Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Fibre |
FibreNoun1. A slender and greatly elongated solid substance. 2. The inherent complex of attributes that determine a persons moral and ethical actions and reactions: "education has for its object the formation of character"- Herbert Spencer. 3. A leatherlike material made by compressing layers of paper or cloth. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "fibre" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1120. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Biology & Biotechnology | The broken straw is then subjected to the process known as scutching, which separates the unwanted woody matter from the --. Source: European Union. (references) |
Food & Agriculture | A general term of convenience for any long, narrow cell of wood or bast, other than vessel elements and parenchyma. Source: European Union. (references) |
| The material to be defined in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 10(cf. RF)and measured by the method of analysis to be determined in accordance with that procedure. Source: European Union. (references) | |
General | A particle, no distinction being made with respect to length-to-width ratios. Source: European Union. (references) |
Metallurgy | Orientation of the segregates within the metal. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Fiber (American English) or fibre (British English) is elongated stringy natural or manufactured material. In the case of natural fibers, they often tie together the parts of natural creatures. Natural vegetable fibers, generally consist of cellulose, examples include cotton, linen, and hemp. Cellulose fibers are used in the manufacture of paper and cloth. Natural animal fibers include spider silk, sinew, hair, and wool. There are naturally occurring mineral fibers such as asbestos.Synthetic fibers include rayon, nylon, fiberglass, and graphite fiber. Synthetic fibers are the result of an extensive search by scientists to increase and improve upon the supply of naturally occurring animal and plant fiber.
See also: textile
References
Fiber can also refer to:
- The Internet-Encyclopedia article, "Fiber" http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Fiber July 23, 2003
- the fiber of a fiber bundle in mathematics
- fiber optic in engineering
- dietary fiber in nutrition
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Fiber."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
An optical fiber (or fibre in British English) is a transparent thin fiber for transmitting light. Fiber optics is the branch of science and engineering concerned with optical fibers.
The optical fiber can be used as a medium for telecommunication and networking because it is flexible and can be bundled as cables. Although fibers can be made out of either plastic or glass, the fibers used in long-distance telecommunications applications are always glass, because of the lower optical absorption of glass. The light transmitted through the fiber is confined due to total internal reflection within the material. This is an important property that eliminates signal crosstalk between fibers within the cable and allows the routing of the cable with twists and turns. In telecommunications applications, the light used is typically infrared light, at wavelengths near to the minimum absorption wavelength of the fiber in use.
Fibers are generally used in pairs, with one fiber of the pair carrying a signal in each direction.
Fibers, like waveguides, can have various transmission modes. The fibers used for long-distance communication are known as single mode fibers, as they have only one strong propagation mode. This results in superior performance compared to other, multi-mode fibers, where light transmitted in the different modes arrives at different times, resulting in dispersion of the transmitted signal.
Because of the remarkably low loss and excellent linearity and dispersion behavior of single-mode optical fiber, data rates of up to 40 Gbit/s are possible in real-world use on a single wavelength. Wavelength division multiplexing can then be used to allow many wavelengths to be used at once on a single fiber, allowing a single fiber to bear an aggregate bandwidth measured in terabits per second.
Modern fiber cables can contain up to a thousand fibers in a single cable, so the performance of optical networks easily accommodate even today's demands for bandwidth on a point-to-point basis. However, unused point-to-point potential bandwidth does not translate to operating profits, and it is estimated that no more than 1% of the optical fibre buried in recent years is actually 'lit'.
Recent advances in fiber technology have reduced losses so far that no amplification of the optical signal is needed over distances of hundreds of kilometers. This has greatly reduced the cost of optical networking, particularly over undersea spans where the cost reliability of amplifiers is one of the key factors determining the performance of the whole cable system.
Longer-range systems still have to use optical amplifiers.
Advantages of optical fibres over wires
- low loss, so repeater-less transmission over long distances is possible
- large data-carrying capacity (thousands of times greater)
- immunity to electromagnetic interference, including nuclear electromagnetic pulses (but can be damaged by alpha and beta radiation)
- high electrical resistance, so safe to use near high-voltage equipment or between areas with different earth potentials
- light weight
- signals contain very little power
Disdvantages of optical fibres compared to wires
- higher cost
- need for more expensive optical transmitters and receivers
- more difficult and expensive to splice than wires
- cannot carry electrical power to operate terminal devices (Note: current telecommunication trends greatly reduce this concern: availability of cell phones and wireless PDAs; the routine inclusion of back-up batteries in communication devices; lack of real interest in hybrid metal-fiber cables; increased use of fiber-based intermediate systems)
History
In 1966, Charles Kao, born in China, in his PhD thesis estimates that glass fibers need to have an optic signal attenuation of less than 20 dB per kilometer to be useful for long distance communication. The first useful optical fiber was invented in 1970 by researchers Maurer, Keck, Schultz, and Zimar working for American glass maker Corning Glass Works (http://www.corning.com/). They manufactured a fiber with 17 dB optic attenuation per kilometer by doping silica glass with titanium.
