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From: rwt@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Rainer Thonnes)
Subject: Re: New IEC proposal: 1 kibibyte = 1024 bytes
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Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:08:45 GMT
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In article <W_Ens-ya023680001401970256090001@news.cc.umanitoba.ca>,
W_Ens@UManitoba.CA (Werner Ens) writes:
> In article <iMr2yAwZq8LX091yn@io.com>, eighner@io.com wrote:
> 
> > >So, what are the mho and seimen defined as? 
> > 
> > The unit is the Seimens.  One of them is one Seimens.  Bot the Seimens
> > and the mho are reciprocal resistance, or in other words: conductance.

First off, remember "I before E", it's Siemens, not Seimens.

> The siemens and the mho are equivalent. They are units of conductance
> or reciprocal resistance, and equal to 1 ampere/volt or 1 reciprocal 
> ohm.

Indeed.  You might say that the cycle (or cycle-per-second), the hertz,
and the second are isomorphic (well, in some sense equivalent) to the
mho, the siemens, and the ohm.  That is to say the first and second of
each triple are different names for the same thing, with the second
being the newer-fangled version of the more traditional first, and that
the third in each is the opposite (or reciprocal) of the first two.

> The siemens is now the standard, and has the symbol S.

That's a strong statement and I'm not sure it's true.  There's no argument
about the symbol, but "the standard" could easily be interpreted as meaning
that it is more fundamental than the ohm, rather than what you presumably
intended to say, namely that the standards organisations have recommended
dropping the mho and using the siemens instead, just as the hertz is being
favoured over the cycle-per-second.

The thing is that both the siemens and the hertz are completely unnecessary
units, being as they are an inverse ohm and an inverse second, respectively.
I assume that the fundamental quantity remains resistance, with conductance
being a derived quantity, just as time is more fundamental than frequency.

> The plural for siemens is siemens, the plural for mho is mhos.

I think the mho must have two plurals, one as you say, the other without
the 's'.  The same goes for the ohm.

> 1 mho = 1 ohm^-1 = 1 siemens

To complete the picture, a two-ohm resistor is a half-siemens conductor.
