2 Units

There are three things that every engineer should know about units. First, the fundamental significance of units must
be understood. Second, the conversion from one set of units to another must be a routine matter. Third, one must learn
to use units to help prevent the occurrence of algebraic and conceptual errors. The second of these is emphasized by
the following:

In the Sacramento Bee, November 11, 1999 one finds the headline:
Training faulted in loss of $125 million Marsprobe.
In the article that follows one reads, “The immediate cause of the spacecraft’s Sept. 23 disappearance as it entered Mars
orbit was a failure by a young engineer……to make a simple conversion from English units to metric….”

Physics is a quantitative science. By this we mean that the physicist attempts to compare measured observables with
values predicted from theory. There is basically only one measuring process and that is the process of counting. For
example, the distance between two points is determined by counting the number of times that a standard length fits
between the two points. Often we call this length a unit length. The business of measuring began with the Egyptians,
but we are generally more familiar with the work of the Greek geometers such as Pythagoras. In physics, the process
of performing experiments and measuring observables is often attributed to Galileo (1564–1642). The process of
measuring by counting standard units can be described as*:

Since the measurement process is one of counting multiples of some chosen standard, it is reasonable to ask how many
standards we need. If we need a standard for each observable, we will need a large Bureau of Standards. As a matter of fact,
we need only four standards: a standard of length, a standard of mass, a standard of time, and a standard of electric charge.
This is an extraordinary fact. It means that if one is equipped with a set of these four standards and the ability to count, one
can (in principle) assign a numerical value to any observable, be it distance, velocity, viscosity, temperature, pressure, etc.

Here we find that our confrontation with units begins with a great deal of simplicity since we require only the follow-
ing four fundamental standards:

LENGTH
MASS
TIME
ELECTRIC CHARGE

The reason for this simplicity is that observables, in one way or another, must satisfy the laws of physics, and these
laws can be quantified in terms of length, mass, time, and electric charge.
Although the concept of a standard is simple, the matter is complicated by the fact that the choice of a standard is
arbitrary. For example, a football player prefers the yard as a standard of length because one yard is significant and
100 yards represents an upper bound for the domain of interest. The carpenter prefers the foot as a standard of length
since one foot is significant and the distance of 100 feet spans the domain of interest for many building projects. For
the same reasons, a truck driver prefers the mile as a standard of length, i.e., one of them is significant and 100 of them
represent a certain degree of accomplishment. It is a fact of life that people like to work in terms of standards that
give rise to counts somewhere between 1 and 100, and we therefore change our standards to fit the situation. While
the football player thinks in terms of yards on Saturday, his Sunday chores are likely to be measured in feet and the
distance to the next game will surely be thought of in terms of miles. Outside of the United States, a football player
(soccer) thinks in terms of meters on Saturday, perhaps centimeters on Sunday, and the distance to the next match will
undoubtedly be determined in kilometers.

* Hurley, J.P. and Garrod, C. 1978, page 1, Principles of Physics, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

DOI: 10.1201/9781003283751-2 9