TABULA/samples/units
What is meant by the word: units ?
The units of a given physical quantity is a standardized description of what the quantity is measured in.
Thus, if discussing distance, it is not enough for us to write down the number: 2. Our audience needs to know: two – of what?
- two metres?
- two centimetres?
- two kilometres?
If we mean two kilometres, there is a standard way of writing this down: 2 km
- This standard is known as Système-Internationale (SI); and the units (km) are called SI-units.
- Other standards are possible, such as Imperial Units (the next most popular standard worldwide).
SI Units and TABULA
TABULA works internally with SI-units. It can handle units in other standards of measurement, but only if such units are defined in terms of SI-units. Thus…
- one mile (1 mi) = 1.60934 km
- one pound (1 lb) = 0.45359237 kg
(These units are pre-defined in TABULA, along with hundreds of others. You don't need to look them up in a reference book and define them to TABULA yourself.)
OBSERVATION: units is a singular noun in this context. It is short for: scientific units, and is not the plural of unit.
(The word unit[y] means one-ness, referring to the value: 1.
Examples of units are:
kg mass kilogram mph speed miles-per-hour mi/h speed miles-per-hour m/s speed metres-per-second m·s⁻² acceleration metres-per-second-every-second; metres-per-second-squared (correct SI units)