inhomogeneityn.

1899 J. Ward Naturalism & Agnosticism I. iv. 117 The former consists of smallest inhomogeneities,—a finely grained structure, as we say in English.

1936 Jrnl. Royal Aeronaut. Soc. 40 595 A local slip occurred (owing to a stress-concentration effect at a local inhomogeneity or flaw) in the zone separating the part of the crystal which had slipped from that which had not.

1955 Jrnl. Brit. Interplanetary Soc. 14 20 Just as the visual twinkling of stars gives information about atmospheric irregularities..so the ‘twinkling’ of radio stars in radio wave-lengths can show up ‘inhomogeneities’ in the ionosphere, especially at the top.

1956 Nature 10 Mar. 487/1 Crystallographic cracking can be found in such an alloy, although its analysis is complicated by the presence of gross inhomogeneities and intermetallics.

1959 New Scientist 22 Jan. 167/1 The solidified ribbon of glass has a certain amount of distortion which cannot be avoided arising from small differences in viscosity due to chemical and thermal inhomogeneities.

1959 Wiltshire Archaeol. & Nat. Hist. Mag. LVII. 176 The sensitivity of the [electrical resistivity] method depends on..the size and depth below the surface of the inhomogeneity.

1971 I. G. Gass et al. Understanding Earth i. 36/1 Gneissose banding is also developed from original inhomogeneities in the rock such as bedding.

1916 Sci. Abstr. A. 19 154 The inhomogeneity of the field in the canal-ray tube.

1921 Chem. Abstr. 15 476 The word ‘graininess’ is used to denote the inhomogeneity of the deposit due to aggregations of particles.

1930 Proc. Royal Soc. A. 129 221 All the evidence..tends to show that this tail is due, not to initial inhomogeneity of velocity, but to scattering or absorption.

1938 R. W. Lawson tr. G. von Hevesy & F. A. Paneth Man. Radioactivity (ed. 2) xx. 189 The condition of initially complete uniformity in distribution is not satisfied, and it is just this inhomogeneity that is utilized..for the concentration of the isotopes.

1942 Jrnl. Biol. Chem. 146 459 Further evidence for the inhomogeneity of ferritin is the variability of the iron, phosphorus, and nitrogen content of different crystallized ferritin samples.

1962 Listener 12 July 62/3 Information on fundamental crystal size and crystal shape, on lattice strain, on inhomogeneity.