WikiProject Measurement	(Rated Project-Class)	MeasurementWikipedia:WikiProject MeasurementTemplate:WPMeasureMeasurement articles
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Proposed deletion 9 Dec 2009 – PROD tag removed from Ancient Arabic units of measurement (talk). Articles for deletion 1 Nov 2009 – Comparison of the imperial and US customary measurement systems (talk) was kept; see discussion. Other news 10 Dec 2009 – The cleanup listings from WolterBot have updated. 7 Dec 2009 – A new edition of the Wikipedia Signpost is out. 30 Nov 2009 – The new book-class is released. See the Signpost article and the setup guide for details. Contact Headbomb for questions and help. 28 Nov 2009 – A new database dump is available. Archives (4 more...)

Contents 1 WikiProject or Task Force (or workgroup) 2 New member 3 Temperature scales timeline? 4 Action on worklists 5 Change to Manual of Style on measurement systems 6 Greenspun illustration project: requests now open 7 Proposed Unit Conversion Control 8 Use of Template:Lowercase for SI prefix- and unit articles 8.1 Proposal 9 Created a banner 10 Help requested 11 Apothecaries' system 12 Bot tagging 13 Coordinators' working group 14 Review of article Standard 15 Article alerts 16 Consistency and diversity in weights and measures 17 Scottish units of length 18 RfC pointer: units derived from U.S. survey foot 19 World Metrology Day 20 Foundry Sand testing equipments 21 Might be interesting for you guys 22 Old units 23 Digit grouping style (notice of discussion) 24 Move proposal - additional input wanted 25 Jupiter mass 26 Mass articles merge into Astronomical system of units

[edit] WikiProject or Task Force (or workgroup)

I set this up as a WikiProject because of its interdisciplinary nature: it is hard to find a good "parent" project for this one. Even if most of the work will cover articles which have already been identified by WP:PHYSICS, the articles are of general interest in science and, for many, beyond. For myself, the exact form of cooperation is unimportant: rather, this project/task force/workgroup should be a place to discuss editing problems which will reoccur accross several disciplines in relation to the scope of articles which we take onboard. The initial worklists which I have posted are outputs from personal databases: in other words, the format can be changed quite easily depending on what participants wish (no-one has to retype everything!). What do others think? Physchim62 (talk) 16:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New member

I'm interested in helping out, but I'm heading out of town tomorrow for a couple weeks. I'll check back here when I return to see what's going on and how I can help. — Zaui (talk) 22:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Temperature scales timeline?

This new project looks like the perfect place to ask a question I asked a long ago at Talk:Celsius that went unanswered. The question is, is there any article in Wikipedia that lists all the temperature scales ordered by the date when they were proposed? If not, should we create one? (Or add it as a section to an existing article?) --Itub 12:05, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I would assume if there was one, someone would have responded in the past 4+ months. A separate article probably isn't necessary, unless there's a compelling story that can't be told in the individual temperature scale articles. How about adding a row to this table with the year of creation? — Zaui (talk) 14:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Action on worklists

(transferred from /SI worklist)

I'm guessing this worklist was posted by Physchim62. I'm not sure what kind of actions the project members should be performing on each item on the worklist. --Gerry Ashton 22:27, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

The worklists were generated for a project which is mostly dealing with referencing and accuracy issues, hence the suggested reference templates. On the other hand, they may well be other things we need to think about: article assesment, general article improvement, coverage, etc. All suggestions/comments welcome! Physchim62 (talk) 16:29, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Change to Manual of Style on measurement systems

The section on choosing measurement systems has been changed from:

• In scientific articles, SI units are the main units of measure, unless there are compelling historical or pragmatic reasons not to use them (for example, Hubble's constant should be quoted in its most common unit of (km/s)/Mpc rather than its SI unit of s⁻¹)

Into:

• In scientific articles, use the units employed in the current scientific literature on that topic. This will usually be SI, but not always. For example, natural units are often used: ångströms (or angstroms) are widely used in such fields as x-ray crystallography and structural chemistry, and Hubble's constant should be quoted in its most common unit of (km/s)/Mpc rather than its SI unit of s⁻¹.

Comments on this change are welcome at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Units_of_measurement. Thank you Tim Vickers 18:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Greenspun illustration project: requests now open

Dear Wikimedians,

This is a (belated) announcement that requests are now being taken for illustrations to be created for the Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP).

