2.2.4 - Sbiis Saibian's Extended Prefixes (2009)

2.2.4

Sbiis Saibian's

Extended Prefixes (2009)

"There is never an end. For when you think you reached the end, you can always add one."

-- Jim Blowers , Internet article: The End Plus One [1]

" There's no need for an alternative, there simply is no recognised name for 10^27, just as there is no recognised name for 10^30, 10^33, or 10^30000 - there are an infinite number of powers of ten, do you think there are an infinite number of words to describe them? "

-- ExNihilo , Wikipedia Member

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INTRODUCTION

It is impossible to know for sure what , if anything, the BIPM will one day accept as an extension to the current SI prefix system. However there is nothing to prevent us from creating our own extension to serve what ever purpose we seek in the meantime.

It seems there are plenty of people who for one reason or another have done just that. In this article I offer not one but two proposals of my own to add to the long list of potential proposals.

Please note, the following are my own ideas, and are NOT in any way endorsed by the BIPM . You are free to copy and distribute this information provided you acknowledge the original author of the material (Sbiis Saibian) and the source that you got it from (this website). Anyone who finds this information should be able to trace it back to this website. Thank you for your cooperation.

The proposals that are about to follow are primarily interested in extending the existing SI system further than has previously been attempted. This means that it assumes that the existing system is already well established and does not need an introduction ( go to the article "Modern Standard SI" to read about the canonical prefixes ).

My interest in extending the SI system are mostly theoretical. It's motivated by questions like :

what is the best way to extend ?

what are the different ways we could go about this ?

what criteria can we use to classify good extensions and bad ones ?

Just how far can we reasonably go with this ?

I make no claim to this endeavor being in any way practical. Our main interest is not how such terms will be used, but instead we are interested in how such terms should be theoretically constructed. This is in contrast to Robert Munafo's statement that "prefixes should be adopted as the need for them develops" -- Robert Munafo. It stands to reason then that there must be a largest prefix that will ever be adopted, because there is a limit to the practical applications it could have. Even if there ends up being a need for a slew of new prefixes scientists would eventually find memorizing the massive list of prefixes impractical, and would probably switch to using scientific notation exclusively. In other words, prefixes, from a practical standpoint, have built in limitations for usefulness.

But now we want to consider prefix systems in a much more abstract sense. How can we can construct a decent extension of the current SI system which goes further than any previous attempts and yet which doesn't become obtuse at some point. Well if that intrigues you than I hope you find what follows interesting.

Below are a set of links. Each leads to an article which presents a single proposed "prefix system". You can read them in order, but in this case each can actually be read independently as their primary purpose is to explain each of my proposals.

Sbiis Saibian's SI Prefix Proposals

Proposal I - EMPS : With permission I have created a practical extension based on a suggestion by Robert Munafo. This first proposal uses an entirely latin based construction.

Proposal II - SEPS : Here I present my own original proposal. It is based on my own ideas of what works and what doesn't. It is a truncated latin and greek construction. It is meant to serve as an alternative to the more practical EMP System in that it provides shorter names for the prefixes.

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Footnotes :

[1] http://www.mindspring.com/~jimvb/endplus.htm : Jim Blowers internet article on the nature of the transfinites