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email conventions (was Re: melting butter in a microwave - addendum)

Carl, I'm sending this off line because it's off the subject. But I'm
confused
on the use and meaning of the _ key in computer programming, e-mail messages,
and other similar applications. Specifically, what's the difference
between S
dot and S_dot?

Oops, your message went to the list, so I'll reply to it.
Anyways, I don't know that there's a fixed convention. I agree _ is often
used for subscripts and ^ for superscripts. But I don't know of any
convention for overscripts and underscripts: does anybody else?
I just used S_dot because I assumed everyone would recognize it as the time
derivative of entropy. I probably should have just written dS/dt, but I
find it easier to recognize T = (dS/dt)/(dE/dt) when I suppress the d../dt
by use of the dot notation.

Dr. Carl E. Mungan, Assistant Professor http://www.uwf.edu/~cmungan/
Dept. of Physics, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL 32514-5751
office: 850-474-2645 (secretary -2267, FAX -3323) email: cmungan@uwf.edu