Measurement - How it works



Numbers

In modern life, people take for granted the existence of the base-10, of decimal numeration system—a name derived from the Latin word decem , meaning "ten." Yet there is nothing obvious about this system, which has its roots in the ten fingers used for basic counting. At other times in history, societies have adopted the two hands or arms of a person as their numerical frame of reference, and from this developed a base-2 system. There have also been base-5 systems relating to the fingers on one hand, and base-20 systems that took as their reference point the combined number of fingers and toes.

Obviously, there is an arbitrary quality underlying the modern numerical system, yet it works extremely well. In particular, the use of decimal fractions (for example, 0.01 or 0.235) is particularly helpful for rendering figures other than whole numbers. Yet decimal fractions are a relatively recent innovation in Western mathematics, dating only to the sixteenth century. In order to be workable, decimal fractions rely on an even more fundamental concept that was not always part of Western mathematics: place-value.

Place-Value and Notation Systems

Place-value is the location of a number relative to others in a sequence, a location that makes it possible to determine the number's value. For instance, in the number 347, the 3 is in the hundreds place, which immediately establishes a value for the number in units of 100. Similarly, a person can tell at a glance that there are 4 units of 10, and 7 units of 1.

Of course, today this information appears to be self-evident—so much so that an explanation of it seems tedious and perfunctory—to almost anyone who has completed elementary-school arithmetic. In fact, however, as with almost everything about numbers and units, there is nothing obvious at all about place-value; otherwise, it would not have taken Western mathematicians thousands of years to adopt a place-value numerical system. And though they did eventually make use of such a system, Westerners did not develop it themselves, as we shall see.

ROMAN NUMERALS.

Numeration systems of various kinds have existed since at least 3000 B.C. , but the most important number

STANDARDIZATION IS CRUCIAL TO MAINTAINING STABILITY IN A SOCIETY. DURING THE GERMAN INFLATIONARY CRISIS OF THE 1920S, HYPERINFLATION LED TO AN ECONOMIC DEPRESSION AND THE RISE OF ADOLF HITLER. HERE, TWO CHILDREN GAZE UP AT A STACK OF 100,000 GERMAN MARKS—THE EQUIVALENT AT THE TIME TO ONE U.S. DOLLAR. (© Bettmann/Corbis.)
S TANDARDIZATION IS CRUCIAL TO MAINTAINING STABILITY IN A SOCIETY . D URING THE G ERMAN INFLATIONARY CRISIS OF THE 1920 S , HYPERINFLATION LED TO AN ECONOMIC DEPRESSION AND THE RISE OF A DOLF H ITLER . H ERE , TWO CHILDREN GAZE UP AT A STACK OF 100,000 G ERMAN MARKS THE EQUIVALENT AT THE TIME TO ONE U.S. DOLLAR . (
© Bettmann/Corbis
.)
system in the history of Western civilization prior to the late Middle Ages was the one used by the Romans. Rome ruled much of the known world in the period from about 200 B.C. to about A.D. 200, and continued to have an influence on Europe long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in A.D. 476—an influence felt even today. Though the Roman Empire is long gone and Latin a dead language, the impact of Rome continues: thus, for instance, Latin terms are used to designate species in biology. It is therefore easy to understand how Europeans continued to use the Roman numeral system up until the thirteenth century A.D. —despite the fact that Roman numerals were enormously cumbersome.

The Roman notation system has no means of representing place-value: thus a relatively large number such as 3,000 is shown as MMM, whereas a much smaller number might use many more "places": 438, for instance, is rendered as CDXXXVIII. Performing any sort of calculations with these numbers is a nightmare. Imagine, for instance, trying to multiply these two. With the number system in use today, it is not difficult to multiply 3,000 by 438 in one's head. The problem can be reduced to a few simple steps: multiply 3 by 400, 3 by 30, and 3 by 8; add these products together; then multiply the total by 1,000—a step that requires the placement of three zeroes at the end of the number obtained in the earlier steps.

But try doing this with Roman numerals: it is essentially impossible to perform this calculation without resorting to the much more practical place-value system to which we're accustomed. No wonder, then, that Roman numerals have been relegated to the sidelines, used in modern life for very specific purposes: in outlines, for instance; in ordinal titles (for example, Henry VIII); or in designating the year of a motion picture's release.

HINDU-ARABIC NUMERALS.

The system of counting used throughout much of the world—1, 2, 3, and so on—is the Hindu-Arabic notation system. Sometimes mistakenly referred to as "Arabic numerals," these are most accurately designated as Hindu or Indian numerals. They came from India, but because Europeans discovered them in the Near East during the Crusades (1095-1291), they assumed the Arabs had invented the notation system, and hence began referring to them as Arabic numerals.

