[Blindmath] Language (was Spatial Abilities)

[Susan Jolly]

I think many students have trouble when the same word has both a common and 
a technical meaning.  When we say in English that a person had so much to 
drink that they couldn't walk a straight line we don't mean "straight line" 
in the mathematical sense. The opposite can also happen.  I remember I used 
to get confused when a math teacher referred to a curved line as simply a 
line when I had thought the word line always meant "straight line."

A non-math example is the useage of the pair of words "melt" and "dissolve." 
These are often treated as synonyms in ordinary speech but in a science 
course "melt" refers to the process happening when a single material changes 
from solid to liquid because of the application of heat (or pressure) and 
"dissolve" refers to the process happening when a solid, such as table salt, 
becomes intimately mixed with a different material, such as water, which is 
a liquid.

SusanJ