The aim of the project is to create and improve illustrations on Wikimedia projects. You can help by identifying which important articles or concepts are missing illustrations (diagrams) that could make them a lot easier to understand. Requests should be made on this page: Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Requests

If there's a topic area you know a lot about or are involved with as a Wikiproject, why not conduct a review to see which illustrations are missing and needed for that topic? Existing content can be checked by using Mayflower to search Wikimedia Commons, or use the Free Image Search Tool to quickly check for images of a given topic in other-language projects.

The community suggestions will be used to shape the final list, which will be finalised to 50 specific requests for Round 1, due to start in January. People will be able to make suggestions for the duration of the project, not just in the lead-up to Round 1.

• General information about the project: m:Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project
• Potential illustrators and others interested in the project should join the mailing list: mail:greenspun-illustrations

thanks, pfctdayelise (talk) 12:54, 13 December 2007 (UTC) (Project coordinator)

[edit] Proposed Unit Conversion Control

For infoboxes. Suggesting an "English/Metric" conversion control be provided as an option in Infoboxes, so that users can have stats displayed to their preference. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Infoboxes#English.2FMetric_Conversion_Feature.3F Rep07 (talk) 21:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Use of Template:Lowercase for SI prefix- and unit articles

At present, measurement articles vary in their use of {{lowercase}}, leading to vagaries of presentation. I've been discussing this at some length with User:Greg L, both on his talk and more recently on Talk:Kilogram. I was overly WP:BOLD in edits to that article and accept that was a blunder, but the underlying concern remains: absent a systemic decision we will have continued variation of Kilo- vice kilo-, Kilogram vice kilogram and yocto- vice Yocto-.

My preference would be to see article names reflecting the standard SI usage of capitals or, failing that, to have them consistently use a capital first letter and include a direct statement about the case useage either as a hatnote or in the lead. For the former to be adopted a minor change to MOS would be in order to bring clarity to the eBay and iPod examples as to just how rare should the usage be — presently there are over 4000 articles using the template, mostly for technical terms, not trademarks. See the template's "What links here" for the current list.

It strikes me that the members of this project likely would have useful perspectives on this matter and I look forward to a lively debate.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:49, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

It has also been suggested that this discussion should be at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions. If editors here think so, I've no major objection to it.LeadSongDog (talk) 17:38, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

You'll probably get more responses there because this project is not very active. My opinion is that these titles should be capitalized like any other word when they occur at the beginning of the sentence, unless there is an SI rule somewhere that says explicitly that they always are lowercase, even at the beginning of a sentence or in an otherwise all-uppercase sentence. I've seen rules like that for biological species names, but never for units. --Itub (talk) 19:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

To display lowercase for an SI spelled-out unit or prefix in a situation where it is supposed to be capitalized would imply that it may never be capitalized under any circumstance. This rule actually does apply to symbols. Consider the following badly worded sentence. s is the SI unit of time. It would be wrong to capitalize the "s", because then it would be the symbol for Siemens.

By capitalizing SI spelled-out units and prefixes when normal rules of grammer call for them to be capitalized, we show by example that those normal rules do indeed apply. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:32, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. The sentences "Seconds are a useful measure of time" and "Milligrams are a useful meausre of mass" should have capitals at the start in English and hence capitals at the start of a Wikipedia title. We could have article titles such as Kilogram redefinition or Mole–kilogram redefinition dilemma, for example. On the other hand "pH is a scale of acidity or basicity" can only start with a lower case "p", and so the article correctly uses {{lowercase}}.

What is missing here, IMHO, from LeadSongDog is a specific reason why these articles should be treated differently from other articles on WP. Why should candela be treated any different from proportionality, government or sex? If that were made clear, there might be a point in taking the question to WT:NC but, for the moment, it isn't clear to me. Physchim62 (talk) 22:22, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