Developed in India during the first millennium B.C. , Hindu notation represented a vast improvement over any method in use up to or indeed since that time. Of particular importance was a number invented by Indian mathematicians: zero. Until then, no one had considered zero worth representing since it was, after all, nothing. But clearly the zeroes in a number such as 2,000,002 stand for something. They perform a place-holding function: otherwise, it would be impossible to differentiate between 2,000,002 and 22.

Uses of Numbers in Science

SCIENTIFIC NOTATION.

Chemists and other scientists often deal in very large or very small numbers, and if they had to write out these numbers every time they discussed them, their work would soon be encumbered by lengthy numerical expressions. For this purpose, they use scientific notation, a method for writing extremely large or small numbers by representing

THE UNITED STATES NAVAL OBSERVATORY IN WASHINGTON, D.C., IS AMERICA'S PREEMINENT STANDARD FOR THE EXACT TIME OF DAY. (Richard T. Nowitz/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)
T HE U NITED S TATES N AVAL O BSERVATORY IN W ASHINGTON , D.C., IS A MERICA ' S PREEMINENT STANDARD FOR THE EXACT TIME OF DAY . (
Richard T. Nowitz/Corbis
. Reproduced by permission.)
them as a number between 1 and 10 multiplied by a power of 10.

Instead of writing 75,120,000, for instance, the preferred scientific notation is 7.512 · 10 7 . To interpret the value of large multiples of 10, it is helpful to remember that the value of 10 raised to any power n is the same as 1 followed by that number of zeroes. Hence 10 25 , for instance, is simply 1 followed by 25 zeroes.

Scientific notation is just as useful—to chemists in particular—for rendering very small numbers. Suppose a sample of a chemical compound weighed 0.0007713 grams. The preferred scientific notation, then, is 7.713 · 10 −4 . Note that for numbers less than 1, the power of 10 is a negative number: 10 −1 is 0.1, 10 −2 is 0.01, and so on.

Again, there is an easy rule of thumb for quickly assessing the number of decimal places where scientific notation is used for numbers less than 1. Where 10 is raised to any power −n, the decimal point is followed by n places. If 10 is raised to the power of −8, for instance, we know at a glance that the decimal is followed by 7 zeroes and a 1.

SIGNIFICANT FIGURES.

In making measurements, there will always be a degree of uncertainty. Of course, when the standards of calibration (discussed below) are very high, and the measuring instrument has been properly calibrated, the degree of uncertainty will be very small. Yet there is bound to be uncertainty to some degree, and for this reason, scientists use significant figures—numbers included in a measurement, using all certain numbers along with the first uncertain number.

Suppose the mass of a chemical sample is measured on a scale known to be accurate to 10 −5 , kg. This is equal to 1/100,000 of a kilo, or 1/100 of a gram; or, to put it in terms of place-value, the scale is accurate to the fifth place in a decimal fraction. Suppose, then, that an item is placed on the scale, and a reading of 2.13283697 kg is obtained. All the numbers prior to the 6 are significant figures, because they have been obtained with certainty. On the other hand, the 6 and the numbers that follow are not significant figures because the scale is not known to be accurate beyond 10 −5 kg.

Thus the measure above should be rendered with 7 significant figures: the whole number 2, and the first 6 decimal places. But if the value is given as 2.132836, this might lead to inaccuracies at some point when the measurement is factored into other equations. The 6, in fact, should be "rounded off" to a 7. Simple rules apply to the rounding off of significant figures: if the digit following the first uncertain number is less than 5, there is no need to round off. Thus, if the measurement had been 2.13283627 kg (note that the 9 was changed to a 2), there is no need to round off, and in this case, the figure of 2.132836 is correct. But since the number following the 6 is in fact a 9, the correct significant figure is 7; thus the total would be 2.132837.

Fundamental Standards of Measure

So much for numbers; now to the subject of units. But before addressing systems of measurement, what are the properties being measured? All forms of scientific measurement, in fact, can be reduced to expressions of four fundamental properties: length, mass, time, and electric current. Everything can be expressed in terms of these properties: even the speed of an electron spinning around the nucleus of an atom can be shown as "length" (though in this case, the measurement of space is in the form of a circle or even more complex shapes) divided by time.

Of particular interest to the chemist are length and mass: length is a component of volume, and both length and mass are elements of density. For this reason, a separate essay in this book is devoted to the subject of Mass, Density, and Volume. Note that "length," as used in this most basic sense, can refer to distance along any plane, or in any of the three dimensions—commonly known as length, width, and height—of the observable world. (Time is the fourth dimension.) In addition, as noted above, "length" measurements can be circular, in which case the formula for measuring space requires use of the coefficient π, roughly equal to 3.14.



Also read article about Measurement from Wikipedia

User Contributions:

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: