Where does yield collide?

The income or return an investment produces, expressed as a rate relative to its price or face value: a bond's current yield is its annual coupon divided by its price, its yield to maturity is the single rate that discounts all future payments back to today's price, and a share's dividend yield is its dividend divided by its price. Fabozzi's Bond Markets, Analysis, and Strategies sets out these yield measures and how each links a price to a rate of return. The referent is a rate of return on money, quoted as a percent per year, and it is not a harvest per hectare, the stress a metal can bear, or the product a reaction delivers.[1]

Unit

A return on an investment, as a percent per year

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Computed from price and cash flows as current yield, yield to maturity, or dividend yield

The mass of harvested product a crop returns per unit of land in a growing season, such as tonnes of grain per hectare: agronomists separate the actual yield of a field from the yield potential, the yield a well adapted cultivar reaches when water and nutrients are ample and pests and disease are controlled. Evans and Fischer's Yield potential: its definition, measurement, and significance defined these terms and how they are measured across environments. The referent is agricultural output per area of land, counted in tonnes or bushels per hectare, and it has nothing to do with a rate of return on money, a threshold stress in a solid, or a reaction's product.[2]

Unit

Harvested output per unit land, in tonnes per hectare

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Weighed at harvest as mass of product per unit area, and compared against yield potential in field trials

The stress at which a material stops deforming elastically and begins to deform plastically, so that on unloading it no longer returns to its original shape: below the yield point the strain is recoverable, above it the deformation is permanent, and the yield strength is the stress that marks the transition. Callister and Rethwisch's Materials Science and Engineering: An Introduction defines the yield point and the offset method used to fix it on a stress-strain curve. The referent is a threshold stress in a loaded solid, measured in megapascals, and it is unrelated to a rate of return on money, a harvest per hectare, or a reaction's product.[3]

Unit

The stress at first plastic deformation, in megapascals

Recovery means

Below the yield point strain is elastic and recovers on unloading; above it the deformation is permanent

Measured by

Read from a tensile stress-strain curve, commonly at a 0.2 percent offset strain

The amount of product a chemical reaction actually delivers, expressed as a fraction or percentage of the theoretical maximum set by the limiting reagent and the reaction stoichiometry: an isolated yield is the mass of purified product recovered divided by the amount that complete conversion would give. Wernerova and Hudlicky's On the practical limits of determining isolated product yields and ratios of stereoisomers examined how accurately such yields can be measured and honestly reported. The referent is the efficiency of a reaction in making product, quoted as a percent of theoretical, and it is not a rate of return on money, a harvest per hectare, or the stress a metal bears.[4]

Unit

Product obtained as a percent of the theoretical maximum

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Mass or moles of purified product divided by the theoretical amount from the limiting reagent