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Critical may denote:

• pertaining to a critic
• pertaining to a critique
• pertaining to a crisis

More specifically:

Philosophy

• critical theory - concepts in social theory and in literary criticism

Psychology and education

• critical pedagogy - helping students achieve critical consciousness
• critical psychology - critiquing mainstream psychology, often looking towards social change as a means of preventing and treating psychopathology
• critical thinking - mental processes of discernment, analysis and evaluation

Biology and medicine

• critical care - intensive care medicine
  • critical condition - grade of severity of a medical condition
• critical period - a time in the early stages of an organism's life during which it displays a heightened sensitivity to certain environmental stimuli, and develops in particular ways due to experiences at this time

Mathematics

• critical graph - graph with minimal chromatic number
• critical group - a group not in the variety generated by all its proper subquotients
• critical line - of zeros of the Riemann zeta function
• critical pair - concepts in mathematical logic, and in order theory
• critical point (mathematics) - point on a function where the derivative vanishes
• critical point (set theory) - of an elementary embedding of a transitive class into another transitive class: the smallest ordinal which is not mapped to itself

Physics

• critical angle - the angle of incidence above which total internal reflection occurs.
• critical distance - in audio physics, the distance at which the sound pressure level of the direct and the reverberant sound fields are equal when dealing with a directional source.
• critical mass - the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction.
• critical point (thermodynamics) - conditions (temperature, pressure) at which the liquid state of matter ceases to exist
  • critical phenomena - associated with critical points
• critical speed - the theoretical angular velocity which excites the natural frequency of a screw or gear.

Process control

• Critical Control Point - a point, step or procedure at which controls can be applied and a food safety hazard can be prevented, eliminated or reduced to acceptable (critical) levels
• critical hours - from sunrise to two hours after sunrise, and from two hours before sunset until sunset, local time
• critical path method - project management algorithm
• Critical Security Parameter - information that is either user or system defined and is used to operate a cryptography module in processing encryption functions
• Critical Success Factor - an element which is necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission.

Aviation

• critical angle of attack - such that the airflow has separated from a substantial portion of the upper surface of the airfoil
• critical area - designated area of an airport that all aircraft must remain clear of when another aircraft is inbound on an ILS approach
• critical engine - the one whose failure would result in the most adverse effects on the aircraft's handling and performance
• critical mach - the speed at which some of the airflow on a wing becomes supersonic.

Other

• Critical (novel) - a medical thriller written by Dr. Robin Cook
• critical focus - the portion of a photograph that is optically in focus
• critical hit - in role-playing games, a successful attack that deals more damage than a normal hit
• critical load - of a pollutant, minimum exposure threshold for known harmful effects
• critical section - piece of code requiring single-thread to a shared device
• Critical Software - company specializing in mission and business critical information systems.
  • Critical Software Technologies, UK subsidiary

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