JOHT 56: Terminology

[stickmaker]

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Joy of High Tech

 

by

 

Rodford Edmiston

 

 

Being the occasionally interesting ramblings of a major-league technophile.

 

 

 

Please note that while I am an engineer (BSCE) and do my research, I am not a professional in this field. Do not take anything here as gospel; check the facts I give. If you find a mistake, please let me know about it.

 

 

 

Terminology

 

 

 

 

Ever notice that electricity flows backwards?

 

In a flow of electricity, electrons carry charge from the negative to the positive. (Actually, it's more complicated than that, but the complications are irrelevant to the point.) You'd think that the people who named the electrical poles (most likely, Benjamin Franklin, who gave the appearance of being several people) would have known things flow from a positive to a negative. Which would have ultimately resulted in the electron - well after its discovery - being designated as holding a positive charge.

 

However, those early experimenters had no idea how electricity was carried. They could produce a flow and measure its effects, and agreed on what to call the poles they found as an arbitrary standard. Only later was the direction of charge travel actually determined. We can't reasonably blame them for getting it wrong, or even seriously consider that they got it wrong. They made the best choice available to them and set the standard, and that is what we use. However, the existing convention still causes trouble for some people. 

 

The corresponding labels for Magnetism, at least, make sense, though you have to remember the reason behind them. They're based on long-standing names for parts of the Earth and directions towards them. The north pole of a magnet - specifically, a compass - therefore points towards the magnetic (though not the geographic) North, though it has the same polarity as the Earth's South Pole. This is something anyone who understands that the Earth has a magnetic field can also understand. (Though, yes, some people do have trouble with this, since the Earth's North Pole has a south magnetic charge, and vice versa.)

 

I'm an engineer. Any competent engineer knows the importance of proper use of terminology. Because when we engineers are careless with it in a professional capacity, things tend to fall down. Being a bit obsessive-compulsive on top of that, one of my pet peeves is misuse of words and terms. 

 

For example, ever notice how some folks use "literal" and "virtual" exactly backwards? Either error makes me gnash my teeth. However, there are far more important reasons than personal irritation to be careful about what you say. 

 

Terminology is important, especially terminology which allows us to abbreviate. Using the right short word or abbreviation in the proper context can save us from repeatedly giving long descriptions of what we mean. Saying "chip" instead of "microelectronic circuit assembly on a single substrate chip" or even "microchip" saves a lot of time and effort. However, if you say "chip" in some circumstances without elaboration folks won't know whether you mean "microprocessor circuit assembly on a single substrate chip" (See what I mean?) or "chocolate chip" or are perhaps even referring to a chip of stone. As usual, context is very important to meaning in language, whether spoken or written. 

 

It's not just engineering and the physical sciences which require precise terminology, either. Paleontologists seethe quietly - and sometimes not so quietly - when the media or popular culture lump all prehistoric reptiles together as "dinosaurs." That word actually refers to a specific group of creatures distinguished from other creatures - past and present - by shared characteristics. 

 

See: http://tinyurl.com/3n22gv2 for a rant on just this subject. 

 

 

This attention to terminology isn't just people being picky. These distinctions are important because the differences they point out are significant. Even when - as with electricity, electromagnetism and electromagnetic energy - the specific terminology is an accident of history, not adhering to the accepted terminology can result in confusion. Any competent engineer will tell you that when a standard exists - even an arbitrary one - you should use it, unless you have a good reason not to. Unfortunately, the exact same term can mean different things in different professions. Again, context is often essential. 

 

By the way, an electromagnet is a magnet which only works when you put electricity through it. Electromagnetic radiation is something different. It received its name because it has some characteristics of both electricity and magnetism, even though it is something distinct from both of them. Because magnetism, electricity and electromagnetic radiation are all closely connected you can easily convert between them. Further adding to the confusion. 

 

Your life could depend on precise and accurate labeling. Saying "gas" when you mean "gasoline" is usually acceptable when you're talking about vehicles or liquid fuels. However, if you're talking about atmospheric contaminants this could lead to confusion. "You need a filter mask. There's gas fumes in there." A mask for keeping out gasoline vapor might not work against methane (natural gas) and vice-versa. 

 

Even in situations where the literal meaning of the words used to describe something are accurate for the field, there can still be problems if the particular field isn't known. This is especially troublesome when different fields use the same words for very different things. As just one example, when an astronomer recently published a paper on "a new taxonomy for asteroids" referring to those lumps orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, he got multiple automated requests for copies of his paper from marine biology departments... because "asteroid" is the technical term for starfish. (The word in Latin meaning "star like.") Yet again, context is vital! (Just try telling that to a simple machine; or teaching it how to recognize context! AI is coming, and desperately needed.)

 

Pronunciation can be as important as the correctly spelled word. NASA pronounces "Gemini" to rhyme with "Jiminy" (like the cricket) in order to differentiate the capsule and its associated program from the twins of Greek mythology. Even though the capsule apparently got this name due to being able to hold two astronauts.

