Despite wars and international rivalries, the metric system has slowly spread throughout the world, although not all. There are reasons manmade things evolved the way they did at least historical reasons, if not logical ones. Permission is granted to copy, distribute andor modify this document under the terms of the gnu free documentation license, version 1. This global change involved moving away from material artefacts e. Metric units in engineering provides guidance for practicing engineers, students, and educators who are adopting and using the international system of units in their engineering work. The quantities can be classified into two groups i. International system of units simple english wikipedia. We fill in between the lines of textbook treatments, providing. It comprises a coherent system of uni ts of measurement starting with seve n base uni ts, which are the seco nd th e u nit of time with the symbol s, metre.
The international system of units including, metre convention treaty and its various organs including international national of weights and measure are described. Measurement fundamentals is a site for learning about dimensional measurement and measuring instruments, starting with the basics. G u a r d i a ns of t h e s i ampere a electric current the ampere is that constant. Driven by a growing frustration at the chaos that had previously existed in the country with many hundreds of thousands of units of measurement, varying from village to village, owing to the lack of true national standardisation, the french scientists of the late 18th century created the first. Just like all objects are addressed by some name, physical quantities are known by the units of measurement. The international system of units is the standard modern form of the metric system.
It is the only system of measurement with an official status in nearly every country in the world. It was designed to replace the misunderstood and mixedup units that were in use at the time. Describes the history of the metric system and units in the metric system. Since the redefinition of the meter in 1960, the kilogram is the only unit which is directly defined in terms of a physical artifact rather than a property of nature. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled gnu free documentation license.
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