Jonathan,
Yes, you have a choice. You can choose to use terms that you think will
be understandable by non-experts or you can choose to use the terms that
experts use (and, perhaps, educate non-experts in the process).
I prefer using expert terms because they are well-defined and I like
learning -- and also because when I come across the use of a non-expert
term, I tend to wonder about the expertise of the author. I don't think
I'm alone in that regard.
Regards,
Steve Emmerson
------- Original Message
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 16:49:41 +0000
From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk>To: cf-metadata at cgd.u
car.edu
Subject: [CF-metadata] Proposed standard names for biological model outputs
Dear Steve
> I belive the term "molality" is as well-known and well-defined to a
> chemist as "termperature" is to a thermodynamicist. I certainly knew it
> when I studied chemistry.
That's interesting. From schooldays I knew molarity not but molality (not
being a chemist). However, I suppose that we have to choose names which are
clear to a wide range of people, not just specialists in the field, and I
suspect that the average climate modeller would not be clear about either
molality or molarity. Hence moles_of_X_per_unit mass is preferable, I'd say.
We could use moles_of_X_per_unit volume, which is perfectly clear, but
we already use the word "concentration" to mean something per unit volume,
and I would guess that mole_concentration would be generally understood to
mean mol m-3.
These terms are unusual in having a unit in them (mol). Yes, we could instead
say amount_of_substance_concentration and amount_of_substance_per_unit_mass
since mole is the SI unit of "amount of substance". Is that clearer? I suspect
that it probably is not, to the average user, as it depends on recognising
"amount of substance" as a technical term.
Cheers
Jonathan
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------- End of Original Message
Received on Mon Dec 04 2006 - 10:02:32 GMT
