Most of us avoid calling the EMF a force. But let me speculate
on this by assuming that the unit of EMF is newton, not volt.
How can volt = J/C become newton? By expressing the amount
of charge in meters. Ridiculous? Wait a moment. Do you know
that capacitances used to be expressed in centimeters rather than
in farads? So what is wrong with expressing Q in meters or kg?
No, I am not advocating any changes; this is only a speculation.
Suppose we have only three basic units, kg, m and s and that
we start dealing with electrostatics. Coulomb's law of
proportionality was discovered in the lab and we decided to
express charges in meters. This means that the proportionality
constant k is in newtons. Naturally, I may add.
The unit of potential, J/C becomes newton, a unit for EMF.
The unit of E (force per unit charge) becomes N/m and the
unit of capacitance becomes m/N. And what is the unit of
electric current? It is m/s, just like speed.
What makes this particular speculation more ridiculous than
breaking the speed of light c into two static factors, epsilon
zero (to be measured) and mu zero (to be defined)?
Ludwik Kowalski