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Differential   /dˌɪfərˈɛnʃəl/  /dˌɪfərˈɛntʃəl/   Listen
Differential

noun
1.
The result of mathematical differentiation; the instantaneous change of one quantity relative to another; df(x)/dx.  Synonyms: derivative, derived function, differential coefficient, first derivative.
2.
A quality that differentiates between similar things.
3.
A bevel gear that permits rotation of two shafts at different speeds; used on the rear axle of automobiles to allow wheels to rotate at different speeds on curves.  Synonym: differential gear.



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"Differential" Quotes from Famous Books



... must differ from Integralds/V by terms not depending on the path—that is, by terms involving only the beginning and end of it. In the case of the free aether V is constant; thus, if we neglect squares like (u/V)2, the condition is that udx vdy wdz be the exact differential of some function f. If this relation is true along all paths, the velocity of the aether must be of irrotational type, like that of frictionless fluid. Moreover, this is precisely the condition for the absence of interference ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... was no longer rated as a ship in ballast, but charged on the higher scale. Vessels were therefore forced to enter the port entirely devoid of cargo, or carrying sufficient to cover the expense of the increased harbor dues; almost an impossibility for foreign ships, on account of the differential customs rates, which acted almost as a complete prohibition. The result was that foreign vessels came there only in ballast, or when ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... Differential rates are recognized to be legitimate. Railroads are allowed to charge a less rate for wheat intended for export than that intended for local consumption. There has sometimes been a wide difference between the freight rate on wheat between ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... support, What we should have to show, therefore, in order to justify the inference of a deterioration due to this process, would be, not that it simply increased the number of the candidates for living, but that it gave to the feebler candidates a differential advantage; that they are now more fitted than they were before for ousting their superior neighbours from the chances of support. But I can see no reason for supposing such a consequence to be probable or even possible. The struggle ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... she would as soon have wrestled with the differential calculus. "Why, dear me," she stammered, "there's Alice; she never came out, and I don't see but what she's got along all right: good home, nice husband, and everything ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... blood-and-thunder young man affects to believe. For that the principles of right and justice have not yet been discovered in barbarous countries no more destroys their universality and legitimacy than the principles of the differential calculus are affected by the primitive practice of counting on the fingers. And while the ethical geniuses—the senior wranglers of the soul—are groping towards further truths and finer shades of feeling, deeper reaches of pity and subtler perceptions of justice, the rank and file ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... patterned. But this little generator of mine was non-random. It was the multiple recording of ten thousand different conversations, all meaningless, against a background of "white" noise. Try that one on your differential analyzers. ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS.—The diagnosis of hog-cholera in the field must depend on the clinical symptoms, post-mortem lesions and history of the outbreak. The history should be that of a ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... invalidate some theory he's gotten out of a book, and he'd have to do some thinking for himself. He wouldn't like that. But you have to admit he's been fighting the idea, intellectually and emotionally, right from the start. Why, they could sit down with pencils and slide rules and start working differential calculus ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... of mechanical parts is known as "the differential motion," and the difficulties in constructing its suitable gearing arose from the fact that the speed of the rove passing on to the various diameters must be maintained throughout, and must coincide with the delivery ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour

... originals (it is admitted that there are none, even of parts of the Legend such as those relating to Tristram and Iseult, which are not only avowedly Irish in place but Irish in tone), but for evidences of differential origin in comparison with classical and Teutonic literature. Unfortunately this last point is one not of technical "scholarship," but of general literary criticism, and it is certain that the Celticists have not ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... and the penultimate hundred yards were covered with fixed bayonets. In this manner we were prepared for any surprise. The enemy replied fitfully to our fire, and we could now see several khaki-clad figures with white hat-bands—the differential symbols—moving backwards and forwards amidst the trees. Presently they disappeared as we worked nearer to their lines. We were now rushing forward, lying down to fire, rising and running only to drop down again ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill

