Drop

1. In a communications network, the portion of a device directly connected to the internal station facilities, such as toward a switchboard or toward a switching center.

2. The central office side of test jacks.

3. A wire or cable from a pole or cable terminus to a building.

4. To delete, intentionally or unintentionally, or to lose part of a signal, such as dropping bits from a bit stream.

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from MIL-STD-188

A small volume of liquid, bounded almost completely by free surfaces. The simplest way to form a drop is to allow liquid to flow slowly from the lower end of a vertical tube of small diameter. When the pendant drop exceeds a certain size it is no longer stable and detaches itself. Drops may also be formed by the condensation of a supercooled[?] vapor or by atomization[?] of a larger mass of liquid. The weight of the largest drop that can hang from the end of a tube of radius a is nearly

mg=2πaλ cos α

where λ is the surface tension of the liquid and α is the angle of contact with the tube. This relationship is the basis of a convenient method of measuring surface tension.

Due to raindrops there is sometimes a [[rainbow].