1.
System of measurement
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A system of measurement is a collection of units of measurement and rules relating them to each other. Systems of measurement have historically been important, regulated and defined for the purposes of science and commerce, systems of measurement in modern use include the metric system, the imperial system, and United States customary units. The French Revolution gave rise to the system, and this has spread around the world. In most systems, length, mass, and time are base quantities, later science developments showed that either electric charge or electric current could be added to extend the set of base quantities by which many other metrological units could be easily defined. Other quantities, such as power and speed, are derived from the set, for example. Such arrangements were satisfactory in their own contexts, the preference for a more universal and consistent system only gradually spread with the growth of science. Changing a measurement system has substantial financial and cultural costs which must be offset against the advantages to be obtained using a more rational system. However pressure built up, including scientists and engineers for conversion to a more rational. The unifying characteristic is that there was some definition based on some standard, eventually cubits and strides gave way to customary units to met the needs of merchants and scientists. In the metric system and other recent systems, a basic unit is used for each base quantity. Often secondary units are derived from the units by multiplying by powers of ten. Thus the basic unit of length is the metre, a distance of 1.234 m is 1,234 millimetres. Metrication is complete or nearly complete in almost all countries, US customary units are heavily used in the United States and to some degree in Liberia. Traditional Burmese units of measurement are used in Burma, U. S. units are used in limited contexts in Canada due to the large volume of trade, there is also considerable use of Imperial weights and measures, despite de jure Canadian conversion to metric. In the United States, metric units are used almost universally in science, widely in the military, and partially in industry, but customary units predominate in household use. At retail stores, the liter is a used unit for volume, especially on bottles of beverages. Some other standard non-SI units are still in use, such as nautical miles and knots in aviation. Metric systems of units have evolved since the adoption of the first well-defined system in France in 1795, during this evolution the use of these systems has spread throughout the world, first to non-English-speaking countries, and then to English speaking countries
2.
SI derived unit
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The International System of Units specifies a set of seven base units from which all other SI units of measurement are derived. Each of these units is either dimensionless or can be expressed as a product of powers of one or more of the base units. For example, the SI derived unit of area is the metre. The degree Celsius has an unclear status, and is arguably an exception to this rule. The names of SI units are written in lowercase, the symbols for units named after persons, however, are always written with an uppercase initial letter. In addition to the two dimensionless derived units radian and steradian,20 other derived units have special names, some other units such as the hour, litre, tonne, bar and electronvolt are not SI units, but are widely used in conjunction with SI units. Until 1995, the SI classified the radian and the steradian as supplementary units, but this designation was abandoned, International System of Quantities International System of Units International Vocabulary of Metrology Metric prefix Metric system Non-SI units mentioned in the SI Planck units SI base unit I. Mills, Tomislav Cvitas, Klaus Homann, Nikola Kallay, IUPAC, Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry. CS1 maint, Multiple names, authors list
3.
Capacitance
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Capacitance is the ability of a body to store an electric charge. There are two related notions of capacitance--self capacitance and mutual capacitance--that are usually both designated by the same term, capacitance. Any object that can be electrically charged exhibits self capacitance, a material with a large self capacitance holds more electric charge at a given voltage, than one with low capacitance. The notion of mutual capacitance is important for understanding the operations of the capacitor. The capacitance is a function only of the geometry of the design, for many dielectric materials, the permittivity and thus the capacitance, is independent of the potential difference between the conductors and the total charge on them. The SI unit of capacitance is the farad, named after the English physicist Michael Faraday, a 1 farad capacitor, when charged with 1 coulomb of electrical charge, has a potential difference of 1 volt between its plates. In electrical circuits, the capacitance is usually a shorthand for the mutual capacitance between two adjacent conductors, such as the two plates of a capacitor. It is actually mutual capacitance between the turns of the coil and is a form of stray, or parasitic capacitance. This self-capacitance is an important consideration at high frequencies and it changes the impedance of the coil and gives rise to parallel resonance. In many applications this is an effect and sets an upper frequency limit for the correct operation of the circuit. The inverse of capacitance is called elastance, the unit of elastance is the daraf, but is not recognised by SI. A common form is a capacitor, which consists of two conductive plates insulated from each other, usually sandwiching a dielectric material. In a parallel capacitor, capacitance is very nearly proportional to the surface area of the conductor plates. If the charges on the plates are +q and −q, and V gives the voltage between the plates, then the capacitance C is given by C = q V. which gives the voltage/current relationship I = C d V d t. Historically, a farad was regarded as a large unit. Its subdivisions were invariably used, namely the microfarad, nanofarad and picofarad, more recently, technology has advanced such that capacitors of 1 farad and greater can be constructed in a structure little larger than a coin battery. Such capacitors are used for energy storage replacing more traditional batteries. The energy stored in a capacitor is found by integrating the work W, W charging =12 C V2 The discussion above is limited to the case of two conducting plates, although of arbitrary size and shape
4.
