In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.[1][2] They vary greatly in size or quantity, from subatomic particles like the electron, to microscopic particles like atoms and molecules, to macroscopic particles like powders and other granular materials. Particles can also be used to create scientific models of even larger objects depending on their density, such as humans moving in a crowd or celestial bodies in motion.
The term particle is rather general in meaning, and is refined as needed by various scientific fields. Anything that is composed of particles may be referred to as being particulate.[3] However, the noun particulate is most frequently used to refer to pollutants in the Earth's atmosphere, which are a suspension of unconnected particles, rather than a connected particle aggregation.
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"Particle". AMS Glossary. American Meteorological Society. Retrieved 2015-04-12.
^"Particle". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005.
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T. W. Lambe; R. V. Whitman (1969). Soil Mechanics. John Wiley & Sons. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-471-51192-2. The word 'particulate' means 'of or pertaining to a system of particles'.
quantity, from subatomic particles like the electron, to microscopic particles like atoms and molecules, to macroscopic particles like powders and other...
Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies...
physics, a subatomic particle is a particle smaller than an atom. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle can be either a...
Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation...
In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. The Standard Model...
A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them...
In physics, a charged particle is a particle with an electric charge. For example, some elementary particles, like the electron or quarks are charged....
A beta particle, also called beta ray or beta radiation (symbol β), is a high-energy, high-speed electron or positron emitted by the radioactive decay...
This is a list of known and hypothesized particles. Elementary particles are particles with no measurable internal structure; that is, it is unknown whether...
thermodynamics, the particle number (symbol N) of a thermodynamic system is the number of constituent particles in that system. The particle number is a fundamental...
A virtual particle is a theoretical transient particle that exhibits some of the characteristics of an ordinary particle, while having its existence limited...
is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are...
A point particle, ideal particle or point-like particle (often spelled pointlike particle) is an idealization of particles heavily used in physics. Its...
Alpha particles, also called alpha rays or alpha radiation, consist of two protons and two neutrons bound together into a particle identical to a helium-4...
The God Particle may refer to: Higgs boson, a particle in physics sometimes referred to as the God particle The God Particle (book), a 1993 popular science...
A particle beam is a stream of charged or neutral particles. In particle accelerators, these particles can move with a velocity close to the speed of light...
In grammar, the term particle (abbreviated PTCL) has a traditional meaning, as a part of speech that cannot be inflected, and a modern meaning, as a function...
In particle physics, a massless particle is an elementary particle whose invariant mass is zero. At present the only confirmed massless particle is the...
Particle board, also known as particleboard, chipboard, and low-density fiberboard, is an engineered wood product manufactured from wood chips and a synthetic...
Particle displacement or displacement amplitude is a measurement of distance of the movement of a sound particle from its equilibrium position in a medium...
In particle physics, a boson (/ˈboʊzɒn/ /ˈboʊsɒn/) is a subatomic particle whose spin quantum number has an integer value (0, 1, 2, ...). Bosons form...
Particle density may refer to: Particle density (packed density), density of material that particles are composed of Particle density (particle count)...
In particle physics, a fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics. Fermions have a half-odd-integer spin (spin 1/2, spin 3/2, etc.) and...
here dubbed particles, and moving these particles around in the search-space according to simple mathematical formula over the particle's position and...
particle is a type of onomastic particle used in a surname or family name in many Western cultures to signal the nobility of a family. The particle used...
Particle radiation is the radiation of energy by means of fast-moving subatomic particles. Particle radiation is referred to as a particle beam if the...
In physics, a free particle is a particle that, in some sense, is not bound by an external force, or equivalently not in a region where its potential energy...
the particle in a box model (also known as the infinite potential well or the infinite square well) describes the movement of a free particle in a small...