"discovering an increased value for Planck's constant"
Isn't that the kind of thing that has an impact on just about everything concerning the history of the Universe ?
Massive news indeed.
Constant work makes the kilo walk the Planck
While business around the world closed out a financial quarter or a financial year ahead of June 30, US boffins were working to a different deadline: linking the kilogram to electromagnetism. Part of the world of metrology's long project to redefine the world's fundamental measurements, the aim is to define the kilogram in …
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 06:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "discovering an increased value for Planck's constant"
Planck's constant has a small amount of uncertainty associated with it - we don't know the exact value. If in the course of creating the Watt balance kg they found Planck's constant was higher than previously believed, while simultaneously shrinking the uncertainty so it still fell within the bounds of the previous constant +/- uncertainty, there's no real impact other than on ultra-precise measurements that take the "value" as input, without the associated uncertainty.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 08:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: DougS
This is where many people get confused and throw the baby out with the bath water. Some things we don't know, and can be discovered to be entirely different. Some things we know, and can never be undiscovered. Other things we know with some accuracy, and can only get more accurate.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 15:17 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: "discovering an increased value for Planck's constant"
"Many other key cosmological values are know only approximately - Hubble's 'constant' to just two significant figures, for example."
I think the significance of this is in moving towards a definition of the unit of mass which is independent of a specific physical object. This has already been done for length and time.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 12:17 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: "discovering an increased value for Planck's constant"
PM offered, "...impact on just about everything [WE KNOW] concerning the history of the Universe ?"
TIFIFY.
The history of the Universe is fixed, because it's in the past. (As far as we know.)
It's our *understanding* of the past that is in constant flux.
:-)
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 08:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: There's a movie about it the redefinition of the kilogram
Looks interesting. Could go off the deep end though with quotes like "Our need for references is nothing but a comfort answer"... as reference is how we communicate, experience and exist. Yes our obsession could be a problem, or other parts of it. But "reference" and "confirmation" are entirely required and part of our existence and experience.
Without them we would be nothing... and hence why I both love and hate "art" films. For being both beautiful, and self destructive in their musings.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 08:02 GMT Solarflare
Re: Lego?
For most usages, we round it to 238mJ (milliJubs), or when talking in non scientific circles, one tenth of an adult badger.
This planks and 'Kilograms' thing confuses me, why try to make it all complicated? All the changes in units lately have me stumped. I know that my car does 1,000 double decker busses to the grapefruit, and frankly that's all I want to know!
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 07:09 GMT eldakka
Confused
I thought the kilogram already had a very precise definition, it's in their in its name:
kilogram.
A kilogram is not the basic unit of mass/weight, the gram is, with a kilogram being equal to 1000 grams.
Therefore, shouldn't they be trying to determine precisely the mass of 1gram? Multiplying that by 1000 gives you a kilogram.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 07:31 GMT Mephistro
Re: Confused
The International System of Units is based on MKS, that is, Metres, Kilograms & Seconds.
This apparent inconsistency dates back to when the Kg. was first defined as the weight of pure water at 4ºC that fits exactly in a litre, which in turn means a cubic decimetre.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 07:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Confused
"A kilogram is not the basic unit of mass/weight, the gram is, with a kilogram being equal to 1000 grams."
The cgs system was replaced by the SI system quite a long time ago - I was just at the end of using cgs in schools.
The kilogram has been the standard mass unit since the standard kilogram mass was made and placed in Paris. It's just an unfortunate bit of history; the gramme was too small a unit to be useful for standardisation, just as the dyne and the erg gave rather awkward powers of 10 for everyday measurements.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 08:30 GMT Terry 6
Re: Confused
Though rather a side issue here, that does come very close to explaining why in the UK we still use mixed measures. Litres of petrol but miles per hour and pints of beer, even milk for many people's thinking . Food weight in Kg, human weight in lbs and ozs height in ft and inches, distance in cm and Metres etc. Many metric units work better in maths but poorer on a human scale. And in human terms multiples of 1 and 1000 have a nasty habit of being either too big or too small. A litre is too small for petrol, but there's no useful equivalent to the gallon. A gramme too small for food ( where a Kg is too large). And intermediate 10x units (100gm etc.) have almost unuseably long names Even decimalisation was hampered by this until inflation took control. £1 was too big for many small transactions and the 1p too small. In reality there was no reason to get rid of the intermediate units ( A shilling becoming worth 5p instead of 12d). If they'd had a sensible human name for 10l or 100gm the whole system would be much less unwieldy in everyday life.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:18 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Confused
"Even decimalisation was hampered by this until inflation took control. £1 was too big for many small transactions and the 1p too small."
1p was actually too big compared with 1d. For small value items rounding up to the nearest d (and when did prices ever get rounded down?) represented quite an inflationary step. Put that together with the dislocation in people's thinking - e.g. how does 16p really compare with 2 / 10d? enabled prices to be put up still further.
It wasn't decimalisation being hampered without inflation, it was decimalisation enabling inflation
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:37 GMT Terry 6
Re: Confused
Dave 126
That sort of sums up at least part of the issue. For mathematical accuracy and calculation decimal every time. But in everyday life Imperial measures relate to human scale. A metre works well because it's about a yard. But saying "about 30cm" doesn't mean as much to humans as "about a foot". And it's easier to get a handle on eight gallons than 40 litres. And so on.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 14:48 GMT Uncle Slacky
Re: Confused
"1p was actually too big compared with 1d. For small value items rounding up to the nearest d (and when did prices ever get rounded down?) represented quite an inflationary step."
