Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
1 - What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
A few months ago I found myself living one of my milder visions of hell, trapped on a flight to Los Angeles, having forgotten to bring along anything to read but Physical Review Letters. Finishing the two articles that had inspired me to stuff it in my briefcase before we even reached the Mississippi I decided to make the best of a bad thing by taking the opportunity to expand my horizons. Scanning the table of contents, I was arrested by a title containing the word “Lagrangean.”
Funny, I thought, it's not often you see misprints so blatantly displayed. But when I turned to the article, there it was again, “Lagrangean,” in the title and scattered through the text. Well, I thought, an uncharacteristic failure of the copyediting process. The authors were foreign and apparently didn't know how to spell. Copy editors aren't physicists, the word is surely in few if any dictionaries, and so it slipped through.
But I had nagging doubts. Easily resolved, I thought: You can't write an article in theoretical particle physics without a Lagrangian, so I can check it right now. Well, it turns out to be not quite that easy. To be sure, you can't do particle physics without a Lagrangian, but you don't have to call it anything more than L, and many don't. Nevertheless, I found a Lagrangian, fully denominated, in one more article, and there it was, shimmering derisively before my eyes again: “Lagrangean.”
Now I am not a man of great self-confidence, and my secretary will testify that I am a rotten speller. Was I fooling myself? Could “Lagrangean” be right, and my conviction that it should be “Lagrangian” an orthographic hallucination induced by the absence of better things to read, like a mirage in the desert? Please ask yourself this, dear reader, before reading on: Would it have startled you?
When the plane landed in Los Angeles, I tooled up the freeway to the house of my hosts and breathlessly asked, “How do you spell ‘Lagrangian’?”
“I dunno,” said he, but she said without hesitation, “L-A-G-R-A-N-G-I-A-N,” and I felt hope for my sanity, A quick tour revealed that every book in the house on mechanics and field theory spelled it with an i. I was sane! But what was going on at Physical Review Letters?
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 3 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016