Phonons

"Phonons" in a Sentence (1 examples)

Good conductors of heat are usually good conductors of electricity, but that puts the causal relation backwards. Conduction-band electrons can't help but transport kinetic energy, which--randomized--is heat. Putting heat before electricity is reasonable only because of the rarity of materials like diamond that conduct heat via the quasi-particles called phonons, which are communicable crystal-lattice vibrations.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.