Michael Faraday
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Michael Faraday FRS was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, although Faraday received little formal education, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. It was by his research on the field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was a relationship between the two phenomena. He similarly discovered the principles of induction and diamagnetism. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, Faraday ultimately became the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a lifetime position. James Clerk Maxwell took the work of Faraday and others and summarized it in a set of equations which is accepted as the basis of all theories of electromagnetic phenomena. The SI unit of capacitance is named in his honour, the farad, albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, alongside pictures of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell. Faraday was born in Newington Butts, which is now part of the London Borough of Southwark but was then a part of Surrey. His family was not well off and his father, James, was a member of the Glassite sect of Christianity. James Faraday moved his wife and two children to London during the winter of 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been an apprentice to the village blacksmith, Michael was born in the autumn of that year. The young Michael Faraday, who was the third of four children, at the age of 14 he became an apprentice to George Riebau, a local bookbinder and bookseller in Blandford Street. During his seven-year apprenticeship Faraday read many books, including Isaac Wattss The Improvement of the Mind, at this time he also developed an interest in science, especially in electricity. Faraday was particularly inspired by the book Conversations on Chemistry by Jane Marcet, many of the tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance, who was one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Faraday subsequently sent Davy a 300-page book based on notes that he had taken during these lectures, davys reply was immediate, kind, and favourable. In 1813, when Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, very soon Davy entrusted Faraday with the preparation of nitrogen trichloride samples, and they both were injured in an explosion of this very sensitive substance. In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman, Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davys wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal, the trip did, however, give him access to the scientific elite of Europe and exposed him to a host of stimulating ideas
5.
SI base unit
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The International System of Units defines seven units of measure as a basic set from which all other SI units can be derived. The SI base units form a set of mutually independent dimensions as required by dimensional analysis commonly employed in science, thus, the kelvin, named after Lord Kelvin, has the symbol K and the ampere, named after André-Marie Ampère, has the symbol A. Many other units, such as the litre, are not part of the SI. The definitions of the units have been modified several times since the Metre Convention in 1875. Since the redefinition of the metre in 1960, the kilogram is the unit that is directly defined in terms of a physical artifact. However, the mole, the ampere, and the candela are linked through their definitions to the mass of the platinum–iridium cylinder stored in a vault near Paris. It has long been an objective in metrology to define the kilogram in terms of a fundamental constant, two possibilities have attracted particular attention, the Planck constant and the Avogadro constant. The 23rd CGPM decided to postpone any formal change until the next General Conference in 2011
6.
