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[Phys-L] notation for initial velocity components



I may be worried about nothing important, but I thought I'd shoot
this out for comments anyhow in case anyone has any significant
comments or insights.

Is anyone bothered about our usual symbols for initial velocity components?

Particularly egregrious is x_dot_zero. (This is where ascii is
hopeless: I mean write down x, then put a dot above it [what is that
called by the way? an "overdot"?], then add a subscript "0". We all
know what it means, but naively interpreted it could be read as "the
time derivative of the initial x-component of the position" which of
course is zero (derivative of a constant).

Somewhat better is to subscript the initial velocity with a zero. My
main difficulties are:

(a) Should the "0" come before or after the "x" subscript? One can
either read it as x-component of initial velocity, or as initial
value of x-component of velocity. These happen to mean the same
thing, but I can never remember which I prefer and end up switching
from one to the other randomly.

(b) How about putting a zero in parentheses after the symbol:
x_dot(0) or v_x(0)? Is this notation to be preferred? It seems it
could be preferable for the former case but more cluttered for the
latter case.

As I said, probably minor issues. But in the interests of refining my
own notations in writing on the board or in articles, I'd welcome
comments. -Carl
--
Carl E. Mungan, Asst Prof of Physics 410-293-6680 (O) -3729 (F)
Naval Academy Stop 9c, 572C Holloway Rd, Annapolis MD 21402-5002
mailto:mungan@usna.edu http://usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/