3 ms·
Yes! Units are up to you (with some constraints)! Physicists do this in practice a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
by donovanr 1y ago
Yes! Units are up to you (with some constraints)! Physicists do this in practice a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_units
- cperciva 1y agoPhysicists also sometimes deal with inverse temperature aka "coldness".
- jabl 1y agoThis is to an extent a party trick to befuddle lay people. Physicists know perfectly well that temperature is not a well-defined concept out of equilibrium. And when in a population inversion experiment when "temperature" is determined to be negative (or "beyond infinite" if you will) it arises because for a short while you have a non-Boltzmannian distribution.
- OscarCunningham 1y agoI don't think they were talking about negative temperature, they just mean that sometimes the convenient quantity to work with is β = 1/T.
- jabl 1y agoOh, right, yes. But that's just because 1/T occurs in many formulas and thus it's often convenient to work with it instead. No exciting new physics hiding there. ;)
- cperciva 1y agoRight, using beta is more convenient and also it's better behaved since it doesn't have the weird "goes to infinity then comes back from negative infinity as you keep increasing it" behaviour.