Wiktionary
n. 1 (context catastrophe theory English) The point at which a slow, reversible change becomes irreversible, often with dramatic consequences. 2 The point in time at which some new technology becomes mainstream.
Wikipedia
In sociology, a tipping point is a point in time when a group—or a large number of group members—rapidly and dramatically changes its behavior by widely adopting a previously rare practice.
The phrase was first used in sociology by Morton Grodzins when he adopted the phrase from physics where it referred to the adding a small amount of weight to a balanced object until the additional weight caused the object to suddenly and completely topple, or tip. Grodzins studied integrating American neighborhoods in the early 1960s. He discovered that most of the white families remained in the neighborhood as long as the comparative number of black families remained very small. But, at a certain point, when "one too many" black families arrived, the remaining white families would move out en masse in a process known as white flight. He called that moment the "tipping point".
The idea was expanded and built upon by Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Schelling in 1972. A similar idea underlies Mark Granovetter's threshold model of collective behavior.
Tipping point may refer to:
A climate tipping point is a somewhat ill-defined concept of a point when global climate changes from one stable state to another stable state, in a similar manner to a wine glass tipping over. After the tipping point has been passed, a transition to a new state occurs. The tipping event may be irreversible, comparable to wine spilling from the glass: standing up the glass will not put the wine back.
A tipping point is an example of hysteresis in which the point at which an object is displaced from a state of stable equilibrium into a new equilibrium state is qualitatively dissimilar from the first.
Tipping Point is a British television game show which began airing on ITV on 2 July 2012, and is presented by Ben Shephard. Contestants answer general knowledge questions to win counters which they use on a large coin pusher arcade-style machine. Only the winner at the end takes home their accumulated money—the rest go home with nothing.
On 18 June 2015, Tipping Point was renewed until 2017.
Tipping Point is an experimental contemporary jazz quartet from England, founded in 2013 by James Mainwaring. All members are alumni of Leeds College of Music and active in other successful projects.
Tipping Point released their debut album, The Earthworm's Eye View, in October 2015 on Lamplight Social Records. The album was described as “Playful, dark, skilful and spontaneous… a surefooted trip across many persuasions in contemporary music” by John Fordham in the Guardian and to have “moments of collective beauty” by Daniel Spicer in Jazzwise.
The Earthworm's Eye View was also dubbed a best album of 2015 by Jazz on 3 and The Guardian.
Usage examples of "tipping point".
The director of the CIA reached her tipping point, and decided on a course of action.
Anyone who wanted to lower the gate now would have to cut cables and then pull it down past the tipping point.
The tipping point into revelation and deliverance for all might come not at the moment when a sceptic became a believer but at the point that an un-reformable heathen breathed their last.
For most of them, however, the tipping point had been the almost universal perception of bureaucrats that a change in bosses (followed, inevitably, by a change in personnel on the staff) is a catastrophe.
She seemed to be at that tipping point of intense emotion where humans either laughed or cried, and sometimes did both.
He clawed the air, catching her by the sleeve as he tried in vain to pull himself back from the tipping point.
All that was necessary was to create a tipping point, a point at which the arrogance and hatred could be brought to overwhelm passivity and caution, and then the heretics would become an army.