Definition of the meter?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
21

In the official scientific world, SI should be used. If any US universities teach emerging scientists differently, then their graduates will have to re-learn once they try to publish data. This applies to data published in US based journals as well. In point, of course that value-of-volume called the litre is used where it is a convenient amount. I’m sure many lab-scientists talk of “litres”. But when it is written down it is as dm3 (superscript 3). A molar solution is corrently written using this nomenclature.

As pointed out, the original metric (or is that meteric?) system has been refined, redefined etc. over the years. So has the english language. In fact Fish and fishes are both correct, depending on your position in time in space when you were taught to write/speak. The english language has thrived and spread based on this flexibility. It has allowed it to evolve to suit contemporary needs. Languages (e.g. french) where central control is exercised have tended to decline. This is in contrast to measurement systems, where global standardisation (notice the s, not Z!)has lead to global adoption.

22

Backtracking a wee bit: << one thing keeps me puzzled. What is the exact origin of the foot? >>

It evolved at the end of the leg as a more efficient way of walking.

Well, someone had to say it.

BTW, does India count as an English-speaking country? Although there are dozens (hundreds?) of languages in India, English is the official one.

23

Again, with most biomedical science journals you’ll see derivations of liters use to express volume and not cubic meters. It’s not just talk, it’s the way formal papers in international journals are written.

Pick an article at random in a biomedical journal like Journal of Virology or Cell. Or find a cell biology paper in Nature or Science. Find the Materials and Methods section and try to find a volume expressed in cubic meters, or cubic decimeters, or any unit that’s not a liter derivative. The devices used to dispense liquids in these labs use milli-/micro- liter units. It’s not just Americans, and it’s not just informal usage. As such, students in this field learning to refer to volumes in terms of ml need not re-learn anything.

It’s not correct, but it is acceptable and widely (perhaps exclusively) used in the biomedical science community.

24

Non-yank anglophone (Australian): we use metre. Your metreage may vary. And Manduck: :smiley:

25

The BIPM does not specify how words are to be translated into non-French languages. In Italian, for example, it’s metro. The French word metre is translated into British or American English as metre or meter according to the conventions of those two nations.

It appears that the ISO may have specified a preference for “metre” in English; I don’t know, because the ISO is financed by selling their documents, so they’re not available on the web. But the BIPM has not done so, and, in any case, the operative authority in the USA, the NIST, uses “meter”.

26

kanga99 is correct, the french word is pronounced “metre”, not “metray”. And the correct spelling for the french word is mètre.

27

The conversion of French-derived ending “-re” to “-er” was a reform in American spelling, done by Noah Webster. The reason Americans use “plow” instead of “plough”, among other reforms, are due to him.

“Meter” is the correct United States English spelling, as is “center” and “color”. I am unaware of there being a generally accepted international standard for the English language.

I would be very surprised if there was a “correct, official, internationally-approved spelling” of any unit. Spelling is language-dependent. The unit is not. The German spelling, as someone said, was chosen to match the sound of the original, not the spelling. And the Chinese uses a semantic meaning instead of trying to match sound or spelling: gong1chi3. “gong1” means “public” or “standard”, and “chi3” is a traditional Chinese unit of length. A meter, in Chinese, is simply “the standard unit of length”.

To even have the concept of spelling, you need an alphabet (well, you might be able to get away with a syllabary). There cannot be any such thing as an “correct, official, internationally-approved spelling” if there is no “correct, offical, internationally-approved” alphabet, and to my knowledge, there is none.

One could argue that the (French) creators of the word spelled it “metre”, and therefore the correct English spelling is “metre”. That’s a silly argument; if you buy that, then you’d have to spell “taikun” instead of “tycoon”, “jagganath” instead of “juggernaut”, and “al-khuwarizmi” instead of “algorithm”. English is a language that has historical precedent for spelling changes.

The BIPM doesn’t have any jurisdiction over U.S.A. English spelling of “meter” any more than they have jurisdiction over what the Chinese name for “meter” is, or over what Cyrillic letters the Russian Federation uses for the unit. They get to define the unit itself, which is, IMHO, more important anyway. It just so happens that the BIPM uses the U.K. English spelling in official reports – well, they had to choose SOME language. If they chose Korean, would you insist that all of us would have to write the Hangui for “meter” as the “correct, internationally-approved spelling”?

It isn’t. A meter is 1250/381 feet. Putting all those digits in a decimal representation is just showing a misleading amount of complication.

I hope not. Change “year” to “second”, and it’d be good.

28

The SI system is not, by a long shot, universally used in science, although variants of the metric system are (almost: See below). Depending on specialization, a great many physicists use the CGS (centimeter gram second) system rather than the MKS (meter kilogram second) SI system. SI is just a particular subset of metric: All SI units are metric, but many metric units (such as the erg, the barn, the Angstrom, and the parsec) are not SI.

The one exception to this: Many theorists use systems of units specialized to their field, which are independent of any human system. String theorists (and other TOEists) use c, hbar, and G as their standards, and astronomers will commonly talk of masses, luminosities, radii, etc. in relation to the values corresponding to the Sun.

