Impact parameter

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Notion

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Science and technology

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What Wikipedia says

In physics, the impact parameter b is defined as the perpendicular distance between the path of a projectile and the center of a potential field U(r) created by an object that the projectile is approaching (see diagram). It is often referred to in nuclear physics (see Rutherford scattering) and in classical mechanics.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article “Impact parameter”, under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Read the article on Wikipedia

Image: Tonatsu, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.