# Worst named scientific concepts **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 29, 2025, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316 "2025-03-29T19:00:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/161 "2025-04-01T09:43:14Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Dark Matter is pretty certain to be matter, since it gravitates See, I don’t think so. I think it will turn out to be a chimera of the order of phlogiston. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/162 "2025-04-01T10:05:00Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > > [@dtilque](#): > > > > Dark Matter is pretty certain to be matter, since it gravitates.. > > See, I don’t think so. I think it will turn out to be a chimera of the order of phlogiston. Well, _something_ is doing the gravitational lensing of distant quasars to produce Einstein Crosses and Einstein Rings. AIUI, there’s not enough baryonic matter in the foreground galaxies to do this. So this “phlogiston” is certainly acting like it’s there. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/163 "2025-04-01T10:53:39Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > It looks kinda like a hole. It acts kinda like a hole. As a catchy name I think it works ok. Ringo: “I’ve got a Black Hole in me pocket.” ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/164 "2025-04-01T11:16:34Z")
Ben Franklin was a brilliant polymath and a proud card-carrying member of the Age of Enlightenment. He left scorch marks on nearly every field he touched — publishing mogul, civic pioneer, champion of education, savvy politician and diplomat, relentless inventor, and cutting-edge scientist (back when they called them “natural philosophers” and wore fancy waistcoats). America wouldn’t be America if not for Franklin (you decide if that’s a good thing). In the world of science, Franklin was basically the colonial Bill Nye — dragging the study of electricity out of the parlor and into the lab. Until Franklin came along, electricity was mostly for party tricks and shocking unsuspecting friends (I gotta admit, I’d be one of those doing the shocking). He made it serious, and seriously fascinating. Ben didn’t _invent_ electricity — that was Mother Nature’s gig. Franklin wasn’t colonial Electro-Magneto Man (though now that you mention it, I’d read that comic). And no, he didn’t _discover_ it either — the ancient Greeks were already rubbing amber and collecting static before ol’ Ben ever picked up a kite string. What Franklin _did_ do was prove that lightning is a form of electricity, and then had the gall to tame it with his invention of the lightning rod — a genius device that saved lives and property. As for the famous kite experiment? It may be partly apocryphal. Some historians suggest it was actually his son William who flew the kite, not Ben. Smart move, really. If you’re going to fly a metal key into a thunderstorm, better to use a relative you can spare. And Franklin wasn’t terribly fond of William anyway — he liked his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache a whole lot more (probably because Bache wasn’t a British loyalist, and also hadn’t tried to kill him via atmospheric electricity). After all, nobody wants one of our nation’s founding fathers remembered as _BBQ Ben._ Franklin also gave us several foundational terms in electricity — positive, negative, charge, conductor, and insulator — which were way more appropriate than his choice of “battery.” The term “battery” originally referred to a _battery_ of cannons — a group of weapons working together to kill and destroy. Franklin used it to describe multiple Leyden jars (early capacitors) linked together. This made sense… at the time. But today, we know a battery refers to a single device that stores and delivers power through electrochemical reactions, not a group of jars or anything else. Calling one AA battery a “battery” is like calling a single trombone a “brass band.” Franklin was a genius, no doubt (and my favorite forefather by far)— but if he’d gone with something like “Voltpack” or “Joule Box” instead of “Battery”, we might’ve saved ourselves a bit of confusion… and a syllable. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/165 "2025-04-01T12:08:44Z")
> [@Tibby](#): > > Calling one AA battery a “battery” is like calling a single trombone a “brass band.” > > Franklin was a genius, no doubt (and my favorite forefather by far)— but if he’d gone with something like “Voltpack” or “Joule Box” instead of “Battery”, we might’ve saved ourselves a bit of confusion… and a syllable. Just call it a cell if that is what you mean… I don’t think any confusion can be blamed on Franklin or Volta or any of those guys. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/166 "2025-04-01T12:11:37Z")
Of course not. As I said, it was an appropriate term to use in Franklin’s day. It’s _our_ fault for adopting it later on when we knew better. Franklin was a genius, but he wasn’t prescient. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/167 "2025-04-01T12:38:06Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Just call it a cell if that is what you mean… I don’t think any confusion can be blamed on Franklin or Volta or any of those guys. Agreed. Growing up in the UK, the term “cell” was common enough for pedants to occasionally correct people on “AA battery” but that’s basically over now. I think it’s because the distinction between cell and battery is not always obvious to the consumer (a power source with single negative and positive terminal may nonetheless have multiple cells inside) and is not something we need to know anyway. It might have been slightly better if “cell / cells” had caught on, rather than “battery / batteries” but at least there’s no confusion because everyone understands battery to be a singular pluggable object. (In everyday life anyway, IANA electrical engineer) When I was recently teaching a friend chess, she asked why the concept of a “battery” (two or more pieces in a line attacking the same square) was named such. Because, I think, the meaning as singular power device is much more common than the broader meaning of battery now. ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/168 "2025-04-01T12:50:45Z")
That’s the one. Sorry, I should have looked it up myself. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/169 "2025-04-01T13:26:01Z")
