this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 7 months ago (2 children)

A thermometer is like if we measured speed by crashing a car into a barrier and gauging how much it made the barrier shake.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago

I mean, it would work, lol.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

It's really an average of all the traffic that was interrupted

[–] [email protected] 51 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago (4 children)

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 ~~wrong~~ different 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..

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I think we should start pronouncing molecules or particles like Hercules, just to be consistent

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Now you're just wrecking my mind.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Just as long they don't wreck your testicles.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I think we can agree on that one.

In any of the languages that I know the pronunciation of, there are no differences in the pronunciation of deez nutz.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Hah. That reminds me of a joke I used to play on my wife back when cars had cd players. After we got in the car, about once a month I would come up with

"Hey can you go and get that CD for the ride?"

"What CD?"

"See Deez Nutz."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Ha. Thanks. I'll use that on my family today .

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Mole-cue-leez?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)
[–] h3rm17 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In Spanish as well. Ter-MO-metro

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Thanks I guess i'll stick to thermo meter lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Pedometer is the first one that comes to mind for me.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Meter is not Greek.

Do you mean its pronunciation is not Greek?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Both thermo and meter are from Greek, but the combination didn't exist until the 17th century

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

What you wrote before is confusing then.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Pedometer is my favorite of these. How many pedo's ya get in today?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Corrected him. lol.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (1 children)

My atoms sped up a bit during the decontamination scene.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Oh, great, now I have to rub one out again.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

As we're both Trekkies, I tell my spouse who likes it warmer all the time that they're exposing us to unnecessary radiation leaks.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Wouldn't it be speed and crowding simultaneously?
Also, where would infrared photons fit in this scenario?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

By that logic:

Officer, I couldn't have been speeding, the average speed of all the cars was below the speed limit!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Was it really though?

Including the speed of the parked cars, yes :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Id like to see her in a speedo meter

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

See figure 3 here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

let’s say 18in.

Show off. 😠

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I’m rather jiggly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Well, speedometers are also speedometers for atoms

[–] southsamurai 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Jolene! Jolene! Dont you steal my ham. ..it hasnt been temperature tested, mam!

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