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Measurement

Measurement is the assignment of a number to a characteristic of an object or event, which can be compared with other objects or events.^[1][2] The scope and application of a measurement is dependent on the context and discipline. In the natural sciences andengineering, measurements do not apply tonominal properties of objects or events, which is consistent with the guidelines of theInternational vocabulary of metrologypublished by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.^[2] However, in other fields such as statistics as well as the socialand behavioral sciences, measurements can have multiple levels, which would include nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio scales.^[1][3]

Measurement is a cornerstone of trade,science, technology, and quantitative researchin many disciplines. Historically, manymeasurement systems existed for the varied fields of human existence to facilitate comparisons in these fields. Often these were achieved by local agreements between trading partners or collaborators. Since the 18th century, developments progressed towards unifying, widely accepted standards that resulted in the modern International System of Units (SI). This system reduces all physical measurements to a mathematical combination of seven base units. The science of measurement is pursued in the field ofmetrology.

A typical tape measure with bothmetric and imperial units and two US pennies for comparison

MethodologyEdit

The measurement of a property may be categorized by the following criteria: type,magnitude, unit, and uncertainty.^{[citation needed]}They enable unambiguous comparisons between measurements.

• The type or level of measurement is a taxonomy for the methodological character of a comparison. For example, two states of a property may be compared by ratio, difference, or ordinal preference. The type is commonly not explicitly expressed, but implicit in the definition of a measurement procedure.
• The magnitude is the numerical value of the characterization, usually obtained with a suitably chosen measuring instrument.
• A unit assigns a mathematical weighting factor to the magnitude that is derived as a ratio to the property of an artifact used as standard or a natural physical quantity.
• An uncertainty represents the random and systemic errors of the measurement procedure; it indicates a confidence level in the measurement. Errors are evaluated by methodically repeating measurements and considering the accuracy and precision of the measuring instrument.

Standardization of measurement unitsEdit

Measurements most commonly use theInternational System of Units (SI) as a comparison framework. The system defines seven fundamental units: kilogram, metre,candela, second, ampere, kelvin, and mole. Six of these units are defined without reference to a particular physical object which serves as a standard (artifact-free), while the kilogram is still embodied in an artifact which rests at the headquarters of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres near Paris. Artifact-free definitions fix measurements at an exact value related to a physical constantor other invariable phenomena in nature, in contrast to standard artifacts which are subject to deterioration or destruction. Instead, the measurement unit can only ever change through increased accuracy in determining the value of the constant it is tied to.

The seven base units in the SI system. Arrows point from units to those that depend on them.

The first proposal to tie an SI base unit to an experimental standard independent of fiat was by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914),^[4] who proposed to define the metre in terms of the wavelength of a spectral line.^[5]This directly influenced the Michelson–Morley experiment; Michelson and Morley cite Peirce, and improve on his method.^[6]

StandardsEdit

With the exception of a few fundamentalquantum constants, units of measurement are derived from historical agreements. Nothing inherent in nature dictates that aninch has to be a certain length, nor that a mileis a better measure of distance than akilometre. Over the course of human history, however, first for convenience and then for necessity, standards of measurement evolved so that communities would have certain common benchmarks. Laws regulating measurement were originally developed to prevent fraud in commerce.

Units of measurement are generally defined on a scientific basis, overseen by governmental or independent agencies, and established in international treaties, pre-eminent of which is the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), established in 1875 by the Metre Convention, overseeing the International System of Units (SI) and having custody of the International Prototype Kilogram. The metre, for example, was redefined in 1983 by the CGPM in terms of light speed, while in 1960 the international yard was defined by the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa as being exactly 0.9144 metres.

In the United States, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a division of the United States Department of Commerce, regulates commercial measurements. In the United Kingdom, the role is performed by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), in Australia by the National Measurement Institute,^[7] in South Africa by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and in India the National Physical Laboratory of India.

Units and systemsEdit

Main articles: Units of measurement and Systems of measurement

A baby bottle that measures in three measurement systems—metric, imperial (UK), and US customary.

