I dunno. Consider that the first derivative of position is velocity, and second is acceleration… third is jerk… and then they go snap, crackle, and pop.
Yeah not great. But I think the worst is naming after a person. You can be brilliant, but if you haven’t studied physics you’ll have no idea whatsoever what, say, “Berry phase” means. But the other term for that phenomenon — “geometric phase” — gives some information as to what it is. A clever mathematician, never having studied physics in depth, would be able to at least have some idea as to what it means.
The fun ones sound right by accident. There’s a mathematical transform central to modern radiology, helpfully discovered by one Dr. Radon. The fuzzy rings in diffraction-limited telescopes are named after Sir Airy. Dove prisms, resembling a dovetail joint, are pronounced doh-vay.
Barns have physical dimensions of area, even though they are used to express probability distributions. So you can imagine “the broad side of a barn” as being so many square meters, but then scale it way way down to a particle physics equivalent, and you get the barn. Which apparently roughly represents “the broad side of a uranium nucleus”.
The probability of interaction between a nuclei and a particle is called a “barn” - because its a bit like shooting the broad side of a barn.
Its a standard Sci unit, too, so real actual papers will use “megabarn” as a real unit of measure.
Its subunit is called a “shed”, because physicists don’t get out enough.
One of the key enzymes in electrical signaling in your brain is called Pikachurin
As far as physics stuff goes, I think this is far preferable to using someone’s name.
I dunno. Consider that the first derivative of position is velocity, and second is acceleration… third is jerk… and then they go snap, crackle, and pop.
Yeah not great. But I think the worst is naming after a person. You can be brilliant, but if you haven’t studied physics you’ll have no idea whatsoever what, say, “Berry phase” means. But the other term for that phenomenon — “geometric phase” — gives some information as to what it is. A clever mathematician, never having studied physics in depth, would be able to at least have some idea as to what it means.
The fun ones sound right by accident. There’s a mathematical transform central to modern radiology, helpfully discovered by one Dr. Radon. The fuzzy rings in diffraction-limited telescopes are named after Sir Airy. Dove prisms, resembling a dovetail joint, are pronounced doh-vay.
Don’t forget the Poynting vector!
Barns have physical dimensions of area, even though they are used to express probability distributions. So you can imagine “the broad side of a barn” as being so many square meters, but then scale it way way down to a particle physics equivalent, and you get the barn. Which apparently roughly represents “the broad side of a uranium nucleus”.
I actually like the barn as a unit of measure.
I am forever haunted by the decision decades ago to refer to two of the quarks as Top and Bottom. Maybe it was cute at the time. It did not age well.