And a good thing you're all coming to froggy metric too ;)
Horace good point again, but why shouldn't Pascal deserve the honor of
de-capitalization like everybody else? As a fellow froggy, I resent this
discrimination ;)
Since we are discussing conventions, I have noticed that some of you usually
write below earlier messages, I used to do the same for obvious
chronological reasons, and also because I thought it was more polite, but a
blind man once taught me that this was very bad for blind people who read
their list messages via text to speech applications: they have to listen to
all the old stuff they already know about before getting to the new bit. All
email clients should have a setting for answering above quoted text by
default, maybe we could adopt this convention?
Michel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Grimer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 1:07 AM
Subject: Re: Sprain Mag Motor
At 11:32 am 02/03/2006 -0900, you wrote:
On Mar 2, 2006, at 7:07 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: hohlrauml6d
Paul is often a little sloppy with his terminology. He forgets to
use the proper units. The pulse duration is not .028 ms, it's .028 s.
<><><><><><><>
Damn, I didn't finish the post. Why does the brain degrade so
quickly after reaching 50?
I meant to add that Paul meant 1.05 Watt-seconds, a measure of
energy equal to 1.05 Joule. It is usually considered polite to
capitalize the units which represent a name.
Surprisingly to many, this is not so. When a scientist's name
reaches the exalted state of being used as a unit, then when spelled
out in that usage it is no longer capitalized. This non-
capitalization rule is in itself an honor, designating the use of an
international standard. However, the name is still capitalized in the
abbreviation. Consider the following SI units and their abbreviations:
hertz Hz
newton N
Pascal Pa
joule J
watt W
coulomb C
volt V
ohm (capital omega)
siemens S
farad F
tesla T
weber Wb
henry H
becquerel Bq
gray Gy
sievert Sv
and some ordinary SI units:
lumen lm
lux lx
radian rad
steradian sr
Horace Heffner
Personally, I find this canonization of scientists bloody annoying.
As a protest I always write Centigrade instead of Celsius. At least
with a unit like a lumen or lux, you know it has something to
do with light - and a radian relates to a radius - but names like
gray and sievert convey absolutely nothing to me.
At least you yanks have stuck to the imperial system of weights and
measures for common usage and not adopted the froggy metric - yet. ;-)
Frank
(even my spell checker didn't recognise sievert)
