Alternative Unit Systems
The main alternative to the Gaussian unit system is SI units, historically also called the MKSA system of units for metre-kilogram-second-ampere.
The Gaussian unit system is just one of several electromagnetic unit systems within CGS. Others include "electrostatic units", "electromagnetic units", and Lorentz–Heaviside units.
Some other unit systems are called "natural units", a category that includes atomic units, Planck units, and others.
SI units are by far the most common today. In engineering and practical areas, SI is near-universal and has been for decades, while in technical, scientific literature (such as theoretical physics and astronomy), Gaussian units were predominant until recent decades, but are now getting progressively less so.
Natural units are most common in more theoretical and abstract fields of physics, particularly particle physics and string theory.
Read more about this topic: Gaussian Units
Famous quotes containing the words alternative, unit and/or systems:
“Our mother gives us our earliest lessons in love—and its partner, hate. Our father—our “second other”Melaborates on them. Offering us an alternative to the mother-baby relationship . . . presenting a masculine model which can supplement and contrast with the feminine. And providing us with further and perhaps quite different meanings of lovable and loving and being loved.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.”
—Anne Sullivan (1866–1936)