Talk:Fundamental unit

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What a strange article. Seems to be an important subject but there's barely any references, there is a claim the metre isn't a fundamental unit while the article Metre claims it is and it even uses words like "dimensionful"... what's going on here? 213.10.112.111 (talk) 18:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The meaning of the word "fundamental" is different. The metre has been defined by defining the speed of light to be 299792458 metres per second (the second is defined by defining the frequency of some transition between two energy levels of some atom to be of some frequency). So, there can be nothing fundamental (in a physical sense) about the metre defined in this way.

However, the reason the units are defined in the way it is defined is because you want to have the most accurate standards available. Any official length standard is ultimately derived from the metre as defined according to the SI standard. So, in this sense, one can talk about the metre being a "fundamental unit".

The metre is certainaly not a fundamental unit in physics, as Nature does not care about what units we use. In fact, many physicist believe that all dimensionful quantities are human constructs and only dimensionless quantities have any meaning independent of our conventions. Count Iblis (talk) 23:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Proposal

This article seems to be erroneous, lacks references, and is too short for such an important subject. Furthermore SI_base_unit article should be sufficient to describe units that are thought to be mutualy independant. Ref: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/units.html Merge or redirect "Fundamental units" to SI_base_unit please. Abaharaki 05:15, 08 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree. There is noting erroneous about this article. The SI system has more to do with having accurate standards for physical quantities. Most, if not all SI units are dependent on each other as far as theoretical physics is concerned. So, SI units are not relevant when we talk about fundamental units. Count Iblis (talk) 17:30, 8 June 2008 (UTC)