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critical mass

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Financial, Acronyms, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.06 sec.
critical mass: see chain reaction chain reaction, self-sustaining reaction that, once started, continues without further outside influence. Proper conditions for a chain reaction depend not only on various external factors, such as temperature, but also on the quantity and shape of the substance
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critical mass

Minimum amount of a given fissionable material necessary to achieve a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under specified conditions. Critical mass depends on several factors, including the kind of fissionable material used, its concentration and purity, and the composition and geometry of the surrounding reaction system.


critical mass - In physics, the minimum amount of fissionable material required to sustain a chain reaction. Of a software product, describes a condition of the software such that fixing one bug introduces one plus epsilon bugs. (This malady has many causes: creeping featurism, ports to too many disparate environments, poor initial design, etc.) When software achieves critical mass, it can never be fixed; it can only be discarded and rewritten.

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During one trick set-up, his concentrated energy exertion reached critical mass and he collapsed into a super-nova, thus creating the wormhole.
Florian Banhart of the University of Mainz in Germany notes that a nuclear-fission bomb or reactor requires a critical mass of kilograms of fissionable material--way too much to enclose in a nanotube.
of Encino moved a step closer to gaining critical mass for its online platform with the purchase last week of InsLogic Corp.
 
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