Today has been dubbed “Talk Like a Physicist Day”. Why? Because we’re at least as cool as pirates, that’s why.
Over at Swans on Tea, Tom offers some vocabulary tips:
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”
Other suggestions: a situation isn’t “bad,” it’s “sub-optimal.” “Finite” can mean either “really big, but not infinite,” or “really small, but not zero.” If you really want to sound advanced, something that moves from one state to another slowly– say, a highway driver who takes a mile and a half to move from one lane into the other– does so “adiabatically.”
I know I’m missing some obvious verbal tics. Leave your suggestions in the comments.
A disproportionate reaction is “nonlinear”, as in “You don’t have to go nonlinear. That wasn’t meant as a criticism.”
I talk like a physicist every day. Seriously, I regularly use every single one of the examples in this post, without thinking about it. In discussions which have nothing to do with physics.
Here’s another one: when there’s a substantial change in something, refer to it as a “phase transition.” Examples: “His personality really goes through a phase transition when he gets drunk.” Or “I was getting ready to cash in my options, but the company stock underwent a phase transition, and now they’re worthless.”
Speaking of “phase,” “out of phase” is another good one, when people don’t agree. As in “Mark Chu-Carroll is 180 degrees out of phase with Vox Day’s views on women.”
Wow, I never realized that talking like a physicist is just like talking like a computer scientist… without “Big O” (equivalent to “to a first order approximation”) or “NP Complete” (slightly stronger than “non-trivial”)
I love the “adiabatic” lane change. The opposite is the “quantum lane change” — I used to have a friend that would change lanes as if her car were an electron transitioning between orbitals.
An object that has traits of two different things is in a “superposition of states”.
A few others here.
Also, since today is Pi day, shouldn’t today be talk like a mathematician day?
I’ve spent the bulk of my liberal-arts teaching career trying to STOP talking like a physicist.
Anyway, I think “dress like a physicist day” would be easier. Warm weather is coming… time to break out the black socks and Birkenstocks!
Isn’t today getting a little overloaded on the holiday front? I mean, it’s Pi Day, and it’s Steak & A BJ Day, and Einstein’s Birthday, and God knows what else they’ll try to tack on next…
I use most of those in “everyday” conversation; sometimes non-physicists are amused and sometimes perplexed. Except for “finite.” As an undergrad, I spent quite a lot of time in the math department, taking classes that math majors took, and adopted to a certain degree a mathematician’s vocabulary: so “within epsilon of” to mean very close. As a result of all this time spent amongst math people, it still really bugs me when physicists use “finite” to mean “non-zero.”
I once asked a theorist why it is that physicists regularly use “finite” to mean “non-zero” and I believe he replied that physicists often think of a quantity and its reciprocal–e.g. frequency and period–to be, in essence, the same thing, which is sort of equivalent to “finite” and “non-zero” meaning the same thing.
Another traffic-related one: stop-and-go traffic would be “quasistationary”.
Also, here in Northern New England there is typically no attempt to sequence traffic lights. I have been known to say that the random phase approximation is valid. (Actually, in some cases it would be better if it were.)
If you’re cleaning up around the office, lab, or house, it’s an entropy reduction exercise. (Since it’s not a closed system, the laws of thermodynamics do not apply.)
It shouldn’t. Used in this sense, “finite” is in contrast to “infinitesimal”.
Difficult problems are “nontrivial.” Also, since I married a physicist, I’ve found myself using words like “constraints” and “an order of magnitude” a lot more.. LOVE the “don’t go nonlinear on me” line.
As for trying NOT to talk like a physicist, becoming aware of this sort of thing actually makes avoiding jargon easier — because it then becomes a conscious choice, not a kneejerk reaction. TLAP Day is just for fun — just like curiosity-driven research — but for those looking for a practical application, they can find that, too.
That’s how I, and most everyone I deal with at work, talks every day. We are all computer programmers/geeks, so precision of language is often important.
Used in this sense, “finite” is in contrast to “infinitesimal”.
Exactly.
