101–110 of 155 posts
Defining a unit of weight in terms of a unit of time and a unit of length. Explain that to your grandma! :)
I'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.
Such a choice might get you removed as emperor of the world -- the number related of engineering, scientific, and medical errors might be high. Generations of scientists would remember such an emperor, but not in a positive light. I share your consternation with the kilogram's name, but it is almost as fundamental to our units as Franklin's implicit, and perhaps unfortunate, choice to call the charge of the electron…
Defining a unit of weight in terms of a unit of time and a unit of length. Explain that to your grandma! :)
Or to me. So I guess a weight = some number of square meters per second. I'm trying to think of a intuitive idea why it should be thus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The definition of units are done in the most convenient and precise way possible. testing my scale with a mirror that contains a kg of photons doesn't sound very convenient.
You were also never going to test your scale with a weight that is stored in a vault in Paris. So far you would test with a replica of a replica of that weight, in the best case (getting a copy directly from the local standards body). With the new definition in principle anybody can create an object that weighs exactly one kg and sell it to you.
I get the feeling this just changes the definition of "Kg", but not how reference Kg's are actually produced?
Earlier 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.)
Defining a unit of weight in terms of a unit of time and a unit of length. Explain that to your grandma! :)
Defining a unit of weight in terms of a unit of time and a unit of length. Explain that to your grandma! :)
Change is scheduled for 20 May 2019. checks date fake news... the artifact is still the official reference for the standard kilogram for another 72 hours... ;)
