I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen other physicists use the term, but it’s a logical back-formation from “fission”, by analogy with “fuse” and “fusion”.
In other words, you can use me as a cite that at least one physicist uses the word, but don’t use me as a cite that physicists use it.
That’s all fine and dandy.
But when they fiss, do we (you actually) pronounce the final “s” sound as in bliss, in fish, or in whiz? Enquiring minds and all that.
You often see things written like “One fission event will cause other nuclei to fission. Which in turn cause more nuclei to fission.”
The first “fission” is fine. The other two seem like really poor English to non-physicist non-grammarian me. “Fiss” seems a much more logical way to construct that part of speech.
Yes indeed … this is what started the family argument in the first place … I think there’s two uranium deposits in The Gabon where the [sup]235[/sup]U:[sup]238[/sup]U ratio is below what is found in all other uranium deposits … implying at some point in the past there was enough pressure to allow superspliticallity …
Interesting … would the past participle of to fiss be fuss or would we use the impassive splot … as in “Once all the plutonium fuss that was able to splot, we were done with the experiment.”
On the other hand, fissicists by definition use it.
Just don’t get me started on the fizzy cysts.
And for what it’s worth, I pronounce it with an S sound, not an SH sound, lest it sound piscine.
I’d say it rhymes with bliss, in the same way that fissile rhymes with the British pronunciation of missile.
There’s also the word fissive, which rhymes with missive.
Fission seems to be the odd one, rhyming with mission.
You mean take a pish?
“Fission” is the verb, but for another data point: I’ve been known to use “fizz” (rhymes with “whiz”) when speaking informally / tongue-in-cheek-ily.
Those words don’t rhyme for me. “zh” versus “sh”. Think “explosion” vs. “mission”. (I’ve heard both, though.)
In my US dialect fissile and missile rhyme as: Fiss’l and Miss’l.
In my US dialect fission and mission rhyme as: Fish’n and Mish’n.