Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Omics of Polymers

The Wall Street Journal had an article a few days ago about how the suffic "-omics" is now becoming overused. It originally started out as a nice word in the field of biology, most prominently with "genomics" (identifying the genes of a life form), then moved on to proteomics (identifying the proteins of a life form) and then has gone crazy to the point where over 400 examples in biology alone exist. Worse yet, the suffix has now leaped the field-of-study barrier, to include fields far removed from biology such as patentomics (all of patent law) and culturome (all of human culture).

Before it's too late, polymers should get into the game, so I propose the following:
  • Polymerome - the totality of all polymers
  • Thermoplasticome - the totality of all thermoplastics
  • Thermosetome - the totality of all thermosets
But those are easy ones. Now let's fire up some words to really get your toungue tied:
  • Viscoelasticitiome - the totality of all viscoelasticity phenmona
  • Mark-Houwink-Sakurada constantome - the totality of all Mark-Houwink-Sakurada equation constants
  • Time-Temperature Superpositionome - the totality of all time-temperature superpositions
  • and finally,
  • Non-linear differential corotation modelome - the totality of ________, yeah, that.
Please start using these and others omic words in your next journal submissions, grant applications and conversations with neighbors. It will defiantly show that you are a cutting edge researcher that needs to be taken seriously. And also be sure to check out the badomics generator, a webpage that automatically generates omics such as what I have proposed here, and also shows what they could look like in an article title.

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