... stealth, and swiftness of foot, or even better weapons, would often lead to victory as well as mere physical strength. Moreover, this kind of more or less perpetual war goes on amongst savage peoples. It could lead, therefore, to no differential characters, but merely to the keeping up of a certain average standard of bodily and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... not half amalgamated, or coated with impurities, the whole concern superintended by a man who knows as little about the treatment of auriferous quartz by the amalgamating or any other processes as a dingo does of the differential calculus. Result: 3 dwt. to the ton in the retort, 30 dwt. in the tailings, and a payable claim declared ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... good fortune to divine the future course of piano development, as also did Schumann. Both took for the strategic center of the piano the principle of what has been called the "differential touch," or discrimination in touch, by means of which not only long passages of different kinds were discriminated from one another, as in the Thalbergian melodies and their surrounding arabesques, but the infinitely finer discriminations which ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... atmosphere to such an extent as to justify one in declaring that, since the discovery of the abscess there could be no doubt of diffuse peritonitis, is hard to understand. According to my training in the worth of differential diagnosis, I should look upon such a diagnosis as most excellent proof that the peritoneum was still intact, and, if the case were handled carefully, its intestine sacredness would remain free from the vandalizing influence of ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... from the days of innocence to those of confirmed guilt, there is no doubt that a keen eye might recognize, we will not say the first evil volition in the change it wrought upon the face, nor each successive stage in the downward process of the falling nature, but epochs and eras, with differential marks, as palpable perhaps as those which separate the aspects of the successive decades of life. And what is far pleasanter, when the character of a neglected and vitiated child is raised by wise culture, the converse change will be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... architectural engineering. The following are the particulars of the instruction in the architectural branch, which commences in the student's second year, with Greek, Roman, and Mediaeval architectural history, the Orders and their applications, drawing, sketching, and tracing, analytic geometry, differential calculus, physics, descriptive geometry, botany, and physical geography. In the third year the course is extended to the theory of decoration, color, form, and proportion; conventionalism, symbolism, the decorative arts, stained glass, fresco painting, tiles, terra-cotta, original designs, specifications, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... of our savages will, I think, bear me out when I assert that, whatever their objections to consanguineous marriages may be, they have no more idea of the advantages of this or that sort of breeding, or of any laws of Nature bearing on the question, than they have of differential calculus."[177] ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... experiment, began to bear rich fruits. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) not only discovered the law of gravitation: other discoveries by him in mechanics and optics were of great moment in the progress of those sciences. Fluxions, or the differential calculus, was discovered independently by both Newton and Leibnitz. Euler, a Swiss mathematician of the highest ability (1707-1783), contributed essentially to the advancement of mechanics. Napier invented logarithms, to shorten mathematical calculations. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... the dust free spaces in a few words, but we may say roughly that there is a molecular bombardment from all warm surfaces by means of which small suspended bodies get driven outward and kept away from the surface. It is a sort of differential bombardment of the gas molecules on the two faces of a dust particle somewhat analogous to the action on Mr. Crookes' radiometer vanes. Near cold surfaces the bombardment is very feeble, and if they are cold enough it appears to act toward the body, driving ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... theory of relativity as opposed to the ether of Lorentz consists in this, that the state of the former is at every place determined by connections with the matter and the state of the ether in neighbouring places, which are amenable to law in the form of differential equations; whereas the state of the Lorentzian ether in the absence of electromagnetic fields is conditioned by nothing outside itself, and is everywhere the same. The ether of the general theory ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein

