Process

Process (lat. processus - movement) is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of operations or events, possibly taking up time, space, expertise or other resource, which produces some outcome. A process may be identified by the changes it creates in the properties of one or more objects under its influence. Compare: project. See also: process management, process theory, Industrial process, and Category:Nature.

Illustration of a process: a geyser in action.

Examples

A process may be categorized as singular, recurrent, or periodic. A singular process would be one which occurs only once. Few processes in nature can be considered singular. Most processes found in nature are recurrent, or repeat more than once. Recurring processes which repeat at a constant rate are considered periodic. The more periodic a process is the more useful it is as the basis of a clock. Below are a few specific examples of processes.

• The Bessemer process is a way of producing steel.
• The process of mining extracts ore.
• Evolution is a natural process which explains the adaptation of species over long periods of time. (generally assumed to be an example of a recurrent process)
• The creation of the universe by God would be an example of a divine process. (generally assumed to be a singular process)
• Process music
• Civic governance and conflict resolution
• Error correction in the information processing of a stream of data.
• Protein biosynthesis