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Kappa

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Variant kappa
Greek word καί written with a handwritten variant of kappa, from the Byzantine period

Kappa (/ˈkæpə/;[1] uppercase Κ, lowercase κ or cursive ϰ; Greek: κάππα, káppa) is the tenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless velar plosive IPA: [k] sound in Ancient and Modern Greek. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value of 20. It was derived from the Phoenician letter kaph . Letters that arose from kappa include the Roman K and Cyrillic К. The uppercase form is identical to the Latin K.

Greek proper names and placenames containing kappa are often written in English with "c" due to the Romans' transliterations into the Latin alphabet: Constantinople, Corinth, Crete. All formal modern romanizations of Greek now use the letter "k", however.[citation needed]

The cursive form ϰ is generally a simple font variant of lower-case kappa, but it is encoded separately in Unicode for occasions where it is used as a separate symbol in math and science. In mathematics, the kappa curve is named after this letter; the tangents of this curve were first calculated by Isaac Barrow in the 17th century.

Symbol

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Lowercase (κ)

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Mathematics and statistics
Physics
Engineering
  • In structural engineering, κ is the ratio of the smaller factored moment to the larger factored moment and is used to calculate the critical elastic moment of an unbraced steel member.
  • In electrical engineering, κ is the multiplication factor, a function of the R/X ratio of the equivalent power system network, which is used in calculating the peak short-circuit current of a system fault. κ is also used to denote conductivity, the reciprocal of resistivity, rho.
Biology and biomedical science
Psychology and psychiatry
Economics

Uppercase (Κ)

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History
Mathematics and statistics
Chemistry

Unicode

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  • U+039A Κ GREEK CAPITAL LETTER KAPPA (Κ)
  • U+03BA κ GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA (κ)
  • U+03F0 ϰ GREEK KAPPA SYMBOL (ϰ, ϰ)
  • U+2C94 COPTIC CAPITAL LETTER KAPA
  • U+2C95 COPTIC SMALL LETTER KAPA
  • U+2CB8 COPTIC CAPITAL LETTER DIALECT-P KAPA
  • U+2CB9 COPTIC SMALL LETTER DIALECT-P KAPA

These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style:

  • U+1D6B1 𝚱 MATHEMATICAL BOLD CAPITAL KAPPA
  • U+1D6CB 𝛋 MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL KAPPA
  • U+1D6DE 𝛞 MATHEMATICAL BOLD KAPPA SYMBOL
  • U+1D6EB 𝛫 MATHEMATICAL ITALIC CAPITAL KAPPA
  • U+1D705 𝜅 MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL KAPPA
  • U+1D718 𝜘 MATHEMATICAL ITALIC KAPPA SYMBOL
  • U+1D725 𝜥 MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL KAPPA
  • U+1D73F 𝜿 MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC SMALL KAPPA
  • U+1D752 𝝒 MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC KAPPA SYMBOL
  • U+1D75F 𝝟 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD CAPITAL KAPPA
  • U+1D779 𝝹 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD SMALL KAPPA
  • U+1D78C 𝞌 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD KAPPA SYMBOL
  • U+1D799 𝞙 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL KAPPA
  • U+1D7B3 𝞳 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC SMALL KAPPA
  • U+1D7C6 𝟆 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC KAPPA SYMBOL

References

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  1. ^ "kappa". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  2. ^ "University of Hong Kong School of Business" (PDF). HKU.