| Wafer: Round disc of pure silicon that is used in manufacturing integrated circuits.
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| WAIS -- (Wide Area Information Servers) A commercial software package that allows the indexing of huge quantities of information, and then making those indices searchable across networks such as the Internet. A prominent feature of WAIS is that the search results are ranked (scored) accordingto how relevant the hits are, and that subsequent searches can find more stuff like that last batch and thus refine the search process.
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| Waloon Process: An early two-hearth process for making wrought iron by refining cast iron. The conversion proper was carried out in a hearth furnace known as a finery; re-heating for forging was carried out in a second hearth furnace known as a chafery.
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| Warmup Drift: The change in output voltage of a power source from turn on until it reaches thermal equilibrium at specified operating conditions.
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| Warmup Effect: Magnitude of change of stabilized output quantities during warmup time.
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| Warmup Time: The time required after a power supply is initially turned on before it operates according to specified performance limits.
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| Warmup: Process of approaching thermal equilibrium after turn on.
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| Watt Density: The watts emanating from each square inch of heated surface area of a heater. Expressed in units of watts per square inch. |
| Waveguide: Transmission line consisting of a hollow conductor used to guide microwaves from one end to the other: |
| Wavelet: Wavelets are mathematical functions that cut up data into different frequency components, and then study each component with a resolution matched to its scale. |
| Weber (Wb): The SI unit of magnetic flux equal to 108 maxwells. The amount of flux that will induce 1 volt/turn of wire as the flux is reduced at a constant rate to zero over a period of one second.
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| Wet Bulb Temperature: Is used in psychrometry and is the temperature recorded by a thermometer whose bulb has been covered with a wetted wick and whirled on a sling psychrometer. Taken with the dry bulb, it permits determination of relative humidity of the atmosphere |
| Wet/Dry Differential: A differential pressure transducer or transmitter that uses a metal diaphragm at the wet port where fluids can be applied, and no diaphragm at the dry port. The dry port exposes the internal circuitry to the medium, so only clean dry gas can be applied to this port. |
| Wet/Wet Differential: A differential pressure transducer or transmitter that has a metal diaphragm in each pressure port to permit fluid into both parts. |
| Wetted Parts: The diaphragm and pressure port material that comes in direct contact with the medium (gas, liquid). |
| Wheatstone Bridge: A network of four resistances, an emf source, and a galvanometer connected such that when the four resistances are matched, the galvanometer will show a zero deflection or "null" reading. |
| Whiff Operating system running on Digital Signal Processors. |
| White Noise: Broadband pseudo-random signal with uniform power in each frequency band: |
| WHOIS: An Internet program which allows users to query a database of people and other Internet entities. |
| Wide Area Network (WAN): A group of computer networks connected together over long distances. The Internet is a WAN. |
| Widmanstatten Structure: A structure characterized by a geometric pattern resulting from the formation of a new phase on certain crystallographic planes in the parent phase. The orientation of the lattice in the new phase is related cystallographically to the orientation of the lattice in the parent phase. |
| Window: In computer graphics, a defined area in a system not bounded by any limits; unlimited "space" in graphics. |
| Windpower Curve: A graph representing the relationship between the power available from the wind and the wind speed. The power from the wind increases proportionally with the cube of the wind speed.
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| Wingwall: A building structural element that is built onto a building`s exterior along the inner edges of all the windows, and extending from the ground to the eaves. Wingwalls help ventilate rooms that have only one exterior wall which leads to poor cross ventilation. Wingwalls cause fluctuations in the natural wind direction to create moderate pressure differences across the windows. They are only effective on the windward side of the building.
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| Wire Style Number: The categorization by regulatory and testing agencies of appliance wiring material with respect to insulation type, thickness, number of conductors and use.
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| Withstand Voltage: The maximum voltage that can be applied between separate circuits without causing failure.
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| Word: Number of bits treated as a single unit by the CPU. In an 8-bit machine, the word length is 8 bits; in a sixteen bit machine, it is 16 bits. |
| Work: The amount of energy transferred to or from a body or system as a result of forces acting upon the body, causing displacement of the body or parts of it. More specifically the work done by a particular force is the product of the displacement of the body and the component of the force in the direction of the displacement. A force acting perpendicular to the bodys displacement does no work on the body. A force acting upon a body which undergoes no displacement does no work on that body |
| Working Standard: A standard of unit measurement calibrated from either a primary or secondary standard which is used to calibrate other devices or make comparison measurements. |
| Working Voltage: The specified operating voltage, or range of voltages, of a component, device or cell.
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| WWW: World Wide Web. |
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