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Article: METRICATION AND THE REST OF SCIENCE.(response to Terry Padden, Quadrant, March 1999)
- Article from:
- Quadrant
- Article date:
- July 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Quadrant Magazine Company, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SO INTEMPERTE and ill-informed an attack by Terry Padden (March 1999) on metrication and, by extension, all of science would not be worth answering had it not appeared in Quadrant. I shall begin with a few of the minor errors.
High-energy physics does not use the "Planck", whatever that might be. There is a quantity called the "Planck constant", which occurs in quantum mechanics with the units of angular momentum, but is by no means restricted to high-energy physics. There is also the "Planck length", but it is far smaller even than the tiny distances over which things happen in high-energy physics and plays a role mainly in theoretical attempts to develop a ...