Metastability in the context of Real gas

In thermodynamics, superheating (sometimes referred to as boiling retardation, or boiling delay) is the phenomenon in which a liquid is heated to a temperature higher than its boiling point, without boiling. This is a so-called metastable state or metastate, where boiling might occur at any time, induced by external or internal effects. Superheating is achieved by heating a homogeneous substance in a clean container, free of nucleation sites, while taking care not to disturb the liquid.

This may occur by microwaving water in a very smooth container. Disturbing the water may cause an unsafe eruption of hot water and result in burns.

A scintillator (/ˈsɪntɪleɪtər/ SIN-til-ay-ter) is a material that exhibits scintillation, the property of luminescence, when excited by ionizing radiation. Luminescent materials, when struck by an incoming particle, absorb its energy and scintillate (i.e. re-emit the absorbed energy in the form of light). Sometimes, the excited state is metastable, so the relaxation back down from the excited state to lower states is delayed (necessitating anywhere from a few nanoseconds to hours depending on the material). The process then corresponds to one of two phenomena: delayed fluorescence or phosphorescence. The correspondence depends on the type of transition and hence the wavelength of the emitted optical photon.

In chemistry, chemical stability is the thermodynamic stability of a chemical system, in particular a chemical compound or a polymer. Colloquially, it may instead refer to kinetic persistence, the shelf-life of a metastable substance or system; that is, the timescale over which it begins to degrade.

Thermodynamic stability occurs when a system is in its lowest energy state, or in chemical equilibrium with its environment. This may be a dynamic equilibrium in which individual atoms or molecules change form, but their overall number in a particular form is conserved. This type of chemical thermodynamic equilibrium will persist indefinitely unless the system is changed. Chemical systems might undergo changes in the phase of matter or a set of chemical reactions.

Ikaite is the mineral name for the hexahydrate of calcium carbonate, CaCO₃·6H₂O. Ikaite tends to form very steep or spiky pyramidal crystals, often radially arranged, of varied sizes from thumbnail size aggregates to gigantic salient spurs. It is only found in a metastable state and decomposes rapidly by losing most of its water content once removed from near-freezing water. This "melting mineral" is more commonly known through its pseudomorphs.

A molecular switch is a molecule that can be switched between two or more stable or metastable states with the use of any external (exogenous) or internal (endogenous) stimuli, such as changes in pH, light, temperature, an electric current, a microenvironment, or in the presence of ions, and other ligands. In some cases, a combination of stimuli is required. Molecular switches are reversible.  They have been considered for a wide area of possible applications, but the main uses are in photochromic lenses and windows.

In physical chemistry, explosive boiling or phase explosion is a process in which a superheated metastable liquid undergoes an explosive liquid–vapour phase transition into a stable two-phase state because of a massive homogeneous nucleation of vapour bubbles. M. M. Martynyuk pioneered this concept in 1976 and then later advanced by Fucke and Seydel.

In computing, a hardware random number generator (HRNG), true random number generator (TRNG), non-deterministic random bit generator (NRBG), or physical random number generator is a device that generates random numbers from a physical process capable of producing entropy, unlike a pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) that utilizes a deterministic algorithm and non-physical nondeterministic random bit generators that do not include hardware dedicated to generation of entropy.

Many natural phenomena generate low-level, statistically random "noise" signals, including thermal and shot noise, jitter and metastability of electronic circuits, Brownian motion, and atmospheric noise. Researchers also used the photoelectric effect, involving a beam splitter, other quantum phenomena, and even nuclear decay (due to practical considerations the latter, as well as the atmospheric noise, is not viable except for fairly restricted applications or online distribution services). While "classical" (non-quantum) phenomena are not truly random, an unpredictable physical system is usually acceptable as a source of randomness, so the qualifiers "true" and "physical" are used interchangeably.