quench
n.— «During a power test, the very last before collisions could start in the machine (to the annoyance of engineers), a fault led to a warming of the busbar. As superconductivity was lost, the temperature soared in a “quench.” The machine is designed to deal with quenches, said Dr David Sankey of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire. “In general the quench protection system should intervene, firing heaters in the rest of the magnet to avoid a local hot spot by sending the whole system normal and also dumping the current.”» —“Large Hadron Collider: How a little bang killed the Big Bang” by Roger Highfield Telegraph (United Kingdom) Sept. 24, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A listener adds to our collection of slang used by RV enthusiasts. When she’s not in her sticks and bricks–that is, her brick-and-mortar home in Michigan–she’s driving around in her motor home chasing 70, which in the RV community means “trying to...
In the 1920’s, Americans were warned of a new danger sweeping across the country. This menace that harmed people’s health, ruined minds, and threatened marriages. The culprit? The national obsession with a new form of entertainment: crossword...