The first transatlantic telephone cable to use optical fiber was TAT-8, which went into operation in 1988.
Other uses of optical fibers
- Fibers can be used as light guides in medical and other applications where bright light need to be brought to bear on a target without a clear line-of-sight path.
- In some high-tech buildings, optical fibers are used to route sunlight from the roof to other parts of the building.
Optical Fiber in Waveguides
Waveguides are silicon chips with extremely thin and extremely flexed optical fibers on them. Companies like JDSUniphase (http://www.JDSU.com) manufacture these waveguides for use in computers and in spliting boxes. A waveguide seperates the different colors of light, and allows it to have the same signal sent in many directions to put it simply (see waveguides)
See also:
- Glossary of fiber optic terms
- SDH
- Submarine communications cables
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Optical fiber."
Synonyms: FibreSynonyms: character (n), fiber (n), vulcanized fiber (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Fibre |
| English words defined with "fibre": Agave cantala ♦ cantala ♦ maguey ♦ Tampico fiber. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "fibre": bast fibre ♦ carbonized rag fibre ♦ dim fibre ♦ extrinsic fibre loss ♦ fibre cable, Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop, fibre cladding, fibre distributed data interface, fibre optics cladding, fibre recovery, fibre rope handling gear ♦ man-made fibre ♦ optical fibre cable, optical fibre cladding ♦ plantain fibre, plastic optical fibre. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "fibre": fibril. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Fibre" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Finnish (filament, strand), French (bulk, fiber, fibre, grain, staple, vein), Italian (roughage). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Honey she's wearing a blouse made of synthetic fibre. It's a four hour drive and a boat ride home (Will & Grace; writing credit: Evan Weinstein) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Fibre en civiltà (1957) Moral Fibre (1921) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
References |
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Books | |||
Periodicals |
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Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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High Tech |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Plant of Champion Fibre Company (south side) Canton, N.C. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Overlooking plant of Champion Fibre Company, Canton, N.C. (from south side). Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
 |
| "Elephant Graveyard 2" by Thomas Hamlyn-Harris Commentary: "In an unfinished and abandoned themepark in rural china the local farmers reclaimed the land. Vegetables were grown in the cement and fibreglass replicas of Europes famous holiday destinations. life sized fibre glass elephants were pushed over and made i" |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| Title | Author | Quote |
Life, the Universe and Everything | Douglas Adams | My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, he muttered to himself, "and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes. |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | He felt the laceration of the unknown fibre. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Business | During 1996-2000, as the chemical fibre, coating and electronics industries developped, the demand for rutile titanium dioxide and high-grade titanium dioxide increased rapidly. (references) | |
International/Global Services In the sector of international communications, the latest SDH transmission technology has been used to construct five international fibre optic-cables connecting the Estonian telecommunications network with Finland, Sweden, Russia and Latvia. (references) | ||
Economic History | Pakistan | Main items imported were man-made fibre and textile machinery. (references) |
Bahrain | In 1998 it officially opened the USD 200 million Fibre Optic Gulf (FOG), to link Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the U.A.E. via an undersea cable. (references) | |
Pakistan | With the introduction of optic fibre link, the PTCL has started to provide ISDN lines to its subscribers, thus enabling them to use these lines for data transmission as well as audio-visual communications. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Fibre" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 99.09% of the time. "Fibre" is used about 1,532 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 99.09% | 1,518 | 5,379 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.91% | 14 | 93,893 |
| Total | 100.00% | 1,532 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Country | Name | Country | Name |
| China | Shanghai Lian Hua Fibre Corporation | Malaysia | Poly Glass Fibre (M) Berhad |
| Pakistan | Dewan Salman Fibre Limited | Taiwan | Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp. |
| USA | Advanced Fibre Communications, Inc. | ||
| (more examples...) |
Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.
