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Old April 25th 08, 10:43 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting,rec.aviation.student
Stefan
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Posts: 578
Default Lancair crash at SnF

WingFlaps schrieb:

In everyday's language, the word velocity stands for the _magnitude_ of
the vector.
Nope. Not even at high school. The magnitude is "speed".
Maybe where you live. Not where I live.
BS. This is stated in any basic physics text book -even Wiki knows it:
"In physics...The scalar absolute value (magnitude) of velocity is
speed."

What part of "everyday's language" wasn't clear?


I can see you have trouble with English too.


If my mediocre English is offending you, then feel free to converse in
German, French, Italian or Spanish with me. I know all those languages
better than English, which obviously isn't my native language. How many
languages do _you_ speak?

Nevertheless I know English good enough to know that in general use
velocity is synonymous to speed. I don't expect you to agree with me,
but maybe you accept an excerpt from the OED:


velocity

1. a. Rapidity or celerity of motion; swiftness, speed.

1849 Macaulay Hist. Eng. iii. I. 379 The flying coaches are extolled as
far superior to any similar vehicles ever known in the world. Their
velocity is the subject of special commendation.

c. In scientific use, speed together with the direction of travel, as a
vector quantity.


So again: If, outside a strictly scientific or technical environment,
you choose to use a technical term which has a different meaning in
general use than in scientific use, then better advise it.