Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A substance or device, such as a piezoelectric crystal, microphone, or photoelectric cell, that converts input energy of one form into output energy of another.
Wiktionary
- n. A device that converts energy from one form into another.
- n. computing theory A state machine that generates output based on a given input.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an electrical device that converts one form of energy into another
Etymologies
- transduce + -er (Wiktionary)
- From Latin trānsdūcere, to transfer : trāns-, trans- + dūcere, to lead; see deuk- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The human ear cannot hear these echoes, so a special wand called a transducer is used.”
“The technician skidded a rodlike device, called a transducer, across my abdomen and pictures of my uterus were flashed onto the monitor.”
“The major breakthrough was Martin Rodbell's realization that there was a switch between these two steps, and that this switch, which he called the transducer, could be turned on by a high-energy compound, guanosine triphosphate.”
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1994 - Presentation Speech
“Then he or she will move a device called a transducer over your abdomen, and images of your liver will be transmitted via the transducer to a video screen.”
“The petty officer paid close attention to the cable and halted the winch when the transducer was a hundred feet down.”
“An object called a transducer is carried along the body, usually around the stomach when it comes to pregnancy.”
“Conventional ultrasonic testing uses the principle of sending a pulsed beam of high ultrasound from a handheld transducer, which is placed upon the surface of the weld being tested.”
“Pelvic floor physiotherapist Anne Patterson, said the transducer was a piece of equipment that would enable she and her colleagues to do their job better.”
“Upon finding the transducer, which is a tubular device used to boost phone signal, police had blocked off the building as a precaution, Smith said.”
“A transducer is a device that converts one type of energy (or physical attribute) to another.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘transducer’.
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IMCO - EU nomenclature
includes words of the "Prodcom list"
abaca, abdominal, abrasive, absorbent, absorber, accelerator, accessory, account book, accumulator, acebutolol, acetaldehyde, acetamide and 4515 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Wordnik Spam Inquiries
We get a lot of spam emails at Wordnik that fit this pattern: "Mr Bob Wilson here and i will like to know if you do have X for sale". The words on this list represent a subset of such requested items.
burnisher, shaper vise, salt spreader, soil pulveriser, bible, flutes, baffles, crucifix cross, proofer, gazebo, real bubble wrap, roller tray and 206 more...
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Flanges &c
Amusingly-named mechanical and electrical parts to be found in a particular warehouse in Newfoundland
nut, relief valve, cotter, shaft, bushing (inner bo..., sleeve, bushing (link), thrust washer, slip yoke, bushing (swing post), half pump coupling, main teledyne spool and 344 more...
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KaeZoo's Words
flingers, unhinged, driven, flanked, arboreal, venerable, endearing, iconoclastic, fletcher, competent, fireproof, cavernous and 215 more...
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aozuas's Words
sense data, hyperreality, brouhaha, ibid, apophenia, fnord, lackadaisical, schadenfreude, bildungsroman, ready-made, readymade, tergiversar and 654 more...
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Pregnant with Possibilities (Includin...
For double the fun, see also Congenital Conditions.
obstetrics, obstetrician, neonatology, neonatologist, isolette, postpartum, prepartum, puerperal fever, induce, pregnancy, episiotomy, meconium and 324 more...
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nfk9595's Words
magnetohydrodynamics, bovine, epistle, gargantuan, kerfuffle, verbiage, morose, coup de main, elan, achtung, uber, verboten and 497 more...
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Technobabble
Frequently used Star Trek terminology
wormhole, turbolift, tricorder, warp, transporter, replicator, sensor, photon, phaser, holodeck, dilithium, combadge and 70 more...
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Notings.
Tweets
Looking for tweets for transducer.
awils1 Quoted from Notebooks by Cosma Shalezi (2004).
The basic idea of a transducer is that it turns one sort of quantity, its inputs, into another, its outputs. The general case to consider is one where both inputs and outputs are time-series, and the current output is a function not just of the current input but of the whole history of previous inputs (when the output is a ‘functional’ of the input series). One way of representing this is to say that the transducer itself has internal or hidden states. The output is a function of the state of the transducer, and that hidden state is in turn a function of the input history. We don’t have to do things this way, but it can potentially give us a better handle on the structure of the transduction process, and especially on the way the transducer stores and processes information—what (to anthropomorphize a little) it cares about in the input and remembers about the past.
Finite-state transducers are a computer science idea; they also call them ‘sequential machines’, though I don’t see why that name wouldn’t also apply to many other things they study. In this case both the input and the output series consist of sequences of symbols from (possibly distinct) finite alphabets. Moreover there are only a finite number of internal states. The two main formalisms (which can be shown to be equivalent) differ only on whether the next output is a function of the current state alone, or is a function of the current state and the next input. While you can describe a huge chunk of electronic technology using this formalism, CS textbooks are curiously reluctant to give it much attention. Dec 14, 2008