supercriticalityn.
/ˌsuːpəkrɪtᵻˈkalᵻti/, /ˌsjuːpəkrɪtᵻˈkalᵻti/, U.S. /ˌsupərkrɪdəˈkælədi/ The state or condition of being supercritical.Chiefly in technical senses.
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the world > matter > physics > atomic nucleus > nuclear fission > [noun] > minimum of fissile material > supercritical state
supercriticality1940
1940 T. Wolfe You can't go Home Again xlv. 720 In a way, this super-criticality was a very good thing for me. It taught me to be more questioning about some of the most venerated names and reputations whose authority had been handed down to me.
1948 Nucl. Sci. Abstr. 1 243 Necessary and sufficient conditions for supercriticality of the system in terms of (M) are given.
1957 Brit. Patent 778,881 5/2 The discharged fuel is scattered into a geometric shape unfavourable to fostering supercriticality such as the shape of a ring at the base of a conical deflector.
1976 L. Sanders Hamlet Warning (1977) i. xi. 95 The blast..would be well into the kiloton range. The trick was..to bring the mass to supercriticality uniformly and at the same instant.
2009 R. K. Zeytounian Convection in Fluids x. 352 With increasing supercriticality, the waves undergo various transformations leading to the formation of pulsating travelling waves.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2012; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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