On Systems of Units

[jabowery]

If I didn’t have a million other things to do that is a video I wish I had made.

I’m reminded of perhaps my favorite passage from Stella Maris where Alicia says:

Cursed Units in Science and Engineering

Its worse than you imagine (although perhaps not worse than you can imagine): To quote the suicidal mathematical genius character, Alicia Western, in Stella Maris (Cormac McCarthy’s last novel): But even Frege doesnt get completely down to nuts and bolts. Adding and subtracting are not really mathematics. A sack of pebbles will do. But multiplication and division are a different matter. If you were to multiply two tomatoes by two tomatoes you wouldnt get four tomatoes. You would get four…