Reader question: Please explain “rocket science”, as in: The trick is real simple; no rocket science involved. My comments: Rocket science is easy. Easy to explain, that is. It is the science of propelling a rocket into the high sky. That’s rocket science in a nutshell, if you refrain from asking me to go into any details. It would require a real rocket scientist to explain everything in which rocket science is involve but fortunately, the question we’re involved with is in fact “rocket science” the linguistic term. Or “no rocket science” as a matter of fact, for this commonplace phrase always appears in the negative. OK, rocket science is really complex and complicated. No rocket science, therefore, is anything but. In other words, if something is described as “no rocket science”, it is really simple, straightforward and easy. In the example from the top, when, say, a magician explains one of his tricks and declares “the trick is real simple” and that there’s “no rocket science involved”, he means exactly that – it’s real simple, nothing complicated at all. Anyways, “no rocket science” (or “not rocket science” sometimes) is a useful term to learn, and we can best learn it, of course, via examples. Here are a few from recent media: 1. Pakistan is wasting God’s gift, the monsoon rains. The crops which are benefiting directly from the rains are taking less water from the canals. Our only two dams are busy generating the much needed power and are not storing the surplus flows. |