areg
6th May 2008 - 04:04 AM
I was looking at some problems in an old physic book and came across this question:
The French centime was defined to have a mass of 2 g of copper. Explain how the mass of this coin is related to the circumference of the earth and the physical properties of water.
Any ideas?
AlphaNumeric
6th May 2008 - 06:25 AM
France defined the SI system and a metre is one ten-millionth the distance from the N. Pole to the equator via Paris. This gives you the definition of 1cm and a cubic cm of water at 4C has a mass of 1g. Therefore a gram is defined via the properties of water and the size of the Earth.