The Quacking Moment

The other day as I was lecturing to my concrete design class, I started to channel Elmer Fudd. I was trying to describe the “cracking moment,” the value of bending moment on a concrete beam when the first cracks occur. But instead of saying “cracking moment,” I pronounced it as “quacking moment.” Instantly the class burst into laughter, and valuable teaching minutes were wasted. I put on a stern expression and tried to regain the high, serious ground, but it was a lost cause. Even I couldn’t keep a straight face, and I was the professor. Unfortunately, the pedestal I stood on couldn’t handle the load from the quacking moment.

I’m not one to miss the opportunity for teaching a good lesson, so the next day I developed a special PowerPoint presentation. This contained a brief discussion of the background and theory behind quacking moment. If the weight of the duck is taken as $P_{\mathrm{duck}}$ , then on a simply supported beam of length, $L$ , the quacking moment, $M_q$ , is equal to ( $P_{\mathrm{duck}}\times L)∕4{.}^{\mathbf{*}}$ I also provided a helpful illustration (Fig. 1).

My brush with the quacking moment illustrates a larger trend affecting the communication of technical issues. With the increasing complexity of everything, spoken English and technology have been at odds for a while, and things don’t seem to be getting better. I remember one of my college professors who provided an early, negative contribution to my engineering education. This professor was lecturing about the “soap film” analogy for stress, in which the shape of a soap bubble can help illustrate magnitude of stress. But he pronounced “soap film” as “soup film.” I had no idea what a “soup film” was. I had this picture in my mind of dirty tomato soup, with a scummy film on top. For years I was clueless about the “soup film” analogy until I finally realized that “soup” in this case was “soap.”

I take pity on this poor teacher of my past, because however bad his pronunciation was, mine is not much better. I suspect that my own students are not greatly better off when I mangle phrases during a lecture. Instead of wondering about soup films, they will have to deal with the “quacking moment” every time they design in concrete. They’ll be working in consulting engineering offices in the near future. The chief engineer will ask them to design a concrete beam or footing. Everything will be okay, but then for no apparent reason they’ll burst into laughter. The chief engineer, who is probably not the most secure chap to begin with, will look at his tie or discreetly check his breath. He is not aware of the impact of the quacking moment.

But even if I should become a better enunciator, able to consistently pronounce complex words, my problems would not be over. New and increasingly bizarre words are being invented every day, and they are being combined in complex, incomprehensible phrases. Attempts to simplify with abbreviations and verbal shorthand often make things worse—in addition to the long-winded technical terms are the endless abbreviations. Whole subsets of language contain information of essential importance that can only be understood and spoken of by a small group of experts.

Added to this Babelian mix is the trend of fading of American centrism. (You will note two invented terms in that sentence.) Maybe some are pleased that after decades of U.S. dominance in the post–World War II period, other cultures are advancing in terms of worldwide influence. But in the past, English was the de facto business language of the world, and as other economies catch up, other languages rightfully take their places in the spotlight. This means that in addition to struggling through technological miscommunication in English, we will have to be proficient in the mispronunciation of Chinese, Spanish, and other languages as well. It is a worrisome thing—adaptation to the comprehension of exponentially expanding knowledge doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with the rate of expansion. Reread the last sentence, and you can see what I mean.

But wait, there’s more! The increasing development and refinement of complexity has led to niche languages and groups that speak them. Here at the university, you can attend lectures where a handful of people know what’s being talked about. Everyone else nods and smiles as if they did. But even if and when the ideas are approachable, the jargon is completely lost on all except a very small “in” crowd. A computer program is available to help write bogus technical papers. The program scans your documents, extracts random words, and assembles sentences that appear to have nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other components of English. To a reader, the sentences seem to be sentences that appear to be combined in paragraphs. Yet the entire creation is gobbledygook. It’s totally funny to read, especially at those times when the passages really seem like actual, technically correct gobbledygook.

Assuming that the governing theory of human development is that of evolution and not “intelligent design,” at issue here is the exponential, sudden explosion of human knowledge and the terminology needed to communicate it. The theory of evolution posits the concept of natural selection, where genetic changes gradually occurred over millions of years, favoring adaptations that improved a species’ survival. With a long enough period of time and a stable enough environment, the generations would gradually improve and evolve. So, subtle physical and mental adaptations would favor those premodern humans who were able to escape the saber-toothed tigers and live to procreate. But how can humans evolve to meet the new environmental challenges of information overload? I remember when there were no PCs or word processors, and I’m not that old. There aren’t yet enough descendents of me to succeed or fail at this new environmental challenge—no natural selection. I’m still here, I’m trying to adapt, and I actually give lectures about things to other human beings. So far I’m succeeding, because I haven’t been eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, but I have survived to pass on my inability to speak to future generations. So this negative trait has not been unselected by natural selection, at least not yet.

In the overall geologic timeline, this is all very sudden. After millions of years of life on earth, human technology has exploded in a few short decades. Like everything else, issues related to the explosion of knowledge and our inability to communicate it will probably (and hopefully) sort themselves out. These are turbulent times, and the fittest and best pronunciators will presumably attract mates, procreate, and live to lecture another day. Meanwhile, my poor students will have to learn to adapt. They won’t have to work through the soup film analogy, but they will need to account for the quacking moment.

^*Note: This is funny for structural engineers. If you’re not a structural engineer, note that the maximum bending moment for a simply supported beam of length $L$ , with load $P$ placed at the center of the beam span, is calculated as $PL∕4$ . Now that you know, it’s funny for you, too.