- Paperback: 354 pages
- Publisher: OUP Oxford (22 Aug 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0198605226
- ISBN-13: 978-0198605225
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 16 x 1.9 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 849,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
This comprehensive and authoritative dictionary provides clear definitions of units, prefixes, and styles of weights and measures within the Système International (SI), as well as traditional, and industry-specific units. It also includes general historical and scientific background, covering the development of the sequential definitions and sizing of units. This new reference work will prove invaluable to professional scientists, engineers, technicians as well as to students and the general user. · Over 1,600 clear and concise entries complete with historical background · Covers a broad range of disciplines, including astronomy, electromagnetics, geology, photography, mathematics, meteorology, physics, and temperature · Notes on associated terminology · Numerous tables, including the geochronologic scale and the equation of time · Comprehensive coverage of the whole Système International
About the Author
After working as a research scientist at the Weapons Research Establishment for the Commonwealth of Australia, as a systems analyst for the Australian Department of Defence, and as the Assistant Director-General for the Australian telecommunications authority, Donald Fenna was made a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta. He has over 60 publications in learned journals and books covering mathematics, management, computing, and medicine, including Elsevier's Encyclopedic Dictionary of Measures.
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4 reviews
Great hardcopy book, poor implementation for Kindle.
30 Mar 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book itself, "A Dictionary of Weights, Measures, and Units (Oxford Paperback Reference)" is an excellent reference. As a hardcopy book, it would be invaluable. If it had been implemented properly on the Kindle, it would be even more useful. As it is, the implementation as a Kindle ebook is so poor as to make the reference almost unusable.
The problem is that there is no index, and other than scrolling through the entire book it is not practical even to look something up alphabetically. Using the Kindle "search" function for a keyword is barely usable, as the search find every occurrence of a given word in the entire book, without distinguishing between main topic headings, or, say, the initials in the name of an author quoted within some entry. If you look in "Table of contents", there are just 4 entries: Preface, Dictionary, Symbols and Endnotes. Clicking on "Dictionary" just brings you to the first entry, "A", in the entire dictionary. You then have to scroll through the entire book, page by page (about a second delay for every page turned) to find anything.
As an example, I wanted to look up "speed of light". This is often represented by the symbol "c". However, searching the book for "c" comes up with 263 entries, including initials in names, and mostly nothing to do with the speed of light. Searching for "speed" comes up with 109 entries, mostly not relevant, and searching for "speed of light" still comes up with 17 entries. One of them (I later found), the 13th in the list, is the main "speed of light" entry, but it's not distinguished by the search as being a main dictionary entry in any way. It was only by accident, while trying to find something else, that I stumbled independently on this main "speed of light" entry in the dictionary.
If this had been a printed version, I could have found my entry, in alphabetical order, immediately. To try to make the Kindle version somewhat usable, I have now made my own 26 bookmarks, for the start of "A", "B", "C" entries etc., so that at least I can start my scrolling search at the right letter of the alphabet.
This is a great disappointment. It should have been easier to find references in the computer (i.e. Kindle) version, rather than becoming as now almost impossible. My impression is that the original text file for the printed book was just automatically converted to Kindle format with no effort or thought as to how it could be used, as a dictionary, on a Kindle.
The problem is that there is no index, and other than scrolling through the entire book it is not practical even to look something up alphabetically. Using the Kindle "search" function for a keyword is barely usable, as the search find every occurrence of a given word in the entire book, without distinguishing between main topic headings, or, say, the initials in the name of an author quoted within some entry. If you look in "Table of contents", there are just 4 entries: Preface, Dictionary, Symbols and Endnotes. Clicking on "Dictionary" just brings you to the first entry, "A", in the entire dictionary. You then have to scroll through the entire book, page by page (about a second delay for every page turned) to find anything.
As an example, I wanted to look up "speed of light". This is often represented by the symbol "c". However, searching the book for "c" comes up with 263 entries, including initials in names, and mostly nothing to do with the speed of light. Searching for "speed" comes up with 109 entries, mostly not relevant, and searching for "speed of light" still comes up with 17 entries. One of them (I later found), the 13th in the list, is the main "speed of light" entry, but it's not distinguished by the search as being a main dictionary entry in any way. It was only by accident, while trying to find something else, that I stumbled independently on this main "speed of light" entry in the dictionary.
If this had been a printed version, I could have found my entry, in alphabetical order, immediately. To try to make the Kindle version somewhat usable, I have now made my own 26 bookmarks, for the start of "A", "B", "C" entries etc., so that at least I can start my scrolling search at the right letter of the alphabet.
This is a great disappointment. It should have been easier to find references in the computer (i.e. Kindle) version, rather than becoming as now almost impossible. My impression is that the original text file for the printed book was just automatically converted to Kindle format with no effort or thought as to how it could be used, as a dictionary, on a Kindle.
Info at hand -
17 Dec 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
We use this book in our business - dealing with clients world-wide - you find terms in documentation, that make you say, "What???". This book helps out!
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
comprehensive but not exhaustive
22 Dec 2008
Format:Paperback
Plenty of details. However somewhat cumbersome to navigate and not as exhaustive ed.as I expect.
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