Re: Dumb Question Mk II

[Franz Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 11:04 17.07.1998 -0500, you wrote:
>What does the 'P' stand for in the units below?  Am I to asume that SI had
>to come up with a prefix for 10^15 because of the Bq unit problem?  (Down
>with Bequerel!  Long live Mme. Curie!)  Ahem...I hear Melissa now: "Step
>down from the soap box Scott, you said that already."
>Yours in confusion,
>
>Scott Kniffin
>
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Scott,

Take it easy, we have in Austria had the nCi in 1986, when the Chernobyl
accident happened and we had terrible problems to refer to the Bq. It takes
some time to accustom to the new SI-units, but I assure you that it does
not hurt. How must our forefathers have suffered, when they went from
"klafter", "inches" (everywhere in Europe there were different "inches"),
"Ellen", "shoes" to the meter. At the St. Stephens Cathedral in Vienna you
have at the main entrance still the standards of different measures
attached and even the circumference of a bread loaf is indicated. At
Regensburg in Germany (beautiful town!) you have also at the town hall the
measure attached in force some hundred years ago. Not to talk about the
"miles" - you have nautic miles, some other ones and in Sweden a "mil" is
10 km. How nice it would be if we could agree on common units - if we
cannot agree on political issues.

All my sympathies are with Marie Curie - she must have been a very
outstanding woman and since I prefer to cooperate with any woman over any
man I cannot be regarded as a "Matcho". Sorry that the unit "Curie" had
already been defined, it would then have been easy to call the "Bequerel" a
"Curie". Even without having her name as a unit I think that her
achievements will never been disregarded.

Once again - it does not hurt to use the new units, it just takes some time
to get used to them!

Best wishes,

Franz


Franz Schoenhofer
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e-mail: schoenho@via.at

Office:
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