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optical tweezer

optical tweezer noun: a scientific instrument that uses a highly focused laser beam to hold and move the microscopic or smaller objects such as atoms and droplets, in a manner similar to tweezers.

Noun

optical tweezer (plural optical tweezers)

  1. A scientific instrument that uses a highly focused laser beam to hold and move the microscopic or smaller objects such as atoms and droplets, in a manner similar to tweezers.
    • This angular momentum has been transferred to macroscopic particles trapped in an optical tweezer causing them to rotate.2003, L. Allen, Stephen M. Barnett, Miles J. Padgett, Optical Angular Momentum, page 240
    • In order to make calibrated measurements from single molecules two more items are required: (1) a four-quadrant photodiode position sensor (4QD) to accurately measure the position of the bead held in the optical tweezer (Figure 12.5); […]2006, Banafshe Larijani, Colin A. Rosser, Rudiger Woscholski, Chemical Biology: Techniques and Applications, page 207

Forms of optical tweezer

pluraloptical tweezers

Questions about optical tweezer

What does optical tweezer mean?
Optical tweezer means a scientific instrument that uses a highly focused laser beam to hold and move the microscopic or smaller objects such as atoms and droplets, in a manner similar to tweezers.
What part of speech is optical tweezer?
Optical tweezer is a noun.
What is the plural of optical tweezer?
The plural of optical tweezer is optical tweezers.

Words near optical tweezer in the dictionary

  1. optical telescopes
  2. optical trackpad
  3. optical trackpads
  4. optical trap
  5. optical traps
  6. optical tweezer
  7. optical tweezers
  8. optical wand
  9. optical wands
  10. opticality
  11. optically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: optical tweezer (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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