Have you ever heard of people using the phrase "rate of speed" before? I have, mainly on TV during one of our local news. Usually it is during a description of some vehicular traffic incident, and some vehicle was described as moving at a "high rate of speed". What they really want to say is simply that the vehicle was moving very fast, but somehow, they think saying "high rate of speed" sounds "sexier".
This, of course, is rather inaccurate. Typically, when say say "rate of something", we usually mean the time rate of change. In calculus, it is d/dt of something, i.e. the time derivative. So when one say "rate of speed", one is actually saying ds/dt, where s is speed. This is ACCELERATION!
Now there's nothing wrong with this if the newscasters actually did intended to say acceleration (which begs the question on why they don't just say "acceleration"?). But more likely, they wanted to say "speed". So really, transposing "speed" into "rate of speed" is not only non-economical in terms of words to say, it is also no longer correct.
So, if you write for some news broadcast, and you want to say that a vehicle moves very fast, just say "high speed" and NOT "high rate of speed". If your producer or proof reader disagree, ask him/her to open a physics textbook.
Zz.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
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5 comments:
In my country, at least (the UK), there's a saying "high rate of knots" (meaning high speed) which presumably comes from the old naval method of measuring speed. That's reasonable because that's explicitly saying a 'high rate of displacement'. This 'high rate of speed' is either a malaprop based on that, or just someone trying to sound intelligent. And it really annoys me too!
I support your campaign :)
TV news and sports are full of science and math mistakes. My favorite was the football announcer who had been told that power was force times distance over time. "And does this guy have power," he said. "He has a lot of force times a big distance over a long time." Groan.
I'm not sure what rate of speed means. It is certainly "non-economical in terms of words to say," but I don't know that it means acceleration either. That would be rate of CHANGE of speed (or, rather, velocity). I think it is as matt said, "just someone trying to sound intelligent," and missing the mark.
So, the as far as I can tell, the sports announcer is correct. work is force times distance, and power is work over time, so P=(force*distance)/time
Anyway, I agree. Rate of speed is ambiguous and sounds kind of silly to those who actually know a thing or two about physics.
Sam... that comment didn't make sense. You don't call work, rate of distance times force? Rate of speed is the wrong term unless your talking about acceleration.
I actually arrived at this post by googling "high rate of speed" because I wanted to know if I was the only one for whom this is so irritating. Glad to know I'm not alone!! Keep fighting the good fight!
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