Hi Ed,
> These terms and their definitions are at the level of what you need
> to read an science article in a major newspaper or something like it.
Read, but not necessarily comprehend :-)
...but then, the comprehension of the people writing the articles is equally in question.
> second 0 | 1/60 of a minute; the basic unit of time adopted under
> the Systeme International d'Unites
I feel obligated to point out that definition 0 here is really two different things:
> second 0 (a) | 1/60 of a minute (1/1440 of a day)
> second 0 (b) | the basic unit of time adopted under the Systeme
> International d'Unites
This is the crux of the issue with leap seconds. The point being that a "second 0 (a)" may be referenced to different kinds of days, although typically this is the mean solar day. A "second 0 (b)" is guaranteed to be nondenumerable to any of them, including the mean solar day.
Hmm - there is an interesting question. The founding geeks were clever fellows and recognized this problem with the definition of the second. In fact, it was proposed that the SI unit be called the "essen" in honor of Louis Essen:
who built the first atomic clock. How do the vocabularies, thesauri, ontologies and all that handle partial synonyms? That is - some terms have multiple meanings. Some of those meanings are shared with other terms.
Rob
-- "If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?" - T. H. HuxleyReceived on 2007-12-03Z17:42:41