Talk:Units, significant figures, and standard procedures

Begin...
Right, I've set out the basics of SI measurement. I referenced it to the NIST, which is American, but the more proper reference I think would be the BIPM. However, I don't speak French. User:guillom, do you think that you could check for any inconsistencies against the resolutions of the CGPM and perhaps put a bit of spiel in english about the whys and wherefores of the SI unit standard?

What else...


 * Products and fractions of units
 * Meaning of significant figures and the practice of abbreviating a given value to the minimum accuracy of the original information
 * A.O.B

Sojourner001 11:00, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Prefixes
Not entirely happy about the section on prefixes. Is it really necessary, particularly at the start of the lesson? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't use unit prefixes much at all; it's both clearer and easier to work with units in standard form. Just because many (often poor) textbooks have them, doesn't mean they're useful or relevant. Sojourner001 11:03, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello, It is very important for the beginning student to have a table to translate these common prefixes into scientific notation. It also acts as a point of familiarity, as the student may already be familiar with centimeters, decibels, kilowatts, and so forth in their everyday life, and here they see them again, only completely explained and put into context. We are not going to have exercises on trivial things like this, but it's good for the student who may want to translate something in the real world into the units we will be using for their own exploratory purposes. The student should never feel that physics is disconnected from the real world around them. The unit prefixes also highlights the part played by order of magnitude in calculations and measurement. A student can usually tell the great difference between a kilogram and a gram, and when one would use one over the other, but just talking about measuring using multiples of 103 versus 10 isn't really a good connection to everyday experience. Ron 12:51, 22 August 2006 (UTC)