Re: [Phys-l] spelling

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

trappe@physics.utexas.edu wrote:
> Lately, I've gotten careless with spelling of the word scalar.  Is my  
> memory off, or did we used to use both scalar and scaler in physics  
> texts/courses?  

A scaler is a piece of apparatus, basically a counter register, e.g.
  http://www.fnal.gov/projects/ckm/jlab/2551-spec.htm

The dot product between two vectors is a scalar.

The spelling is not optional in either case.