Tuesday, August 15, 2017
SIentific stupidity as usual
Metrology doesn't get mentioned by name often. Polistra's metrology sense picked up this article on problems in SI.....
A cycle is a COUNTABLE THING, unlike kilograms or inches. In fact a circle or repetition is the ONLY universal measurement. Start here, return to here. A completed circle or a return to the original condition is universal and identical in all systems. A degree or radian is a subunit of a cycle, dependent on choice of system.
In modern metrology, seconds and meters are defined ON THE BASIS of cycles or wavelengths, and it looks like kilograms will join the crowd soon.
It's absurd and contradictory to treat waves as non-units in a system that is BUILT ON waves.
But it's not surprising. Everything that started from "Enlightenment" thinking turns out to be antiscientific and contradictory. The French terrorists were beheading real scientists in the same year when they were imposing the metric system.
Water is a precious resource. So protest erupted when, last September, India’s Supreme Court ordered Karnataka state to release 15,000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of the stuff per day to its downriver neighbour, Tamil Nadu. But what irked keen-eyed scientists was the nonsensical nature of the order. Cusec is a rate of flow, analogous to speed, not something that can be done “per day”. Taken literally, the order was meaningless.No, it's not meaningless. The meaning of the order is perfectly clear to anyone but a SIentist. Karnataka is required to add a flow of 15k cuft per second to the existing river flow, for a specified number of days each year. The rest of the article cites a real problem.
The issue arises because the International System of Units (SI) allows combinations of only seven basic dimensions and their units (such as length in metres), and allocates quantities with no extent in these dimensions a unit of ‘1’. That makes life simple, but hides crucial information. For example, a turning force, torque, is often measured in joules per radian. In dimensional analysis, that confusingly becomes joules, the same unit as energy. Hertz — cycles per second — reduces to ‘per second’, just like the frequency of non-periodic events.I tried to fight this absurd tendency when I was teaching electronics, and still try when I deal with waves in courseware. I base all calculations on explicitly named CYCLES, which makes the algebra of units easy to handle and understand. Frequency is cycles per second, period is seconds per cycle, wavelength is meters per cycle.
A cycle is a COUNTABLE THING, unlike kilograms or inches. In fact a circle or repetition is the ONLY universal measurement. Start here, return to here. A completed circle or a return to the original condition is universal and identical in all systems. A degree or radian is a subunit of a cycle, dependent on choice of system.
In modern metrology, seconds and meters are defined ON THE BASIS of cycles or wavelengths, and it looks like kilograms will join the crowd soon.
It's absurd and contradictory to treat waves as non-units in a system that is BUILT ON waves.
But it's not surprising. Everything that started from "Enlightenment" thinking turns out to be antiscientific and contradictory. The French terrorists were beheading real scientists in the same year when they were imposing the metric system.
Labels: Metrology
¶ 11:11 PM
