Catalysis

One word on this list leads a double life, and the business pages will have taught you the wrong half. In commercial German der Umsatz is turnover in the shopkeeper’s sense: the takings of a firm over a year. In a laboratory or a plant it is the conversion — the share of the starting material, das Edukt, that has actually reacted. Der Umsatz ist zu niedrig in a lab report therefore means that too much went through the reactor untouched; nobody has lost any money. The verb splits the same way: umsetzen is to put a plan into practice or to shift goods, and here it is to turn one substance into another. Even the compound is not safe. In the singular, die Umsatzzahl is how often one active site gets through its cycle before it gives out; in the plural, in a company report, die Umsatzzahlen are simply the sales figures. The sentence around it always decides.