quantize

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   physics: to restrict a physical quantity or system to discrete allowed values or states

   The model quantizes the electron's energy into a set of discrete levels.

2. 2
   verb

   signal processing: to map a continuous or finely varying signal onto a finite set of values

   The encoder quantizes each audio sample to one of 65,536 amplitude levels.

Formed from quantum + -ize. Quantum is Latin for "how much" and became a physics term for a discrete amount of energy. Quantize first meant expressing a physical system in quanta; signal processing extended it to replacing a continuous range with discrete values.

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