Talk:Ångström

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Additional information: This article is an assessed orphan; it has been assessed by Work via WikiProjects, but should be rated by subject experts in a WikiProject. See the FAQ for more info. The following comments have been left for this page: In the History section, I just changed "length" to "wavelength" Will also change "acuity" to something like "sensitivity" since acuity refers to spatial (angular) discrimination independent of frequency. The assertion that the Angstrom was originally defined independently of the meter (but equal to 10^-10 m) would be more useful if augmented by an explanation of how it *was* defined. (edit)

If the unit angstrom is named after a person, why isn't it always capitalized like Watt, Newton, Joule, etc?--128.83.129.36 (talk) 16:30, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The units you mention are not capitalised. They are spelled watt, newton and joule. Thunderbird2 (talk) 17:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I have a question about the statement that the Angstrom is obsolete. The Angstrom is very much alive and well. I don't think you mean to say that it is no longer used, but that could be explained better. Do you mean that it changed when the meter changed? AndyofVermont 03:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation of Angstrom

How would you pronounce "angstrom" in Swedish? An IPA transcription might be useful. 128.12.20.195 05:19, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

It might be called for, that User:Jor explains more carefully how and why he thinks that the angstrom-symbol "is" different from the Swedish character Å. The symbol is chosen after the initital of the surname Ångström, as far as I understand, in the same way as W is chosen as the symbol for Watt after James Watt.

Please educate me!
--Ruhrjung 17:17, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

As it "might be called for", I will explain User:Ruhrjung that the Angstrom character resembles an Å but tends to be rendered more thinly and with a smaller circle above, just like the Watt W resembles a Latin W but is not identical to it. Perhaps User:Ruhrjung would like to check the Unicode standard? — Jor (Talk) 17:26, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Tat is not a "Unicode standard" for writing these symbols. In fact, that section of Unicode is only included as an accomodation for interpreting things in some old non-Unicode code pages in certain East Asian languages, and it is not for current use in Unicode even in them. The proper symbol for the angstrom is indeed the Swedish letter Å. Gene Nygaard 01:18, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The relevant standard ought not to be Unicode but something from ISO or some physisists' international organization.

To compare the rendering of angstrom-symbol and the Å-character, you could for instance see textbooks in physics in languages where the¨Å-character is domestic.
--Ruhrjung 17:36, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Could anyone enlighten me how the Å-unit is written out? Some textbooks write "angstrom" others "angström" and some "ångström" (which should be correct according to the origin of the unit).
--Universalis 10:58, 31 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, "ångström" should be the most correct, considering that was the original surname Ångström. I guess angstrom would be acceptable if you are having problems with non-standard characters. Angström seems as a strange compromise for systems that could only handle umlauts...

The "angstrom" spelling is just as correct as "ampere", which is almost always written without an accent mark in English though it has one in French. There is, of course, no internationally standardized spelling for the spelled out words of any of the units (consider the "meter" and "metre" spellings in English, or "chilogrammo" in Italian); it is only the symbols for them which are standardized internationally. Gene Nygaard 01:18, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To be pedantic, it isn't "just as correct", because "å" and "ö" are considered to be distinct letters in Swedish and not "a" and "o" with diacritical marks, which is the situation for "è" in French. Doesn't mean "angstrom" isn't perfectly acceptable though. --BluePlatypus 15:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

If I were to be pedantic about it, I'd come to the opposite conclusion and say that it is more correct to use diacritics such as the grave accent in ampère in English that it is to use non-English letters in English. Gene Nygaard 17:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

But if you want to use English characters, the 'right' thing to do would be to transliterate the letters (as in your surname), so "Aangstroem". --BluePlatypus 17:05, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I just converted the page to "angstrom", becuase that is the most common spelling of this unit in English. From WP:NAME, "Name your pages in English..." and "Use the most common name of a person or thing..." --Srleffler 22:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

And I moved it back for several reasons:

1. There was no discussion and/or concensus.

2. It is disrespectfull to Ångström to bastardize his name.

3. Ångström is much more internationally recognized than the bastardized version.

4. The diacritics indicate it is a foreign word, so they aid in pronunciation.

Cameron Nedland 23:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

1. And there was no discussion or consensus for your move back either

2. It is not a bastardization of his name.

3. It is disrespectful for you to not recognize the simple fact that it is quite proper and legitimate to use the English alphabet when writing in English. This blatant disrespect is exemplified not so much by your moving of the page, but rather by your totally improper removal of that spelling from the page.

4. Then, on top of everything else, you changed the indexing sort keys so that this article was missorted in its categories. Please go read Wikipedia:Categorization.

5. It is not a foreign word.

6. The Swedes don't use diacritics in sv:meter, unlike the French inventors do in fr:mètre, and the Swedes don't use diacritics in sv:ampere any more than the English do. In other words, the spelling of the words is determined in each language. What is international is the symbols for the units.

