Re: your mail

["Prof. John P. Ertel (wizard)" <jpe@NADN.NAVY.MIL>]

Sorry, the metric is  c=h-bar=1  which makes  h=2Pi.

Making c=h has some rather unpleasent reprecussions along the way,
particularly in nuclear physics.  See my past thread below on c=h-bar=1
from about this same time last year.

On Sun, 30 May 1999, Samuel Held wrote:

> Lu,
>         The natural units, c=h=k=1, does not eliminate the units from
> the units just the calculations.  In high energy physics, the time unit
> is fm/c or just fm in natural units.  Why?  Because a most particles
> produced (99.999999...% of them do) travel at c, so the distance gives
> us a better understanding of the development of the collision region.
> One can easily recover the proper units by inserting a factor of hc.
> Any really good high energy or rel. kinematics book will discuss this.
> Most text do not and take it for granted, so the instructor should cover
> this.  Ask your teacher why he didn't explain this.
>
>
> Sam Held

+=================================+=================================+

 From jpe@nadn.navy.mil Thu Apr 30 11:09 EDT 1998
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 11:08:27 -0400 (EDT)
X-PH: V4.4@arctic
From: "Prof. John P. Ertel (wizard)" <jpe@nadn.navy.mil>
X-Sender: jpe@arctic
To: phys-l@atlantis.uwf.edu
Subject: RE: FWD: Pi redefined (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <980429114944.20805fec@hep.anl.gov>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.980430101448.10258C-100000@arctic>

I have been a proponent of this "Rationalized System of Calculation" for
so long that many of my friends are now calling it
        "the Irrationalized Ertel System".
Did I say friends?

In any case, I have a somewhat more complete set of constants that one
might want to use.  This includes various versions of 1 (197.32858 Mev-fm,
etc.) that must be used to convert the results into units that most would
consider acceptable.  (In the Rationalized System, one commonly gets
answers for energy calculations in inverse Fermi's.  While this really
doesn't bother most of us anymore, it does take some getting used to.)

I actually had an interesting encounter with my MS Orals Examining
Committee over just this subject a few years ago (1968).  I was asked to
discuss at least two of the three possible ways to EXPERIMENTALLY
determine Planck's constant.  At that point my head was very far into the
proverbial hole that I could only remember the Sakur-Tetrode (the
interconnection between classical and quantum Statistical Mechanics) and
simply could not remember even Einstein's Photoelectric Effect, let alone
any other method.  Scared stiff, I took the only route I could think of:
I suggested that one could take any piece of string and draw a circle ---
STAY WITH ME ON THIS ONE.  Now you simply lay that part of the string
which was used as the radius of the circle along the circular curve very
accurately and count the number of radii (and fractions thereof) which
were required to circumscribe the circle.  This number or radii would be
equal to Planck's famous constant h --- ARE YOU STILL WITH ME?  You see,
if we accept that  h-bar=1 , then it must logically follow that  h=2Pi.

Well any way, after they finished ridiculing me for not remembering
Einstein's Photoelectric Effect, they chided me for being brash enough to
give such an explanation.  However, they all did agree that anyone with
that much gall should be able to have a Masters Degree and should be moved
immediately into the PhD program (which is where I wanted to be in the
first place).

It's a long story just to get to the point (REMEMBER THERE'S SUPPOSED TO
BE A POINT TO ALL OF THIS?) but here it is:
        I believe that Pi cannot also be one as Jack mentions below.
        For if Pi were set to ONE, I would have to set TWO equal
        to ONE, also (or is  h  equal to just TWO).
        Well, even I am not willing to go that far.

On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, JACK L. URETSKY (C) 1996; HEP DIV., ARGONNE NATIONAL
LAB, $

>       Actually, I use units where pi=c=h-bar = 1.
>                                       Jack

PS:  If anyone is really interested if a full description of the
Rationalized System of Calculation, I have a handout that is a little more
than one page (less than two pages) which well covers the subject.  This
style of calculation was supposedly originally came from Fermi, Rabbi, and
Bethe who developed it on a train to Washington, DC for a meeting.  I
later received it from Peter Fong, Statistical Theory of Fission, who was
kind enough to accept me (after my MS orals) as a graduate student.  Dr.
Fong knew both Bethe and Fermi well as he was one of Fermi's students.


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