Talk Like a Physicist Day!
Today is Talk Like a Physicist Day!
I had no idea that such an event existed! I only found out this morning because of Tom’s post in Swans on Tea (in turn from this post in Cosmic Variance). Really, people, you need to keep me better informed!
While today was chosen because it is Albert Einstein’s birthday, I really think that the goal was to take some attention away from those media-hogging mathematicians and their Pi Day fête.
Tom gives some pointers on just how you can pepper your speech to sound like a physicist. These are a few that I’m particularly susceptible to saying myself:
A tiny amount is “vanishingly small” or “negligible”. Really small is “infinitesimal”.
Things are not difficult, they are “non-trivial”.
Large discrepancies are “orders of magnitude apart”.
To add a few of my own:
Whenever I heat something up in the microwave, I say I’m “increasing its kinetic energy”.
A number that stays the same through some manipulations is “conserved”.
Striking a barrier becomes a “failed attempt at quantum tunneling”.
If something seems to act like something else, I say that it’s in a “superposition of the two states”.
Have a great day everyone!
About Me, Physics Is Phun, Random | Jim | 
March 14, 2008 8:32 am
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