Talk:Siemens (unit)

Use of "mho"

Well, somebody seems to have an axe to grind about the use of mho.

The unit is the siemens, and we need to get over it. The mho is dead; long live the siemens.

Looking back at the history of this article, it started out without any mention of mhos, then it became a footnote, then the footnote zoomed up to the top of the article, and it has a strong POV that mhos are better than siemens!

Lately, I removed a confusing and gratuitous reference to mhos, and it's back again, no longer confusing, but still gratuitous.

This is wrong.

This is the siemens article. If you ask me, mhos should go, or be put back where they belong, as a historical foontote to document the former use of this now deperecated unit. Even if I agreed with you that mhos are better, clearer, more intuitive, more elegant, and self-evidently superior, it's over. Mhos are not SI units; siemens are.

If you're interested in promoting the mho, then write a real mho article and add a see also reference from siemens. That's my 2¢.--Jeepien 15:23:43, 2005-08-04 (UTC)

ok i agree i went a little over the top but the term mho and its symbol (probablly the symbol more than the word) are still seen and i think its important to make it absoloutly clear they are the same thing as siemens. I've reverted my most recent edit but i think the inverted ohm sign should stay in the unit equivilences section. Plugwash 14:57, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I attempted reworking the relevant paragraph to put less emphasis on the mho. --DemonThing 04:01, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Eh, the mho needs either a seperate article, or a mention here. It's still in use, and therefore notable. BIPS does not have a monopoly on units of measurement, even though it provides a useful way to standardise measurement in a technical context. 219.79.3.203 09:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Consider this: I was looking through a publication when I stumbled across some "mmhos/cm²". thankfully, google sent me here. 143.50.141.215 (talk) 08:02, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Neither Siemens, nor Mhos are to be promoted or discounted as illegitimate within Wikipedia. Mho is an equivalent unit of conductance, and as such, ought to be formally talked in order to give due reference to the academic community. Mho, like Pounds, Inches, Miles, Slugs, Feet, Fahrenheit, etc.. are as legitimate as any other standard units, and are referenced in current and historical documentation. I will be adding a relationship (1 S = 1 Mho = 1/Ohm, or some such relationship) to clarify the Mho. Nicholas SL Smith^chatter 02:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Ref: http://www.tpub.com/neets/book1/chapter1/1p.htm , Books: A course in electrical engineering, American telegraphy: systems, apparatus, operation; Lessons in practical electricity: principles, experiments, and arithmetical problems, an elementary text-book; The engineers' manual‎; etc.....

• Does anyone have a citation for the the arguments against switching to the the SI unit of Siemens from mho? (the two lines talking about the inverted Omega and confusion with the SI lower case "s" for Seconds...) Although these reasons make sense, they have no source and might ought to be removed.
• Also - to reiterate, this is an article on Siemens, and the only article on conductance as a unit of measure; therefore, "Mho" must be included as an alternate but equivalent unit to serve best the researcher, maintain NPOV, and not promulgate un-cited and therefore possible false or slanted information.
• Also, please, sign your comments with four tildes.

Nicholas SL Smith^chatter 03:48, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Removing mho from this page altogether is not a good idea since clearly it is still in use. However, mho is an outdated term and should be stated as such. If mho is still used in modern research as commonly as unofficial units like Kcal/mol (which as we all know is widely used in place of kJ/mol in the US) then needless to say the page is perfect as it is. -- BBAmp 16:52 January 21, 2010 (EST)

I think mho is currently correctly placed in this article. Does anyone agree that the following sentence is nonsense? "The term siemens could be confused with the large multinational electronics company Siemens." It's supposed to be confused, because it's the same guy who founded the company and gave resistance it's current name. I'll remove that line if nobody complains. Frodo Muijzer (talk) 10:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems an unlikely confusion to me, but could be kept if a reliable source for the statement could be found. I did a search (not very thorough) and did not turn up anything. SpinningSpark 19:34, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

To reiterate once again, this is an article on Siemens, but is the only article on conductance as a unit of measure; therefore, "Mho" must be included as an alternate but equivalent unit to serve best the researcher, maintain NPOV, and not promulgate un-cited and therefore possible false or slanted information. Asserting that mho is an outdated term is appropriate if and only if appropriately (otherwise it would be original research). The article is adequate as written - I'll renew a search for historical commentary about the use of each term. Nicholas SL Smith^chatter 23:13, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Reference to mho for history and cross reference makes sense. The opinion/editorializing in the last paragraph should be removed. It should be informative, but objective.

