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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Science Association | 2/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Science_Association | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:20:09.666490+00:00 | kb-cron |
The natural relation between these units are clearly, that a unit of electromotive force between two points of a conductor separated by a unit of resistance shall produce unit current, and that this current in a unit of time convey a unit quantity of electricity. The unit system was "absolute" since it agreed with previously accepted units of work, or energy:
The unit current of electricity, in passing through a conductor of unit resistance, does a unit of work or its equivalent in a unit of time.
=== Committee on Mechanical Nomenclature === In 1888, at a meeting of the British Association in Bath, the Committee on Mechanical Nomenclature suggested three new units: the kine for velocity, equal to 1 centimeter per second; the bole for momentum, equal to 1 gram times 1 kine; and the barad for pressure, equal to 1 dyne per square centimeter. The London Electrical Review called the new units "an abomination, and wholly unnecessary" and attributed their creation to a "craze" for naming new units. William Henry Preece noted in 1891 that he had only seen one instance of use of the new units. By 1913, the units had fallen entirely out of use.
=== Other === The Association was parodied by English novelist Charles Dickens as 'The Mudfog Society for the Advancement of Everything' in The Mudfog Papers (1837–38). In 1878 a committee of the Association recommended against constructing Charles Babbage's analytical engine, due to concerns about the current state of the machine's lack of complete working drawings, the machine's potential cost to produce, the machine's durability during repeated use, how and what the machine will actually be utilized for, and that more work would need to be done to bring the design up to a standard at which it is guaranteed to work. The Association introduced the British Association (usually termed "BA") screw threads, a series of screw thread standards in sizes from 0.25 mm up to 6 mm, in 1882. The standards were based on the metric system, although they had to be re-defined in imperial terms for use by UK industry. The standard was modified in 1884 to restrict significant figures for the metric counterpart of diameter and pitch of the screw in the published table, as well as not designating screws by their number of threads per inch, and instead giving an approximation due to considerable actual differences in manufactured screws. In 1889, a member of the Rational Dress Society, Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, stunned the proceedings of a meeting of the Association in Newcastle upon Tyne by organizing an impromptu session where she introduced rational dress to a wide audience, her speech being noted in newspapers across Britain. In 1903, microscopist and astronomer Washington Teasdale died whilst attending the annual meeting.
== Perception of science in the UK == The Association's main aim is to make science more relevant, representative and connected to society. At the beginning of the Great Depression, the Association's focus began to shift their purpose to account for not only scientific progress, but the social aspects of such progress. In the Association's 1931 meeting, the president General Jan Christiaan Smuts ended his address by the proposal of linking science and ethics together but provided no means to actuate his ideas. In the following years, debate began as to whom the responsibilities of scientists fell upon. The Association adopted a resolution in 1934 that dedicated efforts to better balance scientific advancement with social progress. J.D. Bernal, a member of the Royal Society and the British Association, wrote The Social Function of Science in 1939, describing a need to correctly utilize science for society and the importance of its public perception. The idea of the public perception of science was furthered in 1985 when the Royal Society published a report titled The Public Understanding of Science.
In the report, a committee of the Royal Society determined that it was scientists' duty to communicate to and educate the public. Lord George Porter, then president of the Royal Society, British Association, and director of the Royal Institution, created the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science, or COPUS, to promote public understanding of science.