Second
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The second is the base unit of time in the International System of Units. It is qualitatively defined as the division of the hour by sixty. SI definition of second is the duration of 9192631770 periods of the corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. Seconds may be measured using a mechanical, electrical or an atomic clock, SI prefixes are combined with the word second to denote subdivisions of the second, e. g. the millisecond, the microsecond, and the nanosecond. Though SI prefixes may also be used to form multiples of the such as kilosecond. The second is also the unit of time in other systems of measurement, the centimetre–gram–second, metre–kilogram–second, metre–tonne–second. Absolute zero implies no movement, and therefore zero external radiation effects, the second thus defined is consistent with the ephemeris second, which was based on astronomical measurements. The realization of the second is described briefly in a special publication from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. 1 international second is equal to, 1⁄60 minute 1⁄3,600 hour 1⁄86,400 day 1⁄31,557,600 Julian year 1⁄, more generally, = 1⁄, the Hellenistic astronomers Hipparchus and Ptolemy subdivided the day into sixty parts. They also used an hour, simple fractions of an hour. No sexagesimal unit of the day was used as an independent unit of time. The modern second is subdivided using decimals - although the third remains in some languages. The earliest clocks to display seconds appeared during the last half of the 16th century, the second became accurately measurable with the development of mechanical clocks keeping mean time, as opposed to the apparent time displayed by sundials. The earliest spring-driven timepiece with a hand which marked seconds is an unsigned clock depicting Orpheus in the Fremersdorf collection. During the 3rd quarter of the 16th century, Taqi al-Din built a clock with marks every 1/5 minute, in 1579, Jost Bürgi built a clock for William of Hesse that marked seconds. In 1581, Tycho Brahe redesigned clocks that displayed minutes at his observatory so they also displayed seconds, however, they were not yet accurate enough for seconds. In 1587, Tycho complained that his four clocks disagreed by plus or minus four seconds, in 1670, London clockmaker William Clement added this seconds pendulum to the original pendulum clock of Christiaan Huygens. From 1670 to 1680, Clement made many improvements to his clock and this clock used an anchor escapement mechanism with a seconds pendulum to display seconds in a small subdial
7.
Ampere
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The ampere, often shortened to amp, is a unit of electric current. In the International System of Units the ampere is one of the seven SI base units and it is named after André-Marie Ampère, French mathematician and physicist, considered the father of electrodynamics. SI defines the ampere in terms of base units by measuring the electromagnetic force between electrical conductors carrying electric current. The ampere was then defined as one coulomb of charge per second, in SI, the unit of charge, the coulomb, is defined as the charge carried by one ampere during one second. In the future, the SI definition may shift back to charge as the base unit, ampères force law states that there is an attractive or repulsive force between two parallel wires carrying an electric current. This force is used in the definition of the ampere. The SI unit of charge, the coulomb, is the quantity of electricity carried in 1 second by a current of 1 ampere, conversely, a current of one ampere is one coulomb of charge going past a given point per second,1 A =1 C s. In general, charge Q is determined by steady current I flowing for a time t as Q = It, constant, instantaneous and average current are expressed in amperes and the charge accumulated, or passed through a circuit over a period of time is expressed in coulombs. The relation of the ampere to the coulomb is the same as that of the watt to the joule, the ampere was originally defined as one tenth of the unit of electric current in the centimetre–gram–second system of units. That unit, now known as the abampere, was defined as the amount of current that generates a force of two dynes per centimetre of length between two wires one centimetre apart. The size of the unit was chosen so that the derived from it in the MKSA system would be conveniently sized. The international ampere was a realization of the ampere, defined as the current that would deposit 0.001118 grams of silver per second from a silver nitrate solution. Later, more accurate measurements revealed that this current is 0.99985 A, at present, techniques to establish the realization of an ampere have a relative uncertainty of approximately a few parts in 107, and involve realizations of the watt, the ohm and the volt. Rather than a definition in terms of the force between two current-carrying wires, it has proposed that the ampere should be defined in terms of the rate of flow of elementary charges. Since a coulomb is equal to 6. 2415093×1018 elementary charges. The proposed change would define 1 A as being the current in the direction of flow of a number of elementary charges per second. In 2005, the International Committee for Weights and Measures agreed to study the proposed change, the new definition was discussed at the 25th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 2014 but for the time being was not adopted. The current drawn by typical constant-voltage energy distribution systems is usually dictated by the power consumed by the system, for this reason the examples given below are grouped by voltage level
8.
