I guess we could say that those who are promoting the Planck units are as thick as two short plancks.
Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Han Maenen Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 22:36 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:25226] Back to topic with Planck units I am looking at the TV now, following the beginning of the war, but as far as this list goes, I want to go back on topic with so-called Planck units, a new front in the battle against SI. This also featured on the Metricsucs forum. I send it in HTML format to keep the text and the links together. This is from the site http://www.planck.com Planck.com outline Planck.com is serving several functions at present. The following is a concise summary indicating the main areas: A.Planck units The Center for Natural Units site features essays concerned with the Planck units as a system of natural units adaptable to human scale and use. In some significant areas of basic research the Planck units have begun to supplant the metric system. These units were proposed in 1899 by Planck as a general-purpose universal set of natural units for science, superior to the metric system in ways Planck pointed out at the time. Essays 1. Planckian Talent-Mile Units This is a new system of Planckian units, based on traditional-sized units which happen to coincide with power-or-ten scale-ups of the natural units. T-M is a consistently decimal system, in which the main physical constants (c, hbar, G, k, e, Avogadro number, gas constant, molar volume, etc.) have values which are powers of ten. The units are defined so as to make these values exact, except in the case of G. Unfamiliar terms are kept at a minimum in the system. Some collections of Nature Fables have been written in Talent-Mile units to illustrate their use, and there are also links to a number of T-M physics examples. 2. Practical Planck Units Practical-sized versions of the Planck units � power-of-ten multiples of the small ones and power-of-ten fractions of the large � presented as a postmetric system of adapted traditional units. This section is kept partly to record versions of human-scale natural units leading up to the Talent-Mile system, which has superseded them and which has fewer unfamiliar terms. Practical Planck units were used in writing several sets of nature fables. 3. Intuitive Planck Quantities An essay describing the Planck quantities as fundamental closely interrelated features of the universe, present in our experience and establishing natural scales. Written in spoken-language style with a minimum of symbolic notation. 4. Natural Units for Scientists and Engineers Technical definitions of the Planck quantities. Construction of a set of counterparts with exact metric equivalents agreeing with the natural units as accurately as the latter can be measured experimentally. For purposes of comparison, parts of this essay use an earlier system of Planckian units which overlaps but is not identical with Talent-Mile. Some of the material in this essay has been superseded and is pending revision. Planck Units Message Board Invites your ideas concerning design and launch of modern alternatives to the metric system in which the main physical constants (G, c, h-bar, e, k, etc.) are powers of ten. * B. Verse and Nature Fables The links here are to pages of rhymed lyric translations from several European languages, 1100-1900, to tumble rhymes (German Sch�ttelreime, spooneristically rhymed couplets), to collections of natural units fables, and to rhymed verse in English. * C. Physical Constants Planck units concisely derived the Planck force the Planck area the Planck length the Planck momentum the Planck voltage the Planck mass the Planck current the Planck unit of power Planck energy Planck temperature Planck frequency and Planck time the Planck/proton mass ratio NASA's heliocentric gravitational constant the fine structure constant, alpha the constants in Maxwell's equations the constant in Coulomb's law the adopted values of constants which define the metric system * D. Music and other This is where some downloadable choral music scores and MIDI music files are located, as well as miscellaneous other links. * Questions and comment are welcome: [EMAIL PROTECTED] google googlephysicsgroup rhymenet U. of Toronto poems, first line index Einstein Field Equation 1916 Gen Rel Franck Wilczek's article in Physics Today June 2001 http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-54/iss-11/p12.html http://www.aip.org/web2/aiphome/pt/vol-55/iss-8/p10.shtml classical systems of units: Greek, Egyptian, Indian, Chinese,... Mohr and Taylor's article in EJDE August 2000 Science 8 May 1998 article on watt balance to replace metal kilogram Pictures of NIST watt balance in March 2001 Physics Today Good graphic diagramming the NIST watt balance, from Ed Williams et al Rowlett's on-line dictionary of units, with some units-history information Cosmology Tutorial, Ned Wright UCLA Andrei Linde essay history of astronomy webpage (NASA) history of gravity-and-orbits model Herodotus' story of the camels and ants hyperdictionary Webster's Unabridged 1913 Arabian Nights, richard burton 1885 Arabian Nights, aldine 1890, jon.scott Cosmological constant, Carroll http://pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/preposterous.html http://www.amherst.edu/~gsgreens/progs/cosmology/friedmcourse.html http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Carroll2/frames.html http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html http://www.astronomytoday.com/cosmology/quintessence.html http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0202/0202008.pdfturner survey http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/cwc/fsc/alpha-papers.html http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/cwc/fsc.html http://www.aip.org/physnews/update/ http://web.mit.edu/redingtn/www/netadv/welcome.html http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/montaigne/m-essays_contents.htm l http://www.chez.com/trismegiste/montable.htm http://www.tcforensic.com.au/docs/article10.html http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/tamil/cap_search.html http://www.ariannaonline.com/books/pigs.html http://pages.infinit.net/starged/exos/intro-e.htm http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ http://xxx.lanl.gov/ http://people.hofstra.edu/faculty/Stefan_Waner/diff_geom/tc.html http://www.naturalusa.com/physics/essentialphysics1.pdf http://www.physics.mq.edu.au/~jcresser/phys301/LectureNotes/ http://www.emmynoether.com/ http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/electromag/java/atomicorbitals/ http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/einstein/node1.html ,,,,, Mohr and Taylor propose that the larger Planck's constant be set equal to 2997924582/135 639 274 � 10-42 joule second. This would sever the connection between SI and the metal kilogram prototype, causing the kilogram to be defined through its frequency equivalent of 135 639 274 � 1042 cycles per second (see M&T paragraph 8)� resolution 7 of the 1999 GCPM called for redefinition of kilogram along these lines. * Han Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
