{"id":3497,"date":"2009-03-14T11:41:14","date_gmt":"2009-03-14T11:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/03\/14\/talk-like-a-physicist-1\/"},"modified":"2009-03-14T11:41:14","modified_gmt":"2009-03-14T11:41:14","slug":"talk-like-a-physicist-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/03\/14\/talk-like-a-physicist-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Talk Like a Physicist"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of last year’s highest-traffic posts was, weirdly, Talk Like a Physicist<\/a>. I say “weirdly” because it wasn’t much more than a link to Tom at Swans On Tea.<\/p>\n

It’s that time of year again, and Tom’s back with an updated list<\/a> of vocabulary for your physicist-talking needs. I don’t have much to add, but one of Tom’s items:<\/p>\n

\n

We physicists quantify relationships — something that is complicated is “nonlinear,” or even “highly nonlinear.” Opposites are “inversely proportional”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

reminded me of a great literary reference<\/a>, from Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”:<\/p>\n

\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

I couldn’t believe it. I was working with somebody who modified the word “neat” with “highly.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Gary is, of course, a physicist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Continue reading Talk Like a Physicist<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,18,7,37,29,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-books","category-physics","category-pop_culture","category-sf","category-silliness","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}