Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The act or process of splitting into parts.
- n. A nuclear reaction in which an atomic nucleus, especially a heavy nucleus such as an isotope of uranium, splits into fragments, usually two fragments of comparable mass, releasing from 100 million to several hundred million electron volts of energy.
- n. Biology An asexual reproductive process in which a unicellular organism divides into two or more independently maturing daughter cells.
- v. To cause (an atom) to undergo fission.
- v. To undergo fission.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act of cleaving, splitting, or breaking up into parts.
- n. In biology, the automatic division of a cell or an independent organism into new cells or organisms; especially, such division as a process of multiplication or reproduction. Also fissuration. See cut under Paramecium.
Wiktionary
- n. The process whereby one item splits to become two.
- n. physics The process of splitting the nucleus of an atom into smaller particles; nuclear fission
- n. biology The process by which a bacterium splits to form two daughter cells.
- v. To cause to undergo fission.
- v. intransitive To undergo fission.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A cleaving, splitting, or breaking up into parts.
- n. (Biol.) A method of asexual reproduction among the lowest (unicellular) organisms by means of a process of self-division, consisting of gradual division or cleavage of the into two parts, each of which then becomes a separate and independent organisms; as when a cell in an animal or plant, or its germ, undergoes a spontaneous division, and the parts again subdivide. See Segmentation, and Cell division, under Division.
- n. (Zoöl.) A process by which certain coral polyps, echinoderms, annelids, etc., spontaneously subdivide, each individual thus forming two or more new ones. See Strobilation.
- n. (Physics) The act or process of disintegration of an atomic nucleus into two or more smaller pieces; called also nuclear fission. The process may be spontaneous or induced by capture of neutrons or other smaller nuclei, and usually proceeds with evolution of energy.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a nuclear reaction in which a massive nucleus splits into smaller nuclei with the simultaneous release of energy
- n. reproduction of some unicellular organisms by division of the cell into two more or less equal parts
Etymologies
- From Latin fissiōnem, accusative singular of fissiō ("the act of breaking up"), from findō ("split, divide"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin fissiō, fissiōn-, a cleaving, from fissus, split; see fissi-. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“When an organ becomes divided it receives at the hands of descriptive botanists the appellations cleft, partite, or sect, according to the depth of the division; hence in considering the teratological instances of this nature, the term fission has suggested itself as an appropriate one to be applied to the subdivision of an habitually entire or undivided organ.”
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants
“(1878-1968) interpreted the fission of uranium (the term fission is another Copenhagen contribution), in terms of the "liquid drop model.”
“Once we secure all that, I hope that we can figure out how to use it in fission reactors to create electricity of be batteries for deep space probes (for where solar panels won't generate enough power).”
“Nuclear fission is neither clean nor safe nor unlimited.”
“I think nuclear fission is a bad way to get energy.”
“The discovery of nuclear fission is very momentous and indeed dangerous, but even more, it is full of promise.”
“Nuclear fission is one of the major discoveries of all time, and the circumstances of its birth have inevitably done much to impress the layman with the destructive rather than the constructive powers of the science that brought it into being.”
“[...] Nuclear Fission: Fusion may be commercially available by 2040 if we’re lucky, but fission is here today.”
“- Nuclear power is produced by harnessing the heat produced by the splitting of atoms inside uranium - a process known as fission.”
“Nuclear fission occurs when heavy atoms such as uranium or plutonium split into smaller, lighter atoms, releasing neutrons and energy.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fission’.
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 503 more...
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Alternative energy concepts
Words that are becoming more important as we learn more about alternative and renewable energy sources.
microreactors, fuel cell, biomass, biofuel, algae, fission, fusion, turbine, hydrogen, solar, photovoltaic, solar thermal and 47 more...
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words
my words. my mind. my gosh.
try not to enjoy it too much.git, ghoti, sauce, quail, querulous, quarrelsome, reliability, untoward, incongruities, fission, fanatic, apple and 206 more...
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dienekes's Words
chutzpah, lexicon, intrepid, pedagogical, schlemiel, schism, erudite, anathema, pugilist, jaunty, paradigm, automaton and 949 more...
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Underworld
Don DeLillo
roily, reverie, slidy, bandido, mohair, brilliantine, stupe, juke step, jowly, juke, wicket, quidbit and 391 more...
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die6die's Words
somnambulist, obfuscate, hirsute, kleptobibliomania, serendipitous, dissuade, duplicitous, zounds, lo, unleash, fortnight, thaumaturgy and 278 more...
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Watchmen (2009)
Words from 2009 'Watchmen' film.
adversary, certitude, deterrent, stockpile, posturing, minuteman, vigilante, toss, flip, spook, carcass, tread and 174 more...
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theonlyway's Words
liquefy, torque, sceptre, wrath, pleasure, omit, equestrian, linearization, differentiate, logarithmic, gravitation, coulombic and 42 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for fission.
seanahan "He (American biologist William A. Arnold) could have gone to Berkeley to pick up radioisotope technique, but would have missed living in Copenhagen, learning from de Hevesy - would have missed contributing a coinage to the gamble that is history.... 'Later that day Frisch looked me up and said, 'You work in a microbiology lab. What do you call the process in which one bacterium divides into two?' And I answered, 'binary fission'. He wanted to know if you could call if 'fission' alone, and I said you could'"
-- From "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, Frisch referring to Otto Frisch, who with Lise Meitner first postulated nuclear fission. Nov 9, 2007