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polarization

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Alternative forms

Etymology

Borrowed from French polarisation. By surface analysis, polarize +‎ -ation or polar +‎ -ization.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˌpoʊlərɪˈzeɪʃən/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -eɪʃən

Noun

polarization (countable and uncountable, plural polarizations)

  1. The production or the condition of polarity.
    • 2016, A. Alexandradinata, Zhijun Wang, B. Andrei Bernevig, “Topological Insulators from Group Cohomology”, in arXiv‎:
      The subtopologies that we discovered include: a glide-symmetric analog of the quantum spin Hall effect, an hourglass-flow topology (exemplified by our recently-proposed KHgSb material class), and quantized non-Abelian polarizations.
    1. (sociology) The grouping of opinions into two extremes.
      • 2004 June 2, William Safire, “Abolish the Penny”, in The New York Times‎:
        What frazzled pollsters, surly op-ed pages, snarling cable talkfests and issue-starved candidates for office need is a fresh source of hot-eyed national polarization.
      • 2019 October 1, Thomas Carothers, Andrew O’Donohue, “How to Understand the Global Spread of Political Polarization”, in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace‎, archived from the original on 14 February 2023:
        Polarization is tearing at the seams of democracies around the world, from Brazil and India to Poland and Turkey.
    2. (physics) The production of polarized light; the direction in which the electric field of an electromagnetic wave points.
      • 2013 July 16, skullsinthestars, “Simple fun with polarizers!”, in Skulls in the Stars‎:
        We don’t usually notice polarization because direct sunlight and light from ordinary incandescent and fluorescent bulbs is unpolarized: it contains equal mixtures of horizontally and vertically polarized light.
    4. (chemistry, physics) The separation of positive and negative charges in a nucleus, atom, molecule or system.

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