What is "homogenization"

1803 (from 1905 specifically of milk); see homogenize + -ation.

alt. the act of making something homogenous, or the same throughout; or the tendency of something to become homogenous n. the act of making something homogenous, or the same throughout; or the tendency of something to become homogenous

n. the act of making something homogeneous or uniform in composition; "the homogenization of cream"; "the network's homogenization of political news" [syn: homogenisation]

Homogenization or homogenisation is any of several processes used to make a mixture of two mutually non-soluble liquids the same throughout. This is achieved by turning one of the liquids into a state consisting of extremely small particles distributed uniformly throughout the other liquid. A typical example is the homogenization of milk, where the milk fat globules are reduced in size and dispersed uniformly through the rest of the milk.

In cell biology or molecular biology research, homogenization is a process whereby a biological sample is brought to a state such that all fractions of the sample are equal in composition, i.e. a homogenized sample is mixed so well that removing some of the sample does not alter the overall molecular make-up of the sample remaining, and is identical to the fraction removed. Homogenization in biology is often followed by, or combined with, cell lysis and/or molecular extraction.

Homogenization in climate research means the removal of non-climatic changes. Next to changes in the climate itself, raw climate records also contain non-climatic jumps and changes for example due to relocations or changes in instrumentation. The most used principle to remove these inhomogeneities is the relative homogenization approach in which a candidate stations is compared to a reference time series based on one or more neighboring stations. The candidate and reference station(s) experience about the same climate, non-climatic changes that happen only in one station can thus be identified and removed.