Talk:SI

Rationale

I know it was established that the metric system did not take but I can't remember if an exact reason was given why. One thing that just hit me is that *here* Napoleon abolished the republican calendar shortly after taking power. It could be that *there* he went further and abolished all metrification efforts as being "all those malicious jacobin's chicannery that go against God and traditions".

Because the basic idea (one system troughout the land) was still valid, a new path would have been taken which eventualy lead to IB's SI. --Marc Pasquin 19:40, 28 October 2005 (PDT)

Sounds reasonable to me Nik 22:34, 13 December 2005 (PST)

Values?

How were the values chosen? I would think they'd use something similar to how the values for *here*'s SI were chosen, e.g., establishing the yard as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the North Pole, or, alternately, the foot as 1/30,000,000 of the same, and going from there. Obviously it's too late to change, but was there any particular reason for choosing .296 m for the foot? Nik 20:16, 7 January 2006 (PST)

It's the length of the Roman foot. That is to say, according to for ex. this article, this is the currently accepted length thereof. The other units should be multiples or fractions of that number. Mind you, that's the reason why I chose 296mm! I doubt that someone brought Julius Caesar's personal yardstick to the Libra Convention! Chalk it up to a happy coincidence. Elemtilas 10:13, 8 January 2006 (PST)

English?

Mille		Mile
Stadium	        Stade
Pertica		Perch
Passus		Pace
Pes		Foot
Uncia		Inch
Docicula	Twelfth-Inch
Sesticula	Sixteenth-Inch
Liliputica	Hundredth-Inch
Unicicula	Thousandth-Ingh

Iugerum		Acre
Unciagria	Twelfth-Acre

Talens		Talent
Libra		Pound
Uncia		Ounce
Drachma		Drachm
Granum		Grain

Amphora		Gallon
Congius		Ex-Gallon
Sextarius	Pint
Octarius	Ex-Pint
Uncia		Fluid Ounce
Drachma		Fluid Drachm
Gutta		Drop 

--Quentin 12:37, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

Quentin, it only appears as a table (as it does now) if you include the "<pre>" tag. Otherwise, it just look like a list of words. Its only when I clicked edit that I figured out what that long series of words meant.

Now, I assume thats a suggestion for the english equivalent ? Most look okay but I think the "ex" ones could have a straight translation instead. "octarine" for example or a "three-fourther" for the ex-pint--Marc Pasquin 18:41, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

I'd go with stadium for stadium (I'm sure that word's been borrowed into English *there* as well) and double-pace for pertica, though perch (or rod or pole) could also work. For the very small lengths, I'd think they'd just be borrowed as is, especially with liliputica and unicicula. Docicula and Sesticula would probably just be "twelfths of an inch" and "sixteenths of an inch". I'd suggets "Inch-acre" for unciagria, "dram" for drachma (that's the equivalent unit *here*). For volumes, I'd go:

Amphora        Cubic foot or Bushel
Congius        Gallon (much closer to the traditional gallon)
Sextarius      Sixth
Octarius       Pint or eighth
Uncia          (Fluid) Ounce
Drachma        (Fluid) Dra(ch)m
Gutta          Minim

Nik 20:18, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

Minim would be OK for Gutta. I would want something to be a gallon or Pint, my Latin dictionary gives Sextarius as pint, but going down Nik's line I would prefer -

Amphora       Ex-Gallon (But Bushel would be OK - I hate the sound of Cubic Foot, it sounds too
like the US Customary Units, not nearly like Imperial, which is probably what we're looking at)
Congius        Gallon
Sextarius      Ex-Pint
Octarius       Pint
Uncia          Fluid Ounce
Drachma        Fluid Drachm
Gutta          Minim

I also don't like the sound of "Sixth" and "Eighth", even if they are literal, but for subdivisions of Inches they are OK. What about for Force? Are masses used, like in USCU, or do we have foot*hour*hour or what have you? --Quentin 07:08, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Why "ex-"? Where'd that prefix come from? If it has to be based on pint, what about "large pint" or "long pint" (analogous to short ton vs. long ton) And what's wrong with "sixth"? We have "quart" (<quarter) and "fifth" for ¼ and ¹/₅ gallon *here*, after all. Personally, I rather suspect that sextarius would see little use in the English-speaking world, with quarts being more familiar. Indeed, I suspect that 2 octarii would commonly be referred to in English as a quart, rather than "two pints". Bushel is a unit *here* equal to around 8 gallons, so it's a sensible translation for amphora. Nik 23:33, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

What Be This?

