Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The branch of chemistry that is concerned with the rates of change in the concentration of reactants in a chemical reaction.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That branch of the science of dynamics which treats of forces causing or changing the motion in bodies or of the circumstances of actual motion: opposed to statics, and synonymous with dynamics in one of the senses of that word. See dynamics.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Physics) See dynamics.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun physics The branch of mechanics concerned purely with the motion of bodies. This is in contrast to dynamics, which also considers the reasons for motion, e.g. the forces acting on such bodies.
  • noun chemistry The branch of chemistry that is concerned with the rates of chemical reactions.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the branch of mechanics concerned with the forces that cause motions of bodies

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek κινητικός ("kinetic").

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Examples

  • After spending nearly two years doing research in kinetics of polymerizations, I realized that I wanted to have time to study various basic subjects in order to broaden my background and to explore other research areas.

    Mario Molina - Autobiography 1995

  • It will hence be abundantly clear again that a special problem of chemical kinetics is involved in the special case of these catalyses and that until a way has been found whereby a rate of chemical reaction can generally be calculated in advance as a function of the chemical nature of the reagents and perhaps of the special form of the reaction equation, the catalysis problem cannot satisfactorily be answered.

    Wilhelm Ostwald - Nobel Lecture 1966

  • Ordering genes in a flagella pathway by analysis of expression kinetics from living bacteria.

    The Edge of Evolution Michael J. Behe 2007

  • Ordering genes in a flagella pathway by analysis of expression kinetics from living bacteria.

    The Edge of Evolution Michael J. Behe 2007

  • Growth is controlled by attachment kinetics, which is in turn controlled by the still mysterious surface physics of the growing snow crystal.

    Mystery in The Air - The Panda's Thumb 2007

  • Ordering genes in a flagella pathway by analysis of expression kinetics from living bacteria.

    The Edge of Evolution Michael J. Behe 2007

  • Ordering genes in a flagella pathway by analysis of expression kinetics from living bacteria.

    The Edge of Evolution Michael J. Behe 2007

  • URL van Baalen CA, Guillon C, van Baalen M, Verschuren EJ, Boers PHM, et al. (2002) Impact of antigen expression kinetics on the effectiveness of HIV-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes.

    PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Boris Schmid et al. 2008

  • At last realizing the futility of superior "kinetics" — roughly speaking, putting a lot of metal in the air — American forces belatedly adopted a counterinsurgency strategy.

    The Surprising Lessons of Vietnam 2009

  • Islamist terrorism cannot be defeated by what the military calls "kinetics" alone.

    16: Gen. David Petraeus 2008

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