dispersion
n. C / Un. the way things or people are spread out over a wide area. It can also describe how light breaks into different colors, like in a rainbow.
n. the action or process of distributing things or people over a wide area; in physics, the separation of light into spectral components. Often used in statistical contexts to describe the spread of values around a mean.
The dispersion of seeds happens through wind and water.
The rapid dispersion of the crowd after the concert made it easy for traffic to flow again.
In optical fibers, chromatic dispersion can cause signal distortion over long distances, requiring specialized equipment to maintain data integrity.
Uncountable when referring to the general process of spreading; countable when referring to specific patterns or instances in statistics or physics.