Re: Computational Physics

["Daniel L. MacIsaac" <Dan.MacIsaac@nau.edu>]

> My second comment is this: please don't call a session in which
> students sit at keyboards looking at screens a "lab". Laboratory work
> involves confronting the student with Nature. Subversion of the
> language is an impediment to the students' understanding this point.
>
> Leigh
I was unaware that Physics (or Physical Science) had applied for and
received a trademark on the word "lab" and was enforcing restrictive use
of the term.  Should I notify the creative writing lab on campus to cease
and desist using the term lest we litigate?

We SHOULD stick to critical conceptual language issues like work, force, 
heat and energy in their appropriate contexts, and not alienate 
nonmembers of the physics community by picking egregious and patently 
unwinnable battles.  We have enough image problems in society without
exacerbating the situation with trifles in this fashion.

Dan M  (who says you have to old to be cranky?)   :^| 

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu  http://www.phy.nau.edu/~danmac/homepage.html