←

• Articles like iPhone and eBay are exceptions to the rule. I see no reason why Kilogram (or for that matter, Kilometer, Pound (unit), and Newton) would join the ranks of these exceptions. This is separate from whether or not it might have been wiser if Wikipedia’s article titles had put non-proper nouns in lowercase and only proper nouns in uppercase. Instead, they (*virtually*) all use sentence-case. But that’s another story. Short of changing all of Wikipedia’s convention for the case that ought to be use for article titles, I view this as strictly an issue of conformity. Doing otherwise would imply some special distinction that doesn’t exist. Greg L (talk) 22:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• For Gerry Ashton: An article title is not a sentence, so normal rules of grammar do not prescribe for capitals. Better sentences would be "The second is a useful measure of time", "The milligram is a useful measure of mass", or "The degree of acidity or alkalinity is denoted on the pH scale". Most usage of a unit name, however, is in the expression of a quantity, as in "The test was over in only seven seconds" or "He was prescribed two 325 milligram asprin and told to call in the morning". In fact, I can't think of a case where there is a strong reason to start a sentence with the unit name.
• For Physchim62: In use, the caps matter but they do not reflect the normal linguistic practice applied for other kinds of words. "A gravitational force of 9.8 kilonewton accelerates a 1 Megagram mass in free fall above the earth's sea level" is correct usage, while "A gravitational force of 9.8 KiloNewton accelerates a 1 megagram mass in free fall above the earth's sea level" is incorrect usage. A well written article should therefore make clear the expected use of caps for that unit or prefix. A reader unfamiliar with the units would not know that "seven candela" should not have caps but "six microTesla" should. By contrast, "sex", "government", or "proportionality" all follow the normal rules of English, so that the reader requires no special explanation to know when caps are used on their respective first letters.
• For Greg L: Quite simply, the use of caps in SI units and prefixes is often confusing to newcomers. My stylistic sense is that we should attempt to avoid aggravating that confusion and indeed make it WP:Clear how caps should apply to each unit and each prefix. Presently Kilo- does that in a less than ideal way. I would seek to replace "Kilo- (symbol: k) is a prefix in the SI and other systems of units ..." with "The prefix kilo- (symbol: k) in the SI and other systems of units ..." and establish a redirect from "Kilo-" to an article at "kilo-" so the reader would see kilo- as the title and "Kilo- redirects here". Naturally, the inverse would apply for Mega- and mega- LeadSongDog (talk) 07:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

An article title may not be a sentence, but the agreed convention, followed by millions of articles, is to write titles in "sentence case". Your example "...accelerates a 1 Megagram mass..." is not correct usage. Unit names are common nouns and are normally lowercase when they are in the middle of a sentence, regardless of whether the symbol for the prefix or for the unit is capitalized or not. Hence, it should be "megagram". --Itub (talk) 09:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

And "microtesla" for that matter. Another misconception that LeadSongDog seems to hold is that redirects are required when using {{lowercase}}: he's not alone on this, as fully one-quarter of the uses of this template are through redirects! I'll go and take them off when I get a moment. In the database, the article titles are EBay, IPod and PH; the template is just a fix to get the title line to display differently. I agree with LSD about avoiding starting sentences with the unit name or prefix. Physchim62 (talk) 11:25, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

People are so dead set against starting a sentence with a unit symbol that they cannot see past it to get my point, so let me give a different example. A person creates a table and decides to capitalize the first letter of each column heading. The column headings are:

 Runner                    | Time | Surname     | Forename    | s    |  

The symbol for seconds must be lowercase even though the convention adopted for this particular table would call for it to be uppercase. Had the unit been spelled out, it could have been uppercased. Hence, our article titles should uppercase spelled-out units whenever that is allowed, to help distinguish works or symbols which must never be uppercased no matter what. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 14:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

(ec)::::I stand corrected. As Itub says, "a 1 Megagram mass" is incorrect. Even after all these years, I got confused, transfering the "Mg" caps to megagram. Indeed, none of the spelled-out prefixes should be in caps. That'll teach me to check my memory. See BIPM on SI base units where each of the base units is used as a tabular heading in lowerecase and linked to its own article, e.g. "kelvin" links to a page entitled "Unit of thermodynamic temperature (kelvin)". It appears that even the BIPM "SI brochure" is troubled by this question. In the text of Section 5.2 it says "In English, the names of units start with a lower-case letter (even when the symbol for the unit begins with a capital letter), except at the beginning of a sentence or in capitalized material such as a title", yet the brochure neatly avoids using a unit name as one of the section titles by the abovementioned device. LeadSongDog (talk) 15:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal

After doing a bit of digging around, I think the best way forward is to propose a change at the Manual of Style to clarify the issue. The MOS already has a section "SI symbols and unit abbreviations", and I propose adding a further bullet point there. I've split the proposal by sentences to make it easier for people to disagree with one part but not another.

1. The names (but not the symbols) of SI units are treated as common nouns, and should not be capitalized except at the beginning of a sentence (degree Celsius is an exception): it is rarely necessary, or advisable, to begin a sentence with a unit name, except in direct quotations.
2. The same applies to SI prefixes.
3. The titles of articles about units are capitalized according to the normal guidelines.

