dimensional-1.0.1.1: Statically checked physical dimensions, using Type Families and Data Kinds.

CopyrightCopyright (C) 2006-2015 Bjorn Buckwalter
LicenseBSD3
Maintainerbjorn@buckwalter.se
StabilityStable
PortabilityGHC only
Safe HaskellNone
LanguageHaskell2010

Numeric.Units.Dimensional.SIUnits

Contents

Description

Summary

This module defines the SI prefixes, the SI base units and the SI derived units. It also defines the units outside of the SI that are accepted for use with the SI. Any chapters, sections or tables referenced are from [1] unless otherwise specified.

References

  1. http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/
  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minute_of_arc
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit

Synopsis

SI Base Units

These are the base units from section 4.1. To avoid a myriad of one-letter functions that would doubtlessly cause clashes and frustration in users' code we spell out all unit names in full, as we did for prefixes. We also elect to spell the unit names in singular form, as allowed by section 9.7 "Other spelling conventions".

We define the SI base units in the order of table 1.

SI Derived Units

From Table 3, SI derived units with special names and symbols, including the radian and steradian.

Celsius Temperature

A problematic area is units which increase proportionally to the base SI units but cross zero at a different point. An example would be degrees Celsius (see section 4.2.1.1). The author feels that it is appropriate to define a unit for use with relative quantities (taking only into account the proportionality) and complement the unit with functions for converting absolute values.

The function fromDegreeCelsiusAbsolute should be used in lieu of "*~ degreeCelsius" when working with absolute temperatures. Similarily, toDegreeCelsiusAbsolute should be used in lieu of "/~ degreeCelsius" when working with absolute temperatures.

Units Admitted for Reasons of Safeguarding Human Health

The last units from Table 3 are SI derived units with special names and symbols admitted for reasons of safeguarding human health.

Units Accepted for Use with the SI

There are several units that are not strictly part of the SI but are either permanently or temporarily accepted for use with the SI. We define the permanently accepted ones in this module.

From Table 6, Units accepted for use with the SI.

We start with time which we grant exclusive rights to minute and second.

Units of Plane Angle

Since minute and second are already in use for time we use arcminute and arcsecond [2] for plane angle instead.

Alternate (longer) forms of the above. In particular degreeOfArc can be used if there is a percieved need to disambiguate from e.g. temperature.

Units Formerly Defined By Experiment

We decline to provide here those units - listed in Table 7 - which, while accepted for use with the SI, have values which are determined experimentally. For versioning purposes, those units can be found in Numeric.Units.Dimensional.NonSI.

However, in 2012 the IAU redefined the astronomical unit as a conventional unit of length directly tied to the meter, with a length of exactly 149,597,870,700 m and the official abbreviation of au [3]. We therefore include it here.

SI Prefixes

Prefixes are used to form decimal multiples and submultiples of SI Units as described in section 4.4. We will define the SI prefixes in terms of the prefix function which applies a scale factor to a unit.

By defining SI prefixes as functions applied to a Unit we satisfy section 6.2.6 "Unacceptability of stand-alone prefixes".

We define all SI prefixes from Table 5. Multiples first.

deka :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

deca :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

hecto :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

kilo :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

mega :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

giga :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

tera :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

peta :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

exa :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

zetta :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

yotta :: Num a => Unit Metric d a -> Unit NonMetric d a Source

Then the submultiples.