[Info-vax] Where is EISNER:: and who funds it?

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Friday, December 24, 2021 at 12:03:05 AM UTC-5, Steven Schweda wrote:
> > [...] How many Newtons do you weigh? 
> 
> Normally, _mass_ is what is measured, not weight (force of gravity, 
> which depends too much on the environment).

Nitpicking. Nit-, nit-, nitpicking. Fine. If you want to go there, then be prepared to adjust your scale to take the small differences in g around the world due to the earth's rotaiton and slightly non-spherical shape. Or just stay home.

> > Dynes and Newtons are pretty much limited to the realm of physicists 
> > and perhaps some engineers.
> Or any car mechanic with a torque wrench and a metric service manual. 
> (Although one written in the US might have goofy values, blindly 
> converted from foot-pounds.) 
> 
> And "Newton" is the man; "newton" is the unit of force. 

Sure, whatever.

> 
> My high-school physics teacher drew a healthy-looking stick-figure 
> horse(?) on the blackboard, and labeled it "cm". Next to it, he drew a 
> similarly shaped animal, but on its back, with limp legs, and X's for 
> eyes, and labeled it "erg". 
> 
> > Physicists use the positron as the unit of charge. [...] 
> 
> No, they use the magnitude of the charge on an electron, just as they 
> did before the positron was discovered.

You're really nitpicking here. It's the same thing. I know you might find that hard to believe, but it really is the same thing.
We now know there's a positron, so I'm using that term instead. Takes fewer words until I had to respond to your post. I see nothing wrong with that. I guess it's news to you that it has the same, but opposite charge of the electron. Amazing, no? Next you'll be telling me that the meter is really 1/10,000,000th of the distance from the N pole to the equator through Paris or whatever it was. 

Please, give me the numerical difference between the charge of a positron and the absolute value of the charge of an electron. 

I'm waiting.

A difference without a distinction, as there is no difference.

> > Nuclear and particle physicists use electron volts, usually as keV,
> > MeV, GeV, and now TeV, [...] 
> 
> Note: "eV", not "pV". There is no "e" in "positron". 

Well duh. And that's for a unit of energy, not charge. Again, please tell me the numerical difference between the charge of a positron and the absolute value of the charge of an electron. Hint: It's pretty damn close to zero.

BTW, physicists often use T for kinetic energy and U for potential energy. So what? There's no U in potential! B is used for the magnetic induction. No B in that! H is used for magnetic field. No H in that! Planck's constant is a lowercase h. No h in Planck or constant! p is used for momentum. No p in that!
 
> > [...] the reason Americans don't adopt Celsius is the same reason you
> > haven't switched from the QWERTY to the Dvorak keyboard.
> Not really. There's an Engineer Guy movie about the Dvorak keyboard, 
> by the way: 
> 
> http://www.engineerguy.com/failure/dvorak.htm 
> 
> Note that SI _did_ take over the world. (Almost completely.)

So has climate change. So what?

And it looks like authoritarianism is taking over the world. I suppose that makes it a good thing, too.

America put men on the moon, despite only partial embrace of the SI system. Five decades later Jeff Besos launched people up 100 km or 62 miles or whatever it was. Just an odd side comment.

One other thing: SI hasn't taken over physics or astronomy. Physicists sometimes even use feet! Light travels about 1 foot in a nanosecond. This is useful for estimating delays in cables. That's probably the only unit from the English/Imperial/Customary/WTFIC system. The rest is a mix of SI and some non-SI units. 

Use the right too for the job.