New term request: photon scattering

[paulmillar]

New term label:

photon scattering

Definition:

Any technique where photons are used as a probe and a measurement is sensitive to photons.

(this is any technique that has photon probe and scattering technique)

Position in the hierarchy or the parent class:

New class is a subclass of:

• photon probe
• scattering technique

New class is a superclass of:

• x-ray scattering
• light scattering

Synonyms

Cross-references

[spc93]

First of all, of course we can do this.

Benefits of added extra named classes include simpler searches and focussed annotation (although Wikipedia doesn’t have anything on photon scattering per se).

I would like to highlight some subtleties, which are true for many other additional terms and so worth discussing.

Let’s assume we make ‘photon scattering’ a subclass of ‘photon probe’ and ‘scattering technique’. On its own this does not mean that ‘light scattering’ (defined as a subclass of ‘scattering technique’ and ‘visible photon probe’) becomes a subclass of ‘photon scattering’. (Imagine, for example, that ‘photon scattering’ has more constraints than we have specified).

There are two ways around this.

We could define ‘photon scattering’ as equivalent to ‘photon probe’ and ‘scattering technique’. However, we have mainly tried to avoid this, both for simplicity, and to avoid accidentally making assumptions that may be wrong, now of in the future. We have generally used ‘subclass’, which is a weaker statement than ‘equivalent class’. The other approach is to change the definitions of terms that we explicitly want to be subclasses of ‘photon scattering’. For example, ‘light scattering’ would be defined as a subclass of ‘photon scattering’ and ‘visible light probe’.

I prefer this approach. It means making more changes to the spreadsheet, but the affect is only to add a new named superclass, as required.

Thoughts?

[paulmillar]

Just some minor comments.

First, perhaps we should add an additional section in the "new term template": Motivation. Describing how (or where) the term is intended to be used might help in sorting out some of the more subtle points.

Second, for this term, my motivation is rather prosaic. I was putting together a catalogue of "tags" currently used to identify PaN services in the EOSC Marketplace:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_F95pwILSexCTkKH8I7zzEx6y5IYjPCI6Uq-SjzIcsM/edit

I noticed that there were many tags that were (in essence) PaNET concepts. (See above document for examples).

For "photon scattering" tag (used by the pan-training and pan-e-learning services), there didn't seem to be a corresponding PaNET term, which motivated me to open this issue.

[paulmillar]

I was thinking that (for example) the definition of light scattering would be updated so that it has photon scattering as a super class, and continue to have visible photon probe as a super class.

I think this is your preferred option @spc93, right?

[spc93]

I agree with both. I will make a list of all the proposed changes for the new term.

Strongly agree with adding 'motivation'. This kind of work can go in all kinds of directions that are of accademic interest. Our priorities should be for things that will make a real practical difference.