> Date: 03/30/2000 4:39:32 PM Central Standard Time > From: andrew.grebneff@STONEBOW.OTAGO.AC.NZ (Andrew Grebneff) > > Beware use of this word. strictly speaking any normal car has three > accelerators: > 1) throttle 2) brake 3)steeringwheel I think what you really mean is that there are three things that could *plausibly* be called accelerators. There are others as well - the tires (which, in the end, provide all the acceleration relative to the road) the gasoline (raw source of the energy for acceleration), the engine (responsible for turing the gas into the kinetic energy that's redirected to accelerate the car), etc. Even the car itself could be called an "accelerator" (in the sense of "something that is accelerating") while it is accelerating. However, "accelerator", when used in regard to a car, is a precise technical term, and it means only one of these things - the throttle. If a word could be expected to have any meaning that might be considered plausible for it regardless of the context, communication would be very difficult. Even physicists use their words this way. If one physicist tells another that he just acquired a "linear accelerator" for his lab, it's clearly understood that his new toy is an atom smasher, as opposed to, say, a slingshot that he's planning to use to accelerate small masses in a straight line toward his lab assistants when they're not looking. > If you don't believe it, ask a physicist. It's just another abused word. I think we would be very hard pressed to find a single physicist who, while teaching his teenage daughter to drive the family Vanagon [OBLIGATORY VOLKSWAGEN CONTENT], will say "we're coming to a stop sign, so now press down on the accelerator..." > Andrew -Steven Sittser (P.S. - I had some fun in high school Physics class one day telling friends that our lab had just purchased a "photon cannon". When they questioned the teacher - a good sport - he agreed, despite the fact that all we had was a new spotlight for optics experiments. Ah, geek humor.) |
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