How to Use rubidium in a Sentence

rubidium

noun
  • The technique makes use of a very cold gas (either lithium or rubidium) trapped in a magnetic field.
    — Jackie Appel, Popular Mechanics, 4 Sep. 2023
  • Once cooled, a series of three laser flashes are shone on the atoms, creating matter waves in the rubidium atoms.
    — Dhananjay Khadilkar, Ars Technica, 16 Dec. 2022
  • The group measured the ratios of light to heavy isotopes of both potassium and rubidium.
    — Jonathan O’Callaghan, Discover Magazine, 21 Oct. 2024
  • The team have tested the idea using rubidium atoms cooled to 40 microkelvin.
    — The Physics Arxiv Blog, Discover Magazine, 15 Dec. 2022
  • The condensate is a cloud of rubidium atoms that has been cooled to nanokelvin temperatures.
    — Dieynaba Young, Smithsonian Magazine, 15 July 2020
  • This keeps the rubidium atoms diffuse, slow moving and in a highly excited state.
    — Marissa Fessenden, Smithsonian, 16 Feb. 2018
  • However, the trap that holds the rubidium atoms can be tuned to efficiently suck energy out of them.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 7 Feb. 2022
  • To create the Rydberg atoms, energy is added to a rubidium atom using lasers.
    — Paul Smith-Goodson, Forbes, 20 Feb. 2024
  • Building on years of quantum research The sensor works by using a tiny glass cell filled with rubidium atom vapor.
    — Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 6 June 2026
  • Researchers start with two identical stations in a single lab, each containing a cloud of rubidium atoms.
    — Adrian Cho, Science | AAAS, 13 Feb. 2020
  • So the researchers measured the isotope ratios for both potassium and rubidium.
    — Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Aug. 2024
  • The scientists used microwave pulses to analyze the behavior of the rubidium atoms to use them as atomic clocks.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 9 Dec. 2022
  • Earth’s crust is abundant with a slightly radioactive isotope of rubidium that, over time, decays into strontium.
    — Megan Gannon, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 Mar. 2020
  • The beam can make the magnetic fields of the rubidium atoms all line up, rendering the cloud essentially transparent.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 29 Apr. 2022
  • The device consists of a cloud of rubidium atoms that are cooled to temperatures nearing absolute zero.
    — Dhananjay Khadilkar, Ars Technica, 16 Dec. 2022
  • Each laser beam precisely matches the quantum energy levels of rubidium atoms.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 16 Oct. 2025
  • The new quantum sensor uses clouds of rubidium atoms cooled to a few millionths of a degree Celsius above absolute zero.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 29 Apr. 2022
  • The equipment will cool rubidium and potassium atoms by scattering laser light off the particles in all directions to slow them to almost a standstill.
    — Elizabeth Gibney, Scientific American, 9 May 2018
  • But vaporizing rubidium with a laser and keeping it ultracold creates a cloud the researchers contain in a small tube and magnetize.
    — Marissa Fessenden, Smithsonian, 16 Feb. 2018
  • Using that trap, the NIST group has been able to cool rubidium atoms down to around 200 microkelvins.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 8 Feb. 2021
  • To do this, Stenhauer shot a laser composed of rubidium atoms through an environment cooled to almost absolute zero.
    — Sophie Weiner, Popular Mechanics, 26 Aug. 2016
  • Atoms of rubidium, a heavy cousin of the more familiar lithium and sodium, are appealing because their internal quantum states can be set and controlled by light.
    — Gabriel Popkin, Science | AAAS, 3 June 2021
  • Each of these tiny blobs consists of 8,000 rubidium atoms that Steinhauer has cooled to near absolute zero and then swished around with a laser.
    — Wired, 8 Nov. 2019
  • One table is responsible for producing laser light for trapping, cooling and imaging rubidium atoms.
    — Charles D. Brown Ii, Scientific American, 16 May 2023
  • Then, dilute acid is poured through the column in order to pull the rubidium off the resin, flushing a solution of only rubidium out the other side of the column.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 11 Feb. 2025
  • What happened was that physicists at the University of Toronto shot photons toward a cloud of rubidium atoms.
    — Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine, 17 Dec. 2024
  • The Harvard initiative, led by Mikhail Lukin, uses rubidium atoms.
    — Quanta Magazine, 18 July 2019
  • Other than uranium, strategic elements such as rubidium and cesium are also found in these lakes, and China is leaving them as waste.
    — Ameya Paleja, Interesting Engineering, 27 Apr. 2026
  • Some experiments use rubidium, while others use lithium.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 24 Sep. 2025
  • The system used silicon nitride waveguides to deliver laser beams into a vacuum cell filled with rubidium vapor.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 27 Sep. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rubidium.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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