Ref : Marcus mail - [USMA:19076] Re: watt seconds ?? Whether you say 5 liters or 5000 cubic centimeters, a person can understand that both are same.
But between 2 kWh and 7.2 Megajoules (1 kWh = 3.6 megajoules), definitely there will be a confusion. The reason is 1 hour = 3600 seconds and not 100 or 1000 seconds. On 1 side, our SI lovers believe that we should switch over to joule (thereby eliminating hours), and on other side the entire world is using kWh, MWh, GWh & TWh making watt-hour the only unit of electricity. According to SI "The second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transition between 2 hyperfine levels of the ground state of caesium 133 atom. " '9,192,631,770' what a horrible number to remember. SI came up with an easy to remember unit of length 1 m = 1/40,000,000 part of circumference of the earth, but they have goofed up the most important unit of measurement - TIME. If we have to bypass celestial events like EARTH's rotation & revolution and consider CEASIUM as our new god-send element, atleast we should try to popularise kiloseconds & megaseconds to get rid of minutes & hours. So 1 day will contain 86.4 kiloseconds and 1 year will contain 31,557 kiloseconds. I believe 1 of our members suggested kiloseconds earlier. Until then its difficult to eliminate kWh, km/h, etc. Beware - the decimal time based on Earth's rotation is becoming popular. Its very easy for people to remember that 1 unit of time = 1/1000 part of a day. The entire world of governments, banking, industry, education, sports, etc will jump on this new unit leaving SI unit of time (second) in trouble and science will become mockery. By the way if we have to define caesium periods based on decimal part of day, then 9,192,631,770 / 86,400 * 100,000 gives 10,639,620,104.167 and 10 billion is easy to remember number. Until man establishes colonies in Mars, Jupiter, etc, our Mother Earth will rule. I apologise for mocking the definition of SI unit of time - SECOND. For the time being stay with kWh, km/h, etc. I would like to see TWh replacing MTOE (million tons oil equivalent), another horrible unit like horsepower. Madan --- Ma Be <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 08:05:54 -0800 > From: "Ma Be" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [USMA:19076] Re: watt seconds ?? > Organization: Angelfire > (http://email.angelfire.mailcity.lycos.com:80) > > This is a very interesting debate. Just a couple of > small comments here with your forbearance. > > I always thought that the real origin of watt came > from the electrical guys. Perhaps definitionally > speaking it may be like Bill described below. > However, I'm talking about *first occurrence*, where > did it really come from and when/how was it first > defined/used? Not that it would matter... ;-) > > My second comment deals with a more fundamental > question, something that perhaps may contribute > towards resistance to the embracement of SI by > ordinary folks. Bill's intervention below just > highlighted this... "problem". (I'm cutting the > portion I'm referring to below for your better > understanding of my point) > > The fact that some units may simultaneously be, like > the watt, V.A, or, J/s, or Nm/s, etc, does bring > some confusion into the picture. True, this is sort > of unavoidable, but it's not uniquely "defined". > Opponents of the SI certainly pin this on us and try > to justify (among other reasons, of course) their > hodge podge collection of unit names on the grounds > that at least most of them are unique. Evidently > this phenomenon above is due to SI's coherence, but > it certainly does not help in some situations. > > So... my fundamental point here is this. Have we > perhaps gone too far on coming up with all sorts of > 'derived units' as Bill put it in his post? Where > should we draw the line? We have witnessed the > creation of a new unit recently here (I don't recall > it's name, but remember that it was a new name for a > simple time ratio, like cd/s, whatever. Something > which I vehemently opposed, by the way, on the > grounds that first it was utterly unnecessary and > secondly that it would create a yet another unit > without much logica,l *real necessity*, reason for > its introduction). Perhaps it should be time for us > to make a fundamental stand on this issue and avoid > the proliferation of such "nicknames" and leave > certain things alone. Some rule/policy creation > IMHO should be in order. Besides we cannot give > much room for the enemy to shoot us down. > > Why the above? Well... There ARE *serious* > inconsistencies among our camp concerning using this > name policy, IMHO (of course...). For instance, we > do not have a new name for every time ratio. > Examples (never mind that A is actually a > fundamental unit, or if definitionally some of these > are "the other way around", I'm just talking about a > principle here): > > W: J/s > A: C/s > V: Wb/s > etc > > Absence of special names: > m/s > N/s > kg/s > etc > > I hope you folks can see where I'm getting with > this! > > So, in essence, as far as I know, the current pool > of unit names we have have pretty much emerged > haphazardly without much... "thought" being put into > the process. Therefore, I repeat again, perhaps it > should be about time we address this interesting > aspect in SI. Any comments, please? > > Marcus __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards� http://movies.yahoo.com/
