Author Topic: Technical misnomers, ambiguous or plain incorrect terms in general usage.  (Read 30031 times)

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Offline Whales

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I've never seen a brushless motor being sold with an in-built controller -- where abouts have you seen these?
Most common are DC fans and pumps.

Gah, you're right.

But that's not a motor.  It's uh,  uh,  a spinny thing.

Offline Cyberdragon

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I agree with the whole AC/DC motor thing.  All motors are AC.
All except the Faraday homopolar disc motor/generator.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=faraday%27s+homopolar+disc+generator&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjSjvqToKjbAhXHfrwKHeeoC5gQ_AUICygC&biw=1457&bih=972

No, only generator. There's no such thing as a "homopolar motor". A static field on a static disc would make a magnetized static disc. ::)
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Offline vk6zgo

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Quote
    Brushless DC motor. How exactly is a synchronous motor "DC" if it needs an ESC/driver/VFD/whatchagonnacallit to do anything other than being stuck in one position and heating up?


That means that the driver providing electronic commutation is built into the motor so it may be treated as a DC motor.

I've never seen a brushless motor being sold with an in-built controller -- where abouts have you seen these?  They've always been separate in the markets I've seen (small hobby & in-hub car) and you have to find a controller that can match your motor's params and type.

I agree with the whole AC/DC motor thing.  All motors are AC.  One type (brushed DC) makes its own AC out of DC to be convenient, but is still an AC requiring type.


Really?
A commutator type motor doesn't really "make its own AC".
All the commutator does is switch in armature windings in succession, so that the motor continues to rotate.

Yes, the current does have an "AC component", just as the "DC" output of a full wave rectifier does, but the current through each winding flows in the same direction throughout its connected time,(neglecting the effects of back EMF), & the field winding current is continuously flowing in the same direction.

Put a DC ammeter in series with the motor, & it will show its operating current.

Use it on AC as a "universal motor", & it will still work in the same way, except that the current in the selected rotor winding & the field winding will both change in step, still producing torque & spinning the motor.

The term "DC motor" has been around for more than a century, & serves to distinguish between motors which can operate on DC, & those which can only operate on AC, ( induction motors, slip ring type wound motors, & so on.)
Quote

  If you're lucky enough to find a single unit with motor driver or VFD as well as a motor, then again it's an AC motor that's been made a bit more convenient by turning it into a DC "module".
 

Offline SG-1

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Here is one we all use: current flow.
Current means flow so we are really saying flow flow, when we should be saying charge flow, or flow of electricity, or electric current. 

It is so pervasive in the language now, I doubt it will ever stop.  I wonder when & how it started.
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Here is one we all use: current flow.
Current means flow so we are really saying flow flow, when we should be saying charge flow, or flow of electricity, or electric current. 

It is so pervasive in the language now, I doubt it will ever stop.  I wonder when & how it started.
And also conventional flow vs. electron flow. Although in semiconductors and liquids/gases, there often are positive charges in motion...
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Offline PointyOintment

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NATO phonetic alphabet. It's a spelling alphabet (a set of words, one beginning with each letter of the alphabet, used for clearly conveying spellings in spoken communication), not a phonetic alphabet (a set of glyphs used for recording pronunciations in written form). Wikipedia does say (without a citation) that the official name is "International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet", but I've never heard anyone call it that in real life.

Personal identification number (or, even worse, PIN number, with redundant "number"). It's not used for identification, but for authentication!
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Offline JohnnyMalaria

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I've never heard it called the NATO phonetic alphabet :)

Nor the any of the others.

I'm also surprised that the first letter is alfa, not alpha.
 

Offline GeorgeOfTheJungle

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Giving batt capacities in Ah alone.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 03:53:09 pm by GeorgeOfTheJungle »
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Offline @rt

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What tech reviewer mixes up transmitters and receivers, or inputs and outputs?
 

Offline Neilm

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My pet peeve - when people measure time in mS. Time is not conductive.
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Online tggzzz

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My pet peeve - when people measure time in mS. Time is not conductive.

Just so.

Mind you, it can be used as an imperfect bozo filter :)
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Online tggzzz

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Battery capacity measured in Watts.

That's an excellent bozo filter.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
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Offline GeorgeOfTheJungle

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Battery capacity measured in "up to [n] hours [something something] use" units.
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Offline Messtechniker

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To put the cat among the pidgins:
Usage of the word "accuracy" where the word "inaccuracy" would be correct.
Example:" ... an accuracy of +/- 0.01 V" should read "... an inaccuracy of +/- 0.01 V".
Go figure... This accuracy nonsense has been going on for ages and simply can't be stopped,
not even in this forum. :palm: :popcorn:
This is not limited to the English speaking world. The Germans do the same.  |O
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Offline JohnnyMalaria

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So "accurately" is used inaccurately and "inaccurately" is used accurately. Precisely.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 07:17:29 pm by JohnnyMalaria »
 

Offline MK14

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RAM

As in Random Access Memory

(1)..Almost all (modern) memory and storage devices these days, are random access.