There are two cases in which you can’t give a definite numerical value to something: when it is arbitratily large (infinite), or arbitrarily small (infinitesimal, or zero). “Finite” is the term for eevrything in between.
“Proportional to” and “inversely proportional to” are another good set of markers. As in “My interest in the Eliot Spitzer story is inversely proportional to the amount of time spent talking about it.”
Should there be something about assuming spherical cows here?
I often refer to “state tables” when discussing non-scientific things.
Or does that belong over in “Talk like a mathematician day”?
Modulo that adiabatic remark, you also talk like an engineer.
I don’t know much about how physicists talk. I think there is a nontrivial intersection between math talk, CS talk and physics talk, though. Examples from CS:
O(1) time – easy but not trivial; not requiring cleverness, as in “I’ll be done with this program in O(1) time.”
o(1) time – trivial, as in “This program will take me o(1) time to write”
bugs – typos, mistakes, issues
Examples from math:
epsilon – a small value, as in “I’m within epsilon of beating this level.”
zero-sum – a situation in which one can’t benefit without hurting others, as in “I’m not sure that it makes sense to offer an extra credit question. Since the test is curved, this is a zero-sum situation.”
isomorphic – sometimes used to indicate sameness. Eg “I was in an isomorphic situation last year”
intersection – as in “there is a nontrivial intersection between math talk, CS talk and physics talk”
converse – not “really” a math thing, though I’m sure we use this term orders of magnitude more than non-math people.
or – frequently means xor to normal people, but not to math people. This has occasionally caused problems in my personal life.
iff (used in non-math writing) – Eg: “McCain will win the election iff Clinton wins the primary”.
“at least one” – used in situations where “a” would suffice, eg “There must be at least one bathroom in this building.”
finite number of – as in “There are only a finite number of options here.” Again, not really a “math” thing, but used much more frequently.
I can’t think of any others right now. I don’t know if any of these work for physicists too.
From the I-wish-I-were-making-this-up Files: I just overheard a co-worker say something about having a Kalman filter in his head to keep him properly focussed on his work.
I think I need a new gig.
My college friends were fond of the following:
“That sounds like it’ll be fun. For a sufficiently small value of fun.” Or “Where fun is defined as boring.”
Modulo! Of course! I knew I was forgetting one! Modulo that omission, I think my comment was within epsilon of being complete.
“For small/large values of ____” is a great one, too.
“In the limit ____” is another. For example, “In the limit of infinite funding, this experiment is trivial.”
What about things that only sound like physicist-talk to people who aren’t physicists (or science-heads generally)? My current least-favorite example of this is “ is exponentially larger than “, with “exponentially” just meaning “very much”.
Oh crap. I now realize that I actually do use almost all these phrases in informal conversations already.
Don’t forget “approaching,” “asymptotically,” and “linear combination.”
What about the common way of asking your friends for their boundary conditions when you want to go for coffee together?
Re: #21:
One of my professors often works out GR problems on the board, without really paying close attention to numerical constants. So, he would say something like:
So, In the limit of 4pi = 1, or maybe -1, or it might be -4pi, I can’t remember, this equation describes…
The high energy types have their own specialized slang. I’ve heard at least two high energy people say “on shell” rather than “actually accomplish some task”. For example, in response to a request to send an email that had been discussed much in advance, “It’s time to put that email on shell.” I don’t know what was more sad – that the person said that casually, or that I understood what was meant.
Turn on the light : Activate the photoemission process within the (assumed infinite, straight, and circular) tungstene wire.
Spectacles : Pair of glass pieces assumed infinitely thin, with a circular surface, and working only within the small angles approximation.
Watch : Bracelet that matches the position of a train with the position of the small hand, in the proper referential.
My boss likes to substitute “delta” or “epsilon” for close or small. i.e. How long till you’re done grading? “Not long, I’m delta away.”
Whenever we are making changes to a journal article back anf forth together she says we are “Iterating to self consistency.”
I think “non-trivial” is somewhat worse than “difficult”, with an edge of “we don’t quite know the best way to approach this”.
