alt Hacker News> > No chemist wakes up and decides to call it “Steve” because Steve is a funny name and they think it’ll make their paper more approachable.
The author is just wrong. Chemistry is fairly jam-packed with various cutesy names either to amuse the authors or because they’re attempting to make an algorithm memorable to the field.
Off the top of my head:
- SHAKE and RATTLE: Bond constraint algorithms.
- CHARMm: An MD package but you’d never guess it from the name
- Amber: Another MD package that you’d never guess from the name.
- So so many acronyms from NMR: COSY, TOCSY, NOESY
The list goes on and on and permeates most of the subfields in one form or another.
If you want really cutesy names, though, look in molecular biology.
Replies
Physics has "Strangeness" and "Charm Quarks"
My own field Materials Engineering has:
"Hardness", "Toughness", Resilience", etc. which all describe different properties.
"Ferromagnetic" or "Ferrimagnetic best believe those are different.
yeah like how about the "sonic hedgehog" protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog_protein
Americium, Einsteinium, Unobtanium also show chemistry isn't so uptight as suggested.
> > > No chemist wakes up and decides to call it “Steve” because Steve is a funny name and they think it’ll make their paper more approachable.
Lawrencium has entered the chat.
Most of your examples are software!
Also SHAKE and RATTLE describe the motion-simulation in the algorithm.
Acronyms are abbreviations for meaningful names.
> - So so many acronyms from NMR: COSY, TOCSY, NOESY
My favourite: MAS, for magic angle spinning. Because every paper needs a bit of magic.
Scientists are the wrong population to pick if you want people who dislike silly names. They are everywhere because we don’t hate fun, and it does make things memorable. We’re also fond of naming things after people, which is as un-descriptive as it gets.