outer edges of the mirror. Rays that strike the outer edges of the mirror fail to focus in the same precise location as light rays that strike the inner portions of the mirror. While light rays originating at the same location on an object reflect off the mirror and focus to a point, any light rays striking the edges of the mirror fail to focus at that same point. The result is that the images of objects as seen in spherical mirrors are often blurry.

Spin

It is a quantum mechanical phenomenon attributed to elementary particles, which is intrinsic form of angular momentum. All elementary particles of a given kind have the same magnitude of spin angular momentum, which is indicated by assigning the particle a spin quantum number. However, in a technical sense, spins are not strictly vectors and they are instead described as a related quantity: a Spinor.

Spin Magnetic Moment

Magnetic moment associated with spinning electron.

Spinor

Spinors were discovered by Élie Cartan in 1913. Later, spinors were adopted by quantum mechanics in order to study the properties of the intrinsic angular momentum of the electron and other fermions. In mathematics and physics, in particular in the theory of the orthogonal groups (such as the rotation or the Lorentz groups), Spinors are elements of a complex vector space introduced to expand the notion of spatial vector. Unlike tensors, the space of Spinors cannot be built up in a unique and natural way from spatial vectors. However, Spinors transform well under the infinitesimal orthogonal transformations (like infinitesimal rotations or infinitesimal Lorentz transformations). Under the full orthogonal group, however, they do not quite transform well, but only "up to a sign". This means that a 360 degree rotation transforms a Spinor into its negative, and so it takes a rotation of 720 degrees for a Spinor to be transformed into itself. Specifically, Spinors are objects associated to a vector space with a quadratic form (like Euclidean space with the standard metric or Minkowski space with the Lorentz metric), and are realized as elements of representation spaces of Clifford algebras.

Spin Quantum Number                                    

It is one of the four quantum numbers associated with energy levels of electrons in an atom. It has either +1/2 or -1/2 value.

Spin-Orbit Coupling

See L-S coupling

Spontaneous Fission

Spontaneous fission is a form of radioactive decay where an atom's nucleus splits into two smaller nuclei and generally one or more neutrons, without any external interference.

Spontaneous Emission

An atom in an excited state can decay down to a lower state by emitting a photon with energy equal to the difference between the initial higher energy level and the final lower energy level. When this process takes place naturally, rather than being initiated by disturbing the atom somehow, it is called spontaneous emission.

Sputtering

The process in which a surface is bombarded with energetic particle to cause ejection of surface atoms. The technique is used to make thin films on a substrate.

Square Wave

A square wave is a type of periodic waveform where the signal has only two levels. The signal switches between these levels at regular intervals and the switching is instantaneous. These qualities mean a graph of the wave over time will produce shapes with square corners. The square wave has practical uses in digital circuits.

Stabilized Transistor

The process of making operating point independent of temperature changes or variations in transistor parameters is known as stabilization.

Standard Deviation

The standard deviation is the square root of the variance.

or

The square root of arithmetic mean of the squares of deviation is called as standard deviation. 

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