1. Fibre, MI |
Expressions using "fibre": abaca fibre ♦ acetate fibre ♦ afferent fibre ♦ alfa fibre ♦ animal fibre ♦ bast fibre ♦ carbon fibre ♦ carbonized rag fibre ♦ cedar fibre ♦ chemical fibre ♦ coconut fibre ♦ coir fibre ♦ dark fibre ♦ diacetate fibre ♦ dim fibre ♦ efferent fibre ♦ equivalent fibre stress at maximum load ♦ ester fibre ♦ extrinsic fibre loss ♦ fibre board ♦ fibre bundle ♦ fibre cable ♦ fibre Channel ♦ fibre cladding ♦ fibre distributed data interface ♦ fibre glass ♦ fibre layer of Henle ♦ fibre loss ♦ fibre mat ♦ fibre optic ♦ fibre optic cable ♦ fibre optic cladding ♦ fibre optic dispersion ♦ fibre optics ♦ fibre optics cladding ♦ fibre plant ♦ fibre recovery ♦ fibre rope handling gear ♦ glass fibre ♦ gomuti fibre ♦ in the fibre direction ♦ interlocked fibre ♦ manila hemp fibre ♦ Mexican fibre ♦ moral fibre ♦ multimode optical fibre ♦ muscle fibre ♦ natural fibre ♦ nerve fibre ♦ neutral fibre ♦ optical fibre ♦ optical fibre cable ♦ optical fibre cladding ♦ optical fibre coupler ♦ plant fibre ♦ plantain fibre ♦ plastic optical fibre ♦ polyester fibre ♦ polyethylene fibre ♦ polythene fibre ♦ reinforced with glass fibre ♦ short fibre ♦ spandex fibre ♦ staple fibre ♦ synthetic fibre ♦ tampico fibre ♦ thin fibre ♦ vulcanised fibre ♦ Yercum fibre. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "fibre": fibre-based, fibre-board, fibre-bonded, fibre-bundle, fibre-cell, fibre-composite, fibre-consumers, fibre-counted, fibre-depleted, Fibre-faced, fibre-fill, fibre-filled, Fibre-filler, fibre-forming, fibre-free, fibre-full, fibre-glass, fibre-high, fibre-optic, fibre-optic transmission system, fibre-optical, fibre-optics, fibre-pile, fibre-piles, fibre-purkinje, fibre-reinforced, fibre-rich, fibre-sinews, fibre-stripped, fibre-tip, fibre-tipped, fibre-tract. | |
Ending with "fibre": bulb-fibre, carbon-fibre, glass-fibre, high-fibre, low-fibre, multi-fibre, optical-fibre. | |
Containing "fibre": carbon-fibre-bladed, glass-fibre plastic, glass-fibre-reinforced. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "fibre"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | fije (cord, fiber, glimmering, leaf, none, sheet of paper, string, thread, wire, wisp, yarn), fibër (fiber), karakter (character, ethos, fiber, format, grain, kind, make, mettle, Mold, mould, nature, persona, size, sort, temper). (various references) | |
Arabic | مادة مصنوعة من ألياف (fiber), ليف نباتي, ليف (bast, fiber, fibrilla, floss), خيط (cord, fiber, filament, line, string, thread, twist, yarn). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | сила (definition, drive, dynamism, effect, energy, feck, fiber, flush, force, forcefulness, forte, goodness, hardness, impetus, intension, intensity, inwardness, kick, lustiness, medium, might, mightiness, muscle, muscularity, nerve, pith, potency, power, prowess, punch, sinews, snap, stamina, strength, stringency, tenacity, thews, tuck, vehemence, verve, vigor, vigour, vim, vinegar, violence, virility, virtue, virulence, vis, volume, zap, zip), характер (character, complexion, constitution, disposition, fiber, grit, grittiness, individuality, kidney, make, make up, mentality, metal, mettle, mould, nature, pattern, spirit, stuff, temper, turn), фибра (fiber), тъкан съставена от влакна (fiber), коренче (fiber, radicle, rootlet), клетъчно влакно (fiber), нерв (fiber, nerve), нишка (clew, clue, fiber, ply, strand, thread, train), мускулно влакно (fiber), жичка (fiber, ply, strand), жилка (fiber, film, nerve, spice, strain, streak, stria, thread, tinge, vein), лико (bass, bast, fiber, liber, raffia, raphia), природа (composition, country, fiber, grain, kind, make up, nature, scenery, temper), издържливост (fiber). (various references) | |
Chinese | 纤维质 (fiber, roughage). (various references) | |
Czech | vlákno (fiber, filament, grain, staple, strand, string, thread). (various references) | |
Danish | fibre (fiber), fiberstruktur, fiber (brin, fiber), sejringsretning, kostfiber. (various references) | |
Dutch | vezel (fiber). (various references) | |
Esperanto | fibro (fiber). (various references) | |
Faeroese | trevja, tægr. (various references) | |
Farsi | فیبر (Fiber-Fibre), نخ (Cotton, Fiber-Fibre, String), تار (Caliginous, Chord, Dim, Fiber-Fibre, Filament, Nebulous, Obscure), بافت (Fiber-Fibre, Texture, Tissue, Weave). (various references) | |
Finnish | syy (account, cause, fault, filament, ground, occasion, reason), syiden kulku, säie (fibril, strand, thread), ravintokuitu, kuitu (fibre. fiber). (various references) | |
French | fibre (fiber). (various references) | |
German | faser (fiber, fiberUS, grain, thread). (various references) | |
Greek | ίνα (fiber). (various references) | |
Hebrew | ליף (fiber), חוט (cord, fiber, line, staple, strand, string, thread, wire), ציב, סיבן, סיב (fiber, floss, staple, string). (various references) | |
