Questions tagged [units]
A unit is a quantity chosen as a standard in terms of which other quantities may be represented. Examples include Joules, Moles, Seconds, etc.
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Did the French ever use the decimal time in science?
Have you ever seen a scientific paper/document that uses the decimal time introduced during the French Revolution?
I'm not looking for any paper that uses decimal time like in astronomy, but instead ...
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Were units of area/volume always in terms of squares/cubes?
Throughout our known history of geometry were the units representing areas and volumes always in terms of squares and cubes respectively? Take ancient Egyptian formulas as an example, the fact that ...
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Where did the notation for dimensions of a quantity come from?
The current SI Brochure defines the dimension of a certain physical quantity as something separate from its units, and treated in detail in its §2.3.3:
This is, by now, pretty bread-and-butter ...
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Why is there no special unit there for velocity/speed?
Heat, time, and electrical current have separate units, namely, calorie, second and ampere, respectively. However, there is no special unit for velocity. We still use $\frac{\rm m}{\rm s}$. Why? ...
