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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: why do a lot of people confuse between interference and diffraction?
« on: 28/04/2024 02:37:08 »
Hi.
1. It's not in my power to make all students and teaching staff use the terminlogy only a certain way, sorry.
2. Some of the important ideas for diffraction and interference are the same. Blending the terms may not be as bad as you think. Scientific terminology evolves just like all spoken languages evolve and develop. If it became essential to point out some differences between one thing and another, there are other ways and other terminology we can use.
Evolving terminology isn't always bad:
In Britain, the word "inflammable" meant that something could easily be set on fire or was some kind of fire hazard. The etymology of the word is from the Latin inflammabilis. However, English started to evolve in a way where adding "in" as a prefix in front of a word indicated the negation or opposite.
Examples: Hospitable and Inhospitable; Tolerable and Intolerable; Edible and Inedible...... plus many others.
As a consequence some people thought that "inflammable" meant that something would NOT burn and indeed, when surveys were done in some workplaces, a few people thought they might be able to use an inflammable material to put a fire out if one started somewhere. Obviously this is a serious problem. So the resolution was to change the terminology assocated with something that will burn or ignite easily easily. HazChem warnings now say "Flammable" instead of "Inflammable". This was probably a senisble decision and may have saved lives. Technically, it's wrong on many levels, the Latin roots have been lost and the word "Flammable" was just nonsense that wasn't in any dictionary when the decision was made. However, it was still probably the right decision.
Best Wishes.
If left uncorrected, the confusion will spread among students. To make it worse, they will get positive feedbacks in the exams by giving wrong answers.
1. It's not in my power to make all students and teaching staff use the terminlogy only a certain way, sorry.
2. Some of the important ideas for diffraction and interference are the same. Blending the terms may not be as bad as you think. Scientific terminology evolves just like all spoken languages evolve and develop. If it became essential to point out some differences between one thing and another, there are other ways and other terminology we can use.
Evolving terminology isn't always bad:
In Britain, the word "inflammable" meant that something could easily be set on fire or was some kind of fire hazard. The etymology of the word is from the Latin inflammabilis. However, English started to evolve in a way where adding "in" as a prefix in front of a word indicated the negation or opposite.
Examples: Hospitable and Inhospitable; Tolerable and Intolerable; Edible and Inedible...... plus many others.
As a consequence some people thought that "inflammable" meant that something would NOT burn and indeed, when surveys were done in some workplaces, a few people thought they might be able to use an inflammable material to put a fire out if one started somewhere. Obviously this is a serious problem. So the resolution was to change the terminology assocated with something that will burn or ignite easily easily. HazChem warnings now say "Flammable" instead of "Inflammable". This was probably a senisble decision and may have saved lives. Technically, it's wrong on many levels, the Latin roots have been lost and the word "Flammable" was just nonsense that wasn't in any dictionary when the decision was made. However, it was still probably the right decision.
Best Wishes.