What do people think? Physchim62 (talk) 21:43, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Unacceptable. If you did that in commerce, the weights and measures inspectors could raid your store and seize your merchandise. The section you linked to is about symbols and abbreviations. Except for liter, there is only one correct case for an SI symbol or prefix, and the case must never be changed. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:05, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Despite the title of the section, it also treats the names of units (and not just SI units at that). I think my wording is clear enough to keep me out of the way of Trading Standards officials. Physchim62 (talk) 22:22, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I've modified the proposal to address this concern. Physchim62 (talk) 22:24, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps Physchim62 was intending the spelled-out unit names, not their symbols? LeadSongDog (talk) 22:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the advice that is not specific to symbols and abbreviations from that section. It all had to do with ambiguous units, so I gave it an appropriate title. Advice about spelled-out words should certainly not go in a section about symbols and abbreviations, no matter how it is worded. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, let's strike the references to SI and put it right at the top of WP:UNITS then. Physchim62 (talk) 22:49, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• My World Book two-volume dictionary has all entry titles in all-cap; it has an entry for KILOGRAM. But the definition instructs that it is a noun and gives an example of proper usage (where it is used in lowercase). I haven’t met anyone walking around who thinks all words in the English language should be in all-cap because they own a World Book dictionary in which each and every entry title is all-cap.

  This whole discussion seems quite unnecessary; it is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. I abstain on any proposals here because this venue is too remote of a backwater. I’ve seen that all change on Wikipedia does not come easy. Change for the sake of chasing windmills seems like a waste of time. Greg L (talk) 01:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• The issue I have is inconsistency. Greg rightly observes that World Book has all entry titles in the same format and that it doesn't cause people to believe every English word is in allcaps. In contrast, we have a mix even amongst the SI units. A thinking reader will infer that the mix actually means something. I'd like to follow what BIPM, NIST, IUPAC and the others do quite consistently, which is to dodge starting the title of unit articles with the unit name if we can find an acceptable way to do that. But even if we must start them with the names, they should still have a consistent format.
• We've twice shifted venue already. Rather than shift a third time, why not simply notify editors in other venues that the discussion is ongoing here? Say, Wikipedia talk:MOS and Wikipedia talk:Village pump? LeadSongDog (talk) 03:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• BIPM can use titles like "The unit of length", but that isn't an option for us, because we have more than one unit of length. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 03:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Created a banner

I've created a banner for this project, {{WPMeasure}}. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 17:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Help requested

I was going to wikify Integrated instrumentation system, but it defeats me. I don't know enough about the subject to work out which of the seemingly overlapping sentences to delete etc. Grateful if someone from this project could help. Heds (talk) 02:03, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Apothecaries' system

I've been doing some article tagging and assessment, and I came across this article, which seems pretty damn good to me. I've tagged it as A-class for the moment, but I would appreciate it others could read through it to check that it really is complete. The criterion should be "can I think of anything else that should be in there but isn't?", although all comments are welcome of course. Physchim62 (talk) 13:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

BTW, you shouldn't open PR and GA at once. PR should do at this point, to get some feedback on completeness (I don't know anything about it). Then GA.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:11, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The peer review is here. I've notified the following WikiProjects to see if any of their members know anything about the topic: Physics; Chemistry; Pharmacology; History of science; Medicine; Science. Physchim62 (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bot tagging

Someone should look into making a WP:BOTREQ for tagging categories such as Category:Systems of units and subcategories (and all other relevant categories, many of which can be found in Category:Measurement). It'll probably have a few non-units articles tagged but we can remove those afterwards. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 13:41, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

