Timeline for In semiconductor physics, how can we know which units to use for Boltzmann's constant?

Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0

7 events

when toggle format	what		by	license	comment
Mar 7, 2021 at 18:03	comment	added	Hearth		@JakeNixon As I said a few times, American education is really bad in this regard. Even into university I had teachers who didn't properly handle units and it got on my nerves every time.
Mar 7, 2021 at 17:33	comment	added	Marcus Müller		yes, they can be measured in different units, but they are different units; if you treat the numbers and units separately, you'll notice that pretty quickly :)
Mar 7, 2021 at 17:27	comment	added	Jake Nixon		@MarcusMüller The reason that this was tricky to me is because sqrt(eV/kg) and sqrt(J/kg) can both be measured in meters per second at the end of the day. The issue lies in the fact that sqrt(1J/1kg) 1 m/s, whereas sqrt(1eV/1kg) is 4.003*10^-10 m/s. I was only looking at the final dimension. I've discussed with my classmates and this wasn't intuitive to anyone at this level. Perhaps it's something to blame on American education.
Mar 7, 2021 at 17:09	comment	added	Marcus Müller		@JakeNixon I'm just really surprised this surprised you! I can't remember a time as student when I didn't use units to check whether my calculations made sense – which you can't do if this wasn't clear to you, so things must've been much harder on you (or you're just much smarter)! Either way, you should really get used to keeping the units around in all your calculations, and work a lot on paper; this becomes natural pretty quickly, I promise :)
Mar 7, 2021 at 16:59	vote	accept	Jake Nixon
Mar 7, 2021 at 16:59	comment	added	Jake Nixon		This makes sense and helps me with terminology and understanding. I will admit that this was unintuitive as far as particle physics goes, but your analogy with feet and inches helped me very much.
Mar 7, 2021 at 16:47	history	answered	Hearth	CC BY-SA 4.0