I first did it the way most scientists probably would have: doing a
keyword search on journals in the field after failing to find it in the
more common desk references. I doubt that many students would do that.
In fact, one of the most common "turn offs" mentioned by students for
deciding NOT to go into scientific fields is the use of arcane
terminology (much of which is not as arcane as they think, though). Of
course, math phobia is another commonly mentioned "turn off".
The point I wanted to make was that Science would be more user-friendly
if it used only SI units or at least defined non-SI units in terms of
SI when those are used. It was not to announce this site that we have
mentioned here before. But thanks for posting this on the list again,
Scott. It probably bears repeating here periodically, along with the
various NIST references as well as the many others on the USMA home
page.
But how many scientists, so you suppose, could pass a broad-spectrum,
closed book quiz on units such as sverdrups, dobson units, janskies,
rayleighs, dobson units, practical salinity units, faradays, parsecs,
etc. You may notice that my suggested SI units were equivalent to the
sverdrup and I'm sure that all scientists (and science students) would
understand those.
Jim
On Tue, 06 Feb 2001, Scott Clauss wrote:
> To avoid the 0.5 hours spent hunting the internet, bookmark this website:
>
> http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/index.html
>
> I have mentioned it before, but it is the most exhaustive I have seen for
> units SI and otherwise.
>
> A sverdrup acording to this site is: "a unit of flow sometimes used in
> oceanography to express the flow of ocean currents. One sverdrup equals one
> million cubic meters per second, which is also one cubic hectometer per
> second. The unit honors the Norwegian oceanographer and Arctic explorer H.
> U. Sverdrup (1888-1957)."
....
--
James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston
10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street
843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424
http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
