Yep, that's one of the things we need to consider changing to catch up
with Ed. 8 of the Brochure. Probably the battery society will want it,
if no one else.
Jim
Bruce Barrow wrote:
Jim,
Yes, I did note the careful wording in your response to Brian. You
clearly are using some of the political skills we now see daily on TV.
In your message, you observe that the dalton "has risen to the level of
acceptance as a unit that can be used with the SI." Gee, I just checked
my copy of IEEE/ASTM SI 10, and I can't find it.
Bruce
PS. On a not-frivolous note, I believe that the 8th edition (2006) of
our BIPM bible has now become deplorably less authoritative, thanks to
the expanded Table 7 and Tables 8 and 9.
----- Original Message ----- From: "James Frysinger"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Bruce Barrow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Brian Leonard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[email protected]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 5:13 PM
Subject: Re: gali and avo
Bruce,
Please note that I did not agree with Brian about the need for new
names. I merely said they were the best proposals I had seen to date.
I also pointed out the process of making such a change and cautioned
that it was a long, arduous road. Hopefully all concerned figured out
that there wasn't a snowball's chance on a Tennessee summer afternoon
of the changes being approved. That said, in the past I made remarks
similar to yours here, but about not needing the dalton. Now it has
risen to the level of acceptance as a unit that can be used with the
SI. So much for my opinion!
Rest assured that CIPM and CGPM will not take USMA discussion on the
matter as the basis for deciding what to do about the unit name for
mass. "L'gran K" will live on in name, if not in artifact. (But we may
have to live with watts in the balance.)
In the meantime I hope to have enlightened some folks about the
process of effecting changes to the SI -- and the minuscule likelihood
of being successful. The endless banter on the USMA mail list (this
thread started before I joined USMA in 1990, I think) is indeed more
of an academic aerobics exercise than an effective course of action. I
find it a refreshing relief from the endless argument about the
centimeter.
Jim
Bruce Barrow wrote:
Dear Jim,
Good #$&*% grief! We do NOT need a new name for the kilogram. We
do NOT need to advocate changes in the SI. We need to teach the
metric system and expand its use in the US. People here know what a
kilo is; let's not confuse them.
Bruce Barrow
----- Original Message ----- From: "James Frysinger"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Brian Leonard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[email protected]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 12:09 PM
Subject: Re: gali and avo
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
------------ Howard Hayden [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> /The Energy Advocate/
www.energyadvocate.com <http://www.energyadvocate.com/>
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