Metre
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The metre or meter, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units. The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 seconds, the metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. In 1799, it was redefined in terms of a metre bar. In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. In 1983, the current definition was adopted, the imperial inch is defined as 0.0254 metres. One metre is about 3 3⁄8 inches longer than a yard, Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations except the United States and the Philippines, which use meter. Measuring devices are spelled -meter in all variants of English, the suffix -meter has the same Greek origin as the unit of length. This range of uses is found in Latin, French, English. Thus calls for measurement and moderation. In 1668 the English cleric and philosopher John Wilkins proposed in an essay a decimal-based unit of length, as a result of the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences charged a commission with determining a single scale for all measures. In 1668, Wilkins proposed using Christopher Wrens suggestion of defining the metre using a pendulum with a length which produced a half-period of one second, christiaan Huygens had observed that length to be 38 Rijnland inches or 39.26 English inches. This is the equivalent of what is now known to be 997 mm, no official action was taken regarding this suggestion. In the 18th century, there were two approaches to the definition of the unit of length. One favoured Wilkins approach, to define the metre in terms of the length of a pendulum which produced a half-period of one second. The other approach was to define the metre as one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant along the Earths meridian, that is, the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. This means that the quadrant would have defined as exactly 10000000 metres at that time. To establish a universally accepted foundation for the definition of the metre, more measurements of this meridian were needed. This portion of the meridian, assumed to be the length as the Paris meridian, was to serve as the basis for the length of the half meridian connecting the North Pole with the Equator
9.
Kilogram
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The kilogram or kilogramme is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype of the Kilogram. The avoirdupois pound, used in both the imperial and US customary systems, is defined as exactly 0.45359237 kg, making one kilogram approximately equal to 2.2046 avoirdupois pounds. Other traditional units of weight and mass around the world are also defined in terms of the kilogram, the gram, 1/1000 of a kilogram, was provisionally defined in 1795 as the mass of one cubic centimeter of water at the melting point of ice. The final kilogram, manufactured as a prototype in 1799 and from which the IPK was derived in 1875, had an equal to the mass of 1 dm3 of water at its maximum density. The kilogram is the only SI base unit with an SI prefix as part of its name and it is also the only SI unit that is still directly defined by an artifact rather than a fundamental physical property that can be reproduced in different laboratories. Three other base units and 17 derived units in the SI system are defined relative to the kilogram, only 8 other units do not require the kilogram in their definition, temperature, time and frequency, length, and angle. At its 2011 meeting, the CGPM agreed in principle that the kilogram should be redefined in terms of the Planck constant, the decision was originally deferred until 2014, in 2014 it was deferred again until the next meeting. There are currently several different proposals for the redefinition, these are described in the Proposed Future Definitions section below, the International Prototype Kilogram is rarely used or handled. In the decree of 1795, the term gramme thus replaced gravet, the French spelling was adopted in the United Kingdom when the word was used for the first time in English in 1797, with the spelling kilogram being adopted in the United States. In the United Kingdom both spellings are used, with kilogram having become by far the more common, UK law regulating the units to be used when trading by weight or measure does not prevent the use of either spelling. In the 19th century the French word kilo, a shortening of kilogramme, was imported into the English language where it has used to mean both kilogram and kilometer. In 1935 this was adopted by the IEC as the Giorgi system, now known as MKS system. In 1948 the CGPM commissioned the CIPM to make recommendations for a practical system of units of measurement. This led to the launch of SI in 1960 and the subsequent publication of the SI Brochure, the kilogram is a unit of mass, a property which corresponds to the common perception of how heavy an object is. Mass is a property, that is, it is related to the tendency of an object at rest to remain at rest, or if in motion to remain in motion at a constant velocity. Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold objects off the cabin floor, they are weightless. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass and inertia, the ratio of the force of gravity on the two objects, measured by the scale, is equal to the ratio of their masses. On April 7,1795, the gram was decreed in France to be the weight of a volume of pure water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of the metre
