On [2004-Aug-13] Warwick Bailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My vote is for nanometres as the default. I recently prepared some Java > Applets for the Education Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the > UK, and they would not accept anything that did not implement SI units - so > nm, not Angstroms. > > I support Miguels view, given that the primary focus for JMol is in > educational environments, where year on year students are better schooled > in the application of SI units, rather then Angstoms, - the proportion of > "Angstom" based users will decline year on year too. > > Finally, as scientists, we should be encouraging the adoption of SI units > as a rational, international agreed framework, rather than Angstroms, where > the justification is more historical, cultural and legacy.
Well the Angstrom is more "natural" when we're talking interatomic distances. My calculator is 8 cm wide not .08 m because using numbers around 1 is a natural scale for things we're interacting with. As crystallographers (or users of crystallographic results) we are "interacting" with these molecules/atoms. The instructions for authors for journals associated with the IUCr (International Union of Crystallography) has: "The International System of Units (SI) is used except that the �ngstr�m (symbol �, defined as 10x-10 m) is generally preferred to the nanometre (nm) or picometre (pm) as the appropriate unit of length." In my view the program (Jmol) shouldn't prevent the user from using whatever output units they want to specify but � is a reasonable default choice. Rich ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by Shop4tech.com-Lowest price on Blank Media 100pk Sonic DVD-R 4x for only $29 -100pk Sonic DVD+R for only $33 Save 50% off Retail on Ink & Toner - Free Shipping and Free Gift. http://www.shop4tech.com/z/Inkjet_Cartridges/9_108_r285 _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
