Capacitance Questions: Troubleshooting Parallel Plate Capacitors

[sophiecentaur]

we say that the speed of light is 1 something?.

In the 'natural system', c would to be dimensionless. The resulting values of distance and time would have suitably adjusted units so that the ratio would be 1. Once you choose the second (say, the units of distance would end up as 3e8 m so that c would measure as 1. (Other combinations are available)

 

[Averagesupernova]

Please remember that 2019 is the year in which they/we screwed around with the units by assigning the speed of light/causation to be 1 -- oh and yeah, that speed is still somewhere around 286,000 miles per second -- where does that information go when we say that the speed of light is 1 something?.

WOW! Someone really screwed around with something since the last I knew the speed of light in a vacuum was 186,282 miles per second.

 

[sophiecentaur]

that speed is still somewhere around 286,000 miles per second

I guess the mile can be defined in terms of the distance traveled by light in 1s but I think it is actually defined as 1,609.344 metres. The last time I used the 186k miles per second value in anger was in secondary School in the early 60s. The mile is a quaint unit but we still use it (UK) when driving around but the fuel consumption figures for new cars don't mention miles. I let the car information display tell me the mpg but does anyone really believe that?

 

[sysprog]

WOW! Someone really screwed around with something since the last I knew the speed of light in a vacuum was 186,282 miles per second.

You're right -- my mistake.

I guess the mile can be defined in terms of the distance traveled by light in 1s but I think it is actually defined as 1,609.344 metres. The last time I used the 186k miles per second value in anger was in secondary School in the early 60s. The mile is a quaint unit but we still use it (UK) when driving around but the fuel consumption figures for new cars don't mention miles. I let the car information display tell me the mpg but does anyone really believe that?

When I was in school the mile was defined as 5280 feet.

 

[sophiecentaur]

When I was in school the mile was defined as 5280 feet.

Not "defined" in the strict sense - there are ratios between all length measurements. In the end, you need to start with one single length - in this case, afaik, the metre is the prime unit of length and it is defined in terms of the second and c. All the others follow that.