Crossword clues for vacuum
vacuum
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Vacuum cleaner \Vac"u*um clean"er\ A machine for cleaning carpets, tapestry, upholstered work, etc., by suction; -- sometimes called a vacuum.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"to clean with a vacuum cleaner," 1919, from vacuum (n.). Related: Vacuumed; vacuuming.
1540s, "emptiness of space," from Latin vacuum "an empty space, vacant place, a void," noun use of neuter of vacuus "empty, unoccupied, devoid of," figuratively "free, unoccupied," related to vacare "be empty" (see vain). Properly a loan-translation of Greek kenon, literally "that which is empty." Meaning "a space emptied of air" is attested from 1650s. Vacuum tube "glass thermionic device" is attested from 1859. Vacuum cleaner is from 1903; shortened form vacuum (n.) first recorded 1910.\n\nThe metaphysicians of Elea, Parmenides and Melissus, started the notion that a vacuum was impossible, and this became a favorite doctrine with Aristotle. All the scholastics upheld the maxim that "nature abhors a vacuum."
[Century Dictionary]
Wiktionary
n. 1 A region of space that contains no matter. 2 A vacuum cleaner. 3 The condition of rarefaction, or reduction of pressure below that of the atmosphere, in a vessel, such as the condenser of a steam engine, which is nearly exhausted of air or steam, etc. vb. 1 (context transitive English) To clean (something) with a vacuum cleaner. 2 (context intransitive English) To use a vacuum cleaner.
n. (context rare chiefly Netherlands English) (alternative spelling of vacuum English)
WordNet
n. the absence of matter [syn: vacuity]
an empty area or space; "the huge desert voids"; "the emptiness of outer space"; "without their support he'll be ruling in a vacuum" [syn: void, vacancy, emptiness]
a region empty of matter [syn: vacuity]
an electrical home appliance that cleans by suction [syn: vacuum cleaner]
[also: vacua (pl)]
v. clean with a vacuum cleaner; "vacuum the carpets" [syn: vacuum-clean, hoover]
[also: vacua (pl)]
Wikipedia
Vacuum is space void of matter. The word stems from the Latin adjective vacuus for "vacant" or "void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressure. Physicists often discuss ideal test results that would occur in a perfect vacuum, which they sometimes simply call "vacuum" or free space, and use the term partial vacuum to refer to an actual imperfect vacuum as one might have in a laboratory or in space. In engineering and applied physics on the other hand, vacuum refers to any space in which the pressure is lower than atmospheric pressure. The Latin term in vacuo is used to describe an object that is surrounded by a vacuum.
The quality of a partial vacuum refers to how closely it approaches a perfect vacuum. Other things equal, lower gas pressure means higher-quality vacuum. For example, a typical vacuum cleaner produces enough suction to reduce air pressure by around 20%. Much higher-quality vacuums are possible. Ultra-high vacuum chambers, common in chemistry, physics, and engineering, operate below one trillionth (10) of atmospheric pressure (100 nPa), and can reach around 100 particles/cm. Outer space is an even higher-quality vacuum, with the equivalent of just a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter on average. According to modern understanding, even if all matter could be removed from a volume, it would still not be "empty" due to vacuum fluctuations, dark energy, transiting gamma rays, cosmic rays, neutrinos, and other phenomena in quantum physics. In the electromagnetism in the 19th century, vacuum was thought to be filled with a medium called aether. In modern particle physics, the vacuum state is considered the ground state of matter.
Vacuum has been a frequent topic of philosophical debate since ancient Greek times, but was not studied empirically until the 17th century. Evangelista Torricelli produced the first laboratory vacuum in 1643, and other experimental techniques were developed as a result of his theories of atmospheric pressure. A torricellian vacuum is created by filling a tall glass container closed at one end with mercury, and then inverting the container into a bowl to contain the mercury.
Vacuum became a valuable industrial tool in the 20th century with the introduction of incandescent light bulbs and vacuum tubes, and a wide array of vacuum technology has since become available. The recent development of human spaceflight has raised interest in the impact of vacuum on human health, and on life forms in general.
Vacuum is the name of a Swedish pop band. The members are Mattias Lindblom and Anders Wollbeck. They also work as song writers and producers under the same name. As songwriters and producers Wollbeck and Lindblom have worked with artists such as Tarja Turunen, Tina Arena, Garou, Monrose, TVXQ, Keisha Buchanan, f(x) and The Canadian Tenors. Wollbeck and Lindblom are signed to Universal Music Publishing world wide.
Vacuum is the absence of matter.
Vacuum may also refer to:
- Vacuum cleaner, a home appliance which uses suction to remove dirt
- Vacuum flask, an insulated storage vessel
- Vacuum (outer space), the very high, but imperfect, vacuum of the solar system and interstellar space
- Vacuum state, the quantum state with the lowest possible energy
- Vacuum Oil Company, an 1866 US petroleum company, now part of ExxonMobil
- Vacuum (band), a musical group from Sweden
- The Vacuum, a free monthly newspaper published in Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Vacuum, 2006 play by Deborah McAndrew
Usage examples of "vacuum".
Those that remained were vacuum ablating, their edges fraying like worn cloth, while their flat surfaces slowly dissolved, reducing their overall thickness.
A vacuum attached to the tank lowers the internal pressure, turning the acetone to a gas and drawing it from the body.
Some of the characters in my tale are present in the Void Which Bind largely as scars, holes, vacancies -- the Nemes creatures are such vacuums, as are Councillor Albedo and the other Core entities -- but I was able to track some of the movements and actions of these beings simply by the movement of that vacancy through the matrix of sentient emotion that was the Void, much as one would see the outline of an invisible man in a hard rain.
Queen Victoria had ever called an urgent meeting of her counsellors, and ordered them to invent the equivalent of radio and television, it is unlikely that any of them would have imagined the path to lead through the experiments of Ampere, Biot, Oersted and Faraday, four equations of vector calculus, and the judgement to preserve the displacement current in a vacuum.
We have seen that the uncertainty principle ensures that even the vacuum of empty space is a teeming, roiling frenzy of virtual particles momentarily erupting into existence and subsequently annihilating one another.
Esmay gave the orders that sent Jig Arek and her team across a few hundred meters of vacuum to the other ship.
The observations of electricity in a vacuum, therefore, yield no confirmation whatsoever of the atomistic view of matter.
But Jordan and other engineers at Stanford believed that the device might have a few practical applications and before long it became clear how stunningly correct they were - the audion was the first electronic vacuum tube, and its descendants ultimately made possible radio, television, radar, medical monitors, navigation systems and computers themselves.
Somehow this brought home to her for the first time the sheer force of the Multiplier migration, its quality of being a cascading explosion of thistledown birling through and filling and abhorring the vacuum.
Thermometers, atmospheric drift gauges, barometers, and bolometers were projected through vacuum suction tubes.
Unfortunately, a chimera bombinating in a vacuum is, nowadays, only too capable of producing secondary causes.
A Higgs boson is a theoretical particle that is named for the Scottish physicist Peter Higgs, who suggested it as a way to explain some phenomena in high energy and vacuum field physics.
Between the vessels was a breakaway point at which a closed pressure door shielded the fragile human body from the deadly vacuum of space when the ships parted.
Six hours later, before the internal fields switch on and the bodies begin to be repaired in their complex sarcophagi, even while the cabin is still in virtual vacuum, Nemes stands, shoulders two hundred gravities with no expression, and walks to the conference cubby and the plotting table.
Their little domestic robot had vacuumed the carpet, dusted round and polished the broad window that looked out over the back garden.