From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Mon Jul 19 1999 - 14:58:18 MDT
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Ron Kean <ronkean@juno.com> Wrote:
>According to the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, the second is the
>duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the
>transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the
>atom of Cesium 133.
Ok, but how long is a meter? If you define it as 1/299782458 of the distance
light moves in one second that means that as your experimental procedures
improve and you know the exact speed of light better the length of a
meter changes.
You can't define everything as you wish and remain consistent. In the last century
the Indiana state legislature tried to pass a law decreeing that the exact value of PI
was 4. It missed becoming law by one vote, but probably wouldn't have worked anyway.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.5
iQA/AwUBN5ORat+WG5eri0QzEQJS1ACgipz3dOgYIQC4udXZTkA4QeabIYkAoNIx
KkipDStU+s1Jb1dn3o2ocQcc
=Ak7y
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:31 MST