I have replicated the John Merryman posts in essay topic 1316 to this topic, as the posts concern issues relevant to this essay.
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John Merryman replied on Jul. 6, 2012 @ 23:19 GMT
Frank,
Temperature is also a defined unit of measure. Why is it ok to conflate the measure of rate of change/time, with the measure of space, but no one conflates the scalar measure of activity/temperature with that of space? Considering there is no space without some degree of temperature and if we used ideal gas laws, it would be as easy to correlate temperature with volume, as it is to use the velocity of light to correlate duration and distance.
Time is a measure of change. Distance, area and volume are measures of space.
Frank Makinson wrote on Jul. 7, 2012 @ 00:40 GMT
John,
I addressed the issue of the unit of time in the essay, temperature is not mentioned anywhere within it.
The current SI definition for temperature, the Kelvin, is not based upon any physical constants, it is based upon the characteristics of a particular molecular compound. "The kelvin, unit of thermodynamic temperature, is the fraction 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water."
Kelvin
It is my opinion that the scientific unit for temperature should be defined as an energy level, but SI does not have a base unit of energy to even consider a starting point.
John Merryman replied on Jul. 7, 2012 @ 03:33 GMT
Frank,
Sorry for not reading your paper yet, due to a lack of personal time.
Yes, temperature is generally thought of in terms of molecular activity, but it's only institutional bias that radioactive processes are not normally included. Step in a pool of radioactive water and while you may not immediately sense the burn, you will still be definitely burned.
What is the base unit of time? Some cycle or vibration of a cesium atom? So a particular duration of this atomic activity is a constant, but a scalar measure of its action wouldn't also be a constant?
The point I keep making is that while we think of duration as a kind of temporal distance from one event to another, along which the present moves, logically it is the changing configuration of what is present, so that it is the events going from being future to being past. Time then being a measure of actions occurring within the present, not external to it. Duration is a bit like the moonwalk; action without actually moving forward.
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