Four measuring devices having metric calibrations

Imperial and US Customary systemsEdit

Main article: Imperial and US customary measurement systems

Before SI units were widely adopted around the world, the British systems of English unitsand later imperial units were used in Britain, the Commonwealth and the United States. The system came to be known as U.S. customary units in the United States and is still in use there and in a few Caribbeancountries. These various systems of measurement have at times been called foot-pound-second systems after the Imperial units for length, weight and time even though the tons, hundredweights, gallons, and nautical miles, for example, are different for the U.S. units. Many Imperial units remain in use in Britain, which has officially switched to the SI system—with a few exceptions such as road signs, which are still in miles. Draught beer and cider must be sold by the imperial pint, and milk in returnable bottles can be sold by the imperial pint. Many people measure their height in feet and inches and their weight instone and pounds, to give just a few examples. Imperial units are used in many other places, for example, in many Commonwealth countries that are considered metricated, land area is measured in acres and floor space in square feet, particularly for commercial transactions (rather than government statistics). Similarly, gasoline is sold by the gallon in many countries that are considered metricated.

Metric systemEdit

The metric system is a decimal system of measurement based on its units for length, the metre and for mass, the kilogram. It exists in several variations, with different choices ofbase units, though these do not affect its day-to-day use. Since the 1960s, the International System of Units (SI) is the internationally recognised metric system. Metric units of mass, length, and electricity are widely used around the world for both everyday and scientific purposes.

The metric system features a single base unit for many physical quantities. Other quantities are derived from the standard SI units. Multiples and fractions are expressed aspowers of 10 of each unit. When smaller or larger units are more convenient for given use,metric prefixes can be added to the base unit to denote its multiple by a power of ten: a thousandth (10⁻³) of a metre is a millimetre, while a thousand (10³) metres is a kilometre. Unit conversions are thus always simple, so that convenient magnitudes for measurements are achieved by simply moving the decimal place: 1.234 metres is 1234 millimetres or 0.001234 kilometres. The use of fractions, such as 2/5 of a metre, is not prohibited, but uncommon. There is no profusion of different units with different conversion factors as in the Imperial system which uses, for example, inches, feet, yards,fathoms, and rods for length.

International System of UnitsEdit

The International System of Units(abbreviated as SI from the French languagename Système International d'Unités) is the modern revision of the metric system. It is the world's most widely used system of units, both in everyday commerce and in science. The SI was developed in 1960 from the metre-kilogram-second (MKS) system, rather than the centimetre-gram-second (CGS) system, which, in turn, had many variants. During its development the SI also introduced several newly named units that were previously not a part of the metric system. The original SI units for the seven basic physical quantities were:^[8]

Base quantity	Base unit	Symbol	Current SI constants	New SI constants (proposed)[9]
time	second	s	hyperfine splitting inCesium-133	same as current SI
length	metre	m	speed of light in vacuum, c	same as current SI
mass	kilogram	kg	mass of International Prototype Kilogram (IPK)	Planck's constant, h
electric current	ampere	A	permeability of free space,permittivity of free space	charge of the electron,e
temperature	kelvin	K	triple point of water,absolute zero	Boltzmann's constant, k
amount of substance	mole	mol	molar mass of Carbon-12	Avogadro constant NA
luminous intensity	candela	cd	luminous efficacy of a 540 THz source	same as current SI

The mole was subsequently added to this list and the degree Kelvin renamed the kelvin.

There are two types of SI units, base units and derived units. Base units are the simple measurements for time, length, mass, temperature, amount of substance, electric current and light intensity. Derived units are constructed from the base units, for example, the watt, i.e. the unit for power, is defined from the base units as m²·kg·s⁻³. Other physical properties may be measured in compound units, such as material density, measured in kg/m³.

Converting prefixesEdit

The SI allows easy multiplication when switching among units having the same base but different prefixes. To convert from metres to centimetres it is only necessary to multiply the number of metres by 100, since there are 100 centimetres in a metre. Inversely, to switch from centimetres to metres one multiplies the number of centimetres by 0.01 or divide centimetres by 100.

