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Surface acoustic wave
A surface acoustic wave (SAW) is an elastic wave confined to a solid's surface, generated electrically in piezoelectric materials and widely used in RF filters and sensors.
Surface acoustic wave filter
A surface acoustic wave (SAW) filter is a small, low-cost radio-frequency filter that converts electrical signals into acoustic waves on a piezoelectric substrate, used in mobile phones and radar.
Surface acoustic wave sensor
A surface acoustic wave sensor is a transducer that measures physical, chemical, or biological quantities by detecting changes in an acoustic wave on a piezoelectric material.
Surface antigen domain
Surface antigen domain: conserved protein domains (Pfam Surface_Ag_2, Surface_antigen/SAG, Bac_surface_Ag) found on pathogen surface antigens, plus the immunological concept of cell-surface antigens used in vaccine and antibody discovery.
Surface antigen p22
Surface antigen p22 (P22, SAG2, SAG2A) is a 22-kDa GPI-anchored surface protein of Toxoplasma gondii tachyzoites, encoded by the single-copy SAG2 locus used in PCR-RFLP typing, serodiagnosis, and vaccine studies.
Surface area
Surface area is the measure of the total area of the surface of a three-dimensional object, expressed in squared units; a sphere's is 4πr², proved by Archimedes.
Surface Book
Surface Book is Microsoft's line of detachable 2-in-1 laptops, announced in 2015, in which the screen unlatches from a keyboard base that adds a GPU and battery.
Surface brightness fluctuation distance method
The surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) method, introduced by Tonry and Schneider in 1988, measures galaxy distances from the graininess of unresolved stellar images and helps determine the Hubble constant.
Surface charge
Surface charge is the net electric charge per unit area on a solid or colloidal surface in contact with another phase, balanced by counter charge in solution.
Surface charge density
Surface charge density, written σ = Q/A, is the electric charge per unit area on a surface, measured in coulombs per square meter; on conductors it governs the external electric field.
Surface chemistry of neural implants
Surface chemistry of neural implants: coatings (Pt, IrOx, PEDOT, graphene, hydrogels, drug-releasing layers) on neural electrodes that lower impedance, raise charge capacity, and suppress glial scar formation at the electrode–tissue interface.
Surface code
The surface code is a topological quantum error-correcting code, introduced by Alexei Kitaev, that encodes logical qubits in a square lattice of physical qubits with a threshold near 1%.
Surface condenser
A surface condenser is a water-cooled shell-and-tube heat exchanger that condenses a steam turbine's exhaust steam, creating vacuum that sets turbine power output; the standard type in power stations.
Surface conductivity (geophysics)
Surface conductivity in geophysics is an extra electrical conductivity of porous rock or soil that flows along charged mineral surfaces rather than through pore water, and ignoring it biases resistivity interpretation in clays and shaly sands.
Surface diffusion
Surface diffusion is the thermally activated movement of atoms, molecules, and clusters along a material's surface, a process central to crystal growth, sintering, adsorption, and surface reactions.
Surface energy
Surface energy, also called surface free energy, is the reversible work per unit area required to create a new surface, equal to surface tension for liquids.
Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land
The Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) is a satellite image-processing method, formulated in 1998, that estimates actual evapotranspiration for every pixel of a satellite image and has been applied in more than 25 countries.
Surface exposure dating
Surface exposure dating measures cosmogenic nuclides in rock surfaces to estimate how long they have been exposed to cosmic rays, over ages from decades to millions of years.
Surface features of Ariel
The surface features of Ariel are the named canyons, grooves, and craters on Uranus's moon Ariel, named by the IAU after light spirits from world folklore and imaged only by Voyager 2 in 1986.
Surface features of Phoebe
The surface features of Phoebe are 25 officially named features on Saturn's largest irregular moon: 24 craters named for the Argonauts and Leto Regio, mapped by Cassini's 2004 flyby.
Surface features of Rhea
The surface features of Rhea, Saturn's second-largest moon, are dominated by ancient impact craters at or near saturation, with named basins like Tirawa and Powehiwehi and five trough systems called chasmata.
Surface features of Tethys
The surface features of Tethys, a 1,066-km icy moon of Saturn, are dominated by the 445-km Odysseus impact basin and the great rift Ithaca Chasma.
Surface features of Titania
The surface features of Titania are 17 named craters, canyons, and scarps on Uranus's largest moon, named after Shakespeare and imaged by Voyager 2 in 1986.
Surface features of Triton
The surface features of Triton, Neptune's largest moon, include cantaloupe terrain, five paterae such as Leviathan, and dark maculae named for water deities, mapped by Voyager 2's 1989 flyby.
Surface finish
Surface finish, also called surface texture or topography, is the deviation of a surface from its ideal form, described by roughness, waviness, and lay and affecting fatigue, friction, and wear.
Surface Go 4
The Surface Go 4 is a 10.5-inch 2-in-1 Windows tablet announced by Microsoft in September 2023, the final Surface Go, sold only to businesses and reportedly discontinued in 2026.
Surface gravity
Surface gravity (κ) is a quantity defined on the horizon of a stationary black hole that plays the role of temperature in black hole thermodynamics.
Surface grinding
Surface grinding is a machining process using a rotating abrasive wheel to produce flat, smooth surfaces on workpieces, chiefly as a finishing operation after other machining.
Surface group
A surface group is a group isomorphic to the fundamental group of a closed surface, a connected compact surface without boundary, with explicit one-relator presentations for orientable and non-orientable cases.
Surface hopping
Surface hopping is a mixed quantum-classical method for nonadiabatic molecular dynamics in which classical trajectories stochastically switch between electronic states, widely used to simulate photochemical reactions.