"principle of least action" meaning in English

See principle of least action in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

Head templates: {{en-prop}} principle of least action
  1. (physics) A variational principle that, when applied to the action of a mechanical system, yields the equations of motion for that system. It states that the trajectories (i.e. the solutions of the equations of motion) are stationary points of the system's action functional. Categories (topical): Physics Synonyms: stationary action principle
    Sense id: en-principle_of_least_action-en-name-lWwka7cN Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Topics: natural-sciences, physical-sciences, physics

Download JSON data for principle of least action meaning in English (1.3kB)

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        "(physics) A variational principle that, when applied to the action of a mechanical system, yields the equations of motion for that system. It states that the trajectories (i.e. the solutions of the equations of motion) are stationary points of the system's action functional."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.