Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Big Unit

A foot is twelve inches long because that was the size of the King's foot. A rod is six and a half feet long -- methinks the King was a liar.

The unit of electrical resistance is the ohm, named after the Bavarian researcher Georg Ohm. The quantity electrical conductance is the inverse of resistance and its unit is therefore the mho, the only unit of measurement that makes any reference to the Three Stooges. The mho, however, is not universal and is sometimes called the siemens which I believe establishes a leitmotif for this post.