SCINTILLATION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Scintillation

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Scintillation

noun

(physics) a flash of light that is produced in a phosphor when it absorbs a photon or ionizing particle.

A rapid change in brightness; a brief spark or flash. Synonyms: sparkling, twinkle.

A brilliant display of wit.

The quality of shining with a bright reflected light. Synonyms: glisten, glister, glitter, sparkle.

The twinkling of the stars caused when changes in the density of the earth's atmosphere produce uneven refraction of starlight.

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"Scintillation" Quotes from Famous Books

... the morning in charmed transition between the hot yellow streets and the cool grey interiors of the churches. The greyness everywhere was lighted up by the scintillation, on vault and entablature, of mosaics more or less archaic, but always brilliant and elaborate, and everywhere too by the same deep amaze of the fact that, while centuries had worn themselves away and empires risen and fallen, ...

— Italian Hours • Henry James

... plodding thoughts. The liveliness of the interruption, and its futility, often please; dulce est desipere in loco; and yet those who must endure the society of inveterate jokers know how intolerable this sort of scintillation can become. There is something inherently vulgar about it; perhaps because our train of thought cannot be very entertaining in itself when we are so glad to break in upon it with irrelevant nullities. The same undertone of disgust mingles with other ...

— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... yellowish sheen—like gold or burnished brass—but the scintillation of the sun's rays, as they glanced from its surface, hindered the spectators from making out its shape, or being able to say exactly ...

— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... had a scintillation in the night: listen and approve!' said Amanda, coming into the room where her comrades sat upon the floor, in the first stages of despair, at the impossibility of getting the accumulated rubbish of three months' travel into a couple ...

— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... final trembling flame remained in the lamp; I followed it with all my power of vision; I gasped for breath; I concentrated upon it all the power of my soul, as upon the last scintillation of light I was ever destined to see: and then I was to be lost forever in Cimmerian and ...

— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

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