I’m refactoring some of our code and am wondering what to do with a few scientific constants we use, like speed of light, permittivity of free space, and the like. I was intrigued to see a stand-alone package, Tau.jl but that offers a bit more than just the τ constant. Would it be appropriate to cr…

Slightly a side-issue, but, suppose there is a good package for constants and I want to write a simple pendulum simulation for which I need only the force of gravity. How can I make sure all the constants in the world (and their uncertainties and units) don’t take up memory?

Memory for constants is not something you will have to worry about.

Not even if it’s all the constants in the world? :-p

Constants in math are precisely defined and have no associated uncertainty. In physics there could be measurement error, but by the time it gets to be called a “constant” this is usually not a concern, or the constant is defined to be something that forms the basis of other units (eg speed of light …

Acceleration due to gravity g would certainly be useful to have and has an intrinsic variation over the earth’s surface.

Apart from a few quantities defined to be exact, most physical constants do have measurement uncertainties. See the CODATA database: Fundamental Physical Constants | NIST

@ChrisRackauckas was right, the bikeshedding is strong in this one :slight_smile:

By the way, this package would be a great candidate for https://github.com/JuliaPhysics :smiley:

There’s also https://github.com/ggggggggg/Physical.jl

Would be nice to consolidate something in JuliaPhysics for sure.

Request for comment: package for scientific and mathematical constants

Specific Domains Numerics

giordano April 4, 2019, 10:16pm 32

I’ve finally released the first version of PhysicalConstants.jl (see the announcement).

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Request for comment: package for scientific and mathematical constants

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