2000-10-22
I work with dc lifting magnets. The two Mechanical Engineers, one who
admits being a dinosaur when I tell him certain units have been obsolete for
decades and are no longer supported, still use to some extent maxwell and
gauss. The rest are never used. I did see oersted on some documentation
once.
Apparently old charts and graphs used these units along with inches, so
these guys just blindly followed them. It seems these guys assume these are
English magnetic units and not old metric. In a seminar once given by one,
I almost choked when my co-worker said the saturation of steel was "20 000
gauss per square inch". I waited to after the seminar was over to explain
that gauss was an obsolete unit for flux density and to add per square inch
after it was wrong. That gauss meant maxwells per square centimetre. I
explained tesla was the correct unit and it was tied directly to amperes and
henrys, but he insisted in his errors.
Recently we bought a program to help design magnets and it uses only SI
units. It is forcing the dinosaur who has to use the program to convert
back and forth, which he finds a nuisance. I told him not adjusting to SI
terms will only make his work harder and he will be out of sync with experts
who don't use old units anymore. I told him he will look ignorant in an
area he is suppose to be an expert in. He didn't care, but then he hasn't
been embarrassed in front of someone important yet.
Time will tell if these two change their ways.
John
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of Dennis Brownridge
Sent: Sunday, 2000-10-22 00:41
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:8696] Old non-SI electromagnetic units?
Can anyone tell me if and to what extent the old non-SI (mostly cgs)
electromagnetic units are still used? I still see the gauss quite
often, but
what about the others, e.g.,
statcoulomb (franklin)
abcoulomb
faraday (various versions)
statampere
gilbert
abampere (biot)
abvolt
statvolt
abohm
statohm
statmho
abmho
mho (old name for siemens)
statfarad
abfarad
daraf
maxwell
gamma (10^-5 oersted)
oersted
gauss
abhenry
stathenry
debye
