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