Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Green Book is a direct successor of the Manual of Symbols and Terminology for Physicochemical Quantities and Units, originally prepared for publication on behalf of IUPAC's Physical Chemistry Division by M. L. McGlashen in 1969. A full history of the Green Book's various editions is provided in the historical introduction to the third edition.
In antiquity, systems of measurement were defined locally: the different units might be defined independently according to the length of a king's thumb or the size of his foot, the length of stride, the length of arm, or maybe the weight of water in a keg of specific size, perhaps itself defined in hands and knuckles. The unifying ...
The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI (from French Système international d'unités), is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. It is the only system of measurement with official status in nearly every country in the world, employed in science ...
The SI system after 1983, but before the 2019 revision: Dependence of base unit definitions on other base units (for example, the metre is defined as the distance travelled by light in a specific fraction of a second), with the constants of nature and artefacts used to define them (such as the mass of the IPK for the kilogram).
The SI system has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by most countries in the world. A notable outlier is the United States (US). Although used in some contexts, the US has resisted full adoption; continuing to use "a conglomeration of basically incoherent measurement systems". [2]
A national measurement system (NMS) is a network of laboratories, calibration facilities and accreditation bodies which implement and maintain a country's measurement infrastructure. [8] [9] The NMS sets measurement standards, ensuring the accuracy, consistency, comparability, and reliability of measurements made in the country. [58]
The SI has special names for 22 of these coherent derived units (for example, hertz, the SI unit of measurement of frequency), but the rest merely reflect their derivation: for example, the square metre (m 2), the SI derived unit of area; and the kilogram per cubic metre (kg/m 3 or kg⋅m −3), the SI derived unit of density.
The measurement of time is unique in SI in that while the second is the base unit, and measurements of time smaller than a second use prefixed units smaller than a second (e.g. microsecond, nanosecond, etc.), measurements larger than a second instead use traditional divisions, including the sexagesimal-based minute and hour as well as the less ...