Most commonly misspelled science and math words

[fresh_42]

On a related note: KM for kilometers.

-Dan

1KM=1G

 

[jrmichler]

I see too much of stopping the car by applying the breaks.

 

[fresh_42]

I see too much of stopping the car by applying the breaks.

At least it is not completely wrong. I mean, applying them leads to a break (in the sense of Newton's first law), doesn't it?

 

[HowlerMonkey]

How about auto correct worldwide losing it's mind trying to deal with almost anything scientific?

 

[vela]

How about auto correct worldwide losing it's mind trying to deal with almost anything scientific?

its/it's ;)

 

[HowlerMonkey]

lol

 

[Mondayman]

Diarrhea seems to be misspelled often. I always forget how to. Spelling is probably the least of your worries if you're talking about it, however.

 

[robphy]

Astrology and cosmetology.

That actually happened to Lise Meitner:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/collection-of-science-jokes-p2.847743/page-8#post-5717287

It also happened to Lisa Randall when she visited my grad school to give a talk.

 

[robphy]

• not Expirement, but Experiment
• indice is not the singular of indices (when I hear that, I should ask them for the singular of matrices)

 

[fresh_42]

that one drives me crazy.

On my crazy meter, it is right up there with "ect." As in, "bring your own paper, pencils, pens, ect."
Ick, I see "ectoplasm" everytime I see "ect."

Here is one especially for you:

At least it isn't in Webster. I checked, I expect any linguistic accident to be the new normal nowadays.

 

[kuruman]

Here is one especially for you:

View attachment 316599

At least it isn't in Webster. I checked, I expect any linguistic accident to be the new normal nowadays.

Its a membre of the family of mispeled words ending in "say": heresay, neighsay, soothesay, gamesay, ect.

 

[DrClaude]

I've often seen, including in books and articles, Crank-Nicholson instead of Crank-Nicolson.

Clebsch-Gordan is easy to misspell (Gordon ).

 

[Filip Larsen]

If we are doing names, then Chebyshev is notable for its lack of widespread consensus towards a single correct spelling:

The surname Chebyshev has been transliterated in several different ways, like Tchebichef, Tchebychev, Tchebycheff, Tschebyschev, Tschebyschef, Tschebyscheff, Čebyčev, Čebyšev, Chebysheff, Chebychov, Chebyshov (according to native Russian speakers, this one provides the closest pronunciation in English to the correct pronunciation in old Russian), and Chebychev, a mixture between English and French transliterations considered erroneous. It is one of the most well known data-retrieval nightmares of the entire mathematical literature. Currently, the English transliteration Chebyshev has gained widespread acceptance, except by the French, who prefer Tchebychev. The correct transliteration according to ISO 9 is Čebyšëv. The American Mathematical Society adopted the transcription Chebyshev in its Mathematical Reviews.

Perhaps once a student know this, he or she just gives up and starts winging other foreign-looking names too ...

 

[Orodruin]

Ångström.

 

[Orodruin]

Oh! Among those who know enough to want to use en-dashes to separate surnames (e.g., Einstein–Hilbert):

Using Levi–Civita instead of Levi-Civita.

 

[fresh_42]

Rune Elmqvist
Søren Sørensen
Christian Møller
Ole Rømer
Søren Hjorth
Carl Friedrich Gauß
Hermann Graßmann
Erwin Schrödinger
Guillaume François Antoine de L'Hôpital

and not to mention how often I corrected Reimann to Riemann!

 

[Orodruin]

Rune Elmqvist
Søren Sørensen
Christian Møller
Ole Rømer
Søren Hjorth
Carl Friedrich Gauß
Hermann Graßmann
Erwin Schrödinger
Guillaume François Antoine de L'Hôpital

and not to mention how often I corrected Reimann to Riemann!

You forgot Karl Schwarschild ...

 

[fresh_42]

You forgot Karl Schwarschild ...

... and shall I dicsclose that Celcius actually used his scale the other way around?

 

[dextercioby]

Also want to make a comment about that Russian mathematician. In Romanian, we have special characters which perfectly give in writing the equivalent of Russian letters: Cebîşev. The trick of course is that the Romanian pronunciation (IPA_RO = [ʧe.bɨ.'ʃev]) is not quite like the Russian. But it's letter-to-letter correspondence for writing, not for pronunciation purposes.

But yeah, for English it must be either ISO-9 (but they don't use the English alphabet) or whatever AMS says.

 

[bob012345]

Fibonacci.

