Library / English Dictionary

KELVIN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

British physicist who invented the Kelvin scale of temperature and pioneered undersea telegraphy (1824-1907)

Synonyms:

First Baron Kelvin; Kelvin; William Thompson

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Instance hypernyms:

physicist (a scientist trained in physics)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The basic unit of thermodynamic temperature adopted under the Systeme International d'Unites

Synonyms:

K; kelvin

Classified under:

Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure

Hypernyms ("kelvin" is a kind of...):

temperature unit (a unit of measurement for temperature)

Credits

 Context examples: 

It is 1/273.16th of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water, This sets the size of the kelvin unit for temperature differences and defines the thermodynamic temperature of an equilibrium mixture of waters ice-liquid-vapor as 273.16 K, where 0 K is the lowest possible temperature (absolute zero).

(Kelvin, NCI Thesaurus)

The base units are a choice of seven well-defined units within the International System of Units (Systeme International d'Unites, SI), which by convention are regarded as dimensionally independent and therefore defined in an absolute way without referring to any other units: the meter, the kilogram, the second, the ampere, the kelvin, the mole, and the candela.

(Base Unit of International System of Units, NCI Thesaurus)

To their surprise, they found a dramatic temperature difference of 2340 degrees Fahrenheit (1,300 Kelvin) from one side of the planet to the other.

(Spitzer Maps Climate Patterns on a Super-Earth, NASA)