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Mechanism may refer to: Mechanism (economics), a set of rules for a game designed to achieve a certain outcome. Mechanism design, the study of such mechanisms; Mechanism (engineering), rigid bodies connected by joints in order to accomplish a desired force and/or motion transmission; Mechanism (biology), explaining how a feature is created
A mechanism is usually a piece of a larger process, known as a mechanical system or machine. Sometimes an entire machine may be referred to as a mechanism; examples are the steering mechanism in a car, or the winding mechanism of a wristwatch. However, typically, a set of multiple mechanisms is called a machine.
Phenomena can be explained by describing their mechanisms. For example, natural selection is a mechanism of evolution; other mechanisms of evolution include genetic drift, mutation, and gene flow. In ecology, mechanisms such as predation and host-parasite interactions produce change in ecological systems. In practice, no description of a ...
This differs from a mechanism of action since it is a more specific term that focuses on the interaction between the drug itself and an enzyme or receptor and its particular form of interaction, whether through inhibition, activation, agonism, or antagonism. Furthermore, the term "mechanism of action" is the main term that is primarily used in ...
In chemistry, a reaction mechanism is the step by step sequence of elementary reactions by which overall chemical reaction occurs. [1] A chemical mechanism is a theoretical conjecture that tries to describe in detail what takes place at each stage of an overall chemical reaction. The detailed steps of a reaction are not observable in most cases.
An actuator can be just a mechanism that is directly driven by the motions or forces of other parts of the system. An example is the camshafts that drive the intake and exhaust valves in internal combustion engines, driven by the engine itself. Another example is the mechanism that strikes the hours in a traditional grandfather clock or cuckoo ...
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes (principally living things) are similar to complicated machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other. The doctrine of mechanism in philosophy comes in two different varieties.
A spatial mechanism is a mechanical system that has at least one body that moves in a way that its point trajectories are general space curves. The rotational axes of hinged joints that connect the bodies in the system form lines in space that do not intersect and have distinct common normals.