Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Measurement forms an essential part of our view of the world. Our world is measured and calibrated, and we are all subject to the tyranny of these numbers. In this updated and extended edition, Jeffrey Huw Williams outlines the history of measurement; particularly of the International System of units (SI). Since the previous edition, the base units of the SI have been redefined; realizing a 150-year-old dream for a measurement system based on unchanging, fundamental quantities of nature. This change has created a new SI, a Quantum SI, which will significantly change the way we look at nature in a quantitative manner, and greatly facilitate the advance of science.
Key Features
- Significantly updated and extended new edition
- The first book to include the new Quantum SI base unit definitions
- Features wider societal and philosophical implications of a move away from physical standards
- Outlines the history of the science of measurement, and the origin of the Metric System
- More than a textbook of metrology, it is also a history of how we have arrived at the Quantum SI
Forward
Biography of author
Introduction
1 Measurement in Antiquity
2 Measurement in the Early Modern Period
3 Measurement in the Modern World (I)
4 Measurement in the Modern World (II)
5 Creating the language that is science
6 What was not in the original Metric System
7 Measurement in the age of scientific certainty
8 A true universal language
9 Twentieth Century confusions and refinements in measurement
10 The birth of the Quantum International System of Units
11 The base units of the International System of Units (I)
12 The base units of the International System of Units (II)
13 The basis of the Quantum-SI
14 For this is science