大学物理（英文版）笔记 chapter1 Measurement

1.1 What is Physics?

Science and engineering are based on measurements and comparisons(测量的本质就是comparisons).

Thus, we need rules about how things are measured and compared, and we need experiments to establish the units for those measurements and comparisons.
One purpose of physics (and engineering) is to design and conduct those experiments.

1.2 Measuring Things

We discover physics by learning how to measure the quantities involved in physics. Among these quantities are length, time, mass, temperature, pressure, and electric current（电流）.

We measure each physical quantity（物理量） in its own units, by comparison with a standard.

The unit（单位） is a unique name we assign to measures of that quantity—for example, meter (m) for the quantity length.

vacuum 真空

There are so many physical quantities that it is a problem to organize them.Fortunately, they are not all independent.

Thus, what we do is pick out—by international agreement—a small number of physical quantities, such as length and time, and assign standards to them alone. We then define all other physical quantities in terms of these base quantities（基本量） and their standards (called base standards,基本标准). Speed, for example, is defined in terms of the base quantities length and time and their base standards.

Base standards must be both accessible and invariable（易接近且不变的）.

index finger 食指

outstretched 伸出的

The demand for precision in science and engineering pushes us to aim first for invariability（首要追求不变性）. We then exert great effort to make duplicates（复制品） of the base standards that are accessible to those who need them.

1.3 The International System of Units

In 1971, the 14th General Conference on Weights and Measures picked seven quantities as base quantities, thereby forming the basis of the International System of Units（国际单位制的基础）, abbreviated SI from its French name and popularly known as the metric system（公制）

在国际单位制中，将单位分成三类：基本单位、导出单位和辅助单位

Many SI derived units（导出单位） are defined in terms of these base units.

example：$1watt=1W=1kg\cdot m^2/s^3$ read as kilogram-meter squared per second cubed

To express the very large and very small quantities we often run into in physics, we use scientific notation（科学计数法）.

example：$3560000000m=3.56\times 10^{9}m$

Scientific notation on computers sometimes takes on an even briefer look, as in 3.56 E9 , where E stands for “exponent of ten.” It is briefer still on some calculators, where E is replaced with an empty space.

As a further convenience when dealing with very large or very small measurements, we use the prefixes（前缀）.

example：$1.27\times 10^{9}watts=1.27gigawatts=1.27GW$

1.4 Changing Units（单位转换）

We often need to change the units in which a physical quantity is expressed. We do so by a method called chain-link conversion（链式转换）.

In this method, we multiply the original measurement by a conversion factor（转换系数） (a ratio of units that is equal to unity).

example：$80km/h\times \frac{1m/s}{3.6km/h}=80\frac{km\times \frac{1000m}{1km}}{h\times \frac{3600s}{1h}}$

For example, the ratios (1 min)/(60 s) and (60 s)/(1 min) can be used as conversion factors.

If you introduce a conversion factor in such a way that unwanted units do not cancel, invert the factor and try again.

1.5 Length

In 1792, the newborn Republic of France established a new system of weights and measures. Its cornerstone（基石） was the meter, defined to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the north pole to the equator （从北极到赤道距离的千万分之一）.

Later, for practical reasons, this Earth standard was abandoned and the meter came to be defined as the distance between two fine lines engraved near the ends of a platinum – iridium bar（靠近铂-铱条两端雕刻的两条细线之间的距离）, the standard meter bar, which was kept at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris. Accurate copies of the bar were sent to standardizing laboratories throughout the world. These secondary standards（二级标准） were used to produce other, still more accessible standards, so that ultimately every measuring device derived（获得） its authority from the standard meter bar through a complicated chain of comparisons.

In 1960, a new standard for the meter, based on the wavelength of light, was adopted. Specifically, the standard for the meter was redefined to be $1650763.73$ wavelengths of a particular orange-red light emitted by atoms of krypton-86（氪-86） (a particular isotope（同位素）, or type, of krypton) in a gas discharge tube（气体放电管） that can be set up anywhere in the world.

By 1983, however, the demand for higher precision had reached such a point that even the krypton-86 standard could not meet it, and in that year a bold step was taken. The meter was redefined as the distance traveled by light in a specified time interval.

The meter is the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval
of 1/299 792 458 of a second.

This time interval was chosen so that the speed of light c is exactly $c=299792458m/s$

1.6 Time

Time has two aspects. For civil（民用的） and some scientific purposes, we want to know the time of day so that we can order events in sequence. In much scientific work, we want to know how long an event lasts.

Any phenomenon that repeats itself is a possible time standard.

A quartz clock（石英钟）, in which a quartz ring（石英环） is made to vibrate continuously（持续振动）, can be calibrated against Earth’s rotation via astronomical observations（通过天文观测校准地球自转） and used to measure time intervals in the laboratory. However, the calibration cannot be carried out with the accuracy called for by modern scientific and engineering technology（校准不能以现代科学和工程技术要求的精度进行）.

To meet the need for a better time standard, atomic clocks（原子钟） have been developed.

An atomic clock at the National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, is the standard for Coordinated Universal Time(UTC) in the United States. Its time signals are available by shortwave radio （短波收音机）(stations WWV and WWVH) and by telephone (303-499-7111).

cesium (atomic) clock 铯原子钟

One second is the time taken by 9 192 631 770 oscillations of the light (of a specified wavelength) emitted by a cesium-133 atom.（一秒是 9 192 631 770 次铯-133 原子发出的光（特定波长）振荡所用的时间。）

Atomic clocks are so consistent that, in principle, two cesium clocks would have to run for 6000 years before their readings would differ by more than 1 s. Even such accuracy pales in comparison with that of clocks currently being developed; their precision may be 1 part in $10^{18}$—that is, 1 s in $1\times 10^{18}s$(which is about $3\times 10^{10}$ y).

1.7 Mass

The Standard Kilogram

The SI standard of mass is a platinum–iridium cylinder (铂铱圆筒) kept at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris and assigned, by international agreement, a mass of 1 kilogram.

vault 保险库

A Second Mass Standard（第二质量标准）

The masses of atoms can be compared with one another more precisely than they can be compared with the standard kilogram.

For this reason, we have a second mass standard. It is the carbon-12 atom, which, by international agreement, has been assigned a mass of 12 atomic mass units (u).

$$1u=1.66053886\times 10^{-27}kg$$

with an uncertainty of $\pm 10$ in the last two decimal places.

Scientists can, with reasonable precision, experimentally determine the masses of other atoms
relative to the mass of carbon-12. What we presently lack is a reliable means of extending that precision to more common units of mass==（将精度扩展到更常见的单位）==, such as a kilogram.

Density（密度）

density $\rho$ (lowercase Greek letter rho) is the mass per unit volume:

$$\rho =\frac{m}{v}$$

Densities are typically listed in kilograms per cubic meter $kg/m^3$ or grams per cubic centimeter $g/c{m}^3$.The density of water (1.00 gram per cubic centimeter) is often used as a comparison. Fresh snow has about 10% of that density; platinum has a density that is about 21 times that of water.