... from piece to piece, with a variation which is immense in its range, but fairly continuous in its gradation. These are thus two aspects from which the phenomena of price and rent can be regarded; aspects which it is usual to call, (1) the scarcity aspect, (2) the differential aspect. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... the young lady showed her remarkable muscular strength and skill in managing herself in the accomplishment of feats which looked impossible at first sight. How often The Terror had thought to herself that she would gladly give up all her knowledge of Greek and the differential and integral calculus if she could only perform the least of those feats which were mere play to The Wonder! Miss Euthymia was not behind the rest in her attainments in classical or mathematical knowledge, and she was one of the very best students in the out-door branches,—botany, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... psychical differences between the sexes result from education, and are not inborn. Others, however, assume that the psychical characteristics by which the sexes are differentiated result solely from individual differences in education. Stern believes that in the case of one differential character, at least, he can prove that for many centuries there has been no difference between the sexes in the matter of education; this character is the capacity for drawing. Kerschensteiner has studied the development ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... inexpressibly to hide his new phase of trouble from the chattering throng of people who were curious to know about them. To know? As if they could know! They might better sit down to gossip over the secrets of the differential and the integral calculus. ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... of our present findings it is no longer enough to trace the appearing of the after-image solely to a differential fatigue in the retina. The fact is that as long as the eye is turned to the bright window-pane a more intensive blood-activity occurs in the portions of the eye's background met by the light than in ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... Conklin says, "Heredity may be defined as the appearance in offspring of characters whose differential causes are found in germ cells." Doctor Galton says "the two parents between them contribute on an average one-half of each inherited faculty, or each parent one-quarter. The grandparents contribute between them one-quarter, or each ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... what I thought concerning the tariff on aluminium hydrates, and how I stood about the opening of the Tento Pu Reservation of the Comanche Indians, and what were my ideas about the differential rate of hauls from the ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... neglect anybody. What pleases us, we admire and further: if a man in any profession, calling, or art, does things which are beyond us, we are as guiltless of neglecting him as the Caffres are of neglecting the differential calculus. Milton sells his "Paradise Lost" for ten pounds; there is no record of Shakespeare dining much with Queen Elizabeth. And it is Utopian to imagine that statues will be set up to right ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... was due to the variable plane rotation that heated all parts evenly, partly due to favorable flow of ocean currents. It had been noted that there was such an interweaving of cool and warm currents all over the globe that a relatively even temperature was maintained throughout. Some differential in spots, of course, enough to cause rainfall, but no real violence of storms, not as we classified hurricanes, typhoons, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... of some of the Jewish philanthropists and the fluent oratory of all; even while he realized the pettiness of their outlook and their reluctance to face facts. They were timorous, with a dread of decisive action and definitive speech, suggesting the differential, deprecatory corporeal wrigglings of the mediaeval few. They seemed to keep strict ward over the technical privileges of the different bodies they belonged to, and in their capacity of members of the Fiddle-de-dee ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... powder-flasks that hung high over the chimney-place; her first climbings and tumblings had been performed on the three steps that led to the kitchen; and she had addled her tender brains, as well as inflamed the natural greed which is so pardonable in infants, by what was to her a sort of differential calculus before she learned to discriminate nicely among the various jams kept by Mummy ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... incalculable. A man gets no nearer to God through a telescope than through a microscope, and no nearer through either than through the naked eye. Who cannot recognize the divine spirit in the hourly phenomena of nature and of his own mind will not be helped by the differential calculus, or any magnitude or ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... the mean low water level, the last foot being laid after water was pumped out. The tremie used to deposit the concrete was a tube 14 ins. in diameter at the bottom and 11 ins. at the neck, with a hopper at the top. It was made in removable sections, with outside flanges, and was suspended by a differential hoist from a truck moving laterally on a traveler, Fig. 34. The foot of the chute rested on the bottom until filled with concrete; then the chute was slowly raised and the concrete allowed to run but into a conical heap, more ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... consisting of two components which pass together to one pole. Examples of this are Syromaster, Phylloxera, Agalena. In a third class the sex-chromosome is accompanied by a fellow which is usually smaller, and the two separate at the differential division. The sizes of the two differ in different degrees, from cases as in many Coleoptera and Diptera in which the smaller chromosome is very minute, to those (Benacus, Mineus) in which it is almost as large as its fellow, and others (Nezara, Oncopeltus) in which the two are equal in size. ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... simple facts of the mental inventory the association experiments may lead to complex questions which slowly may disentangle the confused ideas, for instance, of a dementia praecox, and thus lead to subtle differential diagnosis. ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... (Diameter of drum estimated by examination of existing features.) In view of the four projections of the frame extending downward and just in front of the jackshaft position, it is likely that these supported the four jackshaft bearings. Being a bicycle manufacturer, Charles saw the need for a differential or balance gear. Accordingly, he purchased from the Pope Manufacturing Company a very light unit of the type formerly used on Columbia tricycles, and installed it somewhere on the jackshaft. A small sprocket on each end of the shaft carried a chain from the larger sprockets clamped ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile

