Definition of "quantum" []

• A quantity or amount. (noun)
• A specified portion. (noun)
• Something that can be counted or measured. (noun)
• Physics The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation. (noun)
• Physics This amount of energy regarded as a unit. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "~ Hidden order found in a quantum spin liquid -- An international team, including scientists from the London Centre for Nanotechnology, has detected a hidden magnetic “quantum order” that extends over chains of 100 atoms in a ceramic without classical magnetism."
• "The word quantum is thrown around a lot these days in media like in the film What the Bleep Do We Know?"
• "In 1902, two years after the physicist Max Planck first coined the term quantum to describe the core reality of light, a young British writer named James Allen penned a little book entitled As a Man Thinketh, which drew its title and its message from the biblical verse “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”"