Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or being a work that in style or form falls between the classical and popular genres.
  • adjective Of, relating to, or being a classical composition that enjoys popular appeal because of modern elements.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective music Describing classical music of broad, popular appeal
  • adjective physics Describing any of various approximations to either relativistic or quantum mechanical physics that retains elements of classical physics

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Examples

  • With musical settings that evoke Rachmaninoff by way of Debussy and sometimes inflected with J. S. Bach, she often moved beyond the realm of jazz into a semiclassical sphere, although the label semiclassical really doesn't suffice, because the music is improvised.

    NYT > Home Page By STEPHEN HOLDEN 2011

  • This is what physicists call a semiclassical argument—the physics used is classical, with a few modern ideas added on.

    How to Teach Physics to Your Dog CHAD ORZEL 2009

  • You can make it predict the same effects as the semiclassical theory, i.e. entropy goes as area et cetera.

    Can a Really, Really Fast Spacecraft Turn Into A Black Hole? | Universe Today 2010

  • Examples of semiclassical models include the “Heisenberg microscope” (page 38) and the Bohr model of hydrogen (page 49).

    How to Teach Physics to Your Dog CHAD ORZEL 2009

  • The idea behind the semiclassical treatment of uncertainty is familiar to any dog.

    How to Teach Physics to Your Dog CHAD ORZEL 2009

  • The most common semiclassical explanations of decoherence leave a lot to be desired, though, as they are inaccurate, and often somewhat circular.

    How to Teach Physics to Your Dog CHAD ORZEL 2009

  • * He refined this later, but he was never able to come up with a convincing semiclassical counterargument, in the way that he had in all his other debates with Einstein.

    How to Teach Physics to Your Dog CHAD ORZEL 2009

  • I was able to explain the observations quantitatively with a semiclassical model that reli ed on the density matrix formalism to account for quantum interference effects in coupled three-level systems.

    Theodor W. Hänsch - Autobiography 2006

  • Rather, we belong in some particular semiclassical history, separated out from other histories by the process of decoherence.

    Arrow of Time FAQ Sean 2007

  • (The various flavors of LQG do not qualify, in my view, because no one has shown that any of them has the required semiclassical limit, and my intuition [which could be completely wrong] is that none of them do.)

    String Theory is Losing the Public Debate Sean 2007

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