Re: Universal Measures

At 17:05 02/10/98 -0500, you wrote:
>But, we have in the metric system: femto, pico, nano, micro, mili, centi,
>deci, deca, hepto, kilo, miria, mega, giga, tero and some others I don't
>remember.  If they are too many for remembering, we would have to remember
>12 prefixes for 2^8 steeps (4^4) to get the shmo, and i wonder how many for
>giving the earth mass, the sun mass, et cetera.  Or would just use
>scientific notation in base two (or four).
>
>-- Carlos
>
>
        The prefixes I know are:
yotto: 10^-24   yotta: 10^24
dzetto: 10^-21  dzetta: 10^21
atto: 10^-18
femto: 10^-15   eta: 10^15
pico: 10^-12    tera: 10^12
nano: 10^-9     giga: 10^9
micro: 10^-6    mega: 10^6
milli: 10^-3    kilo: 10^3
centi: 10^-2    hepta: 10^2
deci: 10^-1     deca: 10^1

        I never heard of miria, and I'm not so sure for the big prefixes (is
there really a gap between eta and dzetta or did I make a mistake?). I know
that dzetto, yotto, dzetta and yotta where adopted only one year ago
(because the phenomena science wants to describe nowadays: the Big Bang and
the sub-particular world, don't fit to the former prefixes).

        I know those prefixes because I found it a game to learn them, and
as you can see, I'm not sure I can remember them well. So I think that more
prefixes would be too much to remember, even for a scientist. Moreover, when
the prefix is too big, you lose the sensation of what is counted (does
anyone can represent himself/herself what is an attosecond or a
yottometre?). Units become only words with no meaning. So using such units
(proton-mass and others) wouldn't fit our everyday life. Why changing a
system that works (even if its basis is not theorically good)?

        The problem is the same for the calendar: it is designed just for
secular use. The scientists never use it (except astronoms if I remember
well, but they use a modified Gregorian calendar). When scientists have to
measure times, they use the second and decimal fractions of it, and if they
need bigger times, nothing impeeds them to use kiloseconds or megaseconds.
They use minutes (that are _exactly_ 60 seconds), hours (that are _exactly_
60 minutes), days (that are _exactly_ 24 hours) and years (that are
_exactly_ 365 days, never 366 or 365.25) only for personal preferences, and
because they find it more striking for them. As they always use computers
nowadays, the translation is not
difficult.

        I don't think that a metric time system would be more useful for us.
So why changing it? (I don't mean that the current system is more useful, I
only mean that most people are a little bit lazy and they won't want to
learn a system that offers no more advantages than the one they already know).

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

homepage: http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html