On Tue, 26 Mar 2002 16:25:26 Joseph B. Reid wrote: ... >According to the Encylopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition, the watt was >defined by a committee of the British Association. It was reommended by an >international Electrical Congress in Chicago in 1893, and finally adopted >by the Electrical Congress of 1908 in London. > >Note that the watt is defined in purely mechanical terms. The power of >automobiles in Australia is stated in kilowatts. > A very opportune remark that sort of confirmed my suspicions. Thanks for sharing that, Joe. >... >The process was haphazard, but with much serious thought. The latest >important arrivals were the pascal and the siemens which were approved by >the CGPM in 1971. > What I meant was that the creation of such 'unit names' did not follow a strategic plan of action as a result of some rigorous policy. Let's face it, our current SI system has only started to look more... "rigorous" after the 1960's. Until then we seemed to still have had some philosophical questions to grapple with.
But, oh, well, I guess we've been learning about this the hard way. Again, I still sustain that we have much work to do in definitional terms. I consider the SI system framework still a WIP (work-in-progress), unfortunately... :-S Perhaps our friends here with strong ties to CGPM, BIPM and the likes should lobby to request/invoke a Forum for some fundamental discussions. We have made great advances, no doubt, since the 1850's, but it IS time to tackle the tougher issues that goes to the root of the SI framework itself! And things like prefix names, etc, should also be addressed when that time comes. The only setback and potential problem to do this would be the hideous and muddled situation we're in with regards to the time entity aspect (we're still stuck in FF age on this... :-S). Therefore, until we have a pool of gutsy forward-thinking individuals permeating these ranks we'll probably still have to settle for piece-meal improvements to the SI system here and there... ... >The ampere is an SI base unit. The watt is an SI derived unit defined in >terms of metre, kilogram and second. The volt is another SI derived unit >defined as watt / ampere. The etymology is that definition of the volt >depends on the definition of the watt, rather than the other way around. >... Finally, the above observation is quite interesting and may trigger a more fundamental question. Aside from the 7 fundamental units, wouldn't (or shouldn't) ALL and ANY other unit actually be a derivative therefrom? What I mean is that both the volt and the watt are derived units, and trying to make a firm statement that one actually came from the other may be difficult to ascertain after all. In other words, maybe we should go back to the basics to settle these questions, i.e. ask what is a volt and a watt and write them both in terms of what they actually are (i.e. in terms of the fundamental base units, like kg, m, s, etc), and forget about whether in the beginning, originally, one came before the other or something. Or putting it yet another way, no physical concept should be given "primacy" over the other. (just a thought...) Marcus See Dave Matthews Band live or win a signed guitar http://r.lycos.com/r/bmgfly_mail_dmb/http://win.ipromotions.com/lycos_020201/splash.asp
