Friday, March 14

Pi day!

Today is Pi day (3-14)! Also, it is Einsteins birthday. For people like Shannon, this means we'll be eating pie, one of her favorite foods. But for the nerds, this fantastic intersection of events has led the nerds of the world to declare today Talk Like a Physicist Day. So today is the day to bust out all those words and phrases you've been neglecting for the rest of the year.
  • Use "orthogonal" to refer to things that are mutually-exclusive or can't coincide. "We keep playing phone tag -- I think our schedules must be orthogonal"
  • "About" becomes "to a first-order approximation"
  • A situation isn't "bad," it's "sub-optimal."
  • "Finite" can mean either "really big, but not infinite," or "really small, but not zero."
  • Something that moves from one state to another slowly-- say, a highway driver who takes a mile and a half to move from one lane into the other-- does so "adiabatically."
  • Difficult problems are "nontrivial."
Here are more suggestions of those weren't enough.

7 comments:

Sabrina said...

Is today your favorite holiday then?

Anonymous said...

The funny thing is my coworkers and I use half of these expressions on a regular basis.

Suzanne said...

This sounds like as much fun as Talk Like a Pirate day! Do you have more suggestions?

Ben said...

I'm personally looking forward to 03-14-15, or better yet 03-14-1592. Of course you realize, this is only true in america where the dates are represented backwards from everywhere else.

Lauren said...

I used orthogonal at work the other day (referring to my orthogonal array). Just wanted to tell you to try and impress you. Every morning I wake up and think, "What might I do today to impress Clark?" As I haven't reported back until now, clearly I still need to work on my success rate.

Em said...

I'm sad to admit that I have never celebrated or even heard of Pi day. What a great holiday!

I loved how you related physics to everyday life in your example phrases. =)

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