... really the poet?" I asked. "There are two brothers, I know; and both have attained reputation in letters. The minister, I believe, has written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... violently, and colored perceptibly. If a text-book in differential calculus, upon the turning of a page, had thrown problems to the winds and begun gibbering purple poems of passion, she could not have been more completely taken aback. However, there was no mistaking the utter and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... therefore, with respect to their subjects, may be divided into the speculative, the practical, and such as are of a mixed nature. The subjects of these last are either general, comprehending both the others; or differential, distinguishing them. The general subject are either fundamental, or final: those of the fundamental kind are philosophy, human nature, the soul of man; of the final kind are love, beauty, good. ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor

... companions in misery, and then companions in mercy and blessedness, that is a new and stronger bond. Mutual love was the badge of reasonable creatures in innocency. But now Jesus Christ hath put a new stamp and signification on it; and made it the very differential character and token of his disciples, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." And therefore, when he is making his latter will, he gives this testamentary commandment to his children and heirs, "A new commandment give ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... it compensates for speed variations above the minimum speed. The manner of its action is to control the generation of current at the source in the armature, and it does so by combining certain electrical actions so as to obtain a differential effect, such that when small force of current only is required it alone is furnished, and when the maximum force is needed the same ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... popular a figure in the town. Across the way was the doctor who had certified the cause of death. The Professor, passing benevolently on, was glad he had now enough money to carry out his projects. He would be able to publish at once his great work on "The Secondary Variation of the Differential Calculus," that hitherto had languished in manuscript. It would make a sensation, he thought; there was more than one generally accepted theory he had challenged or contradicted in it. And he would put ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... not a stone exhibits twin colors, or dichroism, as it is called. (The term signifies two colors.) A well-trained eye can, however, by viewing a stone in several different positions, note the difference in shade of color caused by the differential absorption. ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade

... awakened emotion, met his glance at the window of a carriage. He dispatched his luggage to the Faucon, and sprang lightly in the carriage when the omnibuses had departed for the Lausanne plateau. Alan Hawke was carefully differential in his greeting and he meekly answered all the rapid queries ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... found separately in individuals differing in form. In the Polyporus[13] an acid has been found peculiar to it, as in many plants special compounds are found. In the agariceae the different kinds of vellum distinguish between species, and the color of the conidia is also of differential importance. In all cases of distinct characteristic habits of reproduction and form, one or more ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... in the long run, be beneficial to the interests of the unorganized and low paid workmen. There is a tendency among the employees to keep a close watch on the wages paid to other groups of their fellow workmen, and the differential between their wage and that of some other grade of employment is jealously guarded. Thus on the railways, wage increases usually advance in cycles, an advance to engineers being followed at a close interval by an equivalent advance to firemen, ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... things had happened a dozen times at least in her limited experience. But when a mere emotion assumed the importance and the reality of a solid body, she was seized by the indignant astonishment with which a mathematician might regard the differential calculus if it ceased suddenly to behave as he expected it to do. She had always controlled her own feeling with severity, and it was beyond the power of her imagination to conceive a possible excuse—unless it was a disordered liver—for another person's inability ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... of the lesions, in impetigo contagiosa; the tendency to appear in groups, the smaller lesions, the intense itchiness, course, multiform characters of the eruption and the disposition to change of type in dermatitis herpetiformis,—will serve as differential points. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... real roots of cubic equations, and of equations of higher order (with, however, increasing labor). Further, the calculation of the cost of cutting and embanking for railways by the method of Bruckner & Culmann, the solution of a very considerable number of rather complex differential equations, various problems in the storage of water, and a great variety of statistical questions may all be completely dealt with, or very much simplified ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... Irishman, has been called the "father of modern chemistry," so many were his researches in that field of knowledge. Far greater than any of these men was Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered the law of gravitation and the differential calculus. During the Civil War a group of students interested in the natural world began to hold meetings in London and Oxford, and shortly after the Restoration they obtained a charter under the name of the Royal Society. It still ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... strenuous work continued until the cave was large enough to hold all the mutton, and a considerable quantity of seal and penguin. Close to this larder Simpson and Wright were busy in excavating for the differential magnetic hut. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley



Words linked to "Differential" :   derivative, reckoning, differentiation, mathematics, maths, figuring, bevel gear, calculation, differential psychology, math, pinion and ring gear, partial, curvature, computation, partial derivative, pinion and crown wheel, difference



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