After all, if you did know exactly how to approach something, it’d be trivial.
On the other hand, Lucas earlier used the phrase “non-trivial intersection”, and there it just means “significant”. Different contexts.
I wouldn’t ever use “adiabatically”, but that might be because I switched camps from physics to CS, and I didn’t really like Thermo anyway.
“Use ‘orthogonal’ to refer to things that are mutually-exclusive or can’t coincide.”
Funny. Usually I’ve seen “orthogonal” used to mean “independent,” and often when the qualities said to be orthogonal are often thought of as correlated. For example, a partisan of Jim Wallis might say that theological and political liberalism are orthogonal to each other, that is, one can be theologically conservative (believe in the virgin birth, etc.) but be politically on the left. But then, I usually am not that involved with physicists.
Slightly off-topic, but we live near NASA Goddard, and I saw a red bumpersticker that said, “If this sticker is blue, you’re going too fast.”
With the exception of adiabatic, those are all favorites around our house. Though canonical is more likely to be used as a literary allusion than your usage.
MKK
You forgot “negligible.” I must use that, like, every other sentence.
Adiabatic is a funny word.
In quantum dynamics, it means a process happens very slowly compared to other time scales, so that no quantum jump occurs.
In thermodynamics it means a process happens very quickly, so that no energy is transferred as heat (q=0).
Like other non-physicists in this comment thread, I’m struck by the fact that I use nearly every single one of these turns of phrase. Clearly, physics language is potent in the broader world of geekdom.
Tina Rhea’s bumper sticker in #32 made me laugh out loud.
I use terms like “sub-optimal” and “non-trivial” all the time. I think talking like a physicist must be my base state.
Two more for you: someone’s gone “high order” or gone “nonlinear” for when they became either very excited or very angry for what seemed like small reasons.
Patrick @ 36, the American Physical Society had those for our centennial meeting in 1999. I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find one out there on the internet.
THE DENSITY OF DEATH
by
JONATHAN VOS POST
Death enters the Physics Laboratory
meanders past the magnets’ poles
wires coil on spools and rolls
the slide projector stops its story
Darkness diffracts through sharp-edged prisms
sweeps across oscilloscopes
blackens textbooks’ indexed hopes
and silences their catechisms
An airless breeze turns supercool
as volt-ohmmeter’s needle dips
the teeth of the alligator clips
are clenched unopening and cruel
Not vacuum tubes that hold their breath
nor manuals for engineers
erase from blackboards of our fears
the chalky fingerprints of Death.
1520-1555
22 Apr 87
[in Dr. Theodore N. Sarachman’s lab, Whittier College]
[Once Upon a Midnight, ed. Jame A. Riley, Michael N. Langford, Thomas E. Fuller,
1995, Unnameable Press 1995] trade paperback, ISBN 0-934227-16-0, $10.95
In the years since we were marries, my wife, a doctor of psychology, has begun to say “it’s an existence proof,” when speaking of an example that’s not necessarily the optimal example. I fear I may be a bad influence upon her.
Also, that isn’t the scene of a car wreck. It’s a plastic deformation experiment.
On the theory that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the team responsible (some might say “blameworthy”) for Talk Like a Pirate Day heartily endorses Talk Like a Physicist Day.
Besides, we know some physicists, and they’re much cooler than we are.
The bumper sticker Tina Rhea mentioned in #32 can be purchased at http://www.cafepress.com/giftature.84583189
Einstein’s birthday is Pi Day? Sweet!
re #31 — I have been using “orthogonal” in everyday speech rather a lot lately. To point out that a question has gotten a response that is not actually an answer, for instance. The underlying image is of two ideas/situations/proposals that may happen to intersect, but that fundamentally go off in different directions.
Then there’s “…for some value of X”, usually ironic.
You really can’t talk like a physicist or mathematician if you don’t say something about monotonic sequences at least once.
My husband wants to know whether Talk Like A Physicist Day is a sidereal day (23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.1 seconds) or a calendar day.
