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The fourth, fifth, and sixth derivatives of position are called "Snap" "Crackle" and "Pop". What came first, the rice crispy characters, or the physics units?

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+1 Wow haven't heard these terms since i last played with camshaft profiles, tweaking the 4th, 5th and 6th derivatives of lift. For those in doubt, yes there are official terms used for higher order derivatives. – ja72 Oct 19 '12 at 18:18
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For even higher order derivatives and also integrals see: thespectrumofriemannium.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/… – vtt Nov 11 '12 at 2:23
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closed as off topic by David Zaslavsky♦ Dec 11 '12 at 21:40

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I think the cereal characters came first. The reason being that after acceleration and jerk engineers designing cam profiles needed terms beyond jerk that conveyed the drastic effect minor tweaks had to the lift curve and the trio of well established cereal characters suit the bill exactly.

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