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In physics, the cross section is a measure of the probability that a specific process will take place in a collision of two particles. For example, the Rutherford cross-section is a measure of probability that an alpha particle will be deflected by a given angle during an interaction with an atomic nucleus.
Image of a helium-4 nucleus; 4 H has a very small cross-section, less than 0.01 barn.. During Manhattan Project research on the atomic bomb during World War II, American physicists Marshall Holloway and Charles P. Baker were working at Purdue University on a project using a particle accelerator to measure the cross sections of certain nuclear reactions.
Nuclear cross sections are used in determining the nuclear reaction rate, and are governed by the reaction rate equation for a particular set of particles (usually viewed as a "beam and target" thought experiment where one particle or nucleus is the "target", which is typically at rest, and the other is treated as a "beam", which is a projectile with a given energy).
In a general physics context, sectional density is defined as: = [2] SD is the sectional density; M is the mass of the projectile; A is the cross-sectional area; The SI derived unit for sectional density is kilograms per square meter (kg/m 2). The general formula with units then becomes:
A is the cross-sectional area of the flow, P is the wetted perimeter of the cross-section. More intuitively, the hydraulic diameter can be understood as a function of the hydraulic radius R H, which is defined as the cross-sectional area of the channel divided by the wetted perimeter. Here, the wetted perimeter includes all surfaces acted upon ...
More generally, the term cross-section is used in physics to quantify the probability of a certain particle-particle interaction, e.g., scattering, electromagnetic absorption, etc. (Note that light in this context is described as consisting of particles, i.e., photons.) A typical absorption cross-section has units of cm 2 ⋅molecule −1.
The plastic section modulus is used to calculate a cross-section's capacity to resist bending after yielding has occurred across the entire section. It is used for determining the plastic, or full moment, strength and is larger than the elastic section modulus, reflecting the section's strength beyond the elastic range.
In 1820, the French engineer A. Duleau derived analytically that the torsion constant of a beam is identical to the second moment of area normal to the section J zz, which has an exact analytic equation, by assuming that a plane section before twisting remains planar after twisting, and a diameter remains a straight line.