Timeline for Isn’t natural units prone to mistakes?
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| Jun 28, 2022 at 3:01 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPhysics/status/1541617744709287942 | ||
| Jun 23, 2022 at 10:12 | comment | added | J.G. | As long as a dimensionless quantity appears, one has to be careful not to make these kinds of mistakes regardless of the notation used. Since the result is a function of $v/c$, you have to keep careful track of which function. | |
| Jun 23, 2022 at 2:25 | history | removed from network questions | Qmechanic♦ | ||
| Jun 23, 2022 at 0:49 | vote | accept | Atom | ||
| Jun 22, 2022 at 23:49 | comment | added | Matt Thompson | @SolomonSlow I think you'll find most physicists actually do use their equations, especially on the applied side (which is most of us). I've never personally used natural units (unless you count eV), and suspect in many cases it could just lead to confusion as you're dropping dimensional information from your equations. | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 22:32 | comment | added | Jojo | This is not really answering your question, but in the example you gave you could still error check $L = L_0 \sqrt{1 - \frac{v}{c}}$ by asking for $L$ real for all $v$ with $|v| < c$ | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 22:11 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Jun 22, 2022 at 17:03 | comment | added | knzhou | You could go the other way and make the notation even longer: if you wrote out "the square root of one minus the quantity v squared divided by c squared" it's very unlikely you'd ever drop a whole word when transcribing. But it would be too clunky to do anything. | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 16:58 | history | edited | Mozibur Ullah |
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| Jun 22, 2022 at 15:46 | history | edited | Qmechanic♦ |
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| Jun 22, 2022 at 15:25 | answer | added | Mozibur Ullah | timeline score: -3 | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 15:16 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jun 28, 2022 at 3:10 | |||||
| Jun 22, 2022 at 14:44 | comment | added | Solomon Slow | Physics is more about discovering the equations, not so much about using the equations to obtain numerical answers. Using unfamiliar units might increase the likelihood of getting a wrong numerical answer, but if it makes the equations themselves simpler, then that's a win for Physics. | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 14:36 | answer | added | Andrew Steane | timeline score: 24 | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 14:24 | answer | added | J. Murray | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 14:23 | comment | added | J. Manuel | In the last equation, you most probably would miss the square on $c$ at the same point you would miss in $v$ as they move together all along. Still, thinking in natural units or not, unless I will solve for $v$ somewhere, I always make the substitution $\frac{v}{c}=a$ or $b$ (or $v$) just for the annoyance factor. | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 14:16 | comment | added | Michael Seifert | All other things being equal, I would think the chance of a transcription error like this would increase with the number of symbols in your equations. That would mean that natural units end up with fewer errors overall, because they involve fewer symbols. | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 14:13 | history | edited | Atom | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 22, 2022 at 14:12 | history | edited | Atom | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 22, 2022 at 14:10 | history | asked | Atom | CC BY-SA 4.0 |