Crossword clues for plasticity
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Plasticity \Plas*tic"i*ty\, n. [Cf. F. plasticit['e].]
The quality or state of being plastic.
(Physiol.) Plastic force.
--Dunglison.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1782, from plastic + -ity.
Wiktionary
n. 1 The quality or state of being plastic#Adjective. 2 (context physics English) the property of a solid body whereby it undergoes a permanent change in shape or size when subjected to a stress exceeding a particular value (the yield value)
WordNet
n. the property of being physically malleable; the property of something that can be worked or hammered or shaped under pressure without breaking [syn: malleability] [ant: unmalleability]
Wikipedia
Plasticity may refer to:
Science
- Plasticity (physics), in physics and engineering, plasticity is the propensity of a material to undergo permanent deformation under load.
The characteristics of material by which it undergoes inelastic strain beyond those at the elastic limit is known as plasticity
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Neuroplasticity, in neuroscience, how entire brain structures, and the brain itself, can change from experience
- Synaptic plasticity, the property of a neuron or synapse to change its internal parameters in response to its history
- Metaplasticity, the plasticity of synaptic plasticity
- Phenotypic plasticity, in biology, describes the ability of an organism to change its phenotype in response to changes in the environment
Art and entertainment
- Plastic arts, such as clay sculpture, in which material is formed or deformed into a new, permanent shape
- Plasticity, an album by Cabaret Voltaire (band)
- "Plasticities", a song by Andrew Bird, from the album Armchair Apocrypha
Events
- Plasticity Forum is a conference on the future of plastic and how to reduce impacts on the environment.
In physics and materials science, plasticity describes the deformation of a (solid) material undergoing non-reversible changes of shape in response to applied forces. For example, a solid piece of metal being bent or pounded into a new shape displays plasticity as permanent changes occur within the material itself. In engineering, the transition from elastic behavior to plastic behavior is called yield.
Plastic deformation is observed in most materials, particularly metals, soils, rocks, concrete, foams, bone and skin. However, the physical mechanisms that cause plastic deformation can vary widely. At a crystalline scale, plasticity in metals is usually a consequence of dislocations. Such defects are relatively rare in most crystalline materials, but are numerous in some and part of their crystal structure; in such cases, plastic crystallinity can result. In brittle materials such as rock, concrete and bone, plasticity is caused predominantly by slip at microcracks.
For many ductile metals, tensile loading applied to a sample will cause it to behave in an elastic manner. Each increment of load is accompanied by a proportional increment in extension. When the load is removed, the piece returns to its original size. However, once the load exceeds a threshold – the yield strength – the extension increases more rapidly than in the elastic region; now when the load is removed, some degree of extension will remain.
Elastic deformation, however, is an approximation and its quality depends on the time frame considered and loading speed. If, as indicated in the graph opposite, the deformation includes elastic deformation, it is also often referred to as "elasto-plastic deformation" or "elastic-plastic deformation".
Perfect plasticity is a property of materials to undergo irreversible deformation without any increase in stresses or loads. Plastic materials with hardening necessitate increasingly higher stresses to result in further plastic deformation. Generally, plastic deformation is also dependent on the deformation speed, i.e. higher stresses usually have to be applied to increase the rate of deformation. Such materials are said to deform visco-plastically.
Usage examples of "plasticity".
His thirteen years with the monks in Tibet had taught him much about the wonders of vampiric physiognomy, the astounding supernatural plasticity that was not at all limited to the traditional European transformational varieties of bat, wolf, and mist.
Rose, S P R Early visual experience, learning and neurochemical plasticity in the rat and the chick.
Apart from the hope that understanding biological memory will improve the design of silicon computers, or even offer the prospect of biological computers based on ensembles of neurons in culture, the biology of neural plasticity and memory is relevant across the entire human life scale, from the development of memory and learning ability in young children to the disabling deteriorations of accident, disease and later life.
Asked to predict the most likely site of synaptic plasticity, theoreticians would probably have opted for the inter-neurons, as these can clearly receive and modulate signals from many different inputs before dispatching them to varied outputs.
To unravel the dialectic between specificity and plasticity and to understand its mechanisms form some of the major tasks of modern biology.
So it turns out that to understand the mechanisms of memory, of plasticity, it is also necessary to understand the mechanisms of specificity.
Nonetheless, if in behavioural terms memory is a special case of experience, it is at least worth considering the possibility that the brain mechanisms of memory may be special cases of neural plasticity.
The plasticity means that, although individual brain neurons destroyed as a result of a stroke or brain lesion cannot regenerate, at least in adults, the cells around the damaged area do grow and put out more processes, so that there is some compensatory remoulding of the brain.
Grog does not regain plasticity and will not undergo chemical change when re-fired.
Indeed, with rare exceptions (chiefly the social insects), mammals and birds are the only organisms to devote substantial attention to the care of their young-an evolutionary development that, through the long period of plasticity which it permits, takes advantage of the large information-processing capability of the mammalian and primate brains.
Whereas once biologists used to speak of organisms as the product of the interplay of nature and nurture, or, in modern language, genes and environment, today this dichotomy is recognized as simplistic, for it is an individual's genes, expressed during development, which provide the basis for both specificity and plasticity.
The range of softnesses in the forest amazed her: the green and feathery softness of the moss, the crisp softness of a liny- leafed vascular plant growing amidst the moss, the unresist- ing plasticity of a circle of slime mold.
The textures were sort of Oriental, with crisp things like water chestnuts and gummy things like sukiyaki lending variety to the crunch of lettuce and the plasticity of starches.