Barn
barn ['bärn n. (1942)] Unit of area equal to 10–28 m2, used to express cross sections in nuclear reactions.
To physicists Marshall Halloway and Charles Baker, uranium nuclei were “as big as a barn.” That’s why they decided—over dinner one evening—to use the term as a unit of measurement. These atomic bomb researchers set the barn equal to the cross section of a typical atomic nucleus, more or less, and during World War II its meaning was classified information. After the government declassified the term in 1948, barns spread throughout nuclear and particle physics.
Shmoo
Shmoos are essential: without them, we would have neither bread nor beer.
shmoo\’shmü\ n. [akin to schmo, from Yiddish schmuck, meaning penis or fool] (1974): A yeast cell preparing to mate.
When ready to have sex, a yeast cell looks like an elongated pear, a shape like Al Capp’s 1948 Li’l Abner character, the Shmoo. The cell shows its mating protrusion (the shmoo tip) in the presence of the pheromone “Kickapoo Joy Juice,” another Li’l Abner knockoff. The word “shmoo” has appeared in nearly 700 science publications since 1974; it is used in labs studying the bread- and beer-making species Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
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