Rising up within the US in the course of the oil embargo of the early Nineteen Seventies, I used to be bombarded by public service bulletins encouraging individuals to preserve power. However at a really younger age, I additionally learn that “energy is always conserved”, in line with physics. This baffled me. If nature mechanically conserves power, why would human efforts to take action be wanted?
I quickly realised that physicists don’t precisely converse English. They make use of a dialect filled with familiar-sounding phrases with unfamiliar meanings (together with “conserve” and “energy”). Worse nonetheless, many phrases, together with easy ones like “force” and “mass”, don’t even signify what physicists initially supposed. Consequently, the language we use to speak about physics obscures a few of our most lovely and interesting discoveries about how the universe works.
Some scientists would possibly shrug and say it’s neither stunning nor problematic that the phrases aren’t fully clear. In any case, the foundations of physics are experiment and arithmetic. These are what matter; phrases are inevitably mere shadows.
Although I agree that knowledge and equations are paramount, physicists convey their concepts, each to one another and to non-scientists, utilizing language. When their wording is ambiguous or opaque, important classes in regards to the cosmos could also be misunderstood.
So let’s look nearer on the language of physics, and the way three seemingly easy phrases have morphed over time, changing into snares for the unwary. Such misleading phrases and metaphors are widespread in physicists’ dialect. In pausing to ponder them,…
