The Cascade reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Cascade

A cascade is a chain of consecutive events. The original meaning, a waterfall or a series of waterfalls over rocks, was first incorporated into the english language in the 17th Century from French, where it stems from the Italian word cascata, coming from cascare to fall. Its etymological root is ultimately the Latin word cadere, to fall.

In chemistry, a cascade is a consecutive series of chemical reactions. There are several important biochemical cascade reactions in biochemistry, including the enzymatic cascades, like the coagulation cascade and the complement system, and the signal transduction cascades like the olfactory signal-transduction cascade.

In physics, cascade is used for things like the quantum-cascade laser, where a very powerful laser is created by letting electrons cascade down an energy staircase, emitting a photon at each step.

Cascade is also the name of a disctrict in the Republic of Seychelles.

The Seibel grape, Seibel 13053, is called Cascade.

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This is the "Cascade" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.