Talk:2073: Kilogram

I didn't know that weights and currencies could be converted 1:1, that's cool! Fabian42 (talk) 16:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

I wish they had redefined the kilogram a little bit. It would have been neat if 1 kg was exactly the weight of 1 dm^3 (1 litre) of water under one atmosphere of pressure. Right now it's soooo close. It's a good enough estimate for simple maths, but whenever you tell people that a litre of water weighs one kilogram the pedants comes out of the woodworks... Kapten-N (talk) 16:50, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

You'll get pedants whenever you refer to a kilogram as weight; it's a mass. The difference is that stuff weighs less on the Moon - or on tall mountains - although the mass is the same. I think the article as I just read it gets away with this. And, sure, what is the standard kilogram but a weight, that you take and weigh...

Up until 1964 a litre (and therefore actually the metre too) used to be defined as the volume that water with mass 1kg takes. But this is not good for exact measurements not only because you need exactly reproducable temperature, pressure (not so problematic, because you can measure them and then calculate the divergence) and gravity (not so easy to measure, because you need an exact mass and exact masses are impossible to keep the same), but also because you need pure water free of any polutions of other stuff (hard and expensive) and even free of tiny amounts of isotopes which are deuterium and tritium (even way more expensive). Because the water that was used then was never close to pure the actual weight of water nowadays is 0.99997kg at 4°C and 1.013bar and I don't know which value for g. There is also another definition which I like, but is hard to measure in real life scenarios: E=mc². A kilogramm should be 1/c² of the mass which anything becomes heavier that you accelerate by the energy of one Joule. --162.158.90.150 17:11, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

But how do you define/measure a Joule then? Fabian42 (talk) 18:19, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

No, until 1964, meter and litre were totally independent, a meter has never been defined directly or indirectly in relation to a mass of water. It is only since 1964 that the liter is defined as a cubic decimeter.162.158.90.36 18:36, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Also, in E=mc², E is the energy at rest (for a stationary object of mass m), so your definition using the acceleration makes no sense.162.158.88.254 18:47, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Actually, for the new definition of the kilo using the Kibble balance you need to measure the gravity... 162.158.134.16 17:34, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Welp, looks like 1 kg, a.k.a. 1 lb, a.k.a 2.2 lb, is now officially defined to have zero mass. 172.69.50.28 16:56, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

…or infinite. Fabian42 (talk) 16:59, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

What I understand: the joke is not (only) about 1 (old) kg = 1 (old) lb, but (also) about 1 new kg = 1 old lb... or 1 new lb = 1 old kg :^) Or about a ring of positive characteristic --188.114.102.94 17:08, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

what about the ambiguity of the pound? would they reference an Avoirdupois bound or a Troy lb? --wonderkatn 172.69.50.16 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I don't believe the Imperial system is "no longer used". Gills have been retired, but yards and even chains are still in use, not to mention the Imperial lb pint. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:49, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

The imperial system has some good things about it. Feet are divisible by 12, and Fahrenheit is much nicer for human temperatures. Linker (talk) 18:55, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, coz it's so easier to divide by 12 than to divide by 10! 162.158.89.61 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

No it is easier to divide by 2, 3, 4, and 6, and yes, I can divide the number of feet by 10 easily in my head. SDSpivey (talk) 19:15, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

The idea is that with twelve parts, you can have 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, and 1/12 all be integer number of parts. This is why these types of systems developed in the past, and why so many systems also had multiples of 60 (you can do the math here.). They were easy to divide by merchants without access to any sort of calculation method. The base-10 system is great if you're only ever dealing with halves or tenths. But if you want a quarter or a third of something, you have to split the base units. It's no longer necessary in modern life, but it had a real advantage in ancient times. Cgrimes85 (talk) 19:18, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I'm going to point out something. What's a meter? 1000 milimeters. What's a milimeter? .....skipping the questions all the way to the end, the answer is "the wavelength of the color orange". Or at least that's what I read. So my question is: why orange? What's so special about orange? What as a species or as a solar system or as universe does the color orange have to do with anything? 172.68.90.10 21:50, 16 November 2018 (UTC) SiliconWolf

"The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole." That's why orange. Think of those lines from equator to pole... and how an orange is divided in segments beneath the peel. This is why the "Terry's Chocolate Orange" is so called, because it resembles the fruit orange. [email protected] 162.158.91.59 23:51, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Be very careful

An announcement to a new definition of the kilogram is published wildly (I mean what I'm saying) today. Please do not present this issue as a final fact, I'm still missing an official statement -- it's just press hype. And there are two possible definitions taken account, not only the one from the US. The final decision right now looks like some of Randall's compromises. Just sayin... --Dgbrt (talk) 20:01, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

OK then, here's an after-the-vote November 16 web page from NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, within the US Department of Commerce. It says it's a done deal. historic-vote-ties-kilogram-and-other-units-natural-constants. --JohnB 162.158.79.89 21:58, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, but my German sources still preset something like counting atoms Kilogram and MOL, counting atoms, just meaning I'm not sure what will be true in May 2019, do we know the truth??? And in fact it looks like Europeans are fighting against US scientists, or vice versa. This is far of a standard I would prefer. --Dgbrt (talk) 22:29, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

It will be very funny when we find out one of those constants is not really constant ... sure, planck length is less likely to change than physical object, but it MIGHT. Like, maybe it gets longer the older the universe is ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 23:17, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

You could not define the kilogram in terms of electric force when you defined the Amp in terms of the current that creates a given force. But by defining the amp in terms of numbers of elementary charges per second and setting Avogadro and other constants by fiat, you break the circle. 162.158.38.190 23:54, 16 November 2018 (UTC)