conversion
1. a change to another attitude or belief, as in a change of religion
2. Maths a change in the units or form of a number or expression
3. Logic a form of inference by which one proposition is obtained as the converse of another proposition
4. Lawa. unauthorized dealing with or the assumption of rights of ownership to another's personal property
b. the changing of real property into personalty or personalty into realty
5. Rugby a score made after a try by kicking the ball over the crossbar from a place kick
6. Physics a change of fertile material to fissile material in a reactor
7. a. an alteration to a car engine to improve its performance
b. (as modifier): a conversion kit
8. NZ the unauthorized appropriation of a motor vehicle
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
Conversion
In adaptive reuse, change of use of a property, such as from a railroad station to a commercial facility.
Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture Copyright © 2012, 2002, 1998 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
conversion
[kən′vər·zhən] (chemistry)
Change of a compound from one isomeric form to another.
(chemical engineering)
The chemical change from reactants to products in an industrial chemical process. Also known as chemical conversion.
(navigation)
Determination of the rhumb-line direction of one point from another when the initial great-circle direction is known, or vice versa, the difference between the two directions being the conversion angle; used in connection with radio bearings, Consol, Consolan, and in great-circle sailing.
(nuclear physics)
Nuclear transformation of a fertile substance into a fissile substance.
(petroleum engineering)
Treatment of a drilling mud to alter its chemical properties. Also known as breakover.
(physics)
Change in a quantity's numerical value as a result of using a different unit of measurement.
(psychology)
A defense mechanism whereby unconscious emotional conflict is transformed into physical disability, the affected part always having symbolic meaning pertinent to the nature of the conflict.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
breaking down, conversion
The process of sawing logs into boards.
conversion
2. A change in the use of a building to another use which has different requirements according to code (e.g., different exit, fire-resistance, light and ventilation, loading, structural, or zoning requirements).
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
Conversion
in linguistics, the formation of a new word from the transition of a given stem into another inflectional paradigm. For example, Russian pech’, “oven,” and pech’ “to bake,” and English love and (to) love are different parts of speech; in spite of external similarity, the base word and its derivative are different words, and the semantic relations between them may be diverse. The productivity of conversion is limited by the lexical significance of the stem and the structural peculiarities of the word.
REFERENCE
Smirnitskii, A. I. Leksikologiia angliiskogo iazyka. Moscow, 1956. Pages 71–101.
Conversion
in logic, the transformation of a sentence by changing the positions of its terms, the subject and predicate.
A conversion is said to be simple if quantifiers do not change when the sentence is converted. All negative propositions of the type “No S is P” and all particular affirmatives of the type “Some S are P” are converted simply. Universal affirmatives of the type “All S are P” are converted by limitation—that is, their conversions yield, generally speaking, a true sentence if the quantifier “all” is replaced by the quantifier “some.” Particular affirmatives of the type “Some S are not P” are not convertible: “Some smokers are not people” does not follow from “Some people do not smoke.”
In traditional logic, conversions were regarded as immediate inferences, which were placed in a special group. The rules governing them were formulated parallel’to the rules of syllogism. In modern predicate logic, conversion does not have independent meaning, and the rules of conversion per se are not included in the rules of logical deduction. This does not, however, diminish the heuristic value of conversion in logical thinking.
In the logic of relations, where every relation between the terms x and y has a corresponding concept about the relation between the terms y and x (the converse concept of the original relation), conversion involves replacing a given relation with its converse relation, while simultaneously transposing the terms of the relation.
Conversion
in metallurgy, the treatment of metals that results in changes of chemical composition, physical and mechanical properties, and aggregation state; either all or some of these parameters may undergo a change. The first conversion is the production of pig iron from iron ore in blast furnaces; the second is the production of steel from pig iron; and the third is the working of metals by pressure to produce metallic articles of the desired shapes and sizes. Rolling, pressing, forging, and stamping are the basic types of pressure working. The fourth conversion is the aftertreatment of rolled metals; the term can refer to cold-rolling of strip and sheet metals, to profiling of strips, to sizing, and to drawing, as well as to the application of protective coatings and the production of metal ware.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.