Criticality
Encyclopedia
Criticality may refer to:
- Critical thinkingCritical thinkingCritical thinking is the process or method of thinking that questions assumptions. It is a way of deciding whether a claim is true, false, or sometimes true and sometimes false, or partly true and partly false. The origins of critical thinking can be traced in Western thought to the Socratic...
in education - Critical reflection in adult education
- Critical massCritical massA critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties A critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The...
in nuclear reactions - Criticality accidentCriticality accidentA criticality accident, sometimes referred to as an excursion or a power excursion, is an accidental increase of nuclear chain reactions in a fissile material, such as enriched uranium or plutonium...
- Criticality matrixCriticality matrixIn operations research and engineering, a criticality matrix is a representation of failure modes along with their probabilities and severities.-Example:...
- Nuclear Criticality SafetyNuclear Criticality SafetyNuclear criticality safety is a field of nuclear engineering dedicated to the prevention of nuclear and radiation accidents resulting from an inadvertent, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Additionally, nuclear criticality safety is concerned with mitigating the consequences of a nuclear...
- Prompt criticalPrompt criticalIn nuclear engineering, an assembly is prompt critical if for each nuclear fission event, one or more of the immediate or prompt neutrons released causes an additional fission event. This causes a rapid, exponential increase in the number of fission events...
, an assembly for each nuclear fission event - Self-organized criticalitySelf-organized criticalityIn physics, self-organized criticality is a property of dynamical systems which have a critical point as an attractor. Their macroscopic behaviour thus displays the spatial and/or temporal scale-invariance characteristic of the critical point of a phase transition, but without the need to tune...