Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One that attracts: flowers that are excellent attractors of hummingbirds.
- n. Physics A set of physical properties toward which a system tends to evolve, regardless of the starting conditions of the system.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. See attracter.
Wiktionary
- n. mathematics, physics A set of points or states to which a dynamical system evolves after a long enough time. That is, points that get close enough to the attractor remain close even if slightly disturbed.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One who, or that which, attracts.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an entertainer who attracts large audiences
- n. (physics) a point in the ideal multidimensional phase space that is used to describe a system toward which the system tends to evolve regardless of the starting conditions of the system
- n. a characteristic that provides pleasure and attracts
Examples
“I actually think that the same hunger for authenticity that makes the internet a "strange attractor" is at works in politics, too.”
“This pattern has developed into a state that conflict scholars label intractable and that mathematicians call an attractor: the Israel-Palestinian conflict has thus become an intractable attractor.”
The Huffington Post: Peter T. Coleman, PhD: The Mathematics of Middle East Conflict and Peace
“Classically, a dissipative chaotic system tends towards a strange attractor with a fractal structure; that is, the attractor exhibits substructure at all length scales.”
“For instance, using a san jan worm as a lead or "attractor" pattern followed by an RS2 or some other small midge type nymph.”
“While it is critical that members of NGOs and community-based organizations do whatever possible to increase intercommunal positivity and decrease negativity and suffering, it may be best to do so in a manner divorced from the "peace process," so as to avoid the polarization that can result from falling prey to the politics of the attractor.”
The Huffington Post: Peter T. Coleman, PhD: The Mathematics of Middle East Conflict and Peace
“In other words, we are confronted with an intractable conflict attractor.”
The Huffington Post: Peter T. Coleman, PhD: The Mathematics of Middle East Conflict and Peace
“And even though they may change temporarily we may lose seven pounds on a crash diet, odds are they will soon return to their attractor.”
The Huffington Post: Peter T. Coleman, PhD: The Mathematics of Middle East Conflict and Peace
“It showed a four and a half thousand solar mass attractor of about a hundred meters across, inside the Hera.”
““Plot a series of orbital courses we can use, and take us into the best stable orbit you can manage around the attractor.””
““What kind of sensor readings are we getting from the gravitational attractor?””
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘attractor’.
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whym's Words
probability, random, variable, idiosyncratic, discriminative, generative, information, knowledge, disambiguation, attractor, artifact, varelse and 6 more...
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azif's Words
intricate, oxymoron, entropy, negentropy, attractor, uncertainty, autopoiesis, voluptuous, touche, folly, cybernetics, homeostasis and 11 more...
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