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Glite Dictionary
microradian

microradian

1 9.6
A very small unit for measuring angles equal to one millionth of a radian
  • noun
  • /ˌmaɪkroʊˈreɪdiən/
  • Specialized
: microradián
  • To ensure precision, the measurement was taken with a resolution of 50 microradians.

Examples

  • The angle of the beam was adjusted by a few microradians to improve the accuracy of the measurement.

  • The engineers calculated the deviation to be less than one microradian for the laser alignment.

  • A recent experiment at NIST looked for the rotation of the spins of transversely polarized slow neutrons moving through liquid helium and found an upper bound of 1 microradian per meter.

    Academic text (2012)

Surface Forms

microradian singular
microradians plural

Morphology

microradian = radian (transparent) = micro + radian

The meaning is directly compositional: 'micro-' means very small or one millionth, and 'radian' is the base unit of angular measure.

Etymology

The word microradian breaks into micro- meaning 'small' and radian, which comes from radius, a word for a 'ray' from the center of a circle. So a microradian is just a 'very small' angle measured as a tiny part of a radian, which is why it equals one millionth of a radian.