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Re: Meauring Volts?



I repeat that I am not losing sleep over this, but I don't think it is
something to sweep under the carpet. I believe part of my job is to
teach students to speak and write in a formal way. They don't have to
be formal all the time, but they need to know how to do it and when to
do it.

I think it is often easy to be formal, but I acknowledge there are times
it is difficult. Just because we run into ideas/concepts that are
difficult to describe doesn't mean we throw out the whole idea of
writing carefully.

An object/substance has properties (characteristics or whatevers).
Examples are mass, volume, resistance, temperature. Some of these are
extensive and some are intensive. This means some properties can be
used to tell how much of the subtance is present and some cannot.

Some properties are easily quantified with a number and a unit. Mass is
such a property. Other properties are not easily quantified with a
number and unit (e.g. taste, color, texture).

Regardless of whether the property is determined quantitatively or
subjectively, I would maintain that a formal description should be
worded with the name of the property being determined rather than the
units or other descriptor. Examples: I would say we measured the
resistance rather than say we measured the ohms. I would say we
measured the temperature rather than say we measured the degrees. I
would say we sampled the taste rather than say we sampled the sweetness.

In my mind there is no question about the first two examples. Those
involving subjective descriptions of sensual data are more difficult
because we don't have numbers and units, therefore we revert to words.
At my college, the Family and Consumer Sciences Department is next door,
and our buildings are connected by a tunnel. The dietetics students
take a lot of science courses so we have close communication between the
departments. Science profs often get coerced into student projects
involving taste tests, etc. I am impressed how carefully they try to
choose their words because they are dealing with subjective issues and
they need to describe these carefully so the evaluators know what
they're being asked, and what ranges of responses are expected.

Overall, it is clear we are testing the taste. Within that broad
category we can judge sweetness, bitterness, sourness, astringency,
aftertaste, artificial taste, etc. However, in the end, we are usually
asked to judge which one has the "best" overall "taste."

Thus, it is clear to me that the Family and Consumer Sciences professors
are trying to teach their students to be very careful about how they
word their statements (e.g. about things such as taste). They are
trying to create some sense of order in a very subjective discipline.
In the physical sciences we often have an easier job because our
measurements are less subjective and we have tools and instruments that
can give us numbers and units for a particular property. Has this
relative ease of making measurements led us to become sloppy with our
words?

Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton College
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu