this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
511 points (100.0% liked)

Science Memes

235 readers
68 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] drail@fedia.io 37 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Physics is a mixed bag with this stuff. Gell-Mann came up with the name quarks after a line from Finnegan's Wake because Joyce referenced them as coming in three. It was a nonsense word inserted just to rhyme with Mark, Park, etc, so its pronunciation in physics isn't even correct, but it was fun and physicists were just having a good time with it.

Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he has not got much of a bark And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.

Then we got the strange/charm and top/bottom (which was originally the beauty/truth, so bullet dodged there) so the quarks really got all the fun names. Strong Force physics in general gets the good stuff: Axions were named after a detergent because they helped "clean up" the strong CP-violation problem of the standard model. Fantastic, no notes.

Neutrinos (my field of study), had so much potential for fun, stupid naming that was squandered. The neutrino was originally proposed with the name "neutron" by Pauli, but then the actual neutron was discovered and observed first, so the name got pinched. To remedy this, the electron neutrino was dubbed "neutrino" or little neutron (they didn't know that other flavors of neutrino existed). Meanwhile, the muon neutrino was originally supposed to be the neutretto (before they realized that the neutral leptons were related by the different particle generations), so we could have had a world where each generation of neutral lepton was just another combination of neutron + diminutive italian suffix.

  1. Neutrino
  2. Neutretto/neutronetto
  3. Neutrello/neutronello

Then, when the mass eigenstates were confirmed, we could have diversified and gone with big suffixes to indicate that neutrinos have mass.

  1. Neutroni
  2. Neutrachione/neutronachione
  3. Neutrozzo/neutronozzo

But noooooo, particle physics decided to just give neutrinos the lamest possible names, electron/muon/tau neutrinos for flavor states and m_1/m_2/m_3 neutrino for mass states. I am ashamed of my predecessors for what they've done.

Don't even get me started on the J/Psi debacle...

[–] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 16 points 8 months ago

The time derivative of position is velocity. The derivative of velocity is acceleration. Derive again and you get jerk. Then it's snap, crackle and pop.

(For those too young, these are the names of those characters they use to sell Rice Krispies)

[–] criitz@reddthat.com 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

TIL I've pronounced quark wrong my whole life (rhyming with park).

Though I've heard it done that way elsewhere - perhaps it is also considered acceptable at this point.

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 months ago

You need it to make the quantum duck joke. Quark quark.

[–] drail@fedia.io 2 points 8 months ago

Gell-Mann said it sounds like "quart", Joyce rhymed it with Park, it is a silly word and the pronunciation is as fluid as you desire.