The probability of interaction between a nuclei and a particle is called a “barn” - because its a bit like shooting the broad side of a barn.
Its a standard Sci unit, too, so real actual papers will use “megabarn” as a real unit of measure.
Its subunit is called a “shed”, because physicists don’t get out enough.
Barns have physical dimensions of area, even though they are used to express probability distributions. So you can imagine “the broad side of a barn” as being so many square meters, but then scale it way way down to a particle physics equivalent, and you get the barn. Which apparently roughly represents “the broad side of a uranium nucleus”.
I think what annoys me most about "the “sonic hedgehog” example is that it has nothing to do with sound.
There are two wolves in my heart: A meme wolf, and a pedant wolf. Today they fight, and I know not which will win.
There’s a technique in science that’s commonly used called blotting. It is basically exactly what it sounds like. You transfer a biological sample to a sheet of paper by pressing the paper into your sample.
The person who first developed blotting was a guy with the last name Southern, and he did it to transfer DNA into paper. So that became known as a Southern Blot.
Then someone else decided to try the same thing with RNA, and so they called it Northern Blot, because ofc North is opposite of South. Then someone else tried it with proteins, and that became known as a Western Blot. I think now there’s even Northeastern Blots
An alternative to WIMPs are MAssive Compact Halo Objects, MACHOs
Science people have no idea the depths to which mathematicians and computer scientists will sink as we give silly names to hundreds of abstract concepts.
Well, that wasn’t mathematicians memeing.
Currying is named after Haskell Curry
Shame, I would like to uncurry my curry sometimes → (vegetables, spices)…
(Okay, damn that does quite work since the curry is already the “output”. I could uncurry the curry making process?)
