'Contact' between two pairs of conductors were kept as the everyday sign ( as when you connect a plug to a socket), but contact between just two conductors, as you often have to do in laboratory work, was signed with just one of the fingers on each hand. A short circuit was signed with the index finger of the dominant hand coming across the two fingers of the base hand.

 

 contact between two single cables

 short circuit
   
   

EXAMPLE 3: ATOMS AND ATOMIC PARTICLES

For atomic concepts, there were two every day signs for atom, one meaning 'small' or "tiny" and one meaning 'bomb'. The latter was most in use. (Our students generally got scared when told they had atoms inside.) None of the above could serve our purposes in physics. We decided to deviate from the standard way of signing in Norwegian, by using the extended little finger on the left hand as the center of movement for signs about atoms and atomic particles. We further agreed to use a device not commonly used (though not unheard of) in NSL: initialization. This means that we used the handshape of the first letter of the Norwegian word for the concept. In addition, as is usual in NSL, the Norwegian word was mouthed unless the sign called for a special facial component.

On the other hand, in our sources of foreign sign languages, we found that the group of atom-related signs, for instance, are quite similar: The NSL signs that we adopted were like the Finnish signs in that they all circulated the little finger of the secondary hand. The main hand would take on the handshape of the initial letter of the term (in Norwegian). In ASL, both hands will take on the initial letter's handshape (Oglia, Caccamise et al. 1990). In ASL later development has caused another set of signs to appear, letting the initialized main hand circle the secondary hand in A-handshape (Caccamise and Lang 1996). In NSL and FSL the nuclear particles would start by circling the little finger, and then go to the middle of the palm of the secondary hand. In ASL, the initial letter in the dominant hand is shaking side-to-side, alone or inside a cupped secondary hand (Caccamise and Lang 1996). ­A Nordic symposium in 1975 had decided that 'atom' should be like the official NSL sign, but in the composite signs 'atomic energy' and 'atom reactor' we find the FSL sign, that we at Bjørkåsen adopted (norsk/nordisk tegnspråkutvalg 1976).