IAtionary: Ultraviolet Catastrophe

Ul-tra-vi-o-let Ca-tas-tro-phe [uhl-truh-VAHY-uh-lit kuh-TAS-truh-fee] n.

1. A sudden and widespread disaster often pertaining to relatively high-energy electromagnetic radiation; We were learning about waves in physics class and all the freshpeople kept actually doing the wave...it was an ultraviolet catastrophe!
2. A paradox or other seemingly impossible situation; I thought that sin(90) coming out as a weird decimal was an ultraviolet catastrophe, but then I realized that my calculator was in radian mode.

Language of Origin: Lyonese

In IB2 Fisix we were discussing black body radiation. This concept came up, which for those without the patience to read an entire Wikipedia article is a problem that scientists in the early 20th century faced. They knew that a black body (i.e. something that absorbs all radiation that hits it) should give off certain amounts of radiation of its own in different colors, but the theoretical model predicted that pretty much any random object should give off more and more intense radiation as the frequency of the wave increases. An object should give off more orange light than red, more yellow than orange, etc. The problem was that it kept increasing, and the object should give off an infinite amount of ultraviolet light. Clearly, this doesn't really happen. The problem was solved when we realized that electrons could only exist in discrete energy levels...click the link if you want more on that. Anyway, when Mr. Lyons introduced the concept, he explained the problem and then said that it had pretty much the most awesome name ever. And you've gotta admit, it sounds kinda cool.