Talk:Orders of magnitude (chains)

Archived from Talk:Orders of magnitude

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Change of Units within chains The use of units such as 'hour', 'day', 'year', is bad, because there are a number of different definitions of each of these units. For example, there are several different astronomically defined years, there is the calendar year (whose length varies from year to year, and depends on the calendar being used), there are fixed length years (e.g. the Julian year of 365.25 days used in astronomy.) Which one is it refferring to? Likewise 'day' can be defined astronomically, or on the basis of the calendar (in which case most days are 86400 s long, but a few are 86401 s long, and in theory they can be 86399 s as well), or conventionally as 86400 s.

Of course one could argue that the differences here are too small to make a difference, but I still think that the use of units with varying definitions and varying magnitudes is ugly. Which is why I'd say, stick to the SI second.

I'd admit some scientists still use microns and angstroms, but these units are ugly because they aren't constructed systematically. They are officially discouraged by BIPM, CGPM, national standards laboratories, ISO, and by many of the international scientific unions. They are the metric equivalent of feet and inches... -- SJK

Does that mean we should change the pages such as 1000km2 -- so the whole of that chain is in m² ? I would be in favour of that -- Tarquin

That was my plan. Everything should be in primary SI units. So km is out and m is in. --mav

Other Chains Should we make a chain of pages for dimensionless & unitless numbers? eg "number of hairs on human hair", "number of stars in the mily way", "number of hairs on head of Yul Bryner" Any thoughts on names for full-chain pages: length comparison[?]? -- Tarquin 02:19 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)

Yup, I suggested dimensionless number comparisons on the top of this page. As to naming them, how about simply 1 E 20[?] and 1e20[?]? AxelBoldt 08:55 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)

Has the naming style in general been ironed out? Dimensionless numbers would folloe that style, but without a unit suffix. Is it "1 E 2 {unit}" or "1e2 {unit}"? -- Tarquin 09:01 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)

I thought we decided on 1 E20 m and 1 E-20 m -- I just haven't had time to do the grunt work. --mav

Okay. I'm off to do some grunt work extending the volume chain so Hoover Dam can link in to it. Please could someone check I've changed the correct numbers on each page, I have a morbid fear of missing one! -- Tarquin

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Using the chain pages There seem to be two ways to link the chain pages in use:

1. 137 metres (link the number and the unit separately)
2. 137 metres (joint link)

I see both as having advatages and disadvantages: I'm not sure type (1) makes it clear that the linked number will tell the reader about units and their values: it could be assuemd it's just about big numbers. (2) on the other hand doesn't give immediate information about the unit itself -- though that information is on the chain page, with a link to the unit there, and sometimes in the form of "100 km is x miles". Thoughts on this? It would be a good idea to stick to one type. mav seems to prefer (1). I lean towards (2), but I'm pretty much undecided. -- Tarquin

What I have been doing is using (1) upon the first occurrence of both a order of mag and unit and using (2) when a different order of mag using the same unit is found later in an article. That way we avoid having 137 metre, which at first glance looks like 137 AD. The reason I like linking to the units is because one of the main reasons we have the unit articles is for comparing and relating units. The orders of mag are, of course, here to compare the different sizes of things. Both are important and direct links to them where appropriate should exist in articles (first occurrence only -- unless there is a table. See atomic radius in beryllium). --mav

Sounds good to me. Once the shift to the new names is done, I'll write up the salient points of the chains, the name format & how to link to them on the Manual of Style pages -- Tarquin

Also, another thing I do when I don't know which orders of mag page to link is first link the unit, hit preview and then navigate to the correct orders of mag page (I might have to use the online converter to find the correct SI scale). --mav

I definitely think that #2 is better. The first time that I saw something like "137 metres", I had no idea what the heck was going on until I let my mouse hover over the links (and my browser told me what page was being linked to). Even after seeing that, I often do a double take when I see this strange thing happening — it looks so much like somebody has inadvertently linked to a year. On the other hand, "137 metres" (or "137 m", depending on whether or not you want to abbreviate in the running text) is perfectly clear. The link will surely discuss how long 137 m is, and you can reasonably expect to find a link to metre there if that's what you really want.

What you should expect to find behind the "137" is a mystery to the newcomer. — Toby 05:11 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

Hm - I just reset my prefs to show underlines and agree that the separate links do look odd. However I've already gone about linking many units directly without orders of mag links and many others with both linked. But the joint links should work just as well. The main function of the unit articles was for conversion purposes and there will be links to the unit articles in each order of mag article and there already are links to online converters. We will have to beef-up the order of mag articles a bit more to make this work, but I was planning on this anyway. --mav

I doubt that it's vital to fix each case so that it has the preferred linkage, at least not to fix the version 1 links, which may be confusing but do work. But version 2 is what I'd prefer, and what I've been making those few times that I've had call to. BTW, whatever is decided, when the time comes to do massive gruntwork like moving the order of magnitude titles to their canonical names, let me know here or on my talk page. I'm behind in my Wikipedia duties, but something that can be done for a short while between breaks wouldn't be a difficult way for me to earn my keep. — Toby 07:56 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

If we choose (2) for link style, it'll get a metnion on the Manual of Style -- in other words, all the links will eventually be fixed. No rush though. For a progress report on name canonization, see Orders of magnitude/Temp[?]. Mav and I have done m, m^2, m^3 chains. About a third of the way through the kg chain. -- Tarquin 11:13 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

I also prefer (2) over (1) since (1) is simply illogical. Every link should be self-explanatory and we shouldn't force people to "try out" links. Since the order-of-magnitude pages have links to the units, that's only one click away anyway.

Personally, I sometimes use

(3a) 137 metres (see 1 E2 m for a list of objects of comparable size)

This is crystal clear, if more verbose. AxelBoldt

(3b)I like your idea Axel but instead of all the extra text why not simply write; 137 metres * or 137 m *? Then at the bottom of the page or table have your statement once. Although if there is only one orders of mag link in the article then the verbose option would be best. --mav

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Creating this page with talk from Talk:Orders of magnitude to get it below 32k. -- John Owens 23:09 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)