> Of Bill Potts > Is it all right if we tell you to consume the water at an average rate of > 23 > microliters per second (23 �L/s)? > > Even though this isn't realistic as a set of instructions, it illustrates > the concept of normalization, where the denominator in the expression is > unity (i.e., 1 of something, requiring only the unit's symbol).
Good point. > There's a very common exception -- L/100 km. The first time I saw that, I was disappointed. We may get another chance to use SI when the fuel changes to electricity or something. But we might see something like kWh/km or BTU/furlong. > (Price/100 g is not, of course, > an exception, as currency units are not SI.) Currency can make use of some of the principles. A pseudo SI currency would have one base unit. Many currencies have two. Canadian currency has two: dollars, cents. US currency has three on the coin labels: dollars, cents, dimes. The US fractional 'one quarter' is a non-decimal anomaly which does not exist in Canada. Canada has done a soft conversion of the coin label to '25 cents'. Some currencies had become single unit through inflation (peseta, lira). The Euro had the chance to have a single base unit. However it ended up with cents. It missed the chance to have kiloEuro, milliEuro and inherit all the SI benefits of symbology and unit combinations. -- Terry Simpson Human Factors Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.connected-systems.com Phone: +44 7850 511794
