Date:         Fri, 31 Mar 2000 03:31:03 EST
Reply-To:     Ssittservl@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         S Sittservl <Ssittservl@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: The word accelerator
Comments: To: andrew.grebneff@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

>  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.)