🚀 go-pugleaf

One of my pet peeves about physics since I was an undergrad
is how things are usually named after people.  For example,
the force between two charged particles is the Coulomb force.  
The equations describing E&M are Maxwell's Eqns.  Then there
are the Euler eqn's (of which I believe there are several)
Ampere's Law, ad infinitum.

Why couldn't we talk about the electric force (or charge force),
the electromagnetic equations, etc?  It would be much easier
for non-experts to understand what it is we are talking about.
Most people know about charges repelling or attracting but
how many know about Coulomb?  I know that as a student I used
to flip through my notes furiously trying to figure out
what phenomenon the prof. was referring to.

On a different note, I've always found it interesting how
my wife (a Ph.D. chemist) and I can talk to each other about the
same scientific idea and have absolutely no idea what the other
one is saying.  I remember we had a discussion once about the shell
model and I was thinking about strong central potential wells and 
the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (Hey, a compromise on my
first paragraph!) and quantum mechanics
 and she was thinking in terms of "It takes
2 electrons to fill the s shell..."  We absolutely could not
communicate even though we were talking about the same thing.
(I think the discussion got started because she was trying
to explain her research on proteins to me.)  She finally got
tired of me grilling her with questions and gave up in a huf.


				Mark Balbes
				Dept. of Physics
				Ohio State University