WordNet
n. instrument that shows the extent or amount or quantity or degree of something [syn: measuring system, measuring device]
Wikipedia
A measuring instrument is a device for measuring a physical quantity. In the physical sciences, quality assurance, and engineering, measurement is the activity of obtaining and comparing physical quantities of real-world objects and events. Established standard objects and events are used as units, and the process of measurement gives a number relating the item under study and the referenced unit of measurement. Measuring instruments, and formal test methods which define the instrument's use, are the means by which these relations of numbers are obtained. All measuring instruments are subject to varying degrees of instrument error and measurement uncertainty.
Scientists, engineers and other humans use a vast range of instruments to perform their measurements. These instruments may range from simple objects such as rulers and stopwatches to electron microscopes and particle accelerators. Virtual instrumentation is widely used in the development of modern measuring instruments.
Usage examples of "measuring instrument".
And this result, we note, is quite independent of our particular way of procedure, whether we use, right from the start, a measuring instrument, or whether we proceed as described above.
He put a measuring instrument down into the crack that would tell them if it widened in the future.
Quantum objects acted as if they were everything at once while they were not interacting with their environment, but the instant they encountered another entity capable of pinning them downfor instance, a detector in a measuring instrument designed to find out something about themthey abruptly took on one from the available selection of possible states.
In the aerocar where Major Deringhouse was in charge, a small but 'heavy measuring instrument was dislodged from the boxes and struck a man so violently on the head that he was knocked unconscious.
In the aero-car where Major Deringhouse was in charge, a small but heavy measuring instrument was dislodged from the boxes and struck a man so violently on the head that he was knocked unconscious.
The measuring instrument was telling him that he had been exposed to some hypnotic influence.
But he had learned to use Koris as a measuring instrument when in a new situation.