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oni, I think you missed my previous post which indicated that I was referring to spelling among people who speak English. Again, I wasn’t referring to German or Chinese or any other language. If someone wants to write a similar column in Chinese then they can discuss the Chinese spelling there. I’m really not trying to get into a lingustic argument here.

Perhaps “correct, official, internationally-approved spelling” should be changed to “correct internationally-approved English spelling”. At the very least, a column on the meter needs to give a nod to the “metre” spelling, seeing as how it’s not just Americans that have access to the internet. Worldwide, among anglophones, the American spelling is the exception, not the rule. Since the Americans changed the original spelling, and since the word “meter” has a separate definition from the unit of length as it is, that makes the American spelling a quirky little thing we did for the hell of it and not the technically correct spelling, in my opinion anyway.

Since so much of how themetric system is defined relies on appeal to authority (ultimately, the BIPM) I concluded that the use of “metre” in documents by said authority makes it the correct form, or at very least the more correct form.

Not that stops us Americans from doing whatever the hell we want anyways. :smiley:

30

What the BIPM actually says is that the word is spelled two different ways in English, and that they have therefore chosen to use “metre” in accordance with ISO Standard 31/1992. I have been unable to find what this document actually is or what it says.

And, as I said before, the NIST is the governing authority in the US, and they spell it “meter”.

31

Hey, I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned one of the metric system’s biggest failures, the metric time plan–

http://www.xs4all.nl/~rkeulen/watch/metric.html
http://zapatopi.net/metriclink.html
http://members.aol.com/JWESHLEMAN/comment08.html

Some folks want to use variations on that theme, but looks like there are several competing standards. Just like the computer industry, standards competition will delay any possible adoption…

32

How’d you guys like some almost completely off-topic trivia about the metric system and American Crankism? I thought so. All this stuff comes from Martin Gardner’s classic tome, Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science – first published in 1952.

Here goes:

In 1879, a new Boston organization calling itself the “International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights and Measures,” held a meeting in the Old South Church. At this meeting, the Society claimed its purpose was to work for the revision of measuring units to conform to sacred Pyramid standards (derived from the work of that model Pyramid crank, Charles Piazzi Smyth), and to combat the atheistic metrical system of France. James Garfield, an ardent supporter of the Society, was proposed as its president, but he refused to serve. Yep, the James Garfield. The man who became president in 1881. And was later assassainated by one Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office-seeker. Hmmm, I’m seeing a French conspiracy here. Anyone else?

Here’s some more on the American resistance to the metric system from that era.

In the 1880’s a magazine called The International Standard, was published in Cleveland. The president of that group, a civil engineer, who should know better, (he also prided himself on having an arm exactly one cubit in length) said this in the inaugural issue: “We believe our work to be the work of God; we are actuated by no selfish or mercenary motive. We depreciate personal antagonisms of every kind, but we proclaim a ceaseless antagonism to that great evil, the French Metric System….The jests of the ignorant and the ridicule of the prejudiced fall harmless upon us and deserve no notice….It is the Battle of Standards. May our banner be ever upheld in the cause of Truth, Freedom, and Universal Brotherhood, founded upon a just weight and a just measure, which alone are acceptable to the Lord.”

A later issue of The International Standard printed an interesting song. The words of the fourth verse are quite humorous:

Nice little ditty, eh? Bethca didn’t realize the metric system was truly the work of the devil. All the more reason to impose it, so I say.
[Edited by UncleBeer on 03-16-2001 at 11:36 AM]

33

If they’re in charge of naming the elements, then the spelling of the meter is outside their jurisdiction. And I don’t see how the pronouncements of a self-appointed body are “official”.

Your sarcasm is not appreciated, and the question of which spelling is correct is a matter of opinion, not fact. If you don’t understand the difference, I don’t see how you’re qualified to be writing Staff Reports.

alice_in_wonderland

Huh?

kanga99

Okay, so first Alphagene tells us that our spelling is wrong, and then when we disagree it is somehow evidence that we can’t handle other people doing things differently? Seems to me it’s the British that have a problem with people doing things differently, not us.

34

Originally posted by Arnold Winkelried:

Okay, do you mean “mee tree”, “meh treh”, “mee ter”, “mee truh” or what?

I would tend to want to pronounce “metre” (or even mètre) as “mee truh”, except that I know Brits pronounce it the same as meter.

That’s the point - the “rrrrr” sound comes more easily from an “er” than from an “re”. “Re” seems to imply a “ruh” sound. And that would be why Noah Webster tried to get rid of that spelling for American English words.

kanga99 said:

English certainly has a lack of consistency. This is an artifact of English being a composite language of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Greek, French, and moderate amounts of other components. Then, of course, is the historic separation of Americanish from British. (I know, that’s not a real word. Deal with it.) Still, I think in this case the Americans are on the right track - make the spelling match the sounds as simply as possible.

35

Unc, you rule.

36

With a yardstick.

37

:rolleyes:

38

Oops–didn’t mean to hit reply before mentioning that I’m disgusted by the lengths you’ll go to for a pun.

39

Yeah, well you shouldn’t set me up like that.

40

Sorry Irishman for my singularly unhelpful post. I meant “meh truh”.