Re:It took me 10 years to understand entropy
by XorNot on Thursday April 28, 2022 @12:25AM
(#31188718)
There's actually a sort of general principle in medical science that people should avoid whimsical names for things, since in all likelihood someone with a life-altering or fatal condition or their family shouldn't be told that it's due to a mutation in the Sonic Hedgehog protein [1]
Re:It took me 10 years to understand entropy
by javajosh on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @11:42PM
(#31188501)
"Ultraviolet Catastrophe"'s problem is that it sounds way cooler than it is. I mean, that's the title of a cyberpunk novel; more hyperbolic (and disappointing) than pretentious. Eigenthings would be second on my list of pretentiousness (oddly, not gedankenthings; I'm inconsistent I guess). Standard Model names strike me whimsical to the point of being undignified.
Re:It took me 10 years to understand entropy
by ravi-delia on Thursday April 28, 2022 @12:01AM
(#31188591)
I'm still mad about top and bottom when truth and beauty were right there!
Re:It took me 10 years to understand entropy
by lvncelot on Thursday April 28, 2022 @02:46AM
(#31189445)
If I'm not mistaken, the "official" names are just "t" and "b", so top and bottom, just like truth and beauty, are more mnemonics. So referring to them as truth and beauty would be just as correct.
Re:It took me 10 years to understand entropy
by jleyank on Thursday April 28, 2022 @12:11PM
(#31194324)
Thought one was their names and the other their attributes?
Re:It took me 10 years to understand entropy
by lvncelot on Friday April 29, 2022 @01:34AM
(#31201796)
Seems like you're right and I misremembered.
Re:It took me 10 years to understand entropy
by dr_dshiv on Thursday April 28, 2022 @04:08AM
(#31189932)
Ultraviolet catastrophe is cool! It’s why we needed quantum physics, otherwise there would be catastrophic infinite energy emerging from random high frequency oscillations!
Re:It took me 10 years to understand entropy
by javajosh on Thursday April 28, 2022 @07:55AM
(#31191426)
Well that's not quite what it is, first of all, and second of all I don't like the practice of calling something a catastrophe when its just predicted by a theory, but didn't happen. I mean, bad theories always predict something horrible should be happening. What's next, do flat earthers get to have an "ocean water catastrophe" because their theory implies all the water drains away? Or a "super luminal" catastrophe because their theory requires infinite unending linear acceleration of the earth (and moon and sun)? I mean, it really is a catastrophe I guess...for the theorist.
I looked up the dictionary definition of pretentious, and so it doesn't really apply, but the hERG channel is a critical ion channel and various drugs block this and cause Really Bad Things. hERG stands for "the human Ether-a-go-go-Related Gene" - a pretty bloody stupid name but whimsey is not restricted to particle physics.
Canonical ensemble, along with microcanonical and grand canonical ensembles are all over statistical mechanics. And I suspect there's not one bit of whimsey in their naming. There was not any humour in my stat mech course aside from me trying to make sense of it.