Re: Your expert perspective... -Reply

[David Walland <David.Walland@bristol.ac.uk>]

On Fri, 29 Sep 95 06:39:49 -0500 FRAMEP@ORAU.GOV wrote:

> From: FRAMEP@ORAU.GOV> Date: Fri, 29 Sep 95 06:39:49 -0500
> Subject: Your expert perspective... -Reply
> To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
> 
> If the purpose of the switch to SI were to make the numbers appear
> smaller, then why would we have replaced the curie with the
> becquerel?
> 
> Paul Frame


As a mere Englishman, I always thought that the purpose of SI was to use as fundamental units as possible.  The Curie 
is a very difficult to measure unit (and there's some doubt as to whether it actually was measured correctly in the first 
place so we're actually using a complicated multiple of the Bequerel when we use Curies) while a Bequerel  is an easy 
and fundamental unit.  Since we have to use multipliers anyway, I can't see that MBq and KBq are worse than mCi 
and uCi (which the "scientists" at my establishment are forever confusing anyway.  MBq and KBq are actually better 
on the confusion front).

I don't believe the rumour that SI units are actually are sophisticated French revenge on the Anglo Saxons.

David Walland
University of Bristol
UK