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Asked by iamyourgoals to Chris, Josh, Rebecca, Rob, Susan on 14 Jun 2015.
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Susan Cartwright answered on 14 Jun 2015:
There are any number of truly horrible names in biology, and also (to a lesser extent) in chemistry, but as a physicist I fortunately don’t have to worry about them. The one in my area that causes endless trouble (not to me, because I speak German) is “bremsstrahlung”, the radiation emitted by a charged particle (usually an electron) when its path is deflected by another charged particle (usually an ion). The word means “braking radiation” in German, from ‘bremsen’, to brake, and ‘Strahlung’, radiation, so German speakers have no trouble with it, but those who don’t know German seem to find it impossible to remember which letter to double and where to put the H: “bremmstrahlung”, “brehmstralung” and all sorts of inventive combinations appear in student work – and my colleagues’ notes! People’s names also give trouble: Max Planck has given his name to quite a number of concepts in particle physics (Planck mass, Planck length, and so on), but many people seem to think he’s a length of wood (the plank length, which is something that is relevant to B&Q rather than to black holes…), and Ejnar Hertzsprung of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram tends to lose the t, the z or the s (even Russell often gets stripped of his final l).
But, to be honest, I don’t think we physicists are in with a shout on this one. The biologists have it sewn up.
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Rebecca Dewey answered on 15 Jun 2015:
I always have to look up how to spell Heschl’s gyrus – the part of the brain that processes sounds that come in from the ears. I always want to put the “y” from gyrus (which is a name of a particular shaped bit of the brain, there are lots of things called something-gyrus, or gyri in plural) into “Heschl” (Richard L. Heschl, the man who discovered it). I guess because it’s pronounced “hes-shh-ill” I want to spell it Heschyl but that’s wrong! But generally names are the hardest things to spell because they are often not spelt like normal words. There’s a physicist called Max Planck (after whom we have lots of theories and mathematical constants, and lots of research departments are named after him). My boyfriend often spells it “Plank” like a plank of wood! I’m sure Max Planck is spinning in his grave!
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Chris Armstrong answered on 15 Jun 2015:
Any word you hear in the midst of an experiment is hard to write down. I have fallen victim to calling a “capacitor bank” a “Catbank” in official emails because I misheard what someone said. And shadowgraphy probes become shutography without too much issue.
On top of that half the words related to my field are just not accepted words in any dictionary for example “relativistically” that word is spelled correctly but every single spell check (except my one in word where I have manually added it) will draw a red squiggly line underneath it.
And oh god, “Aluminium” there are too many vowels it never looks right.
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