Comment by lscharen
14 years ago
Mostly because we (humans) made up physical units (i.e. meters) while we were inventing physics. There's nothing keeping you from re-deriving physics equations without the messy constants.
14 years ago
Mostly because we (humans) made up physical units (i.e. meters) while we were inventing physics. There's nothing keeping you from re-deriving physics equations without the messy constants.
Even then there are some dimensionless numbers that you can't get rid of (the ratio between the strength of the gravitational and coulomb forces being one obvious example).
Pi being another.
I wouldn't have said Pi was a physical constant - it's not like we actually measure circles to derive it empirically.
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Natural units are nice, but they are completely impractical for dealing with normal Mirkowskian space. I.e., how do I explain to someone who cannot view me how tall I am? Our normal unit system is nice because it's phenomenological, and maybe inconvenient.
Agreed, but the universe is under no obligation to express itself in units that are convenient on a human scale. I like to think of this as an anti-anthropomorphic principle.
I up-voted this comment, because I liked it, but honestly, I first looked for the "like" button. Facebook's got a serious hold on me.