I’m taking a break from cooking, while the chicken paprika simmers, and I just turned off the burner on the rice, even though it’s not quite cooked through. Since I have electric burners for my stove, I’m not worried about it.
I told myself that, “The decay heat will finish the cooking for me, and it won’t burn.”
What I really should have said was “residual heat,” the heat still in the coil or eye, on the stove that would keep the rice warm. While decay heat does heat things up long after the power source has been shut down, it’s not quite the same thing. And if the [sup]14[/sup]C content of my rice is that high, I’ve got bigger problems than wondering what’s for lunch.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with the term, decay heat refers to heat energy from the decay of radioactive isotopes. In nuclear power it’s why the core of a shut down reactor needs to be cooled for weeks after the reactor is shut down. As time goes by, of course, the amount of heat being generated by the fission products goes down, because most of the fission product isotopes are short-lived. But it’s a real problem and concern.
Just not one for the average stove top cook. And I keep using that term all the time for residual heat.
So, do other Dopers mangle technical terms on a regular basis?
The one I abuse most is saying I have a flu when it is just some generic virus. I know that a true flu will knock me on my butt. But it is a long-standing habit and likely one I won’t break soon. (Most especially because I just don’t care.)
Correct: “The speed of the bullet was 900 feet/second.”
Correct: “The velocity of the bullet was due north at 900 feet/second.”
Incorrect (but common): “The velocity of the bullet was 900 feet/second.”
I long ago came to the conclusion that a main reason for people doing this is that saying you’re too ill to come in to work (or whatever) because you’ve got a cold sounds, well, a bit pathetic.
“Sautee” when I mean sweat and “simmer” when I mean “low boil”. Thank you, Alton Brown! You’ve educated ME about the proper terms, so now I’m all anal about them, but when I tell someone else to “sweat a chopped onion”, they think I’m insane! :mad:
Apparently, when I say ‘hacker’, I actually mean ‘cracker’, because a person who hacks into secure systems is a cracker, not a hacker, and everybody is wrong when they say ‘hacker’
I don’t give a shite. And this is one of those times when, if everybody is wrong all at once, then actually, they’re not.
Just like centrifugal/centripetal. Off the top of my head, I forget the difference. And not working in a laboratory, well frankly I don’t care. GQ nazis may shoot me now.
I was always told “if you wanna know if you have the flu, do the 100 dollar test.” That is, if you see a hundred dollars on the floor of the next room, and you can get up and get it, you probably don’t have the flu.
The house I grew up in in Iowa has crank-out casement windows, which I persist in calling jalousie windows (mostly because my dad always did). Actual jalousie windows don’t have casements; they consist of louvers of glass with a simple butt fit between. They’re meant for beach houses and vacation cottages and such, and if you installed them in a climate as miserable as Iowa, you ought to have your head examined.