For the moment, I'm slowly going through "by hand" so that I can do assessments at the same time. I'm not a great fan of bot-tagging runs, but I won't oppose if there are more people who want it done that way. Physchim62 (talk) 14:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Hate (hyperbole) bot-tagging??? I'm pretty flabbergasted by this, especially how extensively we use them at WP:PHYS. As for assessing quality things, you can ask for quality to be filled in from other templates or to leave that alone. Considering only 3 articles are covered right now, I'd say to auto-assess, then after the bots are done, you can review things to make sure that the assessment makes sense.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 14:21, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that I "hate" autotagging either! We've done a few runs in the past on WP:CHEM, although we don't use it routinely. On the other hand, measurement is only a small subject area, so the benefits of a bot run are less obvious. I wouldn't have found Apothecaries' system by a bot run, for example, now I'm left with having to improvise an A-class review system! That article, btw, wasn't tagged by any project until I came along yesterday, and the same goes for more than half the articles I'm finding. Physchim62 (talk) 08:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Well obviously the bot doesn't pick up everything, but it certainly helps to build a "base", both in article and in users. Others see the wikiproject tags, some join the project, and many will still tag articles with the banner even if they don't join. Also it would allow to monitor some articles through WP:AAlerts. Still I'd rather you (or someone else) build the categories-to-be-tagged lists, as I'm pretty busy on other areas of WP, namely deploying WP:AAlerts and reviving the physics taskforces. Plus I also have a master's degree I need to work on :P. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:57, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Review of article Standard

Could someone take a look at Standard? I can't quite decide if it should be split into two different articles or if it just needs a little cleanup. RJFJR (talk) 19:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't really see where you'd split it. There is no useful distinction at the general level between de jure standards and industry standards, as the same types of documents occur in both. Nor can I see a useful distinction between standards in different subject areas. Don't forget that we have many, many articles on important technical standards (see Category:Standards).

I would remove "standard units" as a colloquialism with no real technical sense.

There is a pertinent question on the talk page as to whether this article should be squatting the article title, or whether Standard (disambiguation) should be moved there and the current article be moved to Standard (technical) or something similar. Physchim62 (talk) 20:08, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:23, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Consistency and diversity in weights and measures

Wikipedia rightly strives for both consistency and diversity in usage. In some cases this means making a choice between competing usages; in other cases, the differing usages are accepted. So, the differences between British and American spelling is accommodated, while, sensibly, the rules state that individual articles should be internally consistent. The same rule applies to weights and measures, only here we generally need to supply both SI and Imperial/US Customary units for the sake of readers who often are not familiar with one or the others.

However, there is a problem with inconsistency between similar articles, which can quite arbitrarily swing between metric and Imperial measures. This may be seen in the following table:

Metric first	Imperial first
Cornwall	Devon
Skye	Lewis and Harris
Shetland	Orkney
Cambridgeshire	Oxfordshire
Staffordshire	Leicestershire
Dorset	Hampshire
Jersey	Guernsey, Alderney, Sark
Niagara River	Niagara Falls
East Falkland, West Falkland	Falkland Islands

Now a certain amount of inconsistency is inevitable when editors have different preferences for weights and measures, but these variations are more Monty Python than encyclopedic. Now I know full well that we can't impose a rigid rule on people. However, I believe that we could put in place guidelines that would nudge editors towards more consistency.

What do people think of a policy that UK based articles should have both SI related measures and Imperial measures, and that in general, the measures be placed in that order. What do others think? Michael Glass (talk) 11:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• There was a debate about this somewhere esle a little while ago: can you provide a link to it? Physchim62 (talk) 14:36, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

It's copy-pased from WT:MOSNUM.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I hope that people will express their opinions about my proposal here. This would be helpful in working out whether the small change in policy that I propose is feasible. Michael Glass (talk) 10:03, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Scottish units of length

We have a large number of articles that spread the misinformation – which was state of scientific knowledge until five years ago – that the Scottish national units of length which were abolished by the Acts of Union 1707 were slightly longer than the English equivalents. R. D. Connor made a compelling argument that this idea is due to a mistake by 19th century antiquarians who misinterpreted the only surviving ell standard; see Connor, R.D.; Simpson, A.D.C. (2004). Weights and Measures in Scotland. East Linton. ISBN 978-1901663884. . (To be precise, no ell standard survived, only a container for an ell standard, which had to be slightly longer to contain the standard itself. The antiquarians simply took the length of the container. From extant similar English objects it's clear that the resulting error accounts for the 0.16% which the Scottish inch is supposed to be longer.) The Scottish units date back to a time when the larger Scottish burghs were something like English colonies (I don't have the book with me now, and I don't remember the exact terminology) and the English were using both yards and ells. In England the yard survived, in Scotland the ell. There are similar issues with some units of weight, which also seem to be closely related, if not identical, to certain English units of weight.

