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WCDT Strips 3511 to 3515 (26 June to 30 June 2017)

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pwhodges:

--- Quote from: Case on 28 Jun 2017, 15:02 ---(*) Imagine here a small, prickly rant about peoples' tendency to 'measure' force in units of mass ...
--- End quote ---

Meh - first-term school physics stuff, that.  For lasting fun you need to go to the conflict between es and em systems of units (with its ratios based on c2 just to keep the numbers friendly!):

http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Workshop/advice/coils/unit_systems/

My uni physics course changed its electricity teaching from CGI to MKS in the middle of the time I was doing it.  Oh what fun that was!  We all had to go out and buy the new edition of Bleaney and Bleaney.


Trivia I didn't know: designation of the letter c for the speed of light is from the word celerity: quickness, or rapidity of motion. Its Latin root also gives accelerate.

Case:
Oh, that's quite simple: For your thesis, choose a theoretical physics supervisor with an "Units are what happens to other people"-attitude.

(Real fun starts when your supervisor is one of those guys who start every paper with "Throughout, we set e=c=hbar=1" and then changes back to MKS halfway through ...)

cesium133:

--- Quote from: Case on 28 Jun 2017, 16:10 ---(Real fun starts when your supervisor is one of those guys who start every paper with "Throughout, we set e=c=hbar=1" and then changes back to MKS halfway through ...)

--- End quote ---

(click to show/hide)That definition isn't consistent with the definition of the fine structure constant.  :psyduck: (You can set two of those equal to unity, but the other then becomes either 137 or 1/137. For example in a lot of atomic physics calculations, we set e=hbar=1, and c is 137.)
* Coulomb's constant

A Duck:
I have a feeling Elliot would be the "I love you all" type of drunk.

Tova:
Everyone except that duck over there.

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