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At 11:22 AM 9/11/00 -0500, Joel Rauber wrote:
This means that the standard for the meter will be differentdepending on
which vacuum you use as a reference. Which implies alogical problem in
the definition. Unless we agree on which vacuum to use, andthen are we
using the same one that the SI guru's intend?
You asked about philosophy: It is philosophically important
to keep in
mind that physics is a natural science. It is not an exact
science like,
say, arithmetic.
The same philosophy and the same sort of procedures apply to the
speed-of-light experiment, which is more properly called the
meter-stick-calibration experiment. Your calibration will never be
_exactly_ the same as my calibration. But we believe that
(if we do it
right) we can greatly reduce the magnitude of junk effects
(stray gas in
the cell, waveguide effects due to the walls of the cell, et
cetera) and
then place tight bounds on the magnitude of any remaining junk
effects. The "SI gurus" intended an idealization, namely
extrapolation to
the limit where the junk effects are negligible.
You asked in particular about the effects of the walls. So stop
philosophizing and do the calculation yourself.
If the actual uncertainty is large enough to cause you
trouble in practice,
please explain what you are doing that requires such high accuracy!