Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The smallest mass of a fissionable material that will sustain a nuclear chain reaction at a constant level.
- n. The amount of matter needed to generate sufficient gravitational force to halt the current expansion of the universe.
- n. An amount or level needed for a specific result or new action to occur: "The sudden national uproar over drugs and drug abuse has reached politically critical mass in Washington” ( Tom Morganthau).
Wiktionary
- n. physics the amount of fissile material that is needed to support a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction
- n. A quantity or amount required to trigger a phenomenon.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the minimum mass of fissionable material that can sustain a chain reaction
- n. the minimum amount (of something) required to start or maintain a venture
Examples
“Notice that a threshold occurs at the indi vidual level of analysis, whereas the critical mass operates at the system level.”
“For example, a new article of clothing becomes fashionable when a critical mass of social elites begins wearing it Grindereng, 1967; Crane, 1999.”
“Discontinuance of an interactive innovation by one individual may lead eventually to a critical mass of discontinuers, and then perhaps to complete rejection of a new idea such as e-mail by the entire system.”
“Granovetter 1978 provided an illustration of how the two-level phenomenon of individual thresholds and the system-level critical mass are interrelated:”
“Factors which act to slow the rate of adoption of an interactive innovation before the critical mass is reached (like network externali ties), then serve to speed up the adoption rate after the critical mass is attained (Wieber, 1992, 1995).”
“The likelihood of a relatively short time-to-take-off for a new product in a nation was higher if that product had already reached critical mass in neighboring countries.”
“Shermesh and Tellis 2002 determined the year in which the critical mass occurred by inspecting their data on the annual rate of adoption for each new product.”
“Marketing diffusion scholars have pioneered in identifying a new dependent variable for their analyses, the amount of time required to reach critical mass for a new product in a nation this variable is called “time-to-take-off”.”
“A small number of highly influential individuals who adopt a new idea may represent a much stronger critical mass than an equally sized number of individual adopters who have little influ ence.”
“A critical mass implies that reciprocal interdependence also occurs, in which early adopters are influenced by later adopters (and discontinuers and rejecters), as well as vice versa: “As users defect, the benefits to the remaining users will decrease and the costs increase, thus stimulating further defection” (Markus, 1987).”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘critical mass’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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EN - newSPEAK
Buzzwords of our time
actionable, administrivia, advermation, agreeance, backbone provider, back-sourcing, baked in, bandwidth, barn raising, Barneyware, belly-buttons, Below Zeros and 1076 more...
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(Medical) Marijuana Strains
Names of various "medicinal" Cannabis strains, harvested from various sources.
grape ape, grape wreck, trainwreck, black domina, sweet wreck, cal-p, jack herer, purple princess, northern lights #5, amnesia haze, c5 haze, cambodian haze and 685 more...
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Size Matters!
The long and the short of it.
gargantuan, small-minded, infinitesimal, dinky, microscopy, innumerable, slew, surfeit, behemoth, bijou, critical mass, whopping and 8 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for critical mass.
Prolagus How boring was life before Babel!
Now sit down, and en-join the rabble. Jun 23, 2008
johnmperry Critical mass
is clearly unable
to save As
ativum
from the Tower of Babel Jun 23, 2008
johnmperry the minimum amount needed to sustain a process Jun 23, 2008
bilby From Pro to yarb hear the power of Babylon.
From Bilby to jmp, we all do babble on. Jun 23, 2008
Prolagus From Peru to Cebu hear the power of Babylon.
From Bali to Cali, far beneath the Coral Sea. Jun 23, 2008
Prolagus I know, it's just that some of us were really in the best wordie mood ever. I beg your pardon. Jun 23, 2008
mollusque Much ado in Cebu,
And in Manila too. Jun 23, 2008
bilby Wordzilla in Manila? Jun 23, 2008
mollusque Wow, 5 people with 170 or more comments in one week! If this is what happens when I go to Belgium for a few days, what's going to happen when I go the Philippines next month? Jun 23, 2008
asativum I think Wordie may have reached some sort of critical mass on Friday, June 20, 2008. Now I really can't keep up with the comments! Jun 21, 2008