Dear Brian,
These are the two best proposals I have seen to date.
One should be braced; it takes a very long time for proposals to wend
their way through the administrative process to become approved.
Consider how long it took for the dalton (Da) to obtain approval. The
pathway is via the Consultative Committee on Units (CCU) and SCC 14
("stds-units") has a healthy connection to our country's CCU. Perhaps
your proposals could find some discussion at our next SCC 14 meeting as
a possible proposal to CCU. Publication of appropriate papers in
Metrologia might be beneficial to your cause as well.
regards,
Jim
Brian Leonard wrote:
Dear Howard:
Thank you. You are absolutely right. For a long time I've been
advocating the name gali (symbol G), honouring Galileo--as he was the
first ("modern physicist") to explore both the inertial and
gravitational properties of mass (although, of course, he didn't speak
of them in these terms). His experiments and insights were essential
for Newton's laws; in fact, Galileo already had "Newton's first law."
This is not some mere whim. The idea of honouring an appropriate
scientist is well established. The symbol (capital) G is also
appropriate. The unit gauss is no longer in use. [Some have suggested
giorgi (also symbol G), honouring the founder of the "MKS" system, known
for cleaning up mechanical, thermal and electrical energy concepts--I
find this a bit "awkward."] I have no trouble keeping gram (symbol g)
defined as (exactly) one milligali: g = mG. Here's the "delicatessen
test":
I would like half a gali of roast turkey and two hundred grams of Swiss
cheese. [1/2 a G of roast turkey and 200 g of Swiss cheese.]
Checkout scales would register in G to three decimal places--as they do
now (in kg) in metric countries. Labelling would have to be precise in
distinguishing between G and g--but this distinction between capital and
lower-case HAS to be cleaned up anyway!
This flows nicely--because in most metric countries a kilogram is
referred to as a kilo ("keeloh"); and gali ("galley") is phonetically
very close to this. [I don't think I could stomach half a giorgi of
roast turkey.]
Also, chemists are never going to give up working (and thinking and
communicating) in grams and moles--see below. SI submultiple prefixes
can be used--even though that's an SI "no-no"! But we have no trouble
doing submultiple and supermultiple SI prefixes with liter. [An
appropriate name for a cubic meter (and a square meter) is another concern.]
I also have no trouble with tonne (symbol t) defined as (exactly) one
kilogali: t = kG. [Pronounce it as "tunn" rather than "tonn." Other
tons will drop by the wayside.] It's handy for large commercial masses.
SI supermultiple prefixes can be used with this--even though that's
also an SI "no-no"!
Getting back to the chemists, the kilomole--renamed the avo (symbol Av),
honouring Avogadro for obvious reasons--should be the BASE unit, thereby
avoiding the ridiculous situation of having the amount specific mass
(not "molar" mass) of, for example, carbon 12 be 0.012 kg/mol when
expressed in base units. In the new base units, it would be 12 G/Av (12
gali per avo). This avoids factors of ten to the plus or minus three
popping up all over the place in theoretical equations. The mole (and
SI submultiple prefixes) would still be used by chemists; one mole being
defined as (exactly) one milliavo: mol = mAv.
By the way, dalton (Da) is used as an (accepted) alternative to "unified
atomic mass unit" (u). SI units or units in use with SI should not have
multi-word names (metric ton, etc); what is a ku?--a kilo-unified atomic
mass unit: an atomic mass unit unified a thousand times? A kilodalton
(kDa) is well defined.
Cheers,
Benny Leonard.
On Jun 23, 2008, at 6:57 PM, Howard Hayden wrote:
Hi Stan,
Gee, I thought a short ton was 2 million millipounds. This is the
problem you face when the UNIT of mass has a prefix meaning a
thousand, namely the kilogram. So, a metric ton becomes a million
millikilograms, for that is exactly the meaning of megagram.
If the SI committee wants to do something truly useful, it would be to
RENAME the kilogram so that it has no prefix. Call it the Jakuba, the
Washington, the Brenner, the FMU (French Mass unit), the SIMU (SI Mass
Unit), the Dalton, the Mach, the Einstein, the Cagey, or SOMETHING!!!
This simple naming problem has been in the works for a half-century.
Get on with it! All you've got to do is choose a name. Why should
that take decades?
Look at it this way. You're trying to get the whole world to quit
using the word /tonne/. It should be much easier to get the standards
committees to quit using the long-outdated term /kilogram/, and
instead to use a non-prefixed name. That would remove an obnoxious
exception to SI. Now that the shoe is on that foot, just who is
it that's suffering from hardening of the categories?
SI got rid of a large number of past units, among them gram-force,
kilogram-force, Gauss, Gilbert, Oersted, slugs, poundals, and probably
others, and for good reason. Why not do the right thing and get rid
of the term /kilogram/?
The Megagram is NOT unambiguous. Students are forever getting
confused about this issue. (Try teaching a bunch of students that a
megagram is a million thousandths of the unit of mass in the SI
almost-system. They'll think you're nuts, and they'll be right.)
Teaching would be much easier if the same mass were called the
kiloEinstein (or kE).
I have no sympathy whatsoever for the term /megagram/. It is NOT a
million mass units. The term /tonne/ has been in use by the French
for over two centuries, and it at least relates /directly/ to the mass
unit (1000 kg), unlike the indirectly related megagram (1,000,000
milli-kg).
It's time for SI to clean house and get rid of that Mg abomination.
Cheers,
Howard
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Howard Hayden
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