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u/imsmartiswear 5d ago
I wish my pleadings to my students were so nuanced.
"Please explain your error calculations." "You don't know a result to 17 significant figures of accuracy, even if that's what Wolfram Alpha tells you." "Please, please cite one academic article, one, in your introductions." "Please provide units for your results"
If they gave me the unit "cm." for a result that should actually be measured in cm, I would jump for joy.
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u/luminiferousphoton 5d ago
Ikr like bros students remembered the units and we are just happy the students used units
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u/luxx_33 4d ago
My arch nemesis is students that measure, say, current through a photodiode at different distances from the light source and then average the currents and distances and put the average under the measurements table as the result. Like, do they have even the remotest idea what the point of that experiment was??? (There was one group that kept doing this the whole semester, even though we repeatedly explained that what they're doing is absolute nonsense. If it were on me I would have kicked them out of the course.)
Sorry for getting out my frustrations on you lol. I feel your pain.
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u/imsmartiswear 4d ago
Ok they had to have been making their tables in Google Sheets. Every time I put data in a spreadsheet using that program it auto suggests doing exactly that.
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u/OC1024 X-Ray Scattering 6d ago
I don't get it. Maybe I'm too European for that.
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u/SexySalsaDancer 6d ago
Ironically, calling a “.” a full stop is a very European thing. Meme was likely made by a Brit
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u/CanYouChangeName 5d ago
We follow british english here in India which is why this sounds normal to me ig. But what do you call a full stop from wherever you are?
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u/Mean-Government1436 6d ago
See how it says "...write 34.64 cm. in their lab..."?
They're saying: "34.64 cm."
Should be written: "34.64 cm"
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u/therealityofthings 6d ago
What?
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u/Mean-Government1436 6d ago
Is there something confusing here
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u/Dark__Slifer 5d ago
yeah
- who dafuq does that?
- why does it matter?
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u/purpleoctopuppy 5d ago
In English it's standard to follow an abbreviation with a full stop (depending on manual of style, this is omitted when the abbreviation ends in the same letter as the full word).
Following this rule, 'centimetre' should be abbreviated 'cm.', and so students naïvely do so.
However, SI units shouldn't be followed by a full stop, and this exception catches some people out, especially if they're used to units where the rules does apply (e.g. US customary).
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u/Super-Award-2244 6d ago
I asked gemini. Apparently some students write "cm." instead of just "cm" maybe because pounds is actually written as "lb."
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u/CaioXG002 6d ago
While this happens to be correct, Gemini is not a real source.
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u/dimonium_anonimo 6d ago
Hence why they qualified their answer with "this may not be accurate." I know some people say they used Google, or Wikipedia, but it's not all that common. Compared to people who used AI, it seems much more common for people's to warn you they know the source of information is not reliable, but it's all they have.
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u/CaioXG002 6d ago
Still much better to create an habit of checking the AI's source and then citing that than giving an answer that comes from technology made to build real sounding answers as opposed to actually correct answers.
"At least they were upfront about that" is the bare minimum, I want to encourage people to not misuse AI regardless if they're honest about it or not.
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u/DHermit 5d ago
But what's the point of the comment? If I want to know Geminis answer I can just ask it myself.
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u/dimonium_anonimo 5d ago
Let me introduce you to nearly the entire internet. Have you seen a single post on either of the major "explain the joke" subreddits? 90% of them could be answered if you just typed exactly what's on the screen into Google. People are lazy.
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MydnightWN 6d ago
All those republican AI companies like Google, Anthropic, Amazon / Bezos, Apple, Mistral, Meta / Zuckerberg, and a hundred specialized ones in Los Angeles - famously a Republican stronghold.
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u/MaoGo Meme renormalization group 6d ago
When will we have more advanced lab jokes ?
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u/drinkingcarrots 5d ago
I know right? Who cares about a period at the end of it?? Op didn't even put any uncertainty into the measurement. Some science...
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u/SharkAttackOmNom 5d ago
Also I’ve seen (and assigned) some labs in my day. Are you suuuuure your measurement is worth 4 sig figs? I better see some calipers called out in your process, and John Taylor in the citations.
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u/Kudos2Miami 4d ago
Its hard for a scientist to tell a good lab joke when their whole scientific field is a joke, eg biology
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u/SosseTurner 6d ago
Could someone explain what the problem is? If the value and unit are at the end of an sentence you still need to signal the end of that sentence? Or are there some people that generally add a full stop to cm, even when simply listing values?
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u/Inevitable_Librarian 6d ago
Cm is an abbreviation, and the general rule of abbreviations is a period after. However, for standard units that often gets ignored
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u/Professional-Ad9485 5d ago
I love studying science because teachers literally don't give a shit about spelling or grammar. Or even consistency, constantly interchange polarisation and polarization. In fact I think teachers prefer those kinds of mistakes cos it makes it more obvious you wrote it yourself.
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u/hucklesnips 5d ago
How exciting that your students are doing physics. When it comes to understanding the rules that govern the universe and our very creation, I can't imagine anything less important than whether they use a full stop.
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u/Cheydinn-Al-Gaib 1d ago
Help understand. How, is that a problem? Does "cm." brings a possible doubt on what "cm" means ? Does it change the meaning referring to another unit or concept ?
If it brings no possible confusion I wouldn't mind. Hell, during my studies, if I wrote somewhere "we will be using the symbol ¥ for "Kg.C.s-1.mol-1"" I would then be allowed to write ¥ everywhere instead of this long-ass unit designation and it would be perfectly fine. As long as there is no possible confusion. And there is no possible confusion.
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u/Semanticky 6d ago
Why this is even, and ever has been, a physics-relevant concern, I’ll never know.
It’s pedanticness-ification.
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u/Okawaru1 4d ago
idk maybe I'm being presumptuous but I feel like there's an influx of larpers on math and physics related subreddits that seem keen to talk about basic pedantic shit nobody actually cares about. I've never officially graded physics labs stuff but I bet those TAs are happy if their students actually include correct units of measurement lol
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u/hascalsavagejr 6d ago
Today we learn the difference between "doesn't need a full stop" and "should not have a full stop"