Re: Centrifuge in "World Book"

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 05:31 PM 5/20/01 -0500, John Clement wrote:
> After perusing the article on centrifugal force in the Wold Book
> Encyclopedia, I glanced at the centrifuge article.  It says it "causes the
> heavier liquid or the solid particles to move to the bottom of the
> container, leaving the lighter substances on the top."  Don't they have any
> good scientists on their staff to proofread this stuff!
>
> One wonders how any student can learn science when this sort of nonsense is
> published in both the texts and the encyclopedias.


With heavy heart I must report that the encyclopedia passage is *not* wrong
(barring nitpicks about the meaning of "top" and "bottom").

In the M-W dictionary, look up "heavy".
  http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=heavy

You will see that "high specific gravity" is definition 1b.
Other dictionaries agree.

Is the encyclopedia passage open to misinterpretation?  Perhaps.
Is it outrageous nonsense?  Certainly not.

Would the intended readership (young children) be better served
by an unambiguous, technical, precise description?  Probably not.