When I was in elementary school, one of my classmates pronounced it “thermo meter” and I had to watch the science teacher struggle for a good 30 seconds to decide if he was going to correct him or not.
speedometers
Submitted 7 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/a913cc09-2f53-4755-b38a-2f438cd5f53f.jpeg
Comments
ptz@dubvee.org 7 months ago
bstix@feddit.dk 7 months ago
For anyone confused.
Most other languages do call it a thermo meter or similar. People who are not native English speakers will pronounce it wrongly when speaking English, because the word is the same - it’s just pronounced weirdly in both British and American English. The British and American pronunciations are not exactly the same on this, but they’re both
wrongdifferent from any other languages, except Greek.The English pronunciation is caused by English inheriting the Greek way of stressing the third last syllable on words of Greek origin. It makes no sense in my mind why they do it on compound words though. Meter is not Greek. It’s English, so they could’ve chosen differently, but they obviously chose the most annoying way to pronounce it.
There’s a few other words like that, but I don’t remember which…
Rubanski@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I think we should start pronouncing molecules or particles like Hercules, just to be consistent
mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Thermo meter Thermometer
Me: They are the same picture
Seriously though i did not understand which one I am pronouncing. I would usually read thermo meter and thermometer the same. When I try to differentiate by trying to make it sound together, or by trying to make more detatched, i just can’t and end up pronouncing the same
Ageroth@reddthat.com 7 months ago
Pedometer is the first one that comes to mind for me.
flora_explora@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Haha thanks! I was totally lost xD
oce@jlai.lu 7 months ago
Meter is not Greek.
Do you mean the pronunciation is not Greek?
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
I like to do that with a lot of the o’meters, just for fun.
Acceler-o-meter and seis-o-meter are my favorite. Weirdly least fun: kil-o-meter.
Ageroth@reddthat.com 7 months ago
Pedometer is my favorite of these. How many pedo’s ya get in today?
Vilian@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
and what the teacher did?
ptz@dubvee.org 7 months ago
Corrected him. lol.
psycho_driver@lemmy.world 7 months ago
My atoms sped up a bit during the decontamination scene.
ikidd@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Oh, great, now I have to rub one out again.
AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I tell my spouse who likes it warmer all the time that they’re exposing us to unnecessary radiation.
IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Hmmm, he says, reveling in his pedantry: Speedometers actually measure net displacement, and since thermal energy causes collisions on the small scale, but results in very little net movement for the particles, its not quite like a speedometer.
I like to think of it as a ball pit with one of those super bounce ball stacks in it.
witty_username@feddit.nl 7 months ago
Wouldn’t it be speed and crowding simultaneously?
Also, where would infrared photons fit in this scenario?TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 6 months ago
By that logic:
Officer, I couldn’t have been speeding, the average speed of all the cars was below the speed limit!
reinei@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Was it really though?
TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Was it really though?
Including the speed of the parked cars, yes :)
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Id like to see her in a speedo meter
Mango@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Eyyy!
How do you meter a Speedo? I am but a stupid sexy space elf and do not understand your ways.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 7 months ago
You look for tracks and pray to play
ParabolicMotion@lemmy.world 7 months ago
PV=nRT, or T=(PV)/(nR) You know, with gasses, temperature can be examined with respect to many factors.
Zachariah@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’ve heard this, but then I asked once what speed water molecules in a room temperature glass of water would be going. Are they like walking, driving, flying in a jet, or much faster? I was told my question didn’t have an answer since it didn’t really work that way or something.
I often wondered if the person answering just wasn’t able to make some assumption needed to answer because I didn’t state it in the question, or if saying thermometers measure speed is just wrong.
L3mmyW1nks@lemmy.world 7 months ago
See figure 3 here: en.m.wikipedia.org/…/Thermodynamic_temperature
As mentioned above, there are other ways molecules can jiggle besides the three translational degrees of freedom that imbue substances with their kinetic temperature. As can be seen in the animation at right, molecules are complex objects; they are a population of atoms and thermal agitation can strain their internal chemical bonds in three different ways: via rotation, bond length, and bond angle movements; these are all types of internal degrees of freedom.
tl;dr Water be jiggly. Amount of jiggle is hard to put a number on
davidgro@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It would still be possible to answer the speed question, you just get different answers for different substances (and even phases of the same substance) at the same temperature.
Since something like water does have those additional ways to store energy, my guess is it would be slower at room temp than another liquid with less complex molecules that have about the same mass each. (If there is such a thing)
Also I expect different answers for each of mean, median, and mode speeds.
Zachariah@lemmy.world 7 months ago
So if I were jiggling, I think I could come up with a speed. I’d figure out how far I’m moving, and how long it takes me to move. So I could measure from far left to far right of the jiggle (let’s say 18in.) and then how far to go from far left to far right and return to the original position. If that’s 2 seconds, then that’s 1½ feet per 2 seconds which can be converted to any other speed such as km/hr.
AppleMango@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well, speedometers are also speedometers for atomd
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Warm atoms go wheeeeeee!
Hupf@feddit.de 7 months ago
The_Tired_Horizon@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Jolene! Jolene! Dont you steal my ham. …it hasnt been temperature tested, mam!
A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 6 months ago
Ok, T’pol
atomicorange@lemmy.world 7 months ago
A thermometer is like if we measured speed by crashing a car into a barrier and gauging how much it made the barrier shake.
xthexder@l.sw0.com 7 months ago
I mean, it would work, lol.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
It’s really an average of all the traffic that was interrupted