Instrumentation and control

Every controlled plant is the same circle: measure something, compare it with a set point, move a final element, measure again. The words of that circle are the same in a dairy and in a power station — el lazo de control, la consigna, la válvula de regulación. Seventeenth on the list is la célula de carga, the thing that weighs the silo, and it shows how much work one English noun is doing. « Cell » covers the load cell, the living cell under a microscope, the cell in a prison and the cell in a spreadsheet — four things with nothing in common but a small enclosed space. Spanish splits them down the middle: la célula is the biological one and the measuring one, la celda is the one you are locked in and the one in the table. A reader who learns only célula will put a prisoner inside a spreadsheet.