One of last year’s highest-traffic posts was, weirdly, Talk Like a Physicist. I say “weirdly” because it wasn’t much more than a link to Tom at Swans On Tea.
It’s that time of year again, and Tom’s back with an updated list of vocabulary for your physicist-talking needs. I don’t have much to add, but one of Tom’s items:
We physicists quantify relationships — something that is complicated is “nonlinear,” or even “highly nonlinear.” Opposites are “inversely proportional”
reminded me of a great literary reference, from Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”:
“So they can read a word with equal ease no matter how it’s rotated,” Gary said. He turned to look at the heptapods, impressed. “I wonder if it’s a consequence of their bodies’ radial symmetry: their bodies have no ‘forward’ direction, so maybe their language doesn’t either. Highly neat.”
I couldn’t believe it. I was working with somebody who modified the word “neat” with “highly.”
Gary is, of course, a physicist.