Talk:Cochrane (unit)

Is the figure for teracochrane correct? I thought that the prefix tera- meant one trillion (1,000,000,000,000). Isn't one quadrillion equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000?--Scimitar 21:14, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * So it seems. Actually I was thinking 20 quadrillion cochranes regarding the voyager reference.--Gvsualan 21:37, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * A trillion is correctly defined as a 1 followed by 18 zeros. A quadrillion is correctly a 1 followed by 24 zeros.  The prefix "tri" meaning 3 is the number you multiply by 6 to get the number of zeros.  The prefix quad means 4.


 * The Americans messed up the numbering system and cut out some zeros making it impossible to figure out what the names mean. See the chart:


 * http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/large.html

Symbol for the cochrane unit of measurement
Do we know for a fact that the symbol for the cochrane is a small c? If so, it would conflict with that of the speed of light constant. Also, symbols for units of measurements named after people are traditionally capital letters. Was the symbol ever shown on screen, or even in a reference book somewhere? -- Renegade54 11:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
 * My theory is that someone must have read the STTNGTM section on cochranes, and just misinterpreted the idea that if warp field cochranes approximately equal the times a craft moves of the speed of light, abbreviated as c, to mean that cochranes are then also abbreviated as c. I removed the statement. If someone finds an actual reference, please put it back. --Pseudohuman 17:08, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * My somewhat educated (and perhaps painfully obvious) guess is that it is a misinterpretation of 'c', the symbol for the speed of light. --Alan 17:24, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The graphic seen in features the text "verteron energy: 408 mC". --Jörg 17:34, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The symbol "c" could be used as the symbol for cochrane and there would be no conflict. The symbol c for the speed of light is not a unit symbol, so there is no conflict.  The speed of light is exactly 299 792 458 m/s, in which the unit symbols are metres per second (m/s).


 * It is true that units named after people have symbols using capital letters, but the unit cochrane can not use the symbol "C" as it conflicts with the symbol for coulomb. The symbol for cochrane would have to be "Co". No matter what the unit, the unit name will always be spelled with non-capital letter.

Remember Me?
One cochrane is equal to the force required to establish a field for warp 1. Does anyone know how this was established in the ? --Pseudohuman 12:24, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This definition can not be if the unit is to be an SI unit. SI units are defined from other SI units in a coherent manner.  It would have to be defined one to one with a combination of other units.  For example the watt is defined as one joule per second (1 W = 1 J/s); the joule is defined as 1 newton metre per second (1 J = 1 N.m/s) and one newton is defined as 1 kilogram metre per second squared (1 N = 1 kg.m/s^2).  Thus in symbolic form, 1 W = 1 kg m^2/s^3.  There is a complete 1:1 relationship.


 * If the cochrane is measuring a physical phenomena that can't be directly related to other phenomena, it may be possible for the cochrane to become an SI base unit. If so, then it could be defined in a similar way that the other base units are defined.