Definition
Plain language
What share of a material's total space is taken up by one particular component.
As stated in the literature
Ratio of the volume of a given phase to total sample volume; standard quantitative descriptor in multiphase materials characterization.
Also called: volume fractions
Why it matters: It is a basic quantitative descriptor that makes material claims checkable, since the numbers must add up across all components.
For example, saying a composite is thirty percent fibre by volume tells you how much of the material is fibre rather than the surrounding matrix.
Heard on the show
“There's an electrolysis cell, volume fractions of vacancy phases in palladium, citations to neutron diffraction and density functional theory.”Episode 240 — Frontier Models Designed Follow-Ups To Fraudulent Papers 93% Of The Time