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complementarity

[ kom-pluh-men-tar-i-tee ]

noun

  1. the quality or state of being complementary.


complementarity

/ ˌkɒmplɪmənˈtærɪtɪ /

noun

  1. a state or system that involves complementary components
  2. physics the principle that the complete description of a phenomenon in microphysics requires the use of two distinct theories that are complementary to each other See also duality


complementarity

/ kŏm′plə-mən-târĭ-tē /

  1. The concept that the underlying properties of entities (especially subatomic particles) may manifest themselves in contradictory forms at different times, depending on the conditions of observation; thus, any physical model of an entity exclusively in terms of one form or the other will be necessarily incomplete. For example, although a unified quantum mechanical understanding of such phenomena as light has been developed, light sometimes exhibits properties of waves and sometimes properties of particles (an example of wave-particle duality).


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Word History and Origins

Origin of complementarity1

First recorded in 1910–15; complementar(y) + -ity

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Example Sentences

Bohr’s master hypothesis, complementarity, seemed the only way forward.

Bohr called this viewpoint the principle of complementarity, and it successfully guided the pursuit of quantum mechanics during the following decades.

Bohr, by then regarded as the foremost of the world’s atomic physicists, pondered the question deeply and by 1927 arrived at a novel viewpoint he called complementarity.

Notice he said that complementarity is “a root” of family, not “the root.”

This is the core of “complementarity,” and it would not seem to require an international colloquium to explain.

Complementarity as conservative Catholics use the term, however, is more than biology.

Complementarity also means, of course, than men and women are fundamentally different.

They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.

They are constitutive of non-linear forms of complementarity.

Harmony, or rather "complementarity," is revealed only in the mass, in tendencies rather than in states.

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complementalcomplementarity principle