Re: [Bug-gsl] Electron charge in CGS(E)

[Brian Gough]

At Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:06:13 +0400,
Evgeny Kurbatov wrote:
> If the idea of gsl_const_cgs.h was to contain the constants from
> base CGS system only, we have to remove electron charge from it,
> then create gsl_const_cgse.h for right CGSE values.  Actually we
> have to add constants of vacuum permittivity and permeability for
> completeness.  If nobody dealing with it, I can because I'm
> interested in it.

The original situation was that I generated the 'cgs' values from
another source (GNU Emacs Calc) without checking what conversion it
used, simply assuming that it was correct. This resulted in some of
the electromagnetic values having inconsistent units.

So we migrated to gsl_const_cgsm.h to get away from that.

Your idea of creating gsl_const_cgse.h and removing old
electromagnetic constants from gsl_const_cgs.h sounds like a good one.
I have not attempted it due to lack of familiarity with the different
CGS systems, so I would be happy for anyone to have a go.

One issue is that the whole set of files is generated by Emacs Calc
(which has a multiple-precision unit conversion system), so it
requires some knowledge of Emacs Lisp and Calc to add new sets of
units.  The system is capable of handling arbitrary unit systems, but
unfortunately somewhat complicated.

-- 
Brian Gough
(GSL Maintainer)

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