There is a proliferation of articles on individual Scottish units, linked from Obsolete Scottish units of measurement. Many of them need correcting (or merging), perhaps most blatantly inch (Scots) and the main article itself. Problems: This is a very recent scientific result. Connor's findings appear to be highly plausible and scientifically uncontroversial, but they will not be liked by Scottish nationalists. They are also so new that I found only one (formally not very reliable) online source which gets this right [1], while dozens of formally reliable sources (such as museum websites) say that a Scottish inch was 1.0016 Imperial inches.

Without the complications this would be a relatively straightforward clean-up job, but as it is I don't dare embark on this without first seeing if there is some support from this project. If anyone is sufficiently interested, I really recommend reading Connor's book. It's huge and quite heavy, but also beautiful (the coauthor contributed the photos, I believe) and absolutely riveting. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:54, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I've been looking at many of these articles as part of my recent tagging spree. I think you missed the most ridiculous, which is Mile (Scots)! The idea that normal weights and measures in the early eighteenth century were defined to two parts in a thousand (as in the purported Scots inch) rather stretches credibility. The Scots measures were not abolished with the Act of Union in 1707, but unified with English measures during the nineteenth century. Some live on to this day (eg, the "wee dram", which is significantly larger than its English counterpart).

I general, I think we need to be merging a lot of the sub-stubs on customary units into longer articles. Not just Scots units, but also the thirty-or-so articles of 3–5 lines that we have on South Asian customary units for example. It's a big job, and I'm still working through our article pool looking for the problems.

If and when we do the merges for Scots units, we need to be careful about NPOV. Wikipedia cannae determine what the value of a unit was 400 years ago! Light-year does a fairly good job of this, I think, explaining why WP chooses one particular definition, rather than others that are also supported by reliable sources. Physchim62 (talk) 14:02, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

It was your tagging that reminded me of the problem. I agree it's not restricted to Scottish units at all, and perhaps we should do them last, when we have gathered some experience with the others. I think we should have one set of articles describing the various systems of units, and another set describing the various individual units with all local variations. E.g. an article on traditional English units (perhaps with subarticles about pre-Imperial, Imperial and American), traditional French units etc., and foot, inch, ell (actually one article for all three might be better) discussing these units as they existed in England, France, Spain, Roman Empire, ancient Greece, Egypt etc. Perhaps we can make an exception for units that are still in use.

I don't think the level of precision about the Scottish inch is ridiculous at all. The actual physical standards were for the ell of 37 inches, which like the yard of 36 inches is roughly a metre. 0.16% of that is 1.6 mm. The surviving yard standards consist of the standard itself and a container whose inside is roughly 2 mm longer so it fits comfortably. These matters were always connected with taxation and royal authority, so it seems natural that people always used the highest practicable degree of precision. (On the other hand the 15th century French national weight standard [2] has internal inconsistencies. Unfortunately I can't find the source with the detailed information about this.)

I don't know what you mean by unification as opposed to abolishment. Connor describes that Scottish units such as the ell (which by then had died out in England) became illegal and English units such as the yard (which by then had died out in Scotland) had to be used. The physical standards had to be destroyed. I believe only the master standards survived, were later distributed to many different castles, and then lost; only a few including an ell bed survived. (Not sure about the details here, as this is from memory.)

We also need to distinguish between units for different purposes. Units for measuring gold or medicine were defined to a much higher level of precision than units for measuring corn or wood. We need to take this into account especially for anthropocentric units such as local variants of the acre; I think I once saw sources for this in the UK; in Germany we had the Morgen ("morning"), also called "Tagwerk" ("day's work"). These were highly variable because they tended to adjust to the average quality of the land, the typical crops, and the typical methods used by the farmers. It's probably better not to discuss these local units along with the national units. (And we should also dispel the silly 17th century myth/polemic that the "Royal foot" changed when there was a new king.) --Hans Adler (talk) 15:15, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. The Scots units of length were not abolished by the Act of Union 1707, or by the Weights and Measures Act 1824. They were unified with the English system by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland in 1685.

