How to Use helical in a Sentence
helical
adjective- Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, travels a helical path through space.
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The mine has a helical tunnel that goes a kilometer and a half down.
—Valerie Ross, Discover Magazine, 26 June 2012
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The latest twist in the origin-of-life tale is double helical.
—Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 25 Aug. 2012
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That movie showed, for the first time, the twisting motions of the plasma, suggesting that the jet has a helical structure.
—Eileen Meyer, Smithsonian, 15 May 2018
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The gear for reverse usually has square cut gear teeth instead of the helical cut on the forward gears.
—Bob Weber, chicagotribune.com, 6 Dec. 2019
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The spokes follow a helical pattern, like a spiral staircase leading through the inside of the bone.
—Theresa MacHemer, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Apr. 2021
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In it, Kompfner revealed that the crucial idea of using a helical electrode was not his own.
—IEEE Spectrum, 25 Aug. 2015
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The microorganisms all had an S-shaped or helical form, and the infections coated the stomach.
—Pamela Weintraub, Discover Magazine, 7 Apr. 2010
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At the Ed Roberts Campus, the firm designed a helical, bright-red ramp, a dramatic focal point emerging from the middle of the first-floor lobby.
—Emily Nonko, The Atlantic, 22 June 2017
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The folded shape of the i-motif only occurs in a relatively small region of a genome — sticking out like a bumpy knot in the smooth helical shape of the rest of a strand of DNA.
—Deborah Netburn, latimes.com, 23 Apr. 2018
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The task with the helical molecule took about the same amount of time in both environments, however.
—Veronique Greenwood, New York Times, 3 July 2018
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Still, no matter what their arrangement, the amino acids fold themselves into just a handful of helical shapes and sheets.
—Charles S. Cockell, WSJ, 7 June 2018
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Best of all are helical cutter heads, which have a couple dozen small square knives that can deliver a near-perfect surface.
—Bob Beacham, chicagotribune.com, 6 Oct. 2020
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The helical teeth in the reduction gears have also been micro-polished to reduce their friction.
—Csaba Csere, Car and Driver, 5 Apr. 2023
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The test, called a spiral or helical CT scan, detects lung abnormalities as small as 5 millimeters, less than a fifth of an inch.
—Washington Post, 26 Apr. 2017
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Often the magnetic field within a solar storm has a helical structure, twisted like a corkscrew.
—Neel Savani, University Of Maryland, Discover Magazine, 10 June 2015
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The curving and converging flights of steps also suggest the book’s many braided or helical plot twists, its mirroring and doublings.
—Francine Prose, The New York Review of Books, 23 Feb. 2022
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To solve this problem, the researchers looked at how helical waves are generated in light beams and then translated the idea to mechanical waves.
—Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 2 Mar. 2022
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These helical tube lights create the effect of a meteor shower or falling snow, with each strand including eight foot-long tubes.
—Corinne Sullivan, Woman's Day, 5 Aug. 2022
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Nearly half had taken on new shapes; some had even developed twisting helical forms to swim, just like Spiroplasma.
—Saugat Bolakhe, Scientific American, 17 Mar. 2023
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This green algae Spirogyra has one of the most fascinating chloroplast shapes of all algae – a helical shape, or spiral.
—Alan Taylor, The Atlantic, 20 Oct. 2021
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But actually, the tokamak is just one approach; there's a more complicated version that is helical in shape.
—Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 9 June 2017
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Instead of the layers of material neatly stacking one on top of another, the layers are twisted, almost like the helical structure of DNA.
—Matt Simon, Wired, 22 Feb. 2021
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The helical detailing pops up elsewhere, too, including on the electric chair that Benicio del Toro’s Moses Rosenthaler briefly straps himself into.
—Radhika Seth, Vogue, 9 Dec. 2021
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As is typical with helical models, this type of cutterhead commands a higher price.
—Alex Rennie, Popular Mechanics, 18 Nov. 2022
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Traditional perforating is when perforations (perfs) are shot in a helical pattern, with lots of holes all around the casing.
—Ian Palmer, Forbes, 27 June 2022
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To effectively drill through the mucus, the pill uses surface features like spiral turbine fins, inspired by torpedo fins, and helical grooves.
—IEEE Spectrum, 18 Oct. 2022
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Driven hard into a corner, the R rotates smartly yet never abruptly so, with the helical limited-slip differential yanking it out of bends with only a slight tug at the steering wheel.
—Mike Sutton, Car and Driver, 8 July 2017
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The effect of this mutation on replication and helical activity is worth further study.
—William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 20 Sep. 2021
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The options are that the magnetic field lines are either turbulent and snarled, or, alternatively, highly ordered in a helical structure.
—Korey Haynes, Discover Magazine, 20 June 2019
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'helical.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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