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An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
31–40 of 155 posts
Re: An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
#32Confused, so how do they measure 1 kilo of something now when they need to calibrate the most precise instruments? They count 10^40 photons? How? And how does that translate into a physical mass they want to carry around? Edit: Seems I completely missed a paragraph somehow. Thanks!
For most intents and purposes its OK if you are a bit inaccurate. The important thing is that we will never drift further and further away. In 1000 years time we will still have exactly the same kg as we have now.
Transitioning is quite interesting, you have to measure your old unit with the new system at a resolution never reached before so that you know you don’t invalidate a large collection of numbers everywhere in the world. Then, depending on your definition, you might choose a special number, Avogadro’s number has to be a perfect cube, number of transitions have to be integer, etc.
Re: An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we keep the current name and use it as a basis for prefixing? gram -> millikilogram milligram -> microkilogram metric ton -> kilokilogram ...never mind.
It's almost a crime that a metric ton isn't called a "megagram". Aside, are the mega and giga prefixes ever used for anything except bits and bytes? (Edit: OK, OK. I forgot about megaohms, megahertz, megawatts. Also megapixels and Megadeth.)
> Aside, are the mega and giga prefixes ever used for anything except bits and bytes?
Sure, few examples of the top of my head:
- Megatons, as in yield of nuclear weapons. Which is a bit odd unit, should be in J, goddammit!
- Similarly, energy consumption/production. Commonly used units MWh, GWh, TWh. Again, the proper unit would be J, not Wh. Or Mtoe, for Million tons of oil equivalent.
Re: An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
#34I've always been mildly irritated that the name of the SI mass base unit has a prefix. Second, liter, meter, Newton, kilogram. Were I emperor of the world I would slide the name scale up so the mass equal to 2.205lbs was called a gram.
If you were emperor of the world, I would implore you to finance a multibillion dollar project to measure the gravitational constant to higher percision so that we could move to units that actually make sense.
Re: An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we keep the current name and use it as a basis for prefixing? gram -> millikilogram milligram -> microkilogram metric ton -> kilokilogram ...never mind.
It's almost a crime that a metric ton isn't called a "megagram". Aside, are the mega and giga prefixes ever used for anything except bits and bytes? (Edit: OK, OK. I forgot about megaohms, megahertz, megawatts. Also megapixels and Megadeth.)
Megahertz, Megawatt, Megapixel?
Re: An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we keep the current name and use it as a basis for prefixing? gram -> millikilogram milligram -> microkilogram metric ton -> kilokilogram ...never mind.
It's almost a crime that a metric ton isn't called a "megagram". Aside, are the mega and giga prefixes ever used for anything except bits and bytes? (Edit: OK, OK. I forgot about megaohms, megahertz, megawatts. Also megapixels and Megadeth.)
Yes! Aside from the extremely common megahertz and gigahertz, commonly used units are megajoules, gigajoules, megawatts, gigawatts, terawatts, petajoules (when countries are negotiating about energy security), exajoules (when people measure world energy consumption), megohms, gigohms, megalitres (for the capacity of a dam, though teraliters would have been more appropriate), megapascals (of some kind of tensile strength typically), gigapascals (of Young's modulus typically), megaergs (back when people still used ergs), and so on.
Re: An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we keep the current name and use it as a basis for prefixing? gram -> millikilogram milligram -> microkilogram metric ton -> kilokilogram ...never mind.
It's almost a crime that a metric ton isn't called a "megagram". Aside, are the mega and giga prefixes ever used for anything except bits and bytes? (Edit: OK, OK. I forgot about megaohms, megahertz, megawatts. Also megapixels and Megadeth.)
Um yes, for ..., like EVERYTHING?
How much money do we have left in the budget -> Several k€.
Astronomical distances in kilo, mega and giga parsecs / light years.
Forces (e.g engine thrust) Kilo and Meganewtons.
output of powerplants are usually in the Megawatt to Gigawatt.
Frequencys of radio waves are Megahertz to Terahertz.
Energy of cosmic Ray's goes all the way up to zetta electronvolts.
I could name more
Re: An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
#38I've always been mildly irritated that the name of the SI mass base unit has a prefix. Second, liter, meter, Newton, kilogram. Were I emperor of the world I would slide the name scale up so the mass equal to 2.205lbs was called a gram.
If you were emperor of the world, I would implore you to finance a multibillion dollar project to measure the gravitational constant to higher percision so that we could move to units that actually make sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units
Shpx, gung'f n shpxvat terng vqrn.
Re: An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were emperor of the world, I would implore you to finance a multibillion dollar project to measure the gravitational constant to higher percision so that we could move to units that actually make sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units
Shpx, gung'f n shpxvat terng vqrn.
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Re: An old artifact kept in a vault outside Paris is no longer the standard kilogram
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's almost a crime that a metric ton isn't called a "megagram". Aside, are the mega and giga prefixes ever used for anything except bits and bytes? (Edit: OK, OK. I forgot about megaohms, megahertz, megawatts. Also megapixels and Megadeth.)
It always feels a little grating when I hear someone say some number of "thousand kilometers".
Yes, describing my old car's odometer as "250 megameters" is oddly satisfying to let roll of the tongue.