11 ms·

I think you are a bit harsh on the author here. Sodium and silicon are very easy to mix up when writing, especially in an article where you talk about both quit

I think you are a bit harsh on the author here. Sodium and silicon are very easy to mix up when writing, especially in an article where you talk about both quite often. It's also easy to overlook in proof reading because it sort of make sense in the sentence. Regarding the flowing myth, I also heard the myth talking about cathedral glass planes being thicker at the bottom. There is a much more mundane reason for that though, it's much easier to handle a pane that is heavier at the bottom than the top, thus they were made that way. The myth is also debunked by the fact that there exist examples of cathedral glass panes which were made with the thick end up and haven't changed since then.

doodlebugging 4y ago
I wasn't trying to be harsh on the author. I thought about this late last night and decided that the easiest way to explain the error could be that the author was employed by Physics World to compose interesting articles in layman's terms and that the author does not have a technical background and those persons at Physics World who were supposed to proof-read this work dropped the ball. In checking the byline you can see that the author is a freelancer and if you follow the link to their site you can see that they do a lot of technical writing for multiple publications on a variety of subjects. It is possible that they had a tight deadline for article submission, more articles to write, etc so that this one was dumped to the machine just in time for publication but without enough time for a good review that would've spotted this slight error.