There are probably some things that get under your skin too. My brother was into his second decade of medical practice when I was a mere junior internal Medicine resident. I picked up this particular expression from him, I think. I used it often on my hospital rounds to express frustration. Okay, I more often said ass rather than butt; it’s about the same.
I haven’t used that expression in many years, but it came to mind today. Spherical aberration chaps my ass. “What is it?” You ask. Spherical aberration is the inability of a spherical lens or mirror to focus all incoming rays of light in a single plane. Light rays hitting a spherical surface outside the central axis are focused closer to the optical element than those falling on the optical axis. Think of your read – light hitting dead center of your pupil gets focused to a pinpoint thus creating a sharp image, but light rays hitting outside that central zone get focused closer to your eye. The further from the optical center the light enters the lens, the closer to your eye it focuses. The result is a blurry image. I hate it when that happens.
Designers of optical instruments including telescopes, cameras and microscopes have long ago found ways to correct for spherical aberrations. The general solution is optical elements that are aplanatic. Aplanatic doesn’t mean a specific shape but rather any shape that corrects for spherical aberration. And this is where my ass gets chapped.
Every morning, I look at the NYT Spelling Bee which I share with Susan. I’ve gotten quite good at this style of puzzle. Yes, sometimes it takes me several minutes to find the pangram (the word that uses all the letters in the puzzle), but I usually solve them in under a minute – sometimes seconds. Today’s puzzle was:
I looked at this one for about a minute, and then the solution came to me. Aplanatic! Well, the puzzle refused to acknowledge that I had found a proper pangram. That really chaps my ass! I few minutes later, I found a solution that was acceptable to the puzzle.
I don’t think that the creators of this puzzle were properly trained in Physics, Optics, Astronomy, or Microscopy. They are probably English majors.