{"id":114,"date":"2008-03-14T04:37:55","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T09:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/114"},"modified":"2008-03-14T04:37:55","modified_gmt":"2008-03-14T09:37:55","slug":"talk-like-a-physicist-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/114","title":{"rendered":"Talk Like a Physicist Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s the day! I’m all over this one. Talk like a physicist<\/a><\/p>\n

If anyone needs some pointers:<\/p>\n

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

Use “orthogonal” to refer to things that are mutually-exclusive or can’t coincide. “We keep playing phone tag \u2014 I think our schedules must be orthogonal”<\/p>\n

“About” becomes “to a first-order approximation”<\/p>\n

Things are not difficult, they are “non-trivial”<\/p>\n

Large discrepancies are “orders of magnitude apart”<\/p>\n

Refer to coordinates and coordinate systems. “I got shafted” becomes “I took one up the z-axis”<\/p>\n

Any actual personal experience becomes “empirical data.” i.e. a burn on your hand is empirical data that the stove is hot.<\/p>\n

You’re not being lazy, you are in your ground state.<\/p>\n

A semi-educated guess is an extrapolation<\/p>\n

You aren’t ignoring details, you are taking the ideal case<\/p>\n

A tiny amount is “vanishingly small” or “negligible.” Really small is “infinitesimal”<\/p>\n

You aren’t overweight, you are thermodynamically efficient<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

it’s not a wire, it’s a “conductor”<\/p>\n

It’s not light, they are photons. Turning on the lamp becomes emitting photons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,51],"tags":[431,478],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-silly","tag-science-humor","tag-talk-like-a-physicist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}