Frenzy
Origin
Middle English frenesie, from Middle French, from Medieval Latin phrenesia, alteration of Latin phrenesis, from phreneticus
Definitions
- 1a : a temporary madness
Example
"Fusion is the process that powers the Sun and the stars; it uses deuterium, a form of hydrogen, as its fuel. The promise of cheap electricity, created with reactors much safer than fission reactors and relying on a fuel easily extracted from ordinary water, excited policy makers. Over the following decades, scientists and engineers expended hundreds of millions of dollars pursuing hot fusion. They found fusion difficult to control, and fusion reactors required large amounts of power to raise the temperatures the millions of degrees sufficient to actually create fusion. The dream of using fusion has not yet been realized."
"The experiment of Pons and Fleischmann consisted of a tabletop apparatus in which deuterium was electrolyzed by two electrodes made of palladium and platinum. The experiment generated more energy than was put into it. From the beginning, many scientists, especially physicists, doubted that such a simple experiment could yield such dramatic results. Other laboratories around the world attempted to duplicate the experiment; some met with partial success, and many failed. A laboratory in Italy announced they had detected excess neutrons in their experiment, an indication of fusion. The media went into a frenzy, and governments quickly announced funding for cold fusion research." (Cold Fusion. (2005). Science in the Contemporary World: An Encyclopedia.)
