Shake

To agitate.

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A western custom, to shake hands. Thought to come from heraldic times, when shaking hands would show there were no hidden daggers up each others' sleeves.

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Short for milkshake or milk shake. A combination of ice cream, milk, sugar and any other desired flavoring. Contrasted to malt or malted, which is a milkshake with malt added.

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A style of roofing or paneling, involving rough-hewn slabs or wedges of wood laid in overlapping layers, with the grain oriented vertically. Some regions with high wildfire risk will recommend against shake roofs or walls.

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In Tom Clancy's Sum of all Fears, a 'shake' is defined as a unit of time approximately 10 nanoseconds; named after the biblical passage that says that armageddon will come in "three shakes of a lamb's tail." Thirty nanoseconds are required for a nuclear weapon to get to critical mass.

The broken-up pieces of marijuana that break ("shake") off of your buds. Good joint rolling material.

For Iceberg Slim and his contemporaries, this was a jivespeak term for extortion, and the act thereof. By the seventies, this term had evolved into shakedown.

A composition and general post production video touch-up program formerly produced by Nothing Real and currently produced by Apple. Shake is one of the most widely used composition programs today, available for Mac OS X (the newest platform, which sort of followed after Apple bought the company), Linux, IRIX and Windows NT.

The program is able to do composition of images and keying, color/channel correction and applying filters, various image transformations and warping, and painting and rotoscoping. It also supports all sorts of APIs and plug-in development.

As said, Shake is widely used by the Big Boys - the chances are that many cool special effects you see in The Next Big Movie were added to it with using Shake, or otherwise got messed up with using some of the gigantic arsenal of tools it has. The people who use it praise it endlessly, mostly thanking its amazing flexibility, speed and stability.

Shake is apparently to Final Cut Pro what After Effects is to Premiere. Of course, the magnitude of these products is entirely different...

Home page: http://www.apple.com/shake/

The term shake in weaponeering refers to the smallest 'useful unit' of time that occurs during fission. It is not directly derived from a particular process; rather, it represents a rough average of the time required for a single 'generation' of fission. Not only is this time averaged across multiple neutron emission/capture cycles, it is also averaged across various fissile materials. The time of a fission 'generation' is related to both the velocity of the neutrons emitted within the material as well as to the density of that material, which relates to what is referred to as the mean free path. This is the mean distance, usually expressed in centimeters, which each neutron will travel within the critical mass before being captured by an atom, resulting in a new fission generation. Averaging the most common fissile materials' values gives a result of approximately 13cm; a 1 MeV neutron traverses this distance in just around 10 nanoseconds - which is the basis of the shake.

The speed of this reaction, and the process of fission, becomes clear if you work the math outwards from here. It takes roughly 2*10^24 atoms splitting to release 20 kt of energy, or the amount of energy released by a small atomic bomb. Since fission generations increase in size exponentially (1 neutron results in 2 neutrons emitted which results in 4 neutrons emitted and so forth - the term for this is k, a coefficient which indicates the number of neutrons which not only are produced per available neutron, but are restricted to those that do not escape or undergo capture by a non-fissioning atom. In a weapon, k tends to be around 2) the total number of atoms that have undergone fission at any point can be expressed as 2^(n-1) where n is the number of generations that have occurred. Therefore, solving for n, we get (I hope, my maths are horrible):

2*10^24 = 2^(n-1)

log 2 (2*10^24) = n-1

log 2 (2*10^24) +1 = n

/me struggles with scientific calculators, then Google, and finds that oh hurray, Carey Sublette already did this math! According to him:

81.7 = n

..or less than 82 fission generations are required to split all the atoms necessary to release 20 kilotons of energy. Even if we were to assume a purely mechanical and linear process (it isn't; generations overlap in time in the 'real world' meaning the actual number will be smaller) that's still only 82 shakes, or 820 billionths of a second. It gets worse; since the energy release is exponential, that means that the most recent 4-5 generations have produced (at any point) 99 percent of the total energy released thus far! That means that realistically, 99 percent of the actual energy release of a 20 kt atomic bomb happens in less than 5 shakes, or 50 billionths of a second.

So the shake is extremely important when designing, describing, or predicting the outcome of atomic fission, whether the low-k 'critical' type such as is found in nuclear reactors, or the high-k 'supercritical' type found in nuclear explosions.

Shake (?),

obs. p. p. of Shake.

Chaucer.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Shake, v. t. [imp. Shook (?); p. p. Shaken (?), (Shook, obs.); p. pr. & vb. n. Shaking.] [OE. shaken, schaken, AS. scacan, sceacan; akin to Icel. & Sw. skaka, OS. skakan, to depart, to flee. &root;161. Cf. Shock, v.]

1.

To cause to move with quick or violent vibrations; to move rapidly one way and the other; to make to tremble or shiver; to agitate.

As a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. Rev. vi. 13.

Ascend my chariot; guide the rapid wheels That shake heaven's basis. Milton.

2.

Fig.: To move from firmness; to weaken the stability of; to cause to waver; to impair the resolution of.

When his doctrines grew too strong to be shook by his enemies, they persecuted his reputation. Atterbury.

Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced. Milton.

3. Mus.

To give a tremulous tone to; to trill; as, to shake a note in music.

4.

To move or remove by agitating; to throw off by a jolting or vibrating motion; to rid one's self of; -- generally with an adverb, as off, out, etc.; as, to shake fruit down from a tree.

Shake off the golden slumber of repose. Shak.

'Tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age. Shak.

I could scarcely shake him out of my company. Bunyan.

To shake a cask Naut., to knock a cask to pieces and pack the staves. -- To shake hands, to perform the customary act of civility by clasping and moving hands, as an expression of greeting, farewell, good will, agreement, etc. -- To shake out a reef Naut., to untile the reef points and spread more canvas. -- To shake the bells. See under Bell. -- To shake the sails Naut., to luff up in the wind, causing the sails to shiver. Ham. Nav. Encyc.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Shake, v. i.

To be agitated with a waving or vibratory motion; to tremble; to shiver; to quake; to totter.

Under his burning wheels The steadfast empyrean shook throughout, All but the throne itself of God. Milton.

What danger? Who 's that that shakes behind there? Beau & FL.

Shaking piece, a name given by butchers to the piece of beef cut from the under side of the neck. See Illust. of Beef.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Shake (?), n.

1.

The act or result of shaking; a vacillating or wavering motion; a rapid motion one way and other; a trembling, quaking, or shivering; agitation.

The great soldier's honor was composed Of thicker stuff, which could endure a shake. Herbert.

Our salutations were very hearty on both sides, consisting of many kind shakes of the hand. Addison.

2.

A fissure or crack in timber, caused by its being dried too suddenly.

Gwilt.

3.

A fissure in rock or earth.

4. Mus.

A rapid alternation of a principal tone with another represented on the next degree of the staff above or below it; a trill.

5. Naut.

One of the staves of a hogshead or barrel taken apart.

Totten.

6.

A shook of staves and headings.

Knight.

7. Zool.

The redshank; -- so called from the nodding of its head while on the ground.

[Prov. Eng.]

No great shakes, of no great importance. [Slang] Byron. -- The shakes, the fever and ague. [Colloq. U.S.]

 

© Webster 1913.