That's probably why the 1/2p was also introduced at decimalisation (and only phased out in the 1980s), worth the equivalent of 1.2 old pence. Inflation was pretty high at the time anyway, so it's not clear how much could be attributed to decimalisation.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 15:40 GMT Terry 6
Re: Confused
When I started this hare it wasn't about which is best. It was just an observation on the reasons for our rather mixed up systems. I do think the metric systems could have been better organised in terms of human use. Units with simpler names and appropriate values. Imperial units grew up from practical uses, metric units were defined and applied retrospectively to practical uses.
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Wednesday 5th July 2017 11:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Confused
Unfortunately, what counts as a convenient unit rather depends on what you're measuring: an ounce is good for cookery, perhaps, a pound for retail, and a bushel or something for industrial use. An inch is a good unit for measuring the length of something you hold in your hand (such as another body part), a furlong is good for horse-powered agriculture, and so on. Using the same metric units for all things in all contexts is slightly less convenient from the point of view of pure and simple measurement but it's much easier when you want to do a calculation. For example, if I tell you how many ounces of grain a man needs per day, how many bushels you can produce per acre per year, and how many square miles of usable land are in a certain province, calculating how many people can be fed off the land requires more effort for converting the units than for doing the real calculation. Similar thing for calculating how much wallpaper you need: width in inches, length in yards, area in square feet; the measurements are nice, but the calculations are unnecessarily complicated.
Of course, even without imperial/US units there are still a rather large number of units for measuring energy...
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:36 GMT Wulfhaven
Re: Confused
You could always start using deca/deci hecto/centi for the ones that are just in between the straight unit and it's kilo or milli notation.
So decalitres for gallons, deca or hectogrammes for food and such..
As for body sizes, metres or centimetres works perfectly well, as does the kilogram. It's just a matter of getting used to it. 6'7" isn't any better than 1.92m Or 19dm if the exact measurement isnt very important, as with the inches.
In sweden, the kilometer is too short to measure distances comfortably, solved by adding a swedish mil, which is 10 km. So, it's a weird and confusing name, but it's still adhering to the metric system.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:47 GMT Terry 6
Re: Confused
You could always start using deca/deci hecto/centi for the ones that are just in between the straight unit and it's kilo or milli notation.
Try saying it. "The car took 8 decalitres of..." people seldom use words of more than two syllables. And consciously avoid them over three. Think; feet inches pints gallons mile yard pound ounce ( furlong fathom rod pole and perch fwiw, too). Add to that the confusing similarity between deca- and deci-
The metric system is one designed for machines, not people.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 11:45 GMT imanidiot
Re: Confused
"The metric system is one designed for machines, not people."
I call bullshit.
It's just what you are used to. To me 8 gallons is about as clear as mud. I have no feeling for a gallon, since I've never used that measurement in my daily life. 30 liters on the other hands is about 3 standard household bucket fulls. 1 and a half if it's larger builders/contractors mixing buckets.
I also don't really see why saying 80 liters isn't clear, or why 21 gallons would be any easier to understand.
grammes and kilogrammes work perfectly well for food stuffs if that is what you are used to. And most people don't really use grams for anything over 200 or so. It becomes a half kilogram or a quarter kilogram for instance. And 200 grams is perfectly comprehensible, again if you are used to it. (About the weight of 2 average apples).
You need to realise any measurement system becomes easy and intuitive if it's what you've used for all your live. To me imperial measurements make no sense. To you metric sucks. Whatever. Get over it. Metric has won already anyway.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:42 GMT Cuddles
Re: Confused
"Many metric units work better in maths but poorer on a human scale."
Utter nonsense. Are you seriously suggesting that we still use miles instead of kilometres to measure distance because a factor of 5/8 somehow makes the numbers incomprehensible on a human scale? Having to drive 160 km instead of 100 miles, or weigh 80 kg instead of 176 lb somehow makes everyone's brain's explode from trying to deal with the crazy numbers? And it's somehow too difficult to read "100 g" instead of "3.25 oz" when cooking? As for litres being too small for petrol, you must really suffer when trying to fill your car up given that petrol has been sold by the litre for a few decades now.
No, some people still stick with stupid imperial measurements out of habit, nothing more. When you've been thinking in one system all your life, trying to change to a different system is a lot of effort and most people just don't have much incentive to actually make that effort. Of course, things like the change to kg for food show that it's not actually all that much effort at all and such changes can easily be done quickly and painlessly, but since people are fundamentally lazy creatures of habit here we are.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 10:55 GMT Terry 6
Re: Confused
As for litres being too small for petrol, you must really suffer when trying to fill your car up given that petrol has been sold by the litre for a few decades now.
Which sums up the paucity of your reasoning here. Few people actually think about the number of litres ( or gallons) they buy. They talk about a tank full or £10 worth etc. Or miles to the gallons .
And we prefer saying "miles" to "Kilometres" because it's a bloody sight easier to say.
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Tuesday 4th July 2017 11:17 GMT lglethal
Re: Confused
Seriously guys arguing about better or worse in a Units System? It depends what you grew up with, period. If you grew up with Imperial Units like Terry6 then you're going to think Imperial is better, if you grew up with SI Units like i did, then your going to think SI makes a hell of a lot more sense.
Whether you think miles per gallon is a useful measurement or a ludicrous throwback to medieval times comes entirely down to what in your head makes sense. So accept that others will think differently based on their life experiences.
The only place where it makes an actual difference is when you get to Science and perfoming experiments. Anyone who does science expeirments using anything but SI Units should be tarred and feathered and forced to walk the plank (insert other medieval punishment as you see fit)!
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
