Intensive And Extensive Properties
In the physical sciences, an intensive property (also called a bulk property, intensive quantity, or intensive variable), is a physical property of a system that does not depend on the system size or the amount of material in the system: it is scale invariant.
By contrast, an extensive property (also extensive quantity, extensive variable, or extensive parameter) is one that is additive for independent, noninteracting subsystems. It is directly proportional to the amount of material in the system.
For example, density is an intensive property of a substance because it does not depend on the amount of that substance; mass and volume, which are measures of the amount of the substance, are extensive properties. In general the ratio of two extensive properties (such as mass and volume) that scale in the same way is scale-invariant, and hence an intensive property (such as density).
There are also measured physical properties which are neither intensive nor extensive. See counterexamples below.
Read more about Intensive And Extensive Properties: Intensive Properties, Extensive Properties, Related Extensive and Intensive Properties, Counterexamples
Famous quotes containing the words intensive, extensive and/or properties:
“We have to transpose ourselves into this impressionability of mind, into this sensitivity to tears and spiritual repentance, into this susceptibility, before we can judge how colorful and intensive life was then.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“In an extensive reading of recent books by psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and inspirationalists, I have discovered that they all suffer from one or more of these expression-complexes: italicizing, capitalizing, exclamation-pointing, multiple-interrogating, and itemizing. These are all forms of what the psychos themselves would call, if they faced their condition frankly, Rhetorical-Over-Compensation.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“A drop of water has the properties of the sea, but cannot exhibit a storm. There is beauty of a concert, as well as of a flute; strength of a host, as well as of a hero.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)