SI electri-who-who?

Why is there an entire-article-worthy table of SI electrical units wedged in this article? 65.122.15.98 00:05, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree. This chart is not applicable to the article, and there already is another table of SI derived units that is more complete. Should it be removed? DemonThing 23:34, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

It belongs here. Keep it. Gene Nygaard 23:46, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

All SI unit articles have the table. The reason is so that redirects from, and/or enquiries about, microsiemens, nanosiemens etc make sense. It is easier to explain multiples in a simple table than in 21 separate articles.

If a reader enquires about the unit (e.g. siemens), then the table is somewhat redundant (as you suggest). However, readers can have a different starting point. They may enquire about yoctosiemens without knowing what it is. Here they can see a description of siemens and how yoctasiemens relates to it and each of the other 20 multiples. Bobblewik 23:40, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

So what is a yoctasiemens? or is that a typo? njh 07:15, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Lack of clarity

All the math should be eliminated unless someone can define the undefined terms such as A, W, s etc. By the way "mho" definitely belongs here. Read the historic literature....it s full of mhos. Our readers should not be separated from continuity with historical research. It is not wikipedia's mission to purge history. Sekolov 18:11, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The "terms" as you call them are written in roman letters (as opposed to italic) and hence easily recognizable as symbols for units in the International System of Units. A is the internationally standardized symbol for "Ampere", and so on. There should be no need to paraphrase major parts of the SI in every article about a particular unit, that's why we work with links. I agree that the mho belongs here, as long as it's made perfectly clear that this unit is now obsolete. --DrTorstenHenning 10:49, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

your theoretical discussion here is fine, but the point is that there were no links to ampere and some of the other parameters, until i have partially fixed this jargon ridden section. it still needs work to be friendly to the average wikipedia user. regards. Sekolov 14:13, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Primary vs. secondary sources

I had replaced the secondary source in the References section by a primary source. A discussion about this has been initiated on my talk page. Pending further exchange there, I will not revert the insertion of said secondary source for the time being. --DrTorstenHenning (talk) 10:19, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

• No further exchange there, the reference to the secondary (and unreliable) source goes. --DrTorstenHenning (talk) 11:34, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Equivalent or Equal?

While sleuthing through what I find to be a rather useless and righteous NPV debate about erasing the existence of mho from the Wikipedia reality...

I am left to guess that the mho's are calculated the same a Siemens, and have a unity conversion between the two units.

I'm in support of a mho article. It is relevant. I have seen mho used in recent catalogs.

Eet 1024 (talk) 04:07, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Weird sentence

Maybe it's just me, but the following sentence seems a bit odd: "The term siemens, as it is an SI unit, is used universally in science and primarily in electrical applications, while mho is still used primarily in electronic applications." --Sydius (talk) 16:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Electronic applications make practical use of the behaviour of charges (electrons) within vacuum, gaseous fluids, or semiconductors, when voltage is applied. Here, microchips, transistors/diodes, or tubes are used for analogue or digital operations.

Electric applications (think: the electrical power grid, candescent lighting, resistive heating plates, electric motors (without any controlling logic), etc.) don't generally use semiconductors, but instead metal conductors, resistors, capacitors, coils.

In reality you'll often have devices that have electrical components combined with electronical modules for control, or as sensors e.g. I am not a expert on this, but maybe this gives you an idea about the differences between 'electrical' and 'electronical' Hffman (talk) 03:16, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't know there was a difference. In fact, until you pointed it out, I didn't even realize they were different words. My brain just kept reading the same word twice. --Sydius (talk) 15:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Not just DC

Siemens (and mhos) are used to measure admittance as well as pure conductance. I've changed the intro to match the Ohm page which mentions impedance as well as resistance. It doesn't mention reactance so I didn't add susceptance. Shannock9 (talk) 13:38, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

mho was officially renamed to the siemens

Which source says something about "renaming" (of a previously defined unit)? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:13, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Did you try google before you started tagging the article? Let me help you,

• Survey of English Spelling
• The Technician's Emi Handbook
• A Dictionary Of Weights, Measures, And Units
• Circuit Analysis (for Anna University)

just a few from dozens of book sources you could choose from.

