Apparent Brightness » Teaching http://apparentbrightness.net astronomy and stuff Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:07:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Calling Things http://apparentbrightness.net/2007/03/08/calling-things/ http://apparentbrightness.net/2007/03/08/calling-things/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2007 07:47:22 +0000 Thomas http://apparentbrightness.net/2007/03/08/calling-things/ Julianne from Cosmic Variance has a hilarious comment about nomenclature in astronomy. I agree that there is some strange slang around that even other physicists might not get. An all-time favourite is of course calling all atoms except Hydrogen and Helium for “metals”.

I guess oneself gets used to almost everything, but I also have experienced strange looks from students while explaining things with some of those “special” words.

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