Construct · 2 fields · 2 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one word, two constructs Nearest construct by meaningcirculationcompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to plasma is circulation.
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A gas in which enough atoms have been stripped of electrons that the whole behaves as a quasi-neutral soup of free electrons and ions, responding collectively to electric and magnetic fields. Langmuir, studying oscillations in the ionized gas of a discharge tube, gave the name plasma to this regime in his 1928 Oscillations in Ionized Gases, and it is now counted as the fourth state of matter, the state of stars, lightning, and fusion devices. The referent is a physical medium, and what marks it is ionization: a body of matter carrying free charge, described by its electron density and temperature. This has nothing in common with a fluid drawn from blood except the letters of the word.[1]
A flat-panel display in which each picture element is a tiny sealed cell of gas that is ionized by an applied voltage, the resulting discharge emitting ultraviolet light that excites coloured phosphors. Weber's 2006 History of the Plasma Display Panel traces the device from its 1964 invention to the flat televisions that carried the name to living rooms. There is an honest wrinkle here: the gas inside a lit cell genuinely is a plasma in the physicist's meaning, so this is not a pure accident of naming. But the referent of the word has moved: a plasma in a shop is a manufactured display product, specified by resolution and brightness, not a state of matter and certainly not a fluid drawn from blood.[2]
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