Abstract
Despite its worldwide popularity as a “common” language (for example, in air traffic control, business, even as the language of science), English is a difficult language to learn—with its synonyms, homonyms, silent letters, and special cases. In his charming book Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, author Bill Bryson says, “Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.” Throwing scientific jargon into the mix adds yet another level of complexity, because many words have different meanings to a scientist than to a member of the general public (or often even a scientist outside their own speciality).
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent, they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
J. G. Ballard, author
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw, playwright
Before I came here, I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture, I am still confused, but on a higher level.
Enrico Fermi, physicist
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Notes
- 1.
For example, do you realize that “ghoti” can reasonably be pronounced “fish”? Combine “gh” as in “tough”, “o” as in “women”, and the “ti” as the second occurrence in “multiplication”, and you get “fish”. How messed up is that?
- 2.
While often even more difficult for the scientist.
- 3.
Literally “new word”, a neologism is a recently-coined term—often attributable to a specific person, event, professional culture, or event. Examples are “grok,” “cyberspace,” “frak,” “Tebowing,” “google” (as a verb), “troll” (as a verb), “spam” (as in email not a meat-like product), and n00b.
- 4.
Measured with respect to how differently the terms are used when compared to their actual scientific meanings.
- 5.
For an excellent introduction to the current state of the debate, read “A Fight for the Soul of Science,” by Natalie Wolchover in Quanta magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-philosophers-debate-the-boundaries-of-science
- 6.
See the chapter “The Path to Nerdvana” in the previous volume of Hollyweird Science. We go into great detail on this there.
- 7.
In the UK, and other places where people speak English as opposed to American, this might be “I have an hypothesis.”
- 8.
Or those looking for any reason to drink to get in practice for 3/17. (But as an Irishman living in the United States, SAC’s attitude to St. Patrick’s Day as it is celebrated in the U.S. is reminiscent of the vampires’ attitude to Halloween on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
- 9.
See “Pi-curious” in Chap. 4: “The Scarecrow’s Blunder”.
- 10.
Not that this is a common topic in casual conversation, to be sure.
- 11.
The “jiffy” in “Be back in a jiffy” is actually a real unit of time, but assumes different values for different scientific disciplines. Chemist Gilbert Lewis proposed that it was the time it takes light to travel one centimeter in a vacuum (roughly 3.33 × 10−11 s or 33.3 picoseconds). In electronics it is 1/60th or 1/50th of a second depending on whether you live in a country whose alternating current frequency is 60 hertz or 50 hertz.
- 12.
The “shake” of “…two shakes of a lamb’s tail…” is also a real, but informal, measure of time. Most commonly, one shake is 10 nanoseconds, or 10−8 seconds. So “two shakes” is 20 nanoseconds.
- 13.
A fortnight is two weeks; “micro” means one millionth. So a microfortnight is one millionth of 14 days, or about 1.2 seconds—about the time it takes light to travel between Earth and the Moon. So the Moon is approximately one light-microfortnight away.
- 14.
We also have social lives! What gave you the idea we don’t?
- 15.
At least he had the courtesy to round to the nearest integer. Solo wasn’t impressed and still did not like being told the odds.
- 16.
Just because a calculator displays eight digits after the decimal point, it does not mean that all of those digits have meaning.
- 17.
See “All about e” in Chap. 4.
- 18.
See also the “Numbers of Numb3rs” entry: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ExponentialGrowth.html
- 19.
The plural is quanta.
- 20.
This disparity between the macroscopic and microscopic behavior of the weight of the sand is also an excellent metaphor for an important law in quantum mechanics called the correspondence principle, which states that behavior of systems described by the theory of quantum mechanics must reproduce classical physics when a large number of objects are involved.
- 21.
Which we discussed in Chap. 7: “A Quantum of Weirdness” in Hollyweird Science.
- 22.
We discuss the meaning of this term in Chap. 8: “The Gravity of the Situation: Orbits”.
- 23.
Batygin, K., and M. E. Brown (2016) Evidence for a distant giant planet in the Solar System, The Astronomical Journal, Volume 151, page 22.
- 24.
Mike Brown’s Twitter handle is @plutokiller, because he was instrumental in Pluto’s reclassification from planet to dwarf planet. He authored the book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, published in 2010. We would argue that he didn’t really kill Pluto, he just hurt its feelings.
- 25.
Strictly speaking, the clustering was actually in both the value and the rate of change of the orbital element. See Chap. 8 for more discussion of orbital elements.
- 26.
More on all of this in Chap. 8.
- 27.
The astronomers who discovered the asteroid named it after the ancient Egyptian god Apep the Uncreator (Greek name Apophis), enemy of the sun-god Ra. Apep is an evil serpent (not unlike the Goa’uld symbiont) that tries to swallow Ra during his nightly passage. Asteroid co-discoverers Roy A. Tucker and David J. Tholen were fans of the television series Stargate SG-1, and in that series, Apophis was real—but rather than being a god, he was an alien whom the ancient Egyptians took to be a god.
- 28.
It is probably no surprise that if you Google “Apophis” and “2029”, websites remain that insist that there will be a collision in 2029, but NASA simply refuses to admit it.
- 29.
Though future collision opportunities have been identified, and again most have subsequently been ruled out. The 2053 pass is still a bit of a concern…
- 30.
Despite the care with which the researchers stated the assumptions and weaknesses in their model, a similar thing may occur if there turns out to be no ninth planet.
- 31.
There is a question often asked of young physics students to help them determine if they would be better served by a career as an experimentalist or a career as a theoretician: “Would you rather spend a week locating a leak in your plumbing or an errant minus sign?”
- 32.
On their Battlestar Galactica web pages, Syfy Channel’s profile of the character of Gaius Baltar includes the description: “Stylish, handsome, and idiosyncratic, he often displays the false humility of the truly arrogant.” This description sounds remarkably like Newton. Given his narcissism, this quote, although famous, seems markedly out of character.
- 33.
Consider this the scientific equivalent of a television series opening every show with “Previously on…”
- 34.
One way that has emerged in recent years is to go to the media first. This is considered by most scientists to be very poor form, and often reflects a parallel agenda.
- 35.
This is the only method that can be cited, and used as the basis or supporting evidence for future research.
- 36.
Since one joule/second is the definition of a watt, a better way to denote flux is W/m2 or “watts per square meter.”
- 37.
Earth rotates around its axis once a day, but revolves around the Sun once a year.
- 38.
Wow! That deserves a lifetime achievement award for the most uses of the word “science” and “scientists” in a single paragraph.
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Grazier, K.R., Cass, S. (2017). English Versus Sciencespeak. In: Hollyweird Science: The Next Generation. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54215-7_2
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