"Joseph B. Reid" wrote:
>
> James Frysinger wrote in USMA 22673:
....
> >Being in an editorial frame of mind, I got to musing about what revisions I
> >would like to see in the next draft of the SI brochure. One that comes to
> >mind is that I would like to see an explicit statement in the brochure about
> >the inclusion of a space between the numerical portion and the unit portion
> >of a quantity. As it stands, all that is there is the obvious use of this
> >construction, so that we see
> > 273.15 K not 273.15K (p. 96)
> >This could be placed in clause 5.3.
>
> D'accord! A common error in the UK is to omit the space. Does 32lm
> mean 321 metres or 32 lumens? But I would like an exception to be
> made in the case of the degree Celsius. In the case of angles, 30�
> is correct, but 30�C is considered to be incorrect. Why? There is
> no possibility of misunderstanding. We are faced here with two
> competing anomalies: either anomalous treatment of the degree symbol
> or an exception for the degree Celsius among metric units. A
> possible solution would be to rename the "degree Celsius" as simply
> the "celsius".
The SI allows the use of prefixes with the unit degree Celsius, as
explained in a note at the bottom of the table. That note was new with
the 7th edition. Let's say that I observe the change in properties of an
object over a range of 20 �C and note the readings in 1000 evenly spaced
increments of temperature. Then, each point differs from the previous
and subsequent point by 20 m�C. Personally, I find it easier to say that
I took 1000 evenly spaced observations over an interval of 20 K, making
each one 20 mK from the previous. But the brochure does allow the use of
degree Celsius in that manner.
Jim
