Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the
current reference desk pages.
In one of their reports
[1] they use "magma, a volatile mixture of molten rocks, fluids and gases", but those are the words of volcanologist Janine Krippner. Note that
magma only becomes lava when it reaches the surface.
Mikenorton (
talk)
11:52, 28 November 2017 (UTC)reply
There is a tendency in the UK to use lava when referring to the cooled and solidified form - I would happily say that I have a couple of lumps of lava in the cupboard (a souvenir of a visit to Iceland). The BBC phrasing may simply be designed to avoid that misunderstanding.
Wymspen (
talk)
15:11, 28 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Technically,
lava is defined as
magma that has reached the surface, whereas molten simply means "melted". So rock that was solid but then heated by lava could potentially be molten rock. (That quantities of such rock would be heated so much as to glow is doubtful.) In this case I suspect the copywriter was padding his prose as either a
hack writer with bad
writing habits or due to a
perverse incentive such per-word compensation or a deadline specifying a total word-count.
μηδείς (
talk)
16:42, 28 November 2017 (UTC)reply
"Malicious" means "doing wrong with foreknowledge it is wrong", that is knowing that padding one's word-count is not a good practice, and still doing it anyways. Hanlon's law applies because that assumes the writer was trying to pad their word-count artificially (which is a malicious practice); the more reasonable assumption was that the writer lacked the knowledge necessary to adequately distinguish between lava and melted rock (Hanlon's law being "assume stupidity before malice") --
Jayron3214:36, 29 November 2017 (UTC)reply
That implies a contradiction. If we assume that the writer thought lava and molten rock were the same thing (was unaware of the difference between them) why would he mention both as separate things? Also, padding is a habit most writers I have worked with fall into. I have done a lot of paid editting, and "redundant" is by far the most common problem I encounter. In any case, I never did impute malice as a motive for the writer's action. I simply mentioned perverse in a technical sense that in no way implies malice. This is off topic, and I think we understand each other; I do generally agree with Hanlon's law. I just wouldn't invoke it as relevant here, but that's a matter of judgment.
μηδείς (
talk)
17:41, 29 November 2017 (UTC)reply
There are many league tables of such. However I'd suggest that you define "physics" as a bit narrower. My own BSc is from a university with a strong reputation for Applied Physics (and lasers in particular) within the engineering faculty, but much more average for the general Physics course in another faculty. This is particularly so if you're considering cosmology or the most abstract of theoretical physics.
Andy Dingley (
talk)
21:56, 28 November 2017 (UTC)reply
There are tons of rankings for universities, with various sets of criteria / methodology. Unexplicably, pretty much every time, the university doing or commissioning the study ends up in higher place than in the other ratings.
TigraanClick here to contact me17:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)reply
The UK doesn't really have serious middlebrow news magazines to the same extent as the US. The presumed leader as a broadsheet newspaper would be the Times Ed., but for a long time The Guardian has been the more popular amongst parents, and of course The Independent would then want to do the same. New Scientist would be another place to look.
Andy Dingley (
talk)
11:10, 30 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the
current reference desk pages.
In one of their reports
[1] they use "magma, a volatile mixture of molten rocks, fluids and gases", but those are the words of volcanologist Janine Krippner. Note that
magma only becomes lava when it reaches the surface.
Mikenorton (
talk)
11:52, 28 November 2017 (UTC)reply
There is a tendency in the UK to use lava when referring to the cooled and solidified form - I would happily say that I have a couple of lumps of lava in the cupboard (a souvenir of a visit to Iceland). The BBC phrasing may simply be designed to avoid that misunderstanding.
Wymspen (
talk)
15:11, 28 November 2017 (UTC)reply
Technically,
lava is defined as
magma that has reached the surface, whereas molten simply means "melted". So rock that was solid but then heated by lava could potentially be molten rock. (That quantities of such rock would be heated so much as to glow is doubtful.) In this case I suspect the copywriter was padding his prose as either a
hack writer with bad
writing habits or due to a
perverse incentive such per-word compensation or a deadline specifying a total word-count.
μηδείς (
talk)
16:42, 28 November 2017 (UTC)reply
"Malicious" means "doing wrong with foreknowledge it is wrong", that is knowing that padding one's word-count is not a good practice, and still doing it anyways. Hanlon's law applies because that assumes the writer was trying to pad their word-count artificially (which is a malicious practice); the more reasonable assumption was that the writer lacked the knowledge necessary to adequately distinguish between lava and melted rock (Hanlon's law being "assume stupidity before malice") --
Jayron3214:36, 29 November 2017 (UTC)reply
That implies a contradiction. If we assume that the writer thought lava and molten rock were the same thing (was unaware of the difference between them) why would he mention both as separate things? Also, padding is a habit most writers I have worked with fall into. I have done a lot of paid editting, and "redundant" is by far the most common problem I encounter. In any case, I never did impute malice as a motive for the writer's action. I simply mentioned perverse in a technical sense that in no way implies malice. This is off topic, and I think we understand each other; I do generally agree with Hanlon's law. I just wouldn't invoke it as relevant here, but that's a matter of judgment.
μηδείς (
talk)
17:41, 29 November 2017 (UTC)reply
There are many league tables of such. However I'd suggest that you define "physics" as a bit narrower. My own BSc is from a university with a strong reputation for Applied Physics (and lasers in particular) within the engineering faculty, but much more average for the general Physics course in another faculty. This is particularly so if you're considering cosmology or the most abstract of theoretical physics.
Andy Dingley (
talk)
21:56, 28 November 2017 (UTC)reply
There are tons of rankings for universities, with various sets of criteria / methodology. Unexplicably, pretty much every time, the university doing or commissioning the study ends up in higher place than in the other ratings.
TigraanClick here to contact me17:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)reply
The UK doesn't really have serious middlebrow news magazines to the same extent as the US. The presumed leader as a broadsheet newspaper would be the Times Ed., but for a long time The Guardian has been the more popular amongst parents, and of course The Independent would then want to do the same. New Scientist would be another place to look.
Andy Dingley (
talk)
11:10, 30 November 2017 (UTC)reply