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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
critical mass
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ By using critical mass and monolithic buying power, we can change the way we do business.
▪ He used his position power to effect the critical mass that was necessary to make the change.
▪ Movie crowds create commercial critical mass, especially after hours.
▪ Some thing or things have to happen for a microbe to escape its previously harmless ecological niche and reach critical mass.
▪ The clusters helped recruit businesses, created the critical mass needed to start programs, and provided work-based learning opportunities for students.
Wiktionary
critical mass

n. A direct action event in which bicycle riders travel through city streets as a group.

WordNet
critical mass
  1. n. the minimum amount (of something) required to start or maintain a venture; "the battle for the computer market has now reached critical mass"; "there is now a critical mass of successful women to take the lead"; "they sold the business because it lacked critical mass"

  2. the minimum mass of fissionable material that can sustain a chain reaction

Wikipedia
Critical Mass (cycling)

Critical Mass is a cycling event typically held on the last Friday of every month; its purpose is not usually formalized beyond the direct action of meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city or town streets on bikes.

The event originated in 1992 in San Francisco; by the end of 2003, the event was being held in over 300 cities around the world.

Critical Mass has been described as "monthly political-protest rides", and characterized as being part of a social movement. It has been described as a "monthly protest by cyclists reclaiming the streets." Participants have insisted that these events should be viewed as "celebrations" and spontaneous gatherings, and not as protests or organized demonstrations. This stance allows Critical Mass to argue a legal position that its events can occur without advance notification of local police.

Critical mass

A critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties (specifically, the nuclear fission cross-section), its density, its shape, its enrichment, its purity, its temperature, and its surroundings. The concept is important in nuclear weapon design.

Critical mass (disambiguation)

Critical mass is the amount of fissile material needed to sustain nuclear fission.

Critical mass may also refer to:

Critical mass (software engineering)

In software engineering, critical mass is a stage in the life cycle when the source code grows too complicated to effectively manage without a complete rewrite. At the critical mass stage, fixing a bug introduces one or more new bugs.

Tools such as high-level programming languages, object-oriented programming languages, and techniques such as programming in the large, code refactoring and test-driven development, exist to make it easier to maintain large, complicated programs.

Critical Mass (Threshold album)

Critical Mass is the sixth album by British progressive metal band Threshold. It was recorded in early 2002 and released in September. It is also the last album to feature original bassist Jon Jeary, who left immediately after the release. He was replaced by Steve Anderson, who appears on the live album Critical Energy and subsequent albums.

Critical Mass (film)

Critical Mass is a low budget action film released straight-to-video in 2001 starring Treat Williams, Lori Loughlin, and Udo Kier and directed by Fred Olen Ray, credited as Ed Raymond. The film features scenes taken straight from other films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Universal Soldier spliced into newly filmed scenes to make up its action sequences.

Critical Mass (American band)

Critical Mass is a ska band, formed in 1992, from the San Francisco Bay Area. The band has played shows with The Skatalites, The Untouchables, and others. They won the award for Best Ska Group at the 1998 SF Weekly Music Awards (Wammies); received a 1998 California Music Awards (Bammies) Nomination for Outstanding Ska Artist, as well as performing at the Awards show; and the 1996 TicketMaster National Showcase.

Critical Mass (Canadian band)

Critical Mass is a Canadian Christian rock music group from Waterloo Region. The band is heavily influenced by its Catholic roots. They have produced and released five albums. Their songs have appeared on albums that have sold more than 60,000 copies, making this band one of Canada's most successful independent artists.

Critical Mass (pressure group)

Critical Mass is a pressure group which began its days in opposition to the government of Margaret Thatcher. It supported the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Critical Mass was founded in 1984 in Ramsgate as a result of regulations that prevented local inhabitants out of work from living in the then-numerous empty hotels desperate for trade.

