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In our school we learned Victorian and post-Victorian English. When we went up to the University, we stepped back and had to read a lot of Elizabethan prose and poetry in our English Classes. We didn't hear any slang at all. And we were always speaking to one another in Telugu...our knowledge of English was bookish.
When we graduated to Physics proper, most of our text books were imported from Britain. They were very concise...perhaps England had either an attitude problem or shortage of paper or both. We had to tease out the meaning of the terse prose. There were no solved examples. Very few diagrams. The style was constipated.
Then I went to IIT KGP and everything was different. I came across Pysics text books by Americans. Like Resnick-Halliday, Sears, Feynman and Beiser. These were expansive. And were an immense relief (it is a different matter that subsequent editions of R & H became too expansive, unreadable, and diffuse...they lost focus...and ended up in hocus-pocus).
Not only were there many solved and unsolved examples but there were a large number of figures. And the altogether new 'Answers to Odd-Numbered Problems'. The style was chatty and personalized. They sort of democratized Physics. And there were many household and sports words that were tickling.
For instance, while the British texts talking (very rarely) of the Twin Paradox always talked of Twin A and Twin B, Feynman called them Joe and Moe. Somehow it all seemed very friendly.
I came across new terms in the American text books whose meaning I could only guess. And the one I guessed right at once was the Problem in R & H that talked of a cockroach crawling on the rim of a Lazy Susan:
I could visualize the Lazy Susan not only from the context, but because I had got made a similar revolving table during my experimental research.
And then Crawford in his 'Waves' in the Berkeley Series talked about a 'slinky'. That too was easy. It must have been a loose toy-spring.
The one that foxed me was: 'Slam Dunk'. I guess it occurred in Feynman. It meant something terrific or easy or whatever. It is only today that I Googled for it:
Then Beiser was talking about the 'right ball park'. Couldn't guess what exactly was a ball park...it looked like a base ball term. And we did play a lot of base ball in school and knew all about 'ball' and 'strike' and 'home run'.
And then there was this verb 'cinch' in the anonymous report of a referee in one of my AJP Papers (the referee turned out to be Ed Taylor). I thought it was a typo and he meant 'clinch'. And inserted the missing 'i' with pen and it slipped through the hands of Prof. S. N. Biswas who was an Expert in my Professor Interview...he was no wiser. It was only much later that I looked it up in Webster.
The latest Yankee flash word I heard was yesterday:
"Brain Dump"
It is an A-4 paper on one side of which are scribbled in pencil a huge amount of text and formulas and plots all exquisitely close-packed. Apparently before facing an exam one unpacks and unleashes on paper all that is stored in the brain relevant to the exam, and then uses it so that the brain, having dumped all its contents on paper, is free to think and consult where necessary.
But I thought this is precisely the 'chittha paper' that IITians used to carry to their exam halls concealed in their pockets and brackets.
But: "No!"
The brain-dumping in online exams is not done in the Hostel Rooms, but in the Exam Hall itself on a blank sheet issued to the examinees before start of 'time'.
Some Dump that!
Of course the most delightful Americanism that I learned at KGP was that famous 4-letter exclamation.
The first time I heard it from a girl student was in the 4th Year Physics Lab where I was always posted. I was then teaching them the Theory Course on Electrodynamics. And, as soon as the Mid-Sem exam was over, I used to mark their scripts and carry them to the Lab to be shown to the students one by one and take their signatures.
That day the turn came of a a girl student who was perhaps expecting something like 20/20, but could only manage to get 02/20. It was like a shock to her.
On seeing the marks on the top of her script, her right hand went up covering her forehead and she exclaimed:
"Oh, Fecal Matter!"
...Posted by Ishani
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In our school we learned Victorian and post-Victorian English. When we went up to the University, we stepped back and had to read a lot of Elizabethan prose and poetry in our English Classes. We didn't hear any slang at all. And we were always speaking to one another in Telugu...our knowledge of English was bookish.
When we graduated to Physics proper, most of our text books were imported from Britain. They were very concise...perhaps England had either an attitude problem or shortage of paper or both. We had to tease out the meaning of the terse prose. There were no solved examples. Very few diagrams. The style was constipated.
Then I went to IIT KGP and everything was different. I came across Pysics text books by Americans. Like Resnick-Halliday, Sears, Feynman and Beiser. These were expansive. And were an immense relief (it is a different matter that subsequent editions of R & H became too expansive, unreadable, and diffuse...they lost focus...and ended up in hocus-pocus).
Not only were there many solved and unsolved examples but there were a large number of figures. And the altogether new 'Answers to Odd-Numbered Problems'. The style was chatty and personalized. They sort of democratized Physics. And there were many household and sports words that were tickling.
For instance, while the British texts talking (very rarely) of the Twin Paradox always talked of Twin A and Twin B, Feynman called them Joe and Moe. Somehow it all seemed very friendly.
I came across new terms in the American text books whose meaning I could only guess. And the one I guessed right at once was the Problem in R & H that talked of a cockroach crawling on the rim of a Lazy Susan:
And then Crawford in his 'Waves' in the Berkeley Series talked about a 'slinky'. That too was easy. It must have been a loose toy-spring.
The one that foxed me was: 'Slam Dunk'. I guess it occurred in Feynman. It meant something terrific or easy or whatever. It is only today that I Googled for it:
Then Beiser was talking about the 'right ball park'. Couldn't guess what exactly was a ball park...it looked like a base ball term. And we did play a lot of base ball in school and knew all about 'ball' and 'strike' and 'home run'.
And then there was this verb 'cinch' in the anonymous report of a referee in one of my AJP Papers (the referee turned out to be Ed Taylor). I thought it was a typo and he meant 'clinch'. And inserted the missing 'i' with pen and it slipped through the hands of Prof. S. N. Biswas who was an Expert in my Professor Interview...he was no wiser. It was only much later that I looked it up in Webster.
The latest Yankee flash word I heard was yesterday:
"Brain Dump"
It is an A-4 paper on one side of which are scribbled in pencil a huge amount of text and formulas and plots all exquisitely close-packed. Apparently before facing an exam one unpacks and unleashes on paper all that is stored in the brain relevant to the exam, and then uses it so that the brain, having dumped all its contents on paper, is free to think and consult where necessary.
But I thought this is precisely the 'chittha paper' that IITians used to carry to their exam halls concealed in their pockets and brackets.
But: "No!"
The brain-dumping in online exams is not done in the Hostel Rooms, but in the Exam Hall itself on a blank sheet issued to the examinees before start of 'time'.
Some Dump that!
Of course the most delightful Americanism that I learned at KGP was that famous 4-letter exclamation.
The first time I heard it from a girl student was in the 4th Year Physics Lab where I was always posted. I was then teaching them the Theory Course on Electrodynamics. And, as soon as the Mid-Sem exam was over, I used to mark their scripts and carry them to the Lab to be shown to the students one by one and take their signatures.
That day the turn came of a a girl student who was perhaps expecting something like 20/20, but could only manage to get 02/20. It was like a shock to her.
On seeing the marks on the top of her script, her right hand went up covering her forehead and she exclaimed:
"Oh, Fecal Matter!"
...Posted by Ishani
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