Hungarian | rost (broiler, fiber, filament, string). (various references) | |
Italian | fibra (courage, fiber, filament, texture). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 繊維 (fiber, textile), 繊維 (fiber, textile), フーゼル油 (far, Far East, farce, farm, farm stay, fast, fast back, fast break, fast food, fiber, fiberboard, fiberglass, fiberscope, fight, fight money, fighter, fighting spirit, file, filename, filesystem, filing system, final, final set, finance, fire, fire alarm, fire insurance, fire storm, fireman, fireproof, firewall, firm, firm banking, firmware, first, first impression, first lady, first run, first-class, first-name, five-star, food, food processor, Fourier, fur, fur coat, furniture, fusel oil, hood, hoop, pharmacy, purse, whodunit). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ファイバー (fiber), ファイバ (fiber), せんい (fiber, fighting spirit, ship's doctor, textile, transition, usurpation of a throne). (various references) | |
Korean | 섬유 (fiber). (various references) | |
Manx | frauaig (pedicle). (various references) | |
Norwegian | fiber, støpning. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ibrefay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | fibra (fiber, grain, ply, thread), filamento (barb, carbon, fiber, filament, thread). (various references) | |
Romanian | fire (character, disposition, feather, fiber, grain, mettle, nature, sort, spirit, temper), filament (fiber, filament, streamer, thread), fibrã (fiber, grain, lint, staple, string, thread), naturã (character, color, colour, disposition, fiber, kidney, kind, life, mother nature, nature, spirit). (various references) | |
Russian | фибра (fiber), волокно волоконный (fiber), волокно (fiber, filament, lint, staple, thread). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | vlakno (fiber, pile). (various references) | |
Spanish | fibra (fiber, filament, grain, string, thread, vein). (various references) | |
Swedish | fiber (fiber, filament, grain, string, thread), textur (fiber). (various references) | |
Thai | เส้นใย (fiber, fila, filament), ลักษณะสำคัญ (fiber). (various references) | |
Turkish | fiber (fiber), yapı (architecture, being, blood, build, building, chemistry, composition, conformation, constitution, construction, contexture, corpus, disposition, edifice, erection, fabric, fiber, form, frame, framework, habit, habit of body, make, make up, making, Mold, mould, nature, organism, presence, quality, set up, strain, structural, structure, system, texture, works), tel (chord, fiber, string, thread, wire, wiry), lif (fiber, fibroid, fibrous, filament, film, staple, string, thread, washcloth), kişilik (character, fiber, for ... persons, for person, humanity, identity, personality, seated, seater, self, stature), karakter (character, constitution, fiber, form, person, persona, personage, personality, self, strain), iplik (fiber, ficelle, strand, thread, yarn), elyaf (fiber, fibrilla, staple). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | фібр (fiber), волокно (fiber, wool), лико (bast, chip, fiber). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | thớ sợi phíp cấu tạo có thớ (fiber). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | fibra. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "fibre": fibreboard, fibreboards, fibrefill, fibrefills, fibreglass, fibreglasses, fibres. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "fibre" (pronounced fī"ber) |
| 4 | f ī" b er | fiber. |
| 3 | -ī" b er | prescriber, scriber, subscriber, transcriber. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: brief, fiber. | |
| Words within the letters "b-e-f-i-r" | |
-1 letter: bier, brie, fire, reif, rife. | |
-2 letters: fer, fib, fie, fir, ire, reb, ref, rei, rib, rif. | |
-3 letters: be, bi, ef, er, if, re. | |
| Words containing the letters "b-e-f-i-r" | |
+1 letter: briefs, fibber, fibers, fibres. | |
+2 letters: barefit, beefier, bonfire, briefed, briefer, briefly, buffier, debrief, febrile, fibbers, fibered, filbert, firebox, firebug, freebie, friable, fribble, frisbee, fubsier, verbify. | |
+3 letters: afebrile, backfire, balefire, barflies, basifier, befinger, befriend, befringe, belfried, belfries, biforate, biforked, biformed, bonfires, briefers, briefest, briefing, bushfire, debriefs, febrific, fiberize, fibranne, fibroses, filberts, fimbriae, fireable, fireback, fireball, firebase, firebird, fireboat, firebomb, firebrat, firebugs, flabbier, forcible, forelimb, freebies, fribbled, fribbler, fribbles, frisbees. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Images: Digital Art 8. Quotations: Fiction | 9. Quotations: Non-fiction 10. Usage Frequency 11. Names: Company Usage 12. Cities | 13. Expressions 14. Expressions: Internet 15. Translations: Modern 16. Translations: Ancient | 17. Derivations 18. Rhymes 19. Anagrams 20. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
