Re: [Phys-L] strange things in chem book

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Good question!

I would say that principle and law in these cases are equivalent.  So why
not call them all laws.  After all the Work-energy law would be in line with
the law of conservation of energy.  But it may be the name comes from how
they were determined or just the author's privilege.  But sometimes there is
no accounting for language.

So why do you "look up" things, but "write down" answers.  I have a friend
who is trying to explain English to some foreigners as part of his job.  The
idiomatic usage of up and down are really confusing to foreigners.

It would be nice if the language usage would be consistent.  Students would
be helped by getting rid of KE, PE... And using E_k, E_g,... For all energy.
How about F_N, F_T... Rather than N and T with all forces being noted as F
so students get the hint that all forces are generically similar.  We can't
even agree on consistent notation let alone a consistent meaning for g or
weight.

I would favor the use of "scientific theory" or better yet model instead of
just plain theory.  This differentiates it from the common usage of theory
as a conjecture or hypothesis.  I would say a conjecture could come from
thin air, but a hypothesis is usually based on a model of some sort.  Then a
guess would be a conjecture whith always comes from thin air and might just
be an eeny-meeny-miney-mo.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


> Interesting discussion!
>
> What about Archimedes' Principe and Bernoulli's Principle? 
> The Work-Energy
> Theorem? The mirror lens equation? Why aren't these laws?
>
> People always say, "I have a theory as to why..." The word 
> "hypothesis" is
> rarely used in the general public. "Theory" just sounds 
> better to them.
> This will never change.
>
> Phys-L@Phys-L.org writes: