Warp wrote:
>   According to wikipedia, one liter of pure water at 4 degrees celsius (the
> standard temperature for measuring SI units) is 0.9999720 kilograms.

It may be that it's too difficult to measure "pure water" at "exactly 4 
degrees celsius" for modern measurement precision.

Plus, of course, if you make *everything* circular, then you have nothing. 
If a kilogram is the weight (well, mass) of a liter of water, and a liter is 
1000 cubic centimeters, and a centimeter is the length of one gram of carbon 
atoms lined up (or some such) then the whole thing falls down.

Given that a cm is defined in terms of the speed of light, and time is 
defined in terms of a cesium atom at rest at 0K, I guess we already have 
unusable base metrics, tho.

>   If they changed the definition of kilogram back to its original form, the
> change would be less than 0.003% from the currently accepted value. Would
> that be a huge catastrophe?

Only for scientists working on 15 digits of precision in their scientific 
experiments. Kind of like "would it really make a difference if we skipped a 
leap-second every 3 to 5 years?"

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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