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What is "observable"

Crossword clues for observable

observable
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
observable
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
directly
▪ Motives are never directly observable whereas behaviour always is.
▪ Evaporation is not usually directly observable.
▪ No, each situation - recovery or relapse - can be verified by other people and has directly observable practical consequences.
▪ The problem which the Phillips-Lipsey model then had to confront was one of measurability: not a directly observable magnitude.
▪ The shortcomings of such an approach lie in the preoccupation with social phenomena which are directly observable.
▪ Since it is not directly observable, it must be measured indirectly.
■ NOUN
fact
▪ Anthropology is potentially a positivist's paradise, inviting an endless recording of observable facts and data.
▪ The question which hung over this whole discussion, though, was how beliefs about linguistic behaviour relate to the observable facts.
▪ At the manifest level of observable facts, the differences may be as significant as the similarities.
▪ Even such observable facts as churchgoing are hard to interpret.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ the observable universe
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ According to others it was more properly a generic term used loosely to cover a wide assortment of observable cutaneous conditions.
▪ If it is to have any practical value a recording system must be concerned with measuring observable behaviour.
▪ It refers to observable behaviors-sensorimotor and conceptual-that reflect intellectual activity.
▪ Primary qualities belong not only to observable substances such as gold, but also to the minute corpuscles which make them up.
▪ The chips are indeed observable, but the difference between them is not.
▪ Then the observable quantity, the orbital decay rate. is.
▪ This may provide the first observable category of classroom behaviour for a workable schedule.
▪ Within a few weeks of birth, initial accommodations on the part of the child are usually observable.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Observable

Observable \Ob*serv"a*ble\, a. [L. observabilis: cf. F. observable.]

  1. Capable of being observed; discernible; noticeable.
    --Sir. T. Browne.

    The difference is sufficiently observable.
    --Southey.

  2. Worthy of being observed; important enough to be noted or celebrated; as, an observable anniversary.

  3. Noteworthy; remarkable. [PJC] -- Ob*serv"a*ble*ness, n. -- Ob*serv"a*bly, adv.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
observable

c.1600, from Latin observabilis "remarkable, observable," from observare (see observe). Related: Observably; observability.

Wiktionary
observable

a. 1 Able to be observed. 2 deserving to be observed. n. (context physics English) Any physical property that can be observed and measured directly and not derived from other properties

Related phrases:
WordNet
observable

adj. capable of being seen or noticed; "a discernible change in attitude"; "a clearly evident erasure in the manuscript"; "an observable change in behavior" [syn: discernible, evident]

Wikipedia
Observable

In physics, particularly in quantum physics, a system observable is a measurable operator, or gauge, where the property of the system state can be determined by some sequence of physical operations. For example, these operations might involve submitting the system to various electromagnetic fields and eventually reading a value. In systems governed by classical mechanics, any experimentally observable value can be shown to be given by a real-valued function on the set of all possible system states.

Physically meaningful observables must also satisfy transformation laws which relate observations performed by different observers in different frames of reference. These transformation laws are automorphisms of the state space, that is bijective transformations which preserve some mathematical property.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "observable".

Fortunately there is little changed here: my old Albergo, -- ruinous with earthquake -- is down and done with -- but few novelties are observable -- except the regrettable one that the silk industry has been transported elsewhere -- to Cornuda and other places nearer the main railway.

Knowing that the appearance of electricity depends on a process of atomization of some sort, we shall expect that where electricity becomes freely observable, it will yield phenomena of an atomistic kind.

They could make out the vague outlines of a vast, dimensionless room without any observable walls or floor or ceiling.

There has been no one to touch Handel as an observer of all that was observable, a lover of all that was loveable, a hater of all that was hateable, and, therefore, as a poet.

They are made to seem like kooks and quaint dingbats who have the nerve to believe that, in an observable universe of trillions upon trillions of stars, and most likely many hundreds of billions of potentially inhabitable planets, some of those planets may have produced life-forms capable of doing things that we cant do.

A remarkable activity of mind was observable in the theological world, and men of great learning and keen intellect began to apply the deductions of foreign naturalism to the sacred oracles.

This makes possible the existence of lines of mathematical singularity, nodal lines of magnetic flux which will not affect the wave functions of other particles, and which therefor, will, no be observable.

It is sufficient to say that, although nodal lines themselves are not observable, their points of termination assume physical reality.

For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales dying--the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring-- that strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before.

She believed that his compassion, humanity, love, warmth, all observable qualities, overlay a core as rigid and unweathered and unassailable as the rocky skeletons of the mountains that endured over the eons while everything about them was worn away.

It is a matter of observable fact that Welladay has twice as many teeth as anyone else, all of enormous size.

The intercalated figures have been fitted into the work with admirable skill, nevertheless they do not form part of design, and make it want the unity observable in the work of Tabachetti and Gaudenzio.

Stephen could satisfy them on neither point but they parted on the kindest terms, and it was observable that the morose Ghegs looked more favourably upon the party now that it was known that at least one member was of the right way of thinking.

The distinguishing characteristic of the Marquesan islanders, and that which at once strikes you, is the European cast of their features--a peculiarity seldom observable among other uncivilized people.

The gray skies and flat vistas seemed to make the scale of nature smaller here, more accessible, more observable, and Dale soon began to walk an hour or two each day, despite the harsh weather.