"Our sovereign lord, thinking it fit that there should be a fixed standard for measuring and computation of miles, and that the whole isle of Britain should be under one certain kind of commensuration, does therefore, with consent of the estates of parliament, statute and ordain that three barley corns set lengthwise shall make an inch, as it is already used, that twelve inches shall make a foot of measure, which is to be the only foot by which all workmen, especially masons, wrights, glaziers and others are ordained to measure their work in all time coming, under the pain of £100 on each occasion, three of these foots are to make a yard, as three foot and one inch makes a Scots ell, and 1,760 yards are to make a mile, which is to be made the standard of computation from place to place in all time coming." 1 Jac. VII c. 44, APS viii 494, c.59, RPS 1685/4/83

I'm rather dubious about the homogeneity of the Scottish standards before the 17th century. There are Acts in 1555 and 1563 forcing the burghs to obtain standard measures from Edinburgh; in 1587 a Royal Commission was set up to harmonise the different measures from around Scotland; in 1607, there was another Act to try and enforce the use of standard measures; and in 1663 there was an Act which specifically forbade the division of the ell into 42 inches instead of 37! In other words, there is no basis for saying that there were any national standards which could be meaningfully expressed in SI units. Physchim62 (talk) 22:55, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

If I remember correctly (and it seems you just caught me misremembering the Scottish conversion to English units), Connor argues that there were island-wide units already in the first millennium. (This seems quite plausible, since trade would have caused the uniform units introduced by the Romans to survive for a long time.) The important thing is to remember that for some uses there are local forces (e.g. an acre should be how much you can typically plough in a day, and that's a different amount of square metres in different parts of the country), and for others there are trade-related forces (e.g. British, and especially Scottish, cloth was traded mainly in Cologne, and the unit for this may well have been the Rhenish foot; and while the yard of 36 inches was used for some purposes, the curious ell of 37 inches ≈ 3 Rhenish feet was used for others including cloth). And therefore local and (inter)national units existed in parallel, exactly like the survey and international yard in the US, and for the same reasons. While much of this may be speculation when going so far back, the ell of 42 inches doesn't convince me at all. Standards tend to compete with each other, and this may well have been an instance of a regional standard becoming a danger to a national one. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:37, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

There are two main problems with the Scots units: 1) there is a lot of folklore that surrounds them, which is attractive to a certain nationalist fringe; 2) the control of the centre (the Crown) seems to have been fairly weak in the face of the merchants and their representatives in the burghs, especially after the Union of the Crowns in 1603. This is a fascinating discussion by the co-author of Connor's text, which you might already be aware of (I can't remember how I found it now, so it could well have been one of your links!). To illustrate point (2), the Scots mile was formally abolished in 1685, but continued to be used well into the 18th century (including in one act of the Parliament of Scotland): needless to say, the idea that it was based on the length of a street in Edinburgh, however important the street, is metrological idiocy. The Dictionary of the Scots Language (free online here) appears to provide some brief but balanced discussion and examples of (written) use of the various units.

As for South Asian units, I've been having fun this week, and you can see the best result at candy (unit) ;) Physchim62 (talk) 01:28, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to Simpson's text – I didn't know it, and I have bookmarked it now. I agree with your point 1 and I don't doubt 2. But for me a central authority isn't all that important. What I learned from Connor's book is that it makes sense to think of units as a language; they are held compatible by the need of people living in different places to communicate/trade with each other, not by by written grammars, or by laws and assizes. There is a complex interplay between regional dialects/regional units and the language itself/widely used units. The essential point for me is that during much of Scottish history (since we are discussing this problematic example) there were some units that were used almost everywhere, but not to the exclusion of other, more local standards, and by no means restricted to Scotland. It's probably not the most logical way to organise this information in articles about Scottish units, but that's what we have now, and that's where most readers will look for the obsolete (politically attractive) information that I would like to replace with what we know today.

Candy (unit) looks great! --Hans Adler (talk) 11:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] RfC pointer: units derived from U.S. survey foot

A Request for Comments is in progress at Talk:United States customary units about whether the units link, rod, chain, acre, and statute mile are derived from the international foot or the survey foot. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] World Metrology Day

Well, it looks like we've missed in for this year [3]! In was 20 May. Maybe someone can look out for it next year… Physchim62 (talk) 12:03, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Foundry Sand testing equipments

We may need to include Foundry sand testing equipments which test bulk and prepared foundry sand and have unique testing parameters Pushkraj.janwadkar (talk) 10:05, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

No. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:56, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Might be interesting for you guys

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Physics#Stuff_that_is_missing_in_a_lot_of_physics_articles. See also {{Infobox Physical quantity}} and {{Infobox Unit}}. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:41, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Old units

Anybody have a legitimate reference discussing the difference between a Dutch mile and an English mile? This essentially states that a Dutch mile was 4.61 times greater than an English mile, but it's only in passing. An article for each (or at least a redirect to the right section in an article) would be really handy in my efforts to expand articles on New Netherland. wadester16 14:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

According to Dutch units of measurement#Mijl the mile wasn't really standardised in the Netherlands but was very roughly 5 km. The Dutch article nl:Mijl (Nederland) has exactly the same information and is also unreferenced. Your "Dutch mile" of 4.61 English miles (7.4 km) would be considerably more than any of the examples given, so there is reason for caution. Interesting problem. I will see if I can look it up somewhere else. Hans Adler 15:21, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

According to one source, "the Dutch mile was very variable but usually taken as the equivalent of the English league (3 miles) in the 17th century". [4] That would be 4.8 km.

