What's Wrong with these Equations?

A major impediment to writing physics gracefully comes from the need to embed in the prose many large pieces of raw mathematics. Nothing in freshman composition courses prepares us for the literary problems raised by the use of displayed equations. Our knowledge is acquired implicitly by reading textbooks and articles, most of whose authors have also given the problem no thought. When I was a graduate teaching assistant in a physics course for nonscientists, I was struck by the exceptional clumsiness with which extremely literate students who lacked the exposure even to such dubious examples treated mathematics in their term papers. The equations stood out like droppings on a wellmanicured lawn. They were invariably introduced by the word "equation," as in "Pondering the problem of motion, Newton came to the realization that the key lay in the equation