Fukushima: damage limitation | 319 comments (319 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Fukushima: damage limitation (none / 0)

What I meant was that they may have been assigned automatically by the computer (based on some standard color sequence), hence "arbitrary". I was trying to come up with an explanation that would make the computer responsible for that comment, as I found it hard to imagine a human being writing something like that....

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 11:38:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Fukushima: damage limitation (none / 1)

What do you mean? People in applied or experimental physics or in numerical simulation love "arbitrary units". It's much easier to not keep track of the units than to use log scale where changes of unit become just a shift of the zero of the scale.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 12:25:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Fukushima: damage limitation (none / 0)

But they hopefully knows what the units mean and could write them somewhere, it they were in the moot to do so. Or are the transformations too complicated for that?

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 04:14:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Fukushima: damage limitation (none / 1)

My guess it that they are showing orders of magnitude of contamination with respect to the normal level of radioactivity in sea water. If so this would indicate that the worst contamination is >1x10⁶ higher than ambient.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 06:03:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Fukushima: damage limitation (4.00 / 2)

My guess would be that they're using arbitrary units because they're modelling concentration relative to emission concentration or -rate, and don't know the latter with enough confidence to calibrate their scale.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Apr 6th, 2011 at 06:38:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Fukushima: damage limitation | 319 comments (319 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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