In another source it's clear that a Dutch mile was roughly 4 English miles, i.e. 6.4 km. [5] And another. [6]

Both sources seem highly relevant, as they talk about the Dutch empire or North America, respectively. Hans Adler 15:31, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

A Dutch mile as 4¹⁄₄ English miles. [7] Hans Adler 15:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Yet another source goes into great detail: Previously variable, the Dutch mile was standardised as 1 league (unit) in the 17th century. According to the source, 1 league was 3.18 nautical miles (is that true?), which was in practice taken as 3 nautical miles. [8] What the source doesn't say is that this applies only in a nautical context (on land a league was 3 land miles). Presumably, following this source, a Dutch mile was an English sea league, whether on land or on sea. That would have been 5.89 km (3.18 nm) or 5.56 (3 nm). The last number is the first that is consistent with one from our article: It's the one referred to as the French sea league. I think I had better stop here. Hans Adler 15:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help. Oddly, here it says a Dutch mijle was only 0.62 English mile. Sigh... wadester16 20:32, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Convert it into kilometres and it will make sense. Metrication generally comes with the introduction of customary units that have the old names but are redefined to easily remembered multiples of metric units. E.g. throughout Europe the older people still think in terms of [metric] pounds, which are exactly 1/2 kg. If you remember that a US pint is 473 ml and a UK/Canada pint is 568 ml, then it's easy to predict that once North America and the UK are fully metric they will use a metric pint of 1/2 litre. This metric "mijle" is only a bit unusual in that it was so much less than the previously used unit. Hans Adler 08:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems fairly clear that this "Dutch mile" is actually the Dutch equivalent of the German geographische Meile and the Danish geografisk mil, that is almost exactly four English nautical miles or 7.4 kilometres. This unit was widely used in Northern Europe, especially for measurements at sea. Note that the correspondance between "Dutch miles" and English miles is not exact: page 34 of the Van Rensselaer Bowier manuscripts gives the conversion factor as ¹³⁵⁄₂₉, which is marginally different from the ^18.44⁄₄ quoted above. I have another reference from the late 19th century which gives the Dutch mile as almost exactly one kilometre, but I don't think it's relevant here for the reasons Hans explains. Physchim62 (talk) 14:47, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

It's apparent from reading the decision in Van Gorden v. Jackson pp.315-340 that the term "Dutch mile", as used in 1678, had at best a vague meaning which that NY State Supreme Court eventually took as 4 English miles (p.324 refers), reversing a lower court in February 1809. I'd be reluctant to ascribe a specific value given that the usage was so confusing even at that time. It was an interesting read, though.LeadSongDog come howl 18:33, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Digit grouping style (notice of discussion)

In case anyone is interested, a discussion about digit grouping styles is taking place at Village Pump (policy), related to this question:

On Wikipedia, should the selection of digit grouping styles depend upon regional and topical conventions used in the English language?

Please refer to that page for details and discussion. TheFeds 04:30, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Move proposal - additional input wanted

I've proposed Shaku to be moved to Chi (length) based on my reasoning on the talk page. Currently it seems there may be conflict of interest among the editors (including myself), so I would like some neutral input in the matter and also help establish whether shaku is an established usage in English. Thanks. --antilived^{T | C | G} 13:13, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Jupiter mass

Someone merged Jupiter mass into the planet Jupiter. This was the second attempt at a forced merge without discussion.

User:Spacepotato reverted it, but it's still being pushed at the Jupiter talk page, with complaints that there has always been resistance to the move. If the proposer can't be persuaded of the ilogic of such a merge, at least let weight of numbers dissuade him. HarryAlffa (talk) 16:39, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Mass articles merge into Astronomical system of units

Proposal that Solar mass, Jupiter mass, Earth mass & Lunar mass be merged into Astronomical system of units.

Discussion here. -- HarryAlffa (talk) 11:52, 21 September 2009 (UTC)