On Aug 13, 12:01 pm, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net>
wrote:
> Jonathan wrote:
> > As a physical scientists I am definitely excited about this. I think
> > the basic plans are sound.
>
> > I presently do units as symbolic variable defined in terms of a list
> > of standard SI units. I also define a list of physical constants with
> > units. This works quite well, but as mentioned by others this means
> > everything ends up expressed in terms of the fundamental units. I
> > then either have to recognize what derived unit the fundamental
> > expression is or divide it by derived units to see what I have.
>
> > So here are the key things beyond the already existing functionality
> > that would be ideal:
> > 1) Automatic look up of physical units and their uncertainties at the
> > NIST web site. I think the package should maintain a table and then
> > have a check_physical_constants() function.
>
> That might be a bit difficult. They are not in any easily accessible
> format.
>
> It is interesting that the charge on an electron returned by Mathematica
> (or Wolfram Alpha) is not the recommended value. Both NPL in the UK and
> NIST reference some document (2006 I think), yet WRI's value is not that
> value. It is however correct within the uncertainty of the measurement.
NIST supplies a simple table format. I even started to write a
parser, but I'm a lot better at parsing in perl and java, so decided I
didn't have time. If somebody wants to tackle the parsing, I can
probably dig up the link.
Jonathan
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