Online Encyclopedia
Grain
The word grain has a great many meanings, most being descriptive of a small piece or particle. For examples:
- a grain of sand or salt; see grain size for granule
- a grain is a type of simple dry fruit technically called a caryopsis. In agriculture, such crops are often called cereals (grain can also refer to other types of seeds, though this is technically less correct).
- in materials science (especially metallurgy), a grain is a single crystal inside solid-state matter, also referred to as crystallite
- a very small unit of mass called a grain
- the fineness of resolution for photographic film (i.e., graininess of a picture)
- wood-grain, and as a description of personality or style from wood-working (i.e. going against the grain)
- also granule, from the diminutive of Latin granum, meaning "grain".
- Granules are short-lived concection cell structures on the visible surface of the Sun.
- There is also an Isle of Grain in Kent, England, on which lies the village of Grain.
- One of the stocks in the game Stock Ticker
- in golf, the direction in which individual blades of grass, usually in reference to a putting green
However, it also means the piece of propellant of a solid rocket, more or less a hollow cylinder, sometimes very large.
Last updated: 02-02-2005 07:26:23
Last updated: 03-18-2005 11:16:12