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Glite Dictionary
classic Pauli effect

classic Pauli effect

9.9
A humorous idea that a person's presence makes lab equipment stop working
  • noun
  • Jargon
translation icon : efecto Pauli clásico
  • The students blamed the experiment's failure on the classic Pauli effect after their professor walked in.

Examples

  • Whenever Dr. Kaufman entered the lab, the classic Pauli effect seemed to strike, and the computers crashed.

  • She joked that her bad luck with lab equipment was just the classic Pauli effect in action.

  • The team experienced the classic Pauli effect during the experiment.

  • Have you ever witnessed the classic Pauli effect in action?

  • The students blamed the experiment's failure on the classic Pauli effect after their professor walked in.

  • She joked that her bad luck with lab equipment was just the classic Pauli effect in action.

  • Whenever Dr. Kaufman entered the lab, the classic Pauli effect seemed to strike, and the computers crashed.

Synonyms

Pauli effect
vsclassic Pauli effect
  • Jargon
9.9

A joking belief that a person's presence makes equipment stop working

is the same belief but written with an extra descriptive adjective

Surface Forms

classic Pauli effect singular
classic Pauli effects plural

Morphology

classic + Pauli + effect

Although 'classic' and 'effect' are semantically transparent, 'Pauli' is a proper name whose special connotation (the humorous anecdote that a particular person causes equipment to fail) requires cultural/scientific background. A B1 learner who only knows the constituent words would not be able to infer this idiomatic, person-specific meaning, so the expression is opaque.

Etymology

Classic Pauli effect comes from stories about a scientist named Pauli; one popular story says that when he walked into a lab, delicate machines would suddenly stop working, so people joked his presence made an effect on the equipment. That's why the phrase is used jokingly to say someone 'causes equipment to fail' today.