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COEFFICIENT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A constant number that serves as a measure of some property or characteristic
Classified under:
Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure
Hypernyms ("coefficient" is a kind of...):
constant (a number representing a quantity assumed to have a fixed value in a specified mathematical context)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "coefficient"):
absorptance; absorption coefficient; coefficient of absorption (a measure of the rate of decrease in the intensity of electromagnetic radiation (as light) as it passes through a given substance; the fraction of incident radiant energy absorbed per unit mass or thickness of an absorber)
coefficient of drag; drag coefficient (the ratio of the drag on a body moving through air to the product of the velocity and the surface area of the body)
coefficient of friction (the ratio of the weight of an object being moved along a surface and the force that maintains contact between the object and the surface)
coefficient of mutual induction; mutual inductance (a measure of the induction between two circuits; the ratio of the electromotive force in a circuit to the corresponding change of current in a neighboring circuit; usually measured in henries)
coefficient of self induction; self-inductance (the ratio of the electromotive force produced in a circuit by self-induction to the rate of change of current producing it, expressed in henries)
modulus ((physics) a coefficient that expresses how much of a specified property is possessed by a specified substance)
coefficient of expansion; expansivity (the fractional change in length or area or volume per unit change in temperature at a given constant pressure)
coefficient of reflection; reflectance; reflection factor; reflectivity (the fraction of radiant energy that is reflected from a surface)
transmission; transmittance (the fraction of radiant energy that passes through a substance)
absolute viscosity; coefficient of viscosity; dynamic viscosity (a measure of the resistance to flow of a fluid under an applied force)
weight; weighting ((statistics) a coefficient assigned to elements of a frequency distribution in order to represent their relative importance)
