Today’s the day! I’m all over this one. Talk like a physicist

If anyone needs some pointers:

Use “canonical” when you mean “usual” or “standard.” As in, “the canonical example of talking like a physicist is to use the word ‘canonical.'”

Use “orthogonal” to refer to things that are mutually-exclusive or can’t coincide. “We keep playing phone tag — I think our schedules must be orthogonal”

“About” becomes “to a first-order approximation”

Things are not difficult, they are “non-trivial”

Large discrepancies are “orders of magnitude apart”

Refer to coordinates and coordinate systems. “I got shafted” becomes “I took one up the z-axis”

Any actual personal experience becomes “empirical data.” i.e. a burn on your hand is empirical data that the stove is hot.

You’re not being lazy, you are in your ground state.

A semi-educated guess is an extrapolation

You aren’t ignoring details, you are taking the ideal case

A tiny amount is “vanishingly small” or “negligible.” Really small is “infinitesimal”

You aren’t overweight, you are thermodynamically efficient

Stuck in a meeting is “trapped in a potential well,” though you hope you can “tunnel out.” Alternatively, it can be a black hole, from which there is no escape.

it’s not a wire, it’s a “conductor”

It’s not light, they are photons. Turning on the lamp becomes emitting photons.