 

[Klystron]

Currently updating my knowledge of dinosaur science and vertebrae paleontology by reading new books. Spelling and remembering names for species and groups, let alone pronouncing them, remains problematic. Not only does taxonomy include difficult to spell proper names as mentioned in earlier posts but applies pseudo-classical Latin conventions that vary enormously from the Latin I learned as a child.

Unpronounceable names exacerbate the inherent difficulty of learning about extinct animals from the spotty fossil records and early misinterpretations of same.

 

[topsquark]

Currently updating my knowledge of dinosaur science and vertebrae paleontology by reading new books. Spelling and remembering names for species and groups, let alone pronouncing them, remains problematic. Not only does taxonomy include difficult to spell proper names as mentioned in earlier posts but applies pseudo-classical Latin conventions that vary enormously from the Latin I learned as a child.

Unpronounceable names exacerbate the inherent difficulty of learning about extinct animals from the spotty fossil records and early misinterpretations of same.

You mean like, "aptasaurus?"

-Dan

 

[Klystron]

You mean like, "aptasaurus?"

-Dan

Got the joke but was thinking of composite names such as Ornithomimosauria and Halszkaraptorinae.

I have no problem with reclassifications of previously described fossils though the progression of names for brontosaurus reminds one of the Pluto planet classification controversy from astronomy.

 

[topsquark]

Got the joke but was thinking of composite names such as Ornithomimosauria and Halszkaraptorinae.

I have no problem with reclassifications of previously described fossils though the progression of names for brontosaurus reminds one of the Pluto planet classification controversy from astronomy.

That's what I used to call apatosaurus when I was a kid. :)

-Dan

 

[BillTre]

Currently updating my knowledge of dinosaur science and vertebrae paleontology by reading new books. Spelling and remembering names for species and groups, let alone pronouncing them, remains problematic. Not only does taxonomy include difficult to spell proper names as mentioned in earlier posts but applies pseudo-classical Latin conventions that vary enormously from the Latin I learned as a child.

Taxonomy can be kind of crazy with names.
Besides changes in names and continued use by some people (in the literature!) of old names, I have also seem mis-spelled names propagating through different published papers.

 

[Claude Bile]

Gouy phase.

 

[pinball1970]

Taxonomy can be kind of crazy with names.
Besides changes in names and continued use by some people (in the literature!) of old names, I have also seem mis-spelled names propagating through different published papers.

Fungal taxonomy, not fun.

 

[fresh_42]

That's what I used to call apatosaurus when I was a kid. :)

-Dan

Fungal taxonomy, not fun.

 

[pinball1970]

View attachment 316757

The most ridiculous name ever?

• Myxococcus llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochensis

And yes of course it's Welsh. Perhaps a couple of PhD students got the crazy idea that if they could isolate a novel species from (that place) then the binomial would be pretty damn long.
if not the longest.

 

[topsquark]

The most ridiculous name ever?

• Myxococcus llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochensis

And yes of course it's Welsh. Perhaps a couple of PhD students got the crazy idea that if they could isolate a novel species from (that place) then the binomial would be pretty damn long.
if not the longest.

Oh, I don't know. Captain Kirk's favorite bird is the Khaan.

-Dan

 

[Ibix]

Oh, I don't know. Captain Kirk's favorite bird is the Khaan.

I thought Captain Kirk's favourite bird was the one with the green skin...

 

[hmmm27]

I thought Captain Kirk's favourite bird was the one with the green skin...

I recently read about the machinations Gene Roddenberry went through to get Majel Barrett (later Mrs Roddenberry) into the original series as Nurse Chapel, after the original original pilot had her as "Number One".

Also, it was postulated that Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand, first season) should have been kept on to provide a foil to Kirk's womanizing.

 

[.Scott]

You can always depend on Iceland for words that are neither pronounceable no spell-able.
As with: Eyjafjallajökull

In High School Physics, I was told that the 1-letter lower case decimal prefixes such as 'm' and 'd' designated multipliers less than 1 while upper case 1-letter prefixes such as 'M' and 'D' designated multipliers greater than 1.
That rule (if it ever really existed) is violated so often that US NIST (standards) now draws the line at 1000. So 'kilo' is 'k', 'hecto' is 'h', and 'deka' is 'da'.
Although 'k' for kilo is the SI standard, more often than not, KBaud, Kbit, and Kbytes are more often 'K' than 'k'.

 

[jrmichler]

I live on a flowage fed by a creek that was recently renamed Aabajijiwani-ziibiinsing because the previous name was derogatory to Native American women. One person tried to find the meaning of the name. He was only able to find a Native American that thought that the second word means creek or river. Google translate finds nothing. We have not yet figured out how to pronounce the new name.

 

[Frabjous]

Nucular