Dan DeBra) once said, roughly, âall instruments are first and foremost thermometers, but sometimes they measure something else as wellâ. He was talking about temperature compensating strain gauges, but he was also in charge of an ultra-precision machining laboratory â the one that built the gyros for Gravity Probe B.
In mathematics, a quotient is the result of division. For example, when dividing 6 by 3, the quotient is 2, while 6 is called the dividend, and 3 the divisor. The quotient further is expressed as the number of times the divisor divides into the dividend, e.g. 3 divides 2 times into 6. A quotient can also mean just the integer part of the result of dividing two integers. For example, the quotient of 13 and 5 would be 2 while the remainder would be 3.
The word quotient is from the Latin 'quotiens', which means 'how many times'. A quotient is the answer to a division problem. A division problem describes 'how many times' a number will go into another. The first known usage of the word in mathematics is found around 1400-1500 AD in England.