Hi Bill,

Yes, we should be.  Unfortunately, most scientists are NOT aware that units 
like angstroms are deprecated.  I only know because I read the SI brochure, 
at your suggestion in fact.

There has been a slow and steady trend in physics education to move away from 
cgs to SI.  Most freshmen-level physics and chemistry textbooks have a page 
or two in the introduction about SI.  However, each specific field has its 
own preferred units, and the journals don't seem to be moving toward SI.  It 
seems like every field has its peculiarities.  For example, high energy 
physicists measure both mass and energy in electron volts (eV).

Sometimes using non-SI units is not optional.  For example, sometimes 
converting to SI would lose precision.  As a historical example, there was a 
time when the distance to Jupiter could be measured precisely in AUs, but the 
length of 1 AU in meters was in fact not yet precisely measured.

John

On Wednesday 05 November 2003 14:38, Bill Potts wrote:
> On the more esoteric side, those in the various scientific fields should be
> aware of the obsolete and highly-deprecated status of dynes, ergs,
> �ngstr�ms, etc.

Reply via email to