 

So, you think you know what plasma is? To a medical person it is something quite different from what a physicist expects. Neither usage is exactly true to the original Greek meaning! (Books could be written on the problems caused when the person who names something has an incomplete understanding of Greek or Latin. More books could be written on the problems caused when the person who names something is well trained in the ancient language from which he or she gets their new term, but uses an obscure meaning!)

 

In physics, a plasma is a state of matter in which electrons have been stripped away from the atomic nuclei they normally circle. It is like a gas, only moreso. The word was adopted to describe this state in 1928.

 

In medicine, plasma is the fluid which carries the other components of blood. Only, it is also the fluid inside cells, or the fluid inside cellular nuclei, or... This usage was adopted in 1845.

 

The etymology of plasma - or plasm, to get a little closer to the original - is rather interesting. In the original Greek it means something molded or created, or something spread thin. You can see how it applies to both areas of current scientific usage. 

 

One of my really hot button pet peeves is the phrase "dark side of the Moon."

 

Now, when it's being used in a poetic or metaphorical sense, as Pink Floyd did, that's fine. However, when someone uses it literally that makes my teeth ache. Because unless they're an astronomer or planetologist or an amateur interested in those fields, they are pretty much guaranteed to get it wrong. 

 

You see, which part of the Moon is dark changes on a monthly cycle. Unlike which are the near and far sides, which never change, because the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth. Anyone who knows the Moon has phases knows that the lit part changes on a regular schedule. Yet they keep saying "dark side" to mean the far side. Which is actually lit by the Sun half the time!

 

Sometimes, lay people inexplicably perpetuate an archaic or incorrect usage long dropped - or never used - by professionals. Take the word "galaxy." The word derives from the Greek term for our own galaxy, galaxias (γαλαξίας), or kyklos galaktikos, meaning "milky circle" for its appearance in the sky. Also known as the Milky Way, our galaxy appears as a dense, bright band in the night sky, resembling spilt milk. 

 

Once the telescope came into use, Astronomers quickly found some rather distinct "spiral nebulae" in the sky, and wondered over their nature. By the early Twentieth Century they were known to be groups of stars, and thought to be something similar to various globular and irregular clusters, and assumed to be part of the Milky Way like all other stars. However, that explanation didn't quite fit new data coming in. Eventually, distance measurements and improved mapping of the Milky Way combined to show that these "nebulae" were actually "island universes" vastly more distant than the clusters of stars of the Milky Way. Further, they found that the closer stars in our galaxy are arranged in a complex shape resembling the "spiral nebulae" now viewed as distant and distinct. 

 

This meant that not all stars were together in one, vast group, the Milky Way. Instead, there were multiple Milky Ways, or island universes, one of which we reside in. Due to the ancient Greek myths attributing the spray of stars making up our island universe with the spilled breast milk of a goddess, "galaxy" came to be the general term for large, gravitationally bound aggregations of stars, usually separated from each other by vast distances. "Island universe" is still occasionally used, but normally in a deliberately archaic sense. 

 

However, for some reason, certain laymen - including people writing news articles - can't seem to understand just what a galaxy is. Nearly a century after astronomers changed their usage, these people say and write "galaxy" to mean our solar system (or, more rarely, another stellar system). The origin of this mistake is not known to me, but it seems to be about as old as the modern definition of galaxy. It could simply be due to people who learned the old meaning not getting the new one and passing the old meaning on. To people who adopt it uncritically, without realizing that it's wrong, because it's "right" in their own training.

 

While this usage of "galaxy" is decreasing it is still out there. I recently read a popularized article about our most distant space probes and how long they would need to reach the nearest stars, in which the author proclaimed that we might someday actually be able to send a probe to a star outside our "galaxy." In the context of the article, they obviously meant our solar system. Argh.

 

Time designations such as 12 AM or 12 PM are nonsense. You see, AM means ante meridiem, or before midday; that is, Noon. PM means post meridiem, or after Noon. Saying 12 PM for Noon is like saying "twelve Noon after Noon." You could almost make a case for 12 Midnight, but since it is equal amounts of time before or after Noon, is it AM or PM? We have correct and distinct terms for these times (that is, Noon and Midnight). Why go out of the way to say something which is not only not the standard, but can be confusing without context? No wonder most militaries use a 24-hour clock...

 

Now, yes, usage changes, as do standards. However, when careless usage results in something which isn't really useful, it's not creating a new standard. It's creating confusion. Like saying "Eighteen Hundreds" when meaning "Nineteenth Century." The Eighteen Hundreds were actually 1800 to 1810. (Or maybe 1801 to 1810. This is a gray area.) Using a term which has a long-understood - if not precise - definition to mean something else is careless at best and folly at worst. Yet such usage appears to be gaining ground, even among archeologists and historians. Is it too hard these days to understand that the First Century of the Modern Era was from the year 1 to 100, and so on? (There was no Year Zero, which confuses many people. Just look at how many celebrated the beginning of the New Millennium in 2000. Remember this mantra: Arthur C. Clarke was right! The Greenwich Observatory even agreed with him!)

 

By the way, stainless steel isn't. Bulletproof isn't, either (someone always has a bigger bullet). "Almost infinite" is an oxymoron. Totally unique is redundant. Penultimate does not mean "more than ultimate." And on and on...