Post #2551642

2026-04-06 02:50 UTC

@aumalatj@mementomori.social @mrundkvist@archaeo.social This is a mistake that people often make in consuming science communication, assuming that the communicators speak in colloquial or simplified terms because they lack an understanding of the subject matter, when in actuality they are often simply phrasing it in a way they think is most likely to be understood by their target audience. And the target audience is almost never experts nor usually even enthusiastic amateurs. In this case it might be the American of median education level or perhaps the median middle school student (if trying to get kids into the science education pipeline).

Replies (1)

@internic@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-06 03:06

@aumalatj@mementomori.social @mrundkvist@archaeo.social Being trained as a scientist but raised as an American generally leaves one with a strange relationship to units. I would always do calculations in SI, almost all the physical constants I know are in SI, and I wouldn't even know some of the unit conversions in US customary units or, in some cases, even how the units are defined for some quantities (e.g., what's the equivalent of a tesla in E&M?). But all my formative experiences were in US customary units; I have a sense of how a certain temperature in Fahrenheit feels. I have an intuitive sense of how long a mile is or how big an acre is. So I would always compute things in SI and preferentially use it for any precision task, but if I want an intuitive sense of a quantity*, it can be useful to convert it to US customary units. * of course this only applies to quantities that fall within the regime of direct human experience. Since the two areas I spent the most time doing research in were quantum physics and astrophysics, this didn't come up all that much. 😁

Open ##2551643