atom: The basic unit of a chemical element. Atoms are made up of a dense nucleus that contains positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons. The nucleus is orbited by a cloud of negatively charged electrons.
attention: The phenomenon of focusing mental resources on a specific object or event.
behavior: The way something, often a person or other organism, acts towards others, or conducts itself.
centrifugal force: A force that seems to pull a rotating body — or something on a rotating object (such as a rider of an amusement park ride) — away from the center of rotation.
engineer: A person who uses science and math to solve problems. As a verb, to engineer means to design a device, material or process that will solve some problem or unmet need.
fuel: Any material that will release energy during a controlled chemical or nuclear reaction. Fossil fuels (coal, natural gas and petroleum) are a common type that liberate their energy through chemical reactions that take place when heated (usually to the point of burning).
fusion: (v. to fuse) The merging of two things to form a new combined entity.
ignite: (in physics) To start a self-sustaining nuclear-fusion reaction, one that keeps releasing energy until engineers choose to shut the process down.
laser: A device that generates an intense beam of coherent light of a single color. Lasers are used in drilling and cutting, alignment and guidance, in data storage and in surgery.
mass: A number that shows how much an object resists speeding up and slowing down — basically a measure of how much matter that object is made from.
mechanical engineer: Someone trained in a research field that uses physics to study motion and the properties of materials to design, build and/or test devices.
metal: Something that conducts electricity well, tends to be shiny (reflective) and is malleable (meaning it can be reshaped with heat and not too much force or pressure).
molten: A word describing something that is melted, such as the liquid rock that makes up lava.
nuclear fusion: The process of forcing together the nuclei of atoms. This fusion is the phenomenon that powers the sun and other stars, producing heat and forging the creation of new, larger elements.
plastic: Any of a series of materials that are easily deformable; or synthetic materials that have been made from polymers (long strings of some building-block molecule) that tend to be lightweight, inexpensive and resistant to degradation. (adj.) A material that is able to adapt by changing shape or possibly even changing its function.
pressure: Force applied uniformly over a surface, measured as force per unit of area.
solid: Firm and stable in shape; not liquid or gaseous.
transition: The boundary where one thing (paragraphs, ecosystems, life stage, state of matter) changes or converts into another. Some transitions are sharp or abrupt. Others slowly or gradually morph from one condition or environment to another. (in gender studies) A term used to describe the process of changing one’s outward gender in terms of name, behavior and/or expression to match one’s inner sense of their gender.