My least favorite engineering character is unquestionably lower case zeta.
In vibrations, this little guy is the damping ratio. Why don’t I like this character? I guess there are two reasons. Firstly, it’s really tough to draw. Try it. At least for me, it took a bit of practice before it stopped looking like a random squiggle and started looking like its true Greekish form. Secondly, it’s not as widely recognized as, say, the ampersand. That means, that if you screw up in your artistic attempt to draw the little guy then no one will have any idea what you’ve written down.
OMG I feel your pain! When I was taking Vibrations with Jaclyn senior year I think she mentioned that you just called it “squiggle.” I used to just draw the hat part and then squiggle down for a little. That character is so dumb and it’s all over the place in Vibrations, as if the class weren’t frustrating enough
Ah, looks calligraphic. Makes me glad I have nothing to do with engineering. And yet, it’s kind of pretty.
I have memories of going through notes for some class, ‘then we multiply by squiggle, wtf is squiggly???’
Yeah, we called it “the squiggle” and “the crazy.”
I hate zeta.
That’s not too bad. It’s like a wide cursive ‘C’ with a tail.
I swear it’s a deceiving little bugger. Deceiving and dangerous. Do not be tricked.
I’m glad some else shares my detest for this character. It’s near impossible to even do consistently so that you can recognize your own version of it in notes.
I also hate how in vibrations you somehow end up using both a capital and lowercase X. So you have to spend all that time putting serifs on your stupid capital Xs
i called it the sperm. and when i drew it it looked like one.
Wow. This takes me back to freshman year and differential equations. I loved the class, but there was one section that used zeta over and over again, and I had a really strange mental block against it. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one.
What a fantastic response from Zeta Haters!!
Thanks to everyone for helping me cope with frustrating variables.
Ah, yes, “squigma” — such a foul character.