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If I'm not mistaken (& I wouldn't be too greatly surprised if I were), the SI is an mks system (the metre, kilogram & second are base units in the SI) and thus the BIPM does provide a modern definition.
JIMptalk·
cont16:19, 27 August 2009 (UTC)reply
mksc units, addition of charge to the MKS system
My old physics book (Sears and Zemansky 1964), after moving beyond Newtonian mechanics into electrostatics, introduces the mksc units [in lower case], cf page 742:
"The mksc unit of mutual inductance is 1 volt/(amp/sec). This is called 1 henry in honor of Joseph Henry".
Where the volt is defined in terms of the "potential energy per unit charge" (cf p 569). When I interrogate wikipedia "mksc" does not come up to physics articles. Anybody out there know what's going on with respect to the addition of "charge" (c) to the mks unit system? Thanks, Bill
The electrical units can not be derived solely from the metre, the kilogramme and the second---they need some eletrical reference---hence the addition of the modern unit of charge, the coulomb. I have seen also m.k.s.a. including the ampere, the coloumb-per-second.
The fourth unit
@
Trackteur: Giorgi did not specify that the ampere should be the additional unit. He proposed that a fourth unit , an electromagnetic one, be added. He did not suggest that this should be a unit drawn from a field of engineering; please do not be misled by a
false friend. The ampere is a unit from the field of
electromagnetism; it is not and was not specifically an engineering or technological unit.
NebY (
talk)
11:42, 8 March 2015 (UTC)reply
Describing the ampere as a unit of electrotechnology is akin to describing the metre as a unit of building construction. The ampere was indeed eventually chosen to provide the fourth unit, but that choice came long after Giorgi's original proposal and was not inherent to it or an inevitable consequence of it. There were other candidates, such as the volt - yes, SI could have been built on an MKSV system instead, still in accordance with Giorgi's proposal.
The following is a closed discussion of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a
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@
Stephan Leeds: It's very often known by abbreviated names (for
WP:COMMONNAME), and the current title is more
WP:CONCISE, so I will
contest this move. If you would like to go ahead with the request, please open a requested-move discussion, which you can do by clicking "discuss" on your request (but please add a rationale for the move when doing so).
SilverLocust💬 17:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
I was thinking it should move to be parallel with:
Keep MKS. As a physicist I cannot remember ever using anything except MKS, and occasionally CGS when teaching or in publications. I suggest using
CGS units, the "system of" is superfluous .I have no idea about
FPS units, you probably have to post to an engineering project page.
I guess the page also could be read by non-physicists and for these readers "MKS" has no meaning, its just an unexplained acronym. That is why I prefer "Metre–kilogram–second (MKS) system of units"
Johnjbarton (
talk)
18:51, 19 January 2024 (UTC)reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
MKS system of units
It is being advocated by @
Dondervogel2 in edits that independent of the renaming discussion, "system of units" needs to be used for grammatical reasons. I am listing here and have cross-listed at
WP:Physics since that is where many of the relevant people are. (My personal opinion is that it is just "MKS units", and "system of" is irrelevant: meters, kilograms and seconds are units.)
Ldm1954 (
talk)
03:04, 3 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I am not saying "MKS system of units" is appropriate (I am not saying it is inappropriate either - I have no opinion on that issue). My opinion is that the article should be grammatically correct. For example
this edit reverted an edit introducing a grammatical error. When my edit was reverted I tried an
alternative route to grammatical correctness. My preference would be to restore a previous stable version and then discuss here what changes are needed to it to address the name change.
Dondervogel 2 (
talk)
08:26, 3 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I learnt to use abbreviations as if they were the full term, excepting "an" sometimes. Hence "meter, kilogram, and second units" is identical to "MKS units", and both are grammatically correct. The "system of" is superfluous. As was discussed, we teach students to use "MKS units", just that.
I have not done major work on this article, but I did revert edits of this issue which I believe should have been discussed first as they differ from the concensus.
Ldm1954 (
talk)
08:53, 3 March 2024 (UTC)reply
SI is the universal abbreviation for the
International System of Units. Wikipedia cannot logically take the position that SI is the abbreviation for “International Units” so I don’t support the strict position proposed by Ldm1954.
When we write “MKS Units” we are talking about one or a small number of the units contained within the MKS system; but when we write “MKS system of units” we are are talking about all the MKS units that define the MKS system, in the same way that we write about SI the International System of Units.
Dolphin(
t)12:36, 3 March 2024 (UTC)reply
As a quick clarification, I just reverted this article back to what it was before in terms of how MKS was used. (I did add a couple of sentences to expand as suggested by
Johnjbarton, but that is separate.)
N.B., "SI units" is the abbreviation for "Système international d'unités", which we translate to International System of units. The usage of SI and MKS are consistent.
Ldm1954 (
talk)
13:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)reply
That distinction isn't reflected in any source that I can find. Rather the opposite, actually: the terms appear interchangeable.
XOR'easter (
talk)
19:35, 4 March 2024 (UTC)reply