The source already in the article at the place discussed says

The siemens was defined at an international conference in 1881, and is named after Ernst Werner von Siemens (1816-1892), a German inventor. The symbol for Siemens is a capital S. The previous unit for electrical conductance was called the mho, and it is still used today in some areas of electronics.

which seems plain enough to me. SpinningSpark 20:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Existence of certain "previous unit" does not imply that it was renamed – the value possibly changed also. Please, add one of citations about "renaming". Myself, I have not to google such citations, since it is the burden of editors who add or restore material. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:47, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

request

if I wanted to convert a plot of amperes (Y axis) and time (x axis) to seimens I would....some help here, as this is a common thing in electrochemistry — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.195.10.169 (talk • contribs) 21:39, 21 February 2014‎

Discussion of unit capitalization

The discussion of capitalization rules for SI units feels out of place. Perhaps the interested reader could be directed to a page where this is discussed in more detail? Perhaps this paragraph-long discussion could be condensed to a single-sentence?

While the issues raised in the discussion is true, it reads more like the opinion of somebody who wanted to make it "Wikipedia-official". Perhaps a better editor than I could fix this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vreezkid (talk • contribs) 23:18, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually, lower case for unit names is pretty common for all systems of units, not just SI. SpinningSpark 18:50, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

I page is not consistent with the cited reference regarding capitalization. As the cited BIPM document states,

In English, the names of units start with a lower-case letter (even when the symbol for the unit begins with a capital letter), except at the beginning of a sentence or in capitalized material such as a title. In keeping with this rule, the correct spelling of the name of the unit with the symbol °C is "degree Celsius" (the unit degree begins with a lower-case d and the modifier Celsius begins with an upper-case C because it is a proper name).

{{{1}}}::So, just a Celsius is capitalized because it is a proper noun (from Anders Celsius), so Siemens should be capitalized (from Ernst Werner von Siemens). Any objections to this being corrected? Klbrain (talk) 14:57, 1 August 2016 (UTC) It seems I was a little hasty with the claim; it looks like the second cited source has more detail, showing use with lower case. So, it does seem that lower case is standard use (but not for Celcius). Surprising. Klbrain (talk) 15:06, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

why there is a 'G' to represnt condctivity ?

pls ans — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.251.19.57 (talk) 01:48, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Sorry I don't know the answer specifically, but Conductivity might give you some more insights, otherwise the Reference Desk might be able to help. Good question! Cheers, --Elfabet (talk) 13:44, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

So I decided to go ahead and ask, since I got so curious. Please find the question on RD here.
Elfabet (talk) 14:09, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Why is this used? They should just use Ohms

I'm really depressed, so this extra unit is hard to remember. I understand ohms but wondered what the heck uS/cm was trying to define. It's just the reciprical of an Ohm. It's like radiation units, there's a crapload of different types of units for radiation. MattL9 (talk) 03:57, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm similarly really confused, why does this unit exist in SI at all? It is just the reciprocal, we don't have a symbol and special place for the inverse of all the other derived units. Why isn't it considered redundant, particularly when S can be easily conflated with seconds?

Nothing in this article explains why it became and remains part of SI, instead it has a completely pointless paragraph on the even less useful mho. For some reason more is written on mho than either the summary or definition despite '"unaccepted special name for an SI unit", and indicates that it should be strictly avoided"'

I tried doing some googling on S but found nothing useful as to why it remains a unit. The first reference to http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/CGPM/CGPM14.pdf#page=78 is dead, the original on waybackmachine is in French (as expected) which I cannot read. Google failed to translate it, any French speakers able to explain why a simple reciprocal was made part of SI? BeardedChimp (talk) 23:16, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

The answer might be merely that a unit of conductance was wanted. However, the minutes of the 14th CGPM conference note that the siemens was adopted by the IEC in 1935, so you might like to explore that. NebY (talk) 00:27, 29 July 2023 (UTC)