Recent content by RaduAndrei

I do not think is a big waste of time. Mathematics may be precise, but physics is not mathematics, physics only uses mathematics. Physics describes the world. We can't escape the natural language words. Great physicists in the past were also great philosophers of science.

Classification is very important and not only in physics. I agree about wiki. That's why I made this topic. I did not agree with that definition. But maybe you have a more suitable definition.

I do not think we are going anywhere with this haha I do not think I said anywhere here that vector is a "measurement". Anyway.

What I did not understand is that I put up a definition about measurement here, questioned it. And then came 3 answers that appeared to try to defend that definition.

Then lead me to a reputable text about measurement. Maybe I will find a good definition there.

Of course I associate it with what I read on wikipedia. I made this topic with that definition in mind. I read that definition and it did not conform with what I already knew. How can you assign a single number to a characteristic of an object? Thus i made this topic so someone can shed light on...

Because "Measurement is the assignment of a number to a characteristic of an object or event," You said that a vector has two characteristics when you read that definition. So you saw the vector as an object. If the definition was "Measurement is the assignment of a number to a characteristic...

It may or may not invalidate it based on what your definitions are for an object, a characteristic, an event. Please tell me your definitions first.

So for you a vector is an object. For example, velocity is an object. I would have seen the object as a physical system. And this physical system has properties. And those properties that are measurable are called physical quantities. And measurement would be the assignment of a number to a...

On wiki measurement is defined as: Measurement is the assignment of a number to a characteristic of an object or event, which can be compared with other objects or events. So a number. For scalars, I agree because they are described by a single number. But what about vectors? They have...

I agree. Thanks for answer.

A water clock

Are all physical quantities inherently positive? In mathematics, you have some order on the axis. -100 < -5 < 5 < 100. But in physics, a speed of -100 is larger than a speed of -5. The minus sign just shows the direction which is opposite of what we defined to be positive. Likewise, the energy...

So let's say I do some measurements and obtain a set of measured values. The measurement is characterized by random errors so by making enough measurements, they approach a normal distribution. In other words, my set of measured values can be approximated by a normal distribution characterized...

Ok. I finally understood it. (with the help of the book introduction to error analysis by Taylor) A measured value with n significant figures means an uncertainty of one unit in the nth significant figure. Sometimes it means a bigger uncertainty, sometimes it means a smaller uncertainty...