commutator
/ˈkɑːmjəteɪtər/
noun
- A device in an electric motor or generator that reverses the direction of electric current to keep the motor spinning in one direction.
- The commutator in the motor helps it run smoothly.
- Engineers replaced the worn commutator to fix the generator.
- A simple DC motor uses a commutator to change the current flow.
- In mathematics, an expression that measures how much two operations fail to commute (e.g., AB - BA for matrices).
- In quantum mechanics, the commutator of position and momentum is important.
- The commutator of two matrices is zero if they commute.
- The professor calculated the commutator of the group elements.