Bruce,
That was a pretty good write-up on the failings of the news media in
general being stingy with numbers. I share his belief; most journalists
are innumerate mathphobes.
A couple of comments, which you may wish to mention to him if you can
figure out how to do so:
- The word sievert should not be started in uppercase.
- It would have been opportune for him to provide the symbols for
sievert, millisievert, and microsievert.
- He started well saying that the sievert has replaced the rem (which
originally was written as REM, it being a funky acronym) but he fell
short on the curie being replaced by the becquerel.
- It took a few days, but I finally started seeing some numbers being
posted by CNN.com and by FoxNews.com.
While I'm on the subject, let me provide a conversion factor for a unit
that is commonly used to measure airborne radiation. A commonly used
limit for airborne radiation is 1 × 10^-9 µCi/mL (1 × 10^-9 microcurie
per milliliter). That equates exactly to 37 MBq/m3 or 37 Bq/mL.
Jim
On 2011-03-19 1952, [email protected] wrote:
Beating the heads of media over Sieverts
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/friday-talking-points-159_b_837878.html
Bruce E. Arkwright, Jr
Erie PA
Linux and Metric User and Enforcer
Id put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I
hope we dont have to wait til oil and coal run out before we tackle
that. I wish I had a few more years left. -- Thomas Edison♽☯♑
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