Leave it to the Brits to take something already confusing and make it even _more_ confusing 😀. The word “cell” already has more meanings than a Shakespearean insult: Sacks of gooey organic materials that make up your body, small telecommunication devices you drop in the toilet, cramped rooms for folks like Bill Cosby. And now… power sources!?! _“Let’s put a cell in that cell and lock it up with the prisoner in the cell!”_ The Queen would be proud. (Okay, _was_ proud.) Juice Brick, Watt Nugget, Power Loaf, Zzzap Sack, or Lightning Biscuit are all better choices than “Cell.” ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/170 "2025-04-01T13:28:58Z")
Don’t let me make it sound more confusing than it is! Everyone just says battery / batteries now. I was just giving a bit of history. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/171 "2025-04-01T13:44:12Z")
Aww, I was just pulling your leg. Or, as you English folks say, “I was pissing on you.” Or, something like that. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![JWT\_Kottekoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@JWT\_Kottekoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JWT_Kottekoe)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/172 "2025-04-01T14:31:55Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > When I was recently teaching a friend chess, she asked why the concept of a “battery” (two or more pieces in a line attacking the same square) was named such. Your friend would be very confused by the lyrics to “76 Trombones”: “… there were 50 mounted cannon in the battery …” ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/173 "2025-04-01T17:44:38Z")
**P** arasol ganglion cells in your retina are sometimes called **M** cells, because they project to the magnocellular layers in your lateral geniculate nucleus. **M** idget ganglion cells are sometimes called **P** cells, because they project to the parvocellular layers. Thankfully **K** oniocellular cells project to the **K** oniocellular layer, so they’re just K cells. And when these were discovered in cats, the parvo cells were called X cells and magno Y cells. ---
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/174 "2025-04-01T18:01:17Z")
In the mechanics of materials, the components of the stiffness matrix are labeled C\_{1111}, C\_{1122}, C\_{1313}, and so on. The inverse of the stiffness is the compliance, which goes by S\_{1111}, S\_{1122}, S\_{1313}, \ldots ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/175 "2025-04-01T20:25:19Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Yeah, but what should we call dark energy and dark matter? An accurate name for either of them would be long and messy. > “For the moment we might very well call them DUNNOS (for _Dark Unknown Nonreflective Nondetectable Objects Somewhere_).” –Bill Bryson. > [@dtilque](#): > > Well, _something_ is doing the gravitational lensing of distant quasars to produce Einstein Crosses and Einstein Rings. AIUI, there’s not enough baryonic matter in the foreground galaxies to do this. So this “phlogiston” is certainly acting like it’s there A wizard did it. > [@Tibby](#): > > The term “battery” originally referred to a _battery_ of cannons — a group of weapons working together to kill and destroy. Hence multiple places named “Battery Park”. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/176 "2025-04-01T20:42:32Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/VdwSMytC7y4/maxresdefault.jpg "Spontaneous fractals appear when you pull things apart") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdwSMytC7y4) > **[Saffman–Taylor instability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffman%E2%80%93Taylor_instability)** > > The Saffman–Taylor instability, also known as viscous fingering, is the formation of patterns in a morphologically unstable interface between two fluids in a porous medium or in a Hele-Shaw cell, described mathematically by Philip Saffman and G. I. Taylor in a paper of 1958. This situation is most often encountered during drainage processes through media such as soils. It occurs when a less viscous fluid is injected, displacing a more viscous fluid; in the inverse situation, with the mo Most exp... ---
**Author:** ![dougrb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@dougrb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougrb)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2025, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/177 "2025-04-01T23:17:40Z")
Band Name “Viscous Fingers” ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/178 "2025-04-02T01:11:08Z")
On further reflection, I’ve changed my mind on this: > [@Mijin](#): > > **Stellar populations:** Population I stars are the third generation. Population III stars are the first generation. Because, firstly, it’s not strictly 1 to 1 with generations. Since giant stars live as “little” as a few million years, there are stars that are potentially fifth or sixth generation or more. (From googling, we guess that this is the case for some stars, based on their extremely high metallicity, but it seems there is no way to confirm for certain.) Anyway, this is why it makes sense to have a term for stars that corresponds basically to its ancestral history, but is not strictly generations And secondly, it’s actually convenient that we count backwards: because that’s the bit we don’t know. It might be that before the metal-poor stars there were black hole stars, and before that something else…no problem, they can be population 4, 5, 6 etc. Rather than 0, -1, -2… Going forwards in time…we don’t really need another term, because we may be talking billions of years in the future before we need to name a whole new population of star. (…ok, we might make models about the future evolution of the universe, but cosmologists are still going to use such terminology less than for the kinds of stars that we are going to potentially see with advanced telescopes some day). * * * Anyway, now I’ve spoiled the fun of my own thread, I bid you adieu ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/179 "2025-04-02T01:40:42Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > That’s a shame. Abstract algebra is a very cool and interesting topic. My class in that topic was one of my favorite college classes ever. Taking a course in modern algebra changed my life. I have worked in that field for nearly 70 years. The real problem with imaginary numbers is that all numbers are imagined. But I cannot think of a better name. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2025, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/180 "2025-04-02T02:15:25Z")
How about “orthogonal number” instead of imaginary, and “planar number” instead of complex? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316.md?page=10)