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Article: Physics and astronomy's strange language: hot to befuddle the public. (includes related information)
- Article from:
- USA TODAY
- Article date:
- January 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Society for the Advancement of Education. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SOME PEOPLE spend their days with pencils and paper clips, others with diapers and shopping carts. Physicists and astronomers, though, deal with WIMPs and MACHOs, giants and dwarfs, and bubble chambers. Then, there are the subatomic particles called quarks, which figure prominently in physics and astronomy. There are six types: up, down, beauty, truth, charm, and strange quarks. Strange quarks? They all sound pretty strange. The terms seem more at home in Alice's Wonderland than in the realm of serious science.
The nomenclature scientisis use stands out in rebellion against typical academic jargon. The men and women who study the world at scales ranging from the tiny ...