In fiber optic technology, a reference surface is that surface of an optical fiber that is used to contact the transverse-alignment elements of a component such as a connector or mechanical splice. For telecommunications-grade fibers, the reference surface is the outer surface of the cladding. For plastic-clad silica (PCS) fibers, which have a strippable polymer cladding (not to be confused with the polymer overcoat of an all-silica fiber), the reference surface may be the core.
Famous quotes containing the words reference and/or surface:
“I think, for the rest of my life, I shall refrain from looking up things. It is the most ravenous time-snatcher I know. You pull one book from the shelf, which carries a hint or a reference that sends you posthaste to another book, and that to successive others. It is incredible, the number of books you hopefully open and disappointedly close, only to take down another with the same result.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“All beauties contain, like all possible phenomena, something eternal and something transitory,—something absolute and something particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction skimmed from the common surface of different sorts of beauty. The particular element of each beauty comes from the emotions, and as we each have our own particular emotions, so we have our beauty.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)