LengthEdit

A 2-metre carpenter's ruler

See also: List of length, distance, or range measuring devices

A ruler or rule is a tool used in, for example,geometry, technical drawing, engineering, and carpentry, to measure lengths or distances or to draw straight lines. Strictly speaking, theruler is the instrument used to rule straight lines and the calibrated instrument used for determining length is called a measure, however common usage calls both instruments rulers and the special namestraightedge is used for an unmarked rule. The use of the word measure, in the sense of a measuring instrument, only survives in the phrase tape measure, an instrument that can be used to measure but cannot be used to draw straight lines. As can be seen in the photographs on this page, a two-metre carpenter's rule can be folded down to a length of only 20 centimetres, to easily fit in a pocket, and a five-metre-long tape measure easily retracts to fit within a small housing.

Some special namesEdit

Some non-systematic names are applied for some multiples of some units.

• 100 kilograms = 1 quintal; 1000 kilogram = 1 metric tonne;
• 10 years = 1 decade; 100 years = 1 century; 1000 years = 1 millennium

Building tradesEdit

The Australian building trades adopted themetric system in 1966 and the units used for measurement of length are metres (m) andmillimetres (mm). Centimetres (cm) are avoided as they cause confusion when reading plans. For example, the length two and a half metres is usually recorded as 2500 mm or 2.5 m; it would be considered non-standard to record this length as 250 cm.^{[citation needed]}

Surveyor's TradeEdit

American surveyors use a decimal-based system of measurement devised by Edmund Gunter in 1620. The base unit is Gunter's chain of 66 feet (20 m) which is subdivided into 4 rods, each of 16.5 ft or 100 links of 0.66 feet. A link is abbreviated "lk," and links "lks" in old deeds and land surveys done for the government.

TimeEdit

Main article: Time

Time is an abstract measurement of elemental changes over a non spatial continuum. It is denoted by numbers and/or named periods such as hours, days, weeks,months and years. It is an apparently irreversible series of occurrences within this non spatial continuum. It is also used to denote an interval between two relative points on this continuum.

MassEdit

Main article: Weighing scale

Mass refers to the intrinsic property of all material objects to resist changes in their momentum. Weight, on the other hand, refers to the downward force produced when a mass is in a gravitational field. In free fall, (no net gravitational forces) objects lack weight but retain their mass. The Imperial units of mass include the ounce, pound, and ton. The metric units gram and kilogram are units of mass.

One device for measuring weight or mass is called a weighing scale or, often, simply ascale. A spring scale measures force but not mass, a balance compares weight, both require a gravitational field to operate. Some of the most accurate instruments for measuring weight or mass are based on load cells with a digital read-out, but require a gravitational field to function and would not work in free fall.

EconomicsEdit

Main article: Measurement in economics

The measures used in economics are physical measures, nominal price value measures andreal price measures. These measures differ from one another by the variables they measure and by the variables excluded from measurements.

Survey researchEdit

Main article: Survey_methodology

In the field of survey research, measures are taken from individual attitudes, values, and behavior using questionnaires as a measurement instrument. As all other measurements, measurement in survey research is also vulnerable to measurement error, i.e. the departure from the true value of the measurement and the value provided using the measurement instrument.^[10]. In substantive survey research, measurement error can lead to biased conclusions and wrongly estimated effects. In order to get accurate results, when measurement errors appear, the results need to be corrected for measurement errors.

DifficultiesEdit

Since accurate measurement is essential in many fields, and since all measurements are necessarily approximations, a great deal of effort must be taken to make measurements as accurate as possible. For example, consider the problem of measuring the time it takes an object to fall a distance of one metre (about 39 in). Using physics, it can be shown that, in the gravitational field of the Earth, it should take any object about 0.45 second to fall one metre. However, the following are just some of the sources of error that arise:

• This computation used for the acceleration of gravity 9.8 metres per second squared (32 ft/s²). But this measurement is not exact, but only precise to two significant digits.
• The Earth's gravitational field varies slightly depending on height above sea level and other factors.
• The computation of .45 seconds involved extracting a square root, a mathematical operation that required rounding off to some number of significant digits, in this case two significant digits.

Additionally, other sources of experimental error include:

• carelessness,
• determining of the exact time at which the object is released and the exact time it hits the ground,
• measurement of the height and the measurement of the time both involve some error,
• Air resistance.

Scientific experiments must be carried out with great care to eliminate as much error as possible, and to keep error estimates realistic.