quarter-wave plate

quarter-wave plate

[kwawr-ter-weyv]
noun Optics.
a crystal thin enough to cause a phase difference of 90° between the ordinary and extraordinary rays of polarized light, thereby converting circularly polarized light into plane polarized light.
Compare half-wave plate.


Origin:
1880–85

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Quarter-wave plate is always a great word to know.
So is interrobang. Does it mean:
a fool or simpleton; ninny.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
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