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Product Description
The epic story of a invention of a tellurian network of weights, scales, and instruments for measurement.
Millions of exchange any day count on a arguable network of weights and measures. This network has been called a larger invention than a steam engine, allied usually to a growth of a copy press.Robert P. Crease traces a expansion of this general complement from a use of flutes to magnitude stretch in a dynasties of ancient China and figurines to import bullion in West Africa to a origination of a French metric and British majestic systems. The former prevailed, with a United States one of 3 holdout nations. Into this enthralling story Crease weaves stories of colorful individuals, including Thomas Jefferson, an disciple of a metric system, and American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, a initial to tie a scale to a wavelength of light. Tracing a energetic onslaught for ultimate precision, World in a Balance demonstrates that dimensions is both foreigner and some-more constituent to a lives than we ever suspected. 35 black-and-white illustrations
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #294179 in Books
- Published on: 2011-10-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.20" h x 6.30" w x 9.30" l, 1.60 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 317 pages
Editorial Reviews
About a Author
Robert P. Crease writes a "Critical Point" mainstay for Physics World. He is a authority of a Philosophy Department during Stony Brook University and lives in New York City. He is a author of, among other books, The Prism and a Pendulum, The Great Equations and World in a Balance.
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5 of 6 people found a following examination helpful.
By R. Hardy
Your crony catches a fish that gets him bragging rights; it was over eighteen inches long, and he has a design to infer it, his fish right alongside a ruler. But how do we know he didn't use one of those fisherman's wisecrack rulers that are shrunk, creation a fish demeanour bigger? Or if he used a unchanging ruler, how do we know it was in line with other unchanging twelve-inch rulers? What are a contingency that he took that ruler from one that had been delicately calibrated to a customary foot? What is a customary foot? The enigmas concerned in measuring are among a subjects in _World in a Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement_ (W. W. Norton) by Robert P. Crease. Crease writes a "Critical Point" mainstay for _Physics World_, and some of a chapters here are from those columns, that means that digressive chapters competence not understanding privately with universe dimensions standards. It doesn't matter; this is a unconditional story of how humans magnitude things, and given Crease is also a authority of a truth department, it is about a definition of dimensions and a place in tellurian thinking. It is a fascinating story, and all a some-more so since it is full of optimism. The general village of metrologists (experts in measuring) have spent centuries operative on a problem of concept dimensions standards, and have cooperated flattering well, and serve team-work seems assured.
In a past, each country, and even sold regions within countries, had sold systems of measurement. The hunt for absolutes forms a categorical partial of Crease's book. It was in a 17th and 18th centuries that it became transparent that it would be accessible to have one customary measuring system. The best offer was by French scientists during a finish of a 18th century. They wanted it to be universal, though they bending it to a apex that came south from a North Pole, took in Paris, and went to a equator. One ten-millionth of this stretch was to be a meter. There were problems with a system, over a substantial ones of other cultures being delayed to modify to it. There had been errors in measuring that apex by Paris, so that a scale rod reverentially stored in a Archives was short. As early as 1827, scientists were fretting over a inexactitude and ephemerality of such rods. If a comet struck a Earth, they said, a pivot of revolution or a figure of a Earth competence be changed, and so a apex dimensions could not go behind to a concept standard. It done no unsentimental difference, as prolonged as everybody was regulating a same scale rod, though rods might not final forever. In 1834 in London, a House of Lords was set on fire, along with a rods that were a standards for majestic measure; there were afterwards no central customary lengths to spin to. There was no reason this could not occur to a scale rod in a Archives. Much of Crease's book has to do with restraining a scale to a healthy customary (it is tangible now as a sold series of wavelengths of a sold kind of light). The section of mass, a kilogram, has nonetheless to be given a healthy standard, and this is troubling. Right now, there is a "real" kilogram weight stored with a pinnacle caring in Sèvres, though for reasons no one unequivocally understands, it seems to be removing lighter compared to a weights that are a central copies. If metrologists can tie it to Planck's Constant, a kilogram, too, will no longer be exposed to a vicissitudes that can trouble any earthy object.
The funniest section here is about American insurgency to a metric system. That we still use feet and miles is no joking matter, though in a 1880s there was a dumb American anti-metric transformation that was "born in Ohio and exhibited a classical signs of American antireform movements: xenophobia, wild rhetoric, phony of `facts,' reimagining history, swindling theories, and appeals to safety a virginity of inlet and nation." In this view, Noah was a designer who designed a pyramids for Egypt, imbuing them with a "sacred cubit", one twenty-fifth partial of that was a "Pyramid Inch," accurately one five-hundred-millionth of a Earth's pivot of rotation. Thus, inches came from a Bible and a Lord (and from Egypt). The proponents of this perspective expel themselves as downtrodden combatants opposite a atheists and their meters. Crease also has a humorous section about a problems of measuring tellurian bodies, generally measurements for brassieres. The whole book proves to be surprisingly entertaining. Cease in his purpose as philosopher knows that measuring is some-more than only requesting precision, though is a tellurian try that contingency always be tied to tellurian enthusiasms and activities.
0 of 0 people found a following examination helpful.
By BuckyBadger
While we am certain this is a good researched and created book on a story of metrology, it is not for a infrequent reader. we am certain that a metrologist would give it 5 stars though we easily gave it two. One thought as to a aim assembly is in a acknowledgments where a author says,"I write for Physics World, a consistently fun repository to review and write for". If Physics World is your thought of a fun repository afterwards this book is for you. For a rest of us, we would challenge anyone to contend that they were means to review this book cover to cover. It is most too technical for a layman.
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