On Sat, Mar 13, 1999 at 01:47:41AM -0800, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> At 00:55 03/13/99 -0500, Bob Drzyzgula wrote:
> >In this case, I will disagree. If 10kOhms can't be written
> >"10K", 
> 
> of course it can, and mA can be written Mamps... as long as you stay within
> a =small= context, everybody'll understand.

I was mostly referring to the ommision of the unit,
rather than the case of the "K", but you are right about
the inconsistancy in my use of case. My only defense is
that I wrote that *way* past my bedtime :-) This
correction, of course, only lessens the risk of confusing
10k as a resistance and 10”K as a temperature.

> >then certainly 10 degrees Kelvin has no greater right
> >to go around naked like that -- at least it needs to have
> >the ”, out of fairness if nothing else. But seriously, "K"
> >by itself is not, AFAIK, assigned to *any* unit if measure;
> >degrees Kelvin is ”K, beginning and end of story; 
> 
> nope. i don't know where the beginning of the story is, and i certainly
> don't know where the end will be, but "K" is the unit "Kelvin" for the
> absolute temperature in the SI ("Systme Internacional") -- no "”", no
> "degree". Celsius, Fahrenheit and Reaumur use ”, though.

Then you know something that I didn't. As my reference
here, I was using the CRC Handbook, which distinctly
and consistantly uses the ”K in its telling of the SI
standard. The CRC Handbook also points out that, when
speaking of a temperature *interval*, the indication of
Kelvin or Celsius is irrelevent (being different only in
offset) and thus it is considered proper to use only ”,
"deg" or "degree" in stating an interval when the scale
is clear from context. Thus, from this I concluded that
it is the ” that is considered the primary symbol for
temperature, with "F", "K" and "C" being suffix indicators
for scale and offset. I suppose that this could reflect
the age of my copy? Perhaps someone has the source standard
and can clear this up?

Of course, the very same handbook then goes and violates
its own advice in several other sections, using K by itself
for example in the statement of the units in Boltzman's
constant. I take this to mean that the use of the ” is
offical and proper, but it is a pain in the behind to
carry around all the time so everyone just winks at each
other and omits it when they can get away with it. But
it also could mean that the CRC's statement of the SI
standard is incorrect.

> >Horowitz
> >and Hill argue vehemently that "10K" is unambiguously
> >10kOhms; the argument for this is that resistance is the only
> >unit so fundamental to the study of electronics that it
> >can be unambiguously stated without the use of the Omega
> 
> i still don't understand why you insist in using the upper case "k". it

Because the last thing I was looking at did it that way
and I didn't think sufficiently about it. Looking at several
other references I see now that the lower case is much more
frequently and correctly used; I stand corrected.

> >square centameters, not centasquaremeters.) 
> 
> right, but it's "centimeters" (also in english, i think, but i'm no native
> speaker :)

Correct, thank you. I never could spell worth a damn. :-)
Of course, it is "centimeters" in "American" but probably
"centimetres" in "English"? :-)

--Bob

-- 
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Bob Drzyzgula                             It's not a problem
bob@drzyzgula.org                until something bad happens
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