Units And Measurements

If you read this chapter well enough, you’ll be capable of doing a masters degree next.

Time

The S.I. unit of time is seconds. But wait a second, why? How did we get here? How do we measure time? Why do we measure time? This was so big a topic that we wrote a whole separate article for it here. Read that and come back.

Length

Once time was defined, and speed of light was constant (It’s so constant that length and time change, but it doesn’t. This is a proven theory by none other than Albert Einstein.), speed=distance/time and so distance=speed x time. Simply because convention had 60 seconds in a minute, metre is the S.I. unit.

Seems just like an elaborate lie doesn’t it? You haven’t seen the half of it.

Mass

Let’s invent a new standard, you and I. The standard will be called PillowGrams. Why? Because pillows are round and yet they don’t hear, “Damn you need to lose weight.” Now, I don’t want to write another article called a brief history of mass keeping, so I’ll just show you this video that summarises what has been going on with the Kg.

If you want you can also watch this and this by Veritasium, in that order. If you don’t understand some things, that should only get you more curious. You’ll get them soon enough.

Temperature

We know that the only temperature scale we use in chemistry is the Kelvin scale. The question is why? And how did we get here? Below are two videos that will explain exactly that. And more.

Wondering how exactly do we measure the volume of a gas? Check it out here.

Others

The Ampere and Mole will be explained in great detail to you by your teachers. For the Candela, we recommend you read its wikipedia page, and that’ll be enough.

The one unit we feel isn’t explained throughout 11th and 12th is the Decibel(dB). And trust me you need this because it’s literally everywhere.

Decibel

Hey this is not Sal? Where is Sal? I want Sal!!

And this will get you to say, “Hey I can do decibels. I know decibels.”

Here is the link to the wikipedia page.

Think deeper. Can decibels be negative? What would that mean? Tell us in the comments!