Heute ist Pi Tag.
3.14.
Also März, der 14.
Und heute hat Einstein Geburtstag.
Wenn das mal kein Grund zum Feiern ist.
Daher sollten wir alle wie Physiker sprechen:
Use “canonical� when you mean “usual� or “standard.� As in, “the canonical example of talking like a physicist is to use the word ‘canonical.’�
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�
Things are not difficult, they are “non-trivial�
Large discrepancies are “orders of magnitude apart�
You’re not being lazy, you are in your ground state.
A semi-educated guess is an extrapolation
You aren’t ignoring details, you are taking the ideal case
A tiny amount is “vanishingly small� or “negligible.� Really small is “infinitesimal�
You aren’t overweight, you are thermodynamically efficient
Stuck in a meeting is “trapped in a potential well,� though you hope you can “tunnel out.� Alternatively, it can be a black hole, from which there is no escape.
it’s not a wire, it’s a “conductor�
It’s not light, they are photons. Turning on the lamp becomes emitting photons.