A Blockbuster Action Flick About A Rouge Band Of Scientists, Who Call Themselves Thermodynamics, Using

A blockbuster action flick about a rouge band of scientists, who call themselves Thermodynamics, using their knowledge to fight the System and take down the Man. They answer only to a man who calls himself Entropy.

They live by three principles; the Laws of Thermodynamics, if you will.

For every action the Man takes to further subdue the naive masses within the System, Thermodynamics responds in kind.

Everything tends towards maximum chaos.

The day chaos is eliminated is the day that hell freezes over.

Plot twist: Entropy is really just Thermal Energy Per Unit Temperature all along.

~

via project-argus, source engineering-laughter

Have you ever heard the word "dord"? It's a scientific term for density. Kidding! No, it isn't. It's the legacy of the greatest typo in scientific history. Learn about the history of this ghost word.

In 1934, the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary came out. It was a detailed and comprehensive tome that went well beyond giving the definition of a word. It included basic etymology of a word, and some variations in spelling or pronunciation, meant to give readers a complete sense of the word and its history. The entry for "dord" included the fact that it was a noun, and that it was a term from physics and chemistry that meant density. There was no sense of what language or history it came from, or why it was a better term for density than the word "density" was.

It wasn't long before physicists and chemists started writing in and saying that none of them had ever heard of this property called dord. Who came up with it? Where was it in scientific texts? An investigation that ended in 1939 finally uncovered a sorting error that spawned a word. The original term was "D or d," and was bound for the stack of words meant to be in the abbreviations section of the dictionary. The capital or lower case d does often stand for density in both physics and chemistry. Somehow, when it found its way into the stack of pages meant to be words, the letters were pushed together and the word "dord" was born.

It almost seems a shame that we didn't just keep the word, since it's a rather charming error. But perhaps dord is better off as a legend than as a scientific term.

Image: Till Niermann

Via Snopes and Etymonline.

(As see on jtotheizzo)

Happy Birthday Bill Nye the Science Guy!

“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” ― Bill Nye

source

I think I'm just going to have to start prefacing all of my insults with "yeasty".

I really should start to use these… So much fun.