Quentin: Why the changes, dammit? (e. g. 1 mile = 1.5km) Kyrmse 05:43, 22 February 2007 (PST)

Q, I appreciate your efforts, but they're fractional for a reason; SI *here* doesn't correlate as neatly and exactly either. Leave be. it's a quirk of IB. :) BoArthur 07:41, 22 February 2007 (PST)

The change back is good news to me, not only because I won't have to re-convert a lot of values, but also - and mainly - because I believe SI units shouldn't correlate neatly with metric units. Why should they? Life and physical units aren't as clear-cut as we would like... Kyrmse 10:22, 22 February 2007 (PST)

Compound units

As I said on the Conculture list, I have some objections to some of these:

• Force
• Is measured in the pound-force (lb) i.e. the force of the weight of a pound at sea level at the equator.

This would be VERY inconvenient in physics, as it means that you'd have to have the factor of G in virtually every equation that deals with force. F=ma would have to changed to F=gma, for example. Force should be measured in pound*foot/s², that is, the force necessary to accelerate a mass of 1 pound at the rate of 1 foot per second per second. The pound-force probably existed in the past, however, by now, it should be obsolete. Instead, the unit of force should be the Wikipedia:poundal = .0968 N

• Energy and power

The Joule would be redefined accordingly as poundal*ft = .02865 J. For convenience's sake, larger units would presumably exist, or perhaps metric-style prefixes would be used.

Power would be measured in watts and Wikipedia:poncelets. 1 watt would be equal to 1 joule per second = .02865 W. As that is a small size, a larger unit, the *ischus (Latinized from Greek Ισχύς), equal to 60 watts (1.719 W) and the poncelet, defined as 60 *ischi (103.14 W) would be used. Light bulbs are often measured in fractions of a poncelet, such as half-poncelet, three-quarters poncelet, or 1 poncelet, or in *ischi.

Electrical energy is often measured in poncelet-hours, the amount of energy used in 1 hour at the rate of 1 poncelet (12,960,000 joules; 371,300 *here*'s joules; .103 kilowatt-hours *here*)

The international horsepower is another unit used for very large measurements. *Here*, the horsepower was originally defined as 33,000 foot*pound-force per minute. When adapted to SI, it was redefined as 720 foot*pound-force per second (23854 watts). Although it's still used in some situations, it is now considered obsolete, as it's based on the obsolete pound-force. Horsepower is sometimes considered a round 24,000 watts or 6²/₃ poncelets

• Charge

No objections there, however, this does bring up an interesting question - if electrons are considered positive, and thus protons negative, what are the antimatter equivalent of electrons called? "Negatrons"? Beta-minus and Beta-plus decay would refer to the opposite processes *there* compared to *here*, too.

• Pressure

Perhaps the same name as *here*'s unit - Pascal? Or perhaps Torricelli after Evangelista Torricelli (compare torr *here*)? It would be 1 poundal per square inch = 227.17 pascals. Standard atmospheric pressure would work out to 431.7 poundals per square inch, making it convenient for measuring atmospheric pressure. Another possible name would be the bar.

• Acceleration

*Here* there was an older unit the galileo of acceleration, defined as 1 centimeter per second squared. Perhaps *there*, too, the term could be used, but for 1 foot per second squared.

Nik 21:31, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

Thanks for the suggestions. I thought somebody would object to using lb-force but its seemed - the thing that would fit. Am changing accordingly. I also want to change Coloumb a little to make it closer to our value but that's something else. One more thing - on the topic of subatomic particles, I intend to make a proposal on names for all of them - and, needless to say, they're quite different because of the different order various ideas were discovered, including Second Great War having a bearing on things - perhaps scientists like Fermi stayed in their native country? --Quentin 23:53, 12 May 2007 (PDT)

I like the idea of Ischi and Poncelets - but what does Ischi literally mean? Also, weren't there bigger units of frequency than Marconi?

I took it from the Greek word for "power", although I don't know if that's the right one.  :-) For these extra units, perhaps we should have something similar to the Metric system of prefixes Nik 11:40, 13 May 2007 (PDT)

Computer memory

The computer terms seem broken. The quintite = 216,000 bytes, but the next-lower unit, the quadrate, is 4,096 bytes. 4096 does not divide evenly into 216,000. Also, as *here*, surely further units should continue on a binary basis? E.g., each unit being 64 times the previous? Thus:

quintyte = 64 quadrytes = 262,144 bytes [256 kb]
hexyte = 64 quintytes = 16,777,216 [16 Mb]

And further terms would be necessary, a hexyte being a rather small unit

Heptyte = 64 hexytes = 1 gigabyte
Octyte = 64 heptytes = 64 gigabytes

That's probably as far as they'd need at present, but future advances will require more units:

Nonyte = 64 octytes = 4 terabytes
Decyte = 64 nonytes = 256 terabytes

And so on

Christina 04:25, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Good suggestion! I like it a lot! BoArthur 18:24, 4 June 2010 (UTC)