Barn (Noun)
Meaning 1
(physics) a unit of nuclear cross section; the effective circular area that one particle presents to another as a target for an encounter.
Classification
Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure.
Examples
- The nuclear reaction rate depends on the barn value of the target particle, which represents the effective cross-sectional area for interaction.
- The barn is a unit of area used to express the probability of nuclear interactions between subatomic particles.
- Physicists often measure the cross-sectional area of particles in barns to quantify their interaction probabilities.
- The large barn value of the nucleus makes it an ideal target for particle collisions in high-energy physics experiments.
- Scientists typically express the results of scattering experiments in terms of barns to facilitate comparison between different studies.