Most commonly misspelled science and math words

[Greg Bernhardt]

I'm looking for a list of commonly misspelled science and math words. What do you see often?

 

[fresh_42]

Do you mean: except names?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Do you mean: except names?

oh names would be great too!

 

[Ibix]

Lorentz, of the Lorentz transforms, is often confused with Lorenz, of the electromagnetic Lorenz gauge condition.

 

[fresh_42]

We recently had Plank.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Hadron.
Which is unfortunate.

 

[Borek]

Actually you could try to write a script to filter out all "spellcheckable" words out of the PF posts.

 

[Ibix]

Einstien is fairly common. Schwarzchild, Schwarschild and Schwarzschild seem to be common mis-spellings of Schwarzschild. The number of ns at the end of Feynman's name also seems to be a topic of debate.

 

[DrGreg]

There are some words for which what is "right" or "wrong" depends on what country you are in. For example:

U.S.​	UK​	notes
math​	maths
center​	centre
fiber​	fibre
meter​	metre	unit of distance (but not measuring device, always "meter")
liter​	litre
esophagus​	oesophagus
color​	colour
neighborhood​	neighbourhood
analog​	analogue
mold​	mould

But that probably wasn't what you were looking for.

 

[fresh_42]

This thread is a bad omen!

Feynam diagrams and sum over paths

 

[DaveC426913]

 

[Bandersnatch]

Astrology and cosmetology.

 

[russ_watters]

Astrology...

I had an ex who would not stop saying that. Doomed relationship.

 

[fluidistic]

Thomson, who became Lord Kelvin is often written as Thompson.

 

[Bystander]

View attachment 316393

"Coolly" equals "laborer, geological formation, adverb...?"

 

[DaveE]

Kirchhoff. No one can spell it right, not even me, and I know I'm doing it wrong every time I type it.

 

[fresh_42]

Astrology and cosmetology.

That actually happened to Lise Meitner:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/collection-of-science-jokes-p2.847743/page-8#post-5717287

 

[topsquark]

Then there's my favorite: pie. (I tend to ask them if they want apple or blueberry to calculate the area of the circle.)

-Dan

 

[BillTre]

Chicxulub, the impactor and loation of impact of the "dinosaur killer" meteorite.

 

[kuruman]

Tangenital velocity.

 

[pinball1970]

We recently had Plank.

I did that once. I was hoping the community had forgot.

 

[hmmm27]

Van der Graaff (probably)

 

[kuruman]

There is also the dreaded pressure guage.

 

[TeethWhitener]

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/feeling-stupid

 

[Math100]

Angle/angel.

 

[Hornbein]

View attachment 316393

I feel certain the the most misspelled word is "loser" but their spell checker didn't catch it.

 

[Hornbein]

I feel certain the the most misspelled word is "loser" but their spell checker didn't catch it.

It would be pretty funny to see the world map with LOSER emblazoned on most of the countries.

 

[mjc123]

Van der Graaff (probably)

It's actually Van de Graaff. But "Van der Graaf Generator" are an "English progressive rock band". Popular in Italy during the 1970s, apparently.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It's actually Van de Graaff.

And he was American, not Dutch. From Alabama.

 

[George Jones]

Hadron.
Which is unfortunate.

Like, for example, on that staid news platform, the BBC:
https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/568972/BBC-News-awkward-sexually-explicit-Hadron-Collider

 

[fresh_42]

Like, for example, on that staid news platform, the BBC:
https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/568972/BBC-News-awkward-sexually-explicit-Hadron-Collider

Not the first inaccuracy I have seen on BBC.

 

[gmax137]

There is also the dreaded pressure guage.

that one drives me crazy.

On my crazy meter, it is right up there with "ect." As in, "bring your own paper, pencils, pens, ect."
Ick, I see "ectoplasm" everytime I see "ect."

 

[kuruman]

that one drives me crazy.

On my crazy meter, it is right up there with "ect." As in, "bring your own paper, pencils, pens, ect."
Ick, I see "ectoplasm" everytime I see "ect."

What did you expect from people who pronounce it ec-setera?

 

[Filip Larsen]

In my native language plural form of nouns are often indicated with "er" in the end, e.g. the singular "bil", meaning car, has plural form "biler", meaning cars. Now, since kilometer ends with "er" some people manage to think that 1 kilometer is to be called "1 kilomet", even on prime time national TV

Another extremely common mistake is to confuse units of power and energy, like mixing up kW and kWh, but I guess that is not really a spelling mistake as such.

 

[topsquark]

On a related note: KM for kilometers.

-Dan

 

[fresh_42]

On a related note: KM for kilometers.

-Dan

1KM=1G

 

[jrmichler]

I see too much of stopping the car by applying the breaks.

 

[fresh_42]

I see too much of stopping the car by applying the breaks.

At least it is not completely wrong. I mean, applying them leads to a break (in the sense of Newton's first law), doesn't it?

 

[HowlerMonkey]

How about auto correct worldwide losing it's mind trying to deal with almost anything scientific?

 

[vela]

How about auto correct worldwide losing it's mind trying to deal with almost anything scientific?

its/it's ;)

 

[HowlerMonkey]

lol

 

[Mondayman]

Diarrhea seems to be misspelled often. I always forget how to. Spelling is probably the least of your worries if you're talking about it, however.

 

[robphy]

Astrology and cosmetology.

That actually happened to Lise Meitner:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/collection-of-science-jokes-p2.847743/page-8#post-5717287

It also happened to Lisa Randall when she visited my grad school to give a talk.

 

[robphy]

• not Expirement, but Experiment
• indice is not the singular of indices (when I hear that, I should ask them for the singular of matrices)

 

[fresh_42]

that one drives me crazy.

On my crazy meter, it is right up there with "ect." As in, "bring your own paper, pencils, pens, ect."
Ick, I see "ectoplasm" everytime I see "ect."

Here is one especially for you:

At least it isn't in Webster. I checked, I expect any linguistic accident to be the new normal nowadays.

 

[kuruman]

Here is one especially for you:

View attachment 316599

At least it isn't in Webster. I checked, I expect any linguistic accident to be the new normal nowadays.

Its a membre of the family of mispeled words ending in "say": heresay, neighsay, soothesay, gamesay, ect.

 

[DrClaude]

I've often seen, including in books and articles, Crank-Nicholson instead of Crank-Nicolson.

Clebsch-Gordan is easy to misspell (Gordon ).

 

[Filip Larsen]

If we are doing names, then Chebyshev is notable for its lack of widespread consensus towards a single correct spelling:

The surname Chebyshev has been transliterated in several different ways, like Tchebichef, Tchebychev, Tchebycheff, Tschebyschev, Tschebyschef, Tschebyscheff, Čebyčev, Čebyšev, Chebysheff, Chebychov, Chebyshov (according to native Russian speakers, this one provides the closest pronunciation in English to the correct pronunciation in old Russian), and Chebychev, a mixture between English and French transliterations considered erroneous. It is one of the most well known data-retrieval nightmares of the entire mathematical literature. Currently, the English transliteration Chebyshev has gained widespread acceptance, except by the French, who prefer Tchebychev. The correct transliteration according to ISO 9 is Čebyšëv. The American Mathematical Society adopted the transcription Chebyshev in its Mathematical Reviews.

Perhaps once a student know this, he or she just gives up and starts winging other foreign-looking names too ...

 

[Orodruin]

Ångström.

 

[Orodruin]

Oh! Among those who know enough to want to use en-dashes to separate surnames (e.g., Einstein–Hilbert):

Using Levi–Civita instead of Levi-Civita.