7. It is, in fact, best known in English under the quite legitimate and proper "angstrom" spelling. Gene Nygaard 03:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't it bother you guys that on this page it says that an angstrom is equal to both 10^-10 and 10^-12 meters? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.122.216.197 (talk • contribs)

People who don't know what they are talking about bother me more. Maybe you have difficulty understanding what 100×10^{−12 means? Gene Nygaard 08:59, 8 December 2006 (UTC)}

^{I mistook it for 10^-12 too, it would seem rather odd to state it as 100^-12, surely less confusion if it is stated the first way. Unless there is a specific reason for this.}

^{I'll be another who got took in by the 100X10^-12 vs. 10^-10 confusion. The mixing of SI units and is much more cumbersome than relating everything to the meter. The information I was looking for was "How many angstroms in a meter", and I'd expect the answer to be the exponent, not an arbitrary multiple of 10^-10.}

^{In addition, the 100 X 10^-9 mm is just confusing.}

^{Why does it state that an angstrom is 0 LY? I know that its really really close to 0 when compared to LY, but it would be inaccurate to actually state it is 0 LY, since its base unit is defined in distance light travels in an ammount of time anyways.}

^{Also, why does the article give the measurement in 100 times an amount? Why isn't it just a straight-up amount? It seems that this has already caused confusion, and I don't see a reason for it to be that way.}

^{[edit] Page moves}

^{Please take any requested moves to WP:RM and avoid unilateral actions. Regards, Asteriontalk 12:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)}

By the way, I am not sure whether the tutorial on how to represent the symbol in computers is encyclopedic. Asterion^talk 12:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Usage of official transliteration

Can we have a reference for "aangstroem" being the official transliteration? Can we also have a comment on whether this is just a transliteration of the name or of the unit as well, and whether it has any official status as the name of the unit? My understanding is that the unit is either "ångström" or "angstrom". I have never seen "aangstroem" used before. — Paul G 13:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

One thought on reality and "aangstroem": While I have no idea whatever where the single monolithic “official” policy for transliterating Swedish surnames into English comes from, the simple fact is that “angstrom” is the ubiquitous conventional English word for this unit of measure, not “aangstroem.” The way the article is written now is misleading in that suggests to the casual reader that the “official” word for the unit using the English alphabet is “aangstroem,” which, in reality, it is not. Right now it reads “An ångström or aangstroem (the official transliteration), or angstrom (symbol Å) . . . ” The word “aangstroem” should be deleted or put in a less misleading context. This is not the place for an uphill crusade to regularize transliteration of Swedish surnames when used for eponymous units of measure. In other words, it is really beside the point to even mention “aangstroem” if almost everyone uses “angstrom” instead of “aangstroem.” If “aangstroem” is mentioned, it must be in a way that shows its relative obscurity. Changing it to “An ångström (sometimes transliterated “aangstroem”), or angstrom (symbol Å) . . . ” would be less misleading, but it is still messy. I won't do it myself, because I don't care enough to fight over it.

According to the IUPAC Green book "Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry" (which is of course a subject where the use of this unit is ubiquitous, as compared to say Physics where nm is probably more common, as alluded to in the text) the recommendation seems to be for "ångström" for the unit (not angstrom or aangstroem or any other variation) so as far as I am concerned this should be the only variant used. The book can be seen in pdf format at http://www.iupac.org/publications/books/gbook/index.html for reference.- Azo bob 18:50, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

"Aangstroem" gets a mere 785 Google hits. The only "official" name for the unit as far as I know is "Ångström", and there is no such thing as an offical transliteration scheme for Swedish. Therefore I'm removing "aangstroem". EldKatt (Talk) 16:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed WikiProject

Right now the content related to the various articles relating to measurement seems to be rather indifferently handled. This is not good, because at least 45 or so are of a great deal of importance to Wikipedia, and are even regarded as Vital articles. On that basis, I am proposing a new project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Measurement to work with these articles, and the others that relate to the concepts of measurement. Any and all input in the proposed project, including indications of willingness to contribute to its work, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your attention. John Carter 20:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bizarre mixed engineering/scientific notation

In the infobox at the top right of the page, the angstrom is related to the meter with the strange relation "100E-12 m". This is, in my view, an unusual (to say the least) combination of engineering and scientific notation. The limitation to powers of multiples of three is only ever used with letter prefixes, such as in "100 pm". Unless someone comes forward to defend this entry, I will change it to "1E-10 m" in a day or so, and accordingly for the nanometer. 149.217.1.6 08:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC) (edited 149.217.1.6 09:01, 11 September 2007 (UTC))

You mention engineering notation, so you should be quite well aware that your statement "The limitation to powers of multiples of three is only ever used with letter prefixes, such as in "100 pm"" is false. In fact, engineering notation is rarely used in conjunction with a symbol containing a prefix, except maybe with kg since kilograms are the SI base unit. In other words, it might be either 100 E-12 m or 100×10⁻¹² m using engineering notation, or 100 pm using prefixes, but not some combination such as 100×10⁻⁶ µm using both prefixes and engineering notation. Gene Nygaard (talk) 20:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How common is the term micron?

The article claims that the non-standard term micron is commonly used. Is it? Is this old term not being replaced by the standard SI term micrometre (or same term spelt another way)? Heaps of Google hits, sure, but they mostly don't seem to refer to the unit. Is it common? Is it even still remembered? AHD says "No longer in technical use." JIMp _talk·cont 08:54, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

... On the other hand, why do we need all this chat about the micrometre? We're talking about the ångström. JIMp _talk·cont 09:09, 11 June 2008 (UTC)