Critical Mass (Dave Holland album)

Critical Mass is a 2006 album release by the Dave Holland Quintet, and the first to feature drummer Nate Smith. This is the first Dave Holland Quintet album to be released outside the ECM label, through which he had released all of his albums since his 1972 debut as leader, Conference of the Birds.

Critical mass (sociodynamics)

In social dynamics, critical mass is a sufficient number of adopters of an innovation in a social system so that the rate of adoption becomes self-sustaining and creates further growth. It is an aspect of the theory of diffusion of innovations, written extensively on by Everett Rogers in his book Diffusion of Innovations. The term is borrowed from nuclear physics and in that field it refers to the amount of a substance needed to start a chain reaction.

Social factors influencing critical mass may involve the size, interrelatedness and level of communication in a society or one of its subcultures. Another is social stigma, or the possibility of public advocacy due to such a factor.

Critical mass may be closer to majority consensus in political circles, where the most effective position is more often that held by the majority of people in society. In this sense, small changes in public consensus can bring about swift changes in political consensus, due to the majority-dependent effectiveness of certain ideas as tools of political debate.

Critical mass is a concept used in a variety of contexts, including physics, group dynamics, politics, public opinion, and technology.

Critical Mass (Pohl and Kornbluth short story)

Critical Mass is a science fiction novelette written by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. It was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in February 1962, almost four years after Kornbluth's death. The tone may reflect a view of American society from even earlier than 1962, depending on how much Pohl updated it before publication. According to a foreword by Pohl in a collection also called "Critical Mass", the story was assembled from notes Kornbluth made for three story ideas, plus one of Pohl's own from 1954. After Kornbluth's death, his widow turned over his story notes and drafts to Pohl. Pohl completed a dozen or so stories based on this material, most of which were eventually collected in the volume "The Wonder Effect" which contained most of the same stories as the later "Critical Mass" collection.

Arthur C. Clarke also wrote a short story with this title. It is included in his collection of tall tales of unlikely inventions, Tales from the White Hart.

Critical Mass (book)

'' Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another is a non-fiction book by English chemist and physicist Philip Ball, originally published in 2004, discusses the concept of a “physics of society”. Ball examines past thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, Lewis Mumford, Emyr Hughes, and Gottfried Achenwall, who have attempted to apply (or argue against) the use of physics, chemistry, or mathematics in the study of mass social phenomena. He also discusses how the concept relates to recent research, including his own. Critical Mass was the winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books.

Critical Mass (Arthur C. Clarke short story)

"Critical Mass" is a science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1949. This comic story describes the relationship between a village and a nuclear research facility located near it. On the day that the story takes place, a truck carrying a mysterious cargo has an accident, and the driver flees. The terrified villagers are about to begin an evacuation, when the narrator discovers that the cargo were merely caged bees.

The piece was later published as the fifth story in Clarke's collection Tales from the White Hart.

Critical Mass (Matthew Shipp album)

Critical Mass is an album by American jazz pianist Matthew Shipp which was recorded in 1994 and released on 2.13, a division of the 2.13.61 label, founded by Henry Rollins. Shipp adds violinist Mat Maneri to his usual trio lineup with bassist William Parker and drummer Whit Dickey. Shipp met Maneri when the violinist was just 17 in Boston, this is their first collaboration on record.

Critical Mass (Ra album)

Critical Mass is the fourth album issued by the alternative metal band Ra. It was released in October 2013, and marked the return of the band’s "Duality" lineup: guitarist-vocalist Sahaj Ticotin, bassist PJ Farley, guitarist Ben Carroll, and drummer Skoota Warner, as well as guitarist Travis Montgomery on Tragic Empire.

Critical Mass (Dutch band)

Critical Mass was a Dutch Happy Hardcore-act that was active from 1994 till 1999 during the Happy Hardcore-period. They scored several hits in the Netherlands. Members of the group were: producer Huib Schippers, Dave van Hasselaar and Ed Bout. Later, female singer Ludmilla Odijk and rapper Danny Haenraets aka MC Energie joined the group.