Absolutely everything is a “tensor”. There’s a shopping tensor, a lane-change tensor, a vocabulary tensor, a TV channel choice tensor, even an underpants tensor for when they get a bit uncomfortable.
My husband wants to know whether Talk Like A Physicist Day is a sidereal day (23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.1 seconds) or a calendar day.
A calendar day, according to UTC, of course. They synch it up with the atomic clocks a few months later.
I agree with Michael Hannemann, and then some. “Non-trivial” is a synonym for “this problem cannot be solved without the whole department quitting our jobs and devoting our lives to it, and even that’s no guarantee. Now, if you will excuse us, it’s time for lunch.”
I too use all of these terms outside the classroom (I teach high school physics) to the confusion of my non-physicist colleagues. I use the term “elegant” to describe a particularly good solution to a problem; they think I’m weird.
Remember that you cannot truly talk like a physicist without discussing frictionless surfaces, massless cables and pulleys, and perfectly elastic collisions. Assume no air resistance, too.
Not necessarily physics talk since some of these are also common parlance (I think):
Integrate instead of consider as in “I need to integrate everything you’ve said.”
Derivative instead of secondary as in “Let’s discuss some of the derivative topics later” or “That seems like a derivative issue.”
Transition state instead of temporary When an object in the house has been moved from place A to place B on its way to its final home in place C we say it is “in a transition state right now.”
Modes instead of aspects as in “This problem has several modes that we need to consider separately.”
Second-order instead of less important as in “Isn’t that a second order consideration? Maybe consider later.”
Once, when I was an Adjunct Professor of Astronomy, I was hanging around with a bunch of astronomers who were arguing about a detail of galactic structure.
“There’s a simple way to tell,” I said. “Bombard the galaxy with a coherent beam of identical neutron stars.”
They stared at me, baffled, except one who nodded her head and agreed: “Right. That goes beyond an inverse scattering problem to holography.”
I noted to myself that not all Astronomers could Talk Like a Physicist.
I wondered what sort of extraterrestrial civilization could perform such an experiment, too.
Garrrr —- there’s your problem, matey — your wavefunction doesn’t transform properly under the parity operator!
I’m sorry, which day is this, again?
When I fart I typically just tell people that I am doing a demonstration of entropy.
When you are talking about the number “0”, use the word “zero”, not the letter “o”.
Here is an example from razib that made me laugh –
I tend to use “converging” “diverging” and “gradient” — e.g., “this discussion isn’t converging” — but mostly I just make physics puns. (“What did the light bulb say to the interferometer?” “Nothing; it was totally incoherent.”) Techies groan; non-techies just look blank.
Referring to Heisenberg, or Schroedinger’s cat, marks a wannabe. Tossing in a mention of Pauli exclusion or the Pauli principle is not bad. But the real master will refer to the Pauli Effect.*
*Otherwise known as Malfunction at a Distance. The mere presence of Pauli, a consummate theorist, in a laboratory building would cause equipment to mysteriously fail, often spectacularly.
Dr. Kare has worked with Edward Teller, and told me that Dr. Teller liked my equations best in a batch of Laser propulsion proposals solicited by Dr. Kare. I have, as mentioned in this blog, worked with Richard Feynman.
I say so to remind the thread readers that Feynman once demonstrated the Pauli Effect at a lecture. Extra credit for she or he who first provides the specific anecdote.
Huh, nobody has mentioned “Apply the Nike operator”, as in “Just do it.” I guess that was just us, then.
Glacial, as in “progress here occurs at a glacial pace.”
Perhaps more geology than physics…
Ctrl+Z will disapply the Nike operator… Just Undo It.
Use “stochastic” when you mean “random.”
Orthogonal lines do meet; maybe saying that your schedules are parallel would make more sense.
“decouple”
IF THE RELATIVITY OF SIMULTINEITY IS ABANDONED DO QUANTUM MECHANICAL AFFECTS BECOME A NECESSITY?
IF THE RELATIVITY OF SIMULTINEITY IS ABANDONED DO QUANTUM MECHANICAL AFFECTS BECOME A NECESSITY?