(2)..Similarly, ROM=Read Only Memory, because most ROMs are really flash these days, which are writable.

(3)..Also, RAM is (originally) intended to mean SRAM (as in Static Ram). But most RAM these days (especially for PCs), is actually Dynamic Ram (DRam), which is something quite different. E.g. It can need regular refreshing.

I guess it should really be called V### (### = something), where V = volatile.
But we are probably going to have RAMs, in the coming future (now/10/20/30 etc years), which don't lose their contents when power is switched off.
I think there are already Ram like, flash devices and similar. E.g. FRAM. So in time, they may become commonplace and replace RAM.
In the same way, flash has mostly replaced masked ROMs, these days.
 
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Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Hard drive when it's actually a solid state drive...

...leading to...

what exactly is being driven in an SSD other than electrons?
 

Offline David Hess

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Hard drive when it's actually a solid state drive...

...leading to...

what exactly is being driven in an SSD other than electrons?

It is called a "drive" because it requires a driver's license from the state to legally operate.

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Offline Ducttape

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Saying that something something difficult to learn has a 'steep learning curve'.

The obvious way to chart the difficulty of learning something would be with time as the horizontal axis and proficiency as the vertical axis. This would result in a 'steep learning curve' being something easy to learn, not difficult.

Apparently this illogical phrase comes from people confusing climbing a hill with charting data vs time.
 
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Offline Circlotron

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To put the cat among the pidgins:
Usage of the word "accuracy" where the word "inaccuracy" would be correct.
Example:" ... an accuracy of +/- 0.01 V" should read "... an inaccuracy of +/- 0.01 V".
Go figure... This accuracy nonsense has been going on for ages and simply can't be stopped,
not even in this forum. :palm: :popcorn:
This is not limited to the English speaking world. The Germans do the same.  |O
Maybe uncertainty would be a better word.
I’m not sure...
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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To put the cat among the pidgins:
Usage of the word "accuracy" where the word "inaccuracy" would be correct.
Example:" ... an accuracy of +/- 0.01 V" should read "... an inaccuracy of +/- 0.01 V".
Go figure... This accuracy nonsense has been going on for ages and simply can't be stopped,
not even in this forum. :palm: :popcorn:
This is not limited to the English speaking world. The Germans do the same.  |O
This feels an awful lot like objecting to the notion of 0V. There is no voltage after all, silly gooses. Maybe we should use unvoltage in those cases instead.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Hard drive when it's actually a solid state drive...

...leading to...

what exactly is being driven in an SSD other than electrons?
It's hard when I throw it at your head and the system sees it as a logical disk.

It seems a lot of people have trouble distinguishing linguistic and cultural conventions, or words, from their origins. In some cases the physical form is relevant, in others the function takes the lead. Here it's obviously the latter. Sometimes neither is very relevant any more.
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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This feels an awful lot like objecting to the notion of 0V. There is no voltage after all, silly gooses. Maybe we should use unvoltage in those cases instead.


Maybe the ancient Romans had it right after all.  II + II = IV but II - II = ??
 

Offline @rt

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Interesting thread, and I’d like to read more, but I have some extra design work to do because I’ve run out of nand and or and xor, but neither and nor not gates.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 08:09:04 am by @rt »
 
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Offline PA4TIM

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Computer guys always talk about CMOS  as being an IC in the computer.

hFE and hfe are different things, Hfe and HFE do not exist.

Marketing bullshit: Watt RMS,
but also TRMS, is that the opposite of  FRMS ? AC volt is always RMS, if not, you state it as f.i. 12Vpp.

Widespread: a return loss of -25dB if they mean 25dB, that many use it like this does not make it correct, just like the wrong written  SWR = 1:1 statement, this should be  SWR=1.

But the biggest fault: Talking about a Voltage and Amperage when you talk about electric tension and electric current.  :box: (in Dutch we use spanning (tension) )

Quote
This is not limited to the English speaking world. The Germans do the same.  |O
They do more wrong, They call the sea a meer and a lake is a see. In Dutch a sea is zee and a lake is meer. A seastar in Dutch is zeester. The Germans call it a seester instead of a meerster
« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 09:22:44 am by PA4TIM »
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