<p>Take for example, “electronegativity” does not mean anything about the negation charge of an electron, but the ability of an atom to attract electrons.
I feel science are hard in that you have to remember terms that have a different meanings from their names. Do you have the same problem? How do you remember them?</p>
<p>most science terms i’ve encountered directly reflect their meanings</p>
<p>Physics is messed up. </p>
<p>Chromosomes vs. Chromatids are annoying.</p>
<p>
That is all.</p>
<p>Meteor/Meteorite/Meteoride is the worst, if you do Astronomy.</p>
<p>Electronegativity makes sense to me.</p>
<p>sorry typo I didn’t pay attention lol</p>
<p>Mechanics makes sense.</p>
<p>Physical sciences have so few terms…
Biological sciences is just insane, though. The class could be taught in Latin, and it would sound the same.</p>
<p>What? It makes perfect sense.</p>
<p>Prefix: electro- (meaning having to do with electrons)
Suffix: -ity (being in the state or condition of)</p>
<p>And it means, “tendency of an atom or a functional group to attract electrons towards itself and thus the tendency to form negative ions”</p>
<p>And in biology words definitely reflect their meaning.</p>
<p>Yeah, biology words reflect their meanings, but you’d have to know all the Latin roots and such to actually extract that meaning from the word!</p>
<p>I don’t know what you are talking about because they do. Also the example you used does reflect the meaning DUH! come on!!</p>
<p>Work, Power, Velocity, weight, mass, gravity, Friction, Force…
Makes sense.</p>
<p>^Um not necessarily. Example if you run a lap around a track your net work is zero, and your velocity is zero. Try explaining that to a kid when he’s out of breath after doing the mile. </p>
<p>Also in chemistry I always though electron affinity and electronegativity should have been reversed. That would have made so much more sense to me personally.</p>
<p>nah, because electron affinity is more closely related to ionization energy.</p>
<p>It’s like the reverse of ionization energy, while electronegativity is for a bond.</p>
<p>^^ All you’d have to do is emphasize that velocity and speed are not always the same. Even describing the difference between scalers and vectors isn’t above what a 4th grader can understand. Tell them to imagine running the circuit without changing the way you’re facing. Running forward = positive velocity. Running backwards = negative velocity. They cancel out, so zero velocity. Over-simplified, but good enough that everything makes sense.</p>
<p>MITHopeful your response told me nothing why the names for those make any sense. </p>
<p>Electronegativity “describes the tendency of an atom or a functional group to attract electrons towards itself” (from Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Electron means electron. Affinity means attraction. Electron affinity then seems, prima facie, like a really good candidate for the term used to describe the “tendency of an atom or a functional group to attract electrons towards itself.”</p>
<p>Instead, electron affinity is “the energy change when an electron is added to the neutral atom to form a negative ion” (Wikipedia again).</p>
<p>Aeroengineer I see what you’re saying, but how would you describe work to a 4th grader?</p>
<p>I have the same problem too senior0991</p>
<p>Doesn’t electron affinity make sense? It’s just the quantitative form of the attraction between the atom and electron. Affinity = "a natural liking for or attraction to a person, thing, idea, etc. " (dictionary.com), so we’re just quantifying it.
I mean, sure, you could say that electronegativity could also be labelled “electron affinity,” but to me it just seems that the definitions are too close to matter.</p>
<p>Racetrack example… didn’t you expend a lot of chemical energy? So you did do work…</p>
<p>^Wait, I think I effed up. work must not be zero for going around a racetrack. man I confused myself so bad. Cyclic integral over a non-conservative field (friction) equals a nonzero work. wow I’m dumb.</p>