There are accepted standards in this world. This goes directly to the definition of, "convention". A convention is an agreement among people such that, "This will be what we mean when we refer to that". For instance, the conventional flow of electricity is from positive to negative. That method makes the math easier than dealing with negative numbers all the time, but it is merely a convention. As a person who learned about electricity when vacuum tubes were still the most used active electronic devices, I can not be convinced that something with a positive charge is emitted from the plate of a vacuum tube and arrives at the cathode. That means that I must declare that I am using, "electron flow" in order to communicate effectively.
"There are 12,000 B.T.U.s in a ton of air conditioning."
"The freezing point of water is the standard method to find zero degrees Celsius."
"The standard for atmospheric pressure is the height of a column of mercury."
"The standard for blood pressure is the height of a column of mercury."
The SI base unit for the ampere (A) is defined in terms of a hypothetical experiment as, "That constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross section, and placed 1 meter apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 × 10-7 newton per meter of length."
It is my contention that if you try to derive any of these constants and your answer is not the same as the convention, you must have made an error. Your water might not be pure, your thermometer might not be correct, and atmospheric pressure might interfere with a blood pressure measurement if you did not adhere strictly to the conditions agreed upon to make these measurements.
One example might be testing an electrical circuit to see if it works. If it doesn't work, you must have made a mistake because electrons will obey the laws of physics regardless of what you intended when you designed and built the circuit. In the same vein, water can not be wrong about its freezing temperature and mercury can not be wrong about how much it weighs.
There are very many ways to find a, "wrong" answer, but the standards can not be wrong. They were declared to be the standards and that's all there is to it.
If you don't believe the standards are correct, you can try to be seated at the next conference on weights and measures. Until then, we have to work with the standards that have been declared.
"There are 12,000 B.T.U.s in a ton of air conditioning."
"The freezing point of water is the standard method to find zero degrees Celsius."
"The standard for atmospheric pressure is the height of a column of mercury."
"The standard for blood pressure is the height of a column of mercury."
The SI base unit for the ampere (A) is defined in terms of a hypothetical experiment as, "That constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross section, and placed 1 meter apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 × 10-7 newton per meter of length."
It is my contention that if you try to derive any of these constants and your answer is not the same as the convention, you must have made an error. Your water might not be pure, your thermometer might not be correct, and atmospheric pressure might interfere with a blood pressure measurement if you did not adhere strictly to the conditions agreed upon to make these measurements.
One example might be testing an electrical circuit to see if it works. If it doesn't work, you must have made a mistake because electrons will obey the laws of physics regardless of what you intended when you designed and built the circuit. In the same vein, water can not be wrong about its freezing temperature and mercury can not be wrong about how much it weighs.
There are very many ways to find a, "wrong" answer, but the standards can not be wrong. They were declared to be the standards and that's all there is to it.
If you don't believe the standards are correct, you can try to be seated at the next conference on weights and measures. Until then, we have to work with the standards that have been declared.
