Re: what electronic device could you build 3000 years ago?

From: Tim Shoppa (shoppa_at_trailing-edge.com)
Date: 06/10/04 

Date: 10 Jun 2004 11:57:13 -0700

Al <no.spam@here.com> wrote in message news:<no.spam-645F92.08543210062004@news.verizon.net>...
> In article <bec993c8.0406091323.59177675@posting.google.com>,
> shoppa@trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) wrote:
> > 2V and lower is a cell, not a battery.
> >
> > A battery is, by definition, made up of multiple cells in series.
> > (Or a pile...)
> >
> > (I know, in common usage it often means a single cell, and in the
> > recent past they've even put that in the dictionaries. I'm waiting
> > for "ATM Machine" to enter the dictionary...)
> >
> > Tim.
>
> Yeah, the meanings of words are being twisted to fit the common mold.
>
> A few years ago I was working as a consultant at a lab at MIT. I was
> pontificating about something and called it a theory. Boy was my face
> red when one of the scientists there calmly explained to me the
> difference between a theory and a hypothesis.

It depends on who you were talking to... different fields have different
meanings for the word. Most physicsists won't have any problem calling
a hypothesis a "theory", but a mathematician or biologist or even worse,
a statistician or an experimental psychologist will probably be much more
pedantic.

Physics tends to have a lot more theories than the other fields just
because they aren't so tied up in the terminology. ("String theory"
and "Superstring theory"... you can't come up with either of those
if you're tied to anything!)

Tim.

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