force per unit area
- noun
- Specialized
:
presión
- The engineer calculated the force per unit area to determine the pressure exerted on the bridge's support beams.
Examples
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Pressure (p). Normal force per unit area.
Academic text (1990) -
Stress, sigma, is defined as the internal force per unit area, and the relationship between stress and strain for a linearly elastic material is defined by this generalization of Hooke's Law:
Blog text (26) -
Then I'll assume that I have a force density force per unit area applied to the surface.
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Compressive load. Normal force per unit area in compression.
Academic text (1990) -
So the elastic constant, remember, is a force per unit area, a Newton's per meter squared.
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In physics, we often express force per unit area in units such as pascals to measure pressure.
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When pressing down on a surface, the force per unit area increases, resulting in higher pressure.
Synonyms
744
1.9
A push on a surface by air or water
1
3.5
How hard something pushes on each small part of a surface
How High
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is fully compositional: 'per' marks a ratio so 'force per unit area' straightforwardly means the amount of force divided by the area over which it acts (i.e. pressure). This construction is cross-linguistically common and, given knowledge of 'force', 'per', 'unit' and 'area', a B1 learner can reasonably infer the meaning even if the term is used in technical contexts.
Etymology
Force per unit area shows a simple picture: it tells how much force pushes on each small unit of a surface or area, for example pressing with your thumb on a small spot versus your whole hand. So it explains how concentrated a push is on each part of a surface, which is why we also call it 'pressure'.