On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 20:31:57 Pat Naughtin wrote: >Dear Jim and All, > >I haven't finished mulling, but what I have done instead is to revisit the >suggestion I made some months ago for a new unit for measuring angles. >... Ok, Pat. That should be an exciting subject to discuss indeed. However, please let me volunteer my views on this, plus add a few others.
I guess most of us here agree that the SI system would require some... "refurbishing" in several aspects. This is what I'd propose to do. I know this would sound radical, but, he, the main thing is to come up with a proposal that should really last a long, looong time! Angles: I'd prefer for us to simply use 100 for the entire circle. Why use a "quad" if by doing so we would be running the same risk and flaw of the ifp system, i.e. that we would require "conversion factors" as you've rightfully pointed out in your e-mail? Angles would be decimally measured to 3 decimal points. Meter: We should redefine it to be ~40% of the current size in line with 100 Mm for the entire circumference of the earth. We would finally be able to get rid of the hideous nautical mile crap for aviation. The minimum 0.001 of an arc would be *exatly* 1 km. And we could finally fly by the meter almost as we already do with the hideous foot thing, with added safety. Peso: New unit for weight (mass) that would be equal to 1 dm3 of water (~6.4 of our present kg), just like we have 1 L equals 1 kg of mass today (I know, I know, it varies with atmospheric pressure, temperature, etc, but you've got the picture of what I mean). Therefore, we would keep that convenient relationship! (gravity would be ~18.3 m/s2. Atmospheric pressure would be ~4727 Pa) Prefixes: They would be the exact same, but now defined as they should. Capital letters for + powers and small for - powers. Second: It would be redefined to a 0.864 of the current duration of the second, so that we would have 100.000 "hours" in a day, where 0.001 is evidently the new second. With this approach, days would be referred to as a % after all, something that would be very convenient. Temperature: No change necessary. Everything else would fall in place exactly as it is today. The newton would still be defined as today, the joule, the pascal, etc, etc, etc. Unless I missed something somewhere, this would be as close to a "flawless" system as one could get. Comments, please? Marcus Get 250 color business cards for FREE! http://businesscards.lycos.com/vp/fastpath/
