Why do people still use conventional current notation?. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 04:25:43 pm
content: I have been interacting with lots of people who still use conventional current notation and wanted to get some feedback as to why.So we know only the free electrons are flowing in our circuits since the electron was discovered. As well anyone who works with rectifiers or tubes understands only the electrons are flowing. We were also taught in grade school that the (+) Protons are the center of the atom. So if we claim the positive charges are flowing we are basically claiming the copper in our wires is flowing which is absurd.I can't understand why so many people use a backwards and outdated concept like conventional current notation when it's obvious electron current notation is the only correct form.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 04:48:37 pm
content: The neverending debate:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/why-not-change-conventional-current-to-electron-current/https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/electical-flow-question/https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/aaaah-its-driving-me-mad/https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/conventional-flow-needs-to-go/and many others. . . .The electrical and electronics industries have been using conventional current for over 150 years, and apart from semiconductor physicists, electrochemists and vacuum tube enthusiasts, no one actually cares that the moving charge is negative and flow the other way. Changing the convention would be a nightmare: All textbooks, documentation, design files, equipment in service &etc. would have to be either revised or clearly marked as pre-changeover, and the potential for f--kups worse than NASA's unit conversion issue resulting in the total loss of the $327.6 millionMars Climate Orbiterwould be great.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 05:03:22 pm
content: Stolen from the first topic I linked!Quote from: T3sl4co1l on January 31, 2016, 07:59:00 pm

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 05:18:39 pm
content: Ian.MI understand it's a little controversial, it's the status quo and changing the convention would be an absolute nightmare. However that's not the point, conventional current notation is incorrect.Here in Canada I noticed my kids high school science textbooks all used electron flow notation now so things are changing for the better imo.So if I'm reading your post correctly, your aware conventional flow notation is backwards but it would take too much time and effort to correct it at this point in time?.I tend to disagree, I remember here in Canada we all had to convert from the outdated imperial units to metric. It was a fiasco, I hated it and it took a long time to get everything sorted out. However once we got used to it we realized metric was superior in almost every respect. I also converted to electron flow notation over 20 years ago and never looked back, I really like it. For me it was a matter of principal not time or money. If it ain't correct... it ain't correct.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 05:26:28 pm
content: Again, what benefit from changing the polarity convention outweighs the nuisance of re-painting every red and black input connector on every voltmeter in the world?The important discovery from the time of Franklin is that there are two opposite possibilities for charge (vitreous and resinous), leading to the choice of positive and negative polarities and later to the corresponding convention for direction of current.Electromagnetism, including the relation between current and magnetism, does not depend on the polarity of the charge carriers.Flow of discrete electrons is found in vacuum tubes, but is not a feature of current in solid conductors.The statement "only the free electrons are flowing in our circuits" is misleading at best. Do you ever use a PMOS or PNP discrete transistor?Newton pointed out that there is only one possibility for mass in gravitation and kinetics, so that there is no need to distinguish between polarities. Modern physics finds that antiparticles still have positive mass.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 05:42:42 pm
content: It isn't wrong, because electrons aren't the only charge carriers, except for the case of vacuum tubes, which are seldom used these days. There is no point in changing something, just for the sake of it.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 05:46:53 pm
content: surely in today's modern society current can go whatever way it wants to

author: UnijunctionTransistor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 05:56:48 pm
content: It would require a Constitutional Amendment.And given the current polarizationin Congress, I find it very unlikely that it would pass.Sorry for the sarcasm, but this topic has been discussed in this forum and all the other EE forums I lurk, many times.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 06:08:45 pm
content: As someone posted above: shit, not again.While the model (charge or voltage moving from plus to minus) may not be correct according to the latest and greatest physics, it matters not: it's plenty good enough for all our purposes electronically speaking, for circuit analysis and representation. What the pointy-headed scientists come up with in the realm of particle and charge physics isn't really relevant here.Just wait until the current (as innow, not as inI) model changes yet again in 10-20 years. Those pointy-headed scientists keep moving the goalposts.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 06:17:05 pm
content: Convention of sign choice is completely arbitrary. In this specific case, there is no advantage of any kind over the other choice - and neither is "more logical" than the other if you look at the big picture. (Hint: electrons are not the only charge carriers.) If the xkcd scenario was possible, all that would result from that would be Electrodynamic creating a thread "Sup dawg why people still use conventional current notation? We now know that electron charge is positive......"Science and engineering is full of arbitrary sign choices. Such is life. For any 1D quantity where the concept of "reversal" compared to some reference zero makes sense, this is always the case."when it's obvious electron current notation is the only correct form. " good trolling. The whole term "electron current" should not exist. It makes absolutely no sense and is created solely to cause confusion. Ditto for "conventional current". There is only electric current, and it has only one definition, which, by definition, is the only correct definition. Anything else makes no sense, just like "Electron Celsius degrees" with swapped polarity and then "Conventional Celsius degrees" with classic polarity would also make no sense.

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 06:29:08 pm
content: Analog KidQuoteI disagree, most of my research is in HV plasma technology where electron flow in and around conductors is critical. At my company most of the Engineers would start laughing and rolling their eyes if you claimed the above. So we should be clear, your only talking about people playing around with low voltage who have probably never even heard the terms corona or leakage.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 06:31:44 pm
content: Never seen corona discharge from a dodgy CRT anode cap?I once built one of those 'electrodynamic lifters' for fun. That worked with either polarity. Both positive and negative charge carriers can ionize (dissociate) air.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 07:03:05 pm
content: I am all for the “multicultural” approach. Let the current annotation follow the most mobile charge carriers:1) In electronic conductors (metal conductors, N-type semiconductors) denote current as flowing from the negative terminal to the positive terminal, in the same direction as electron flow.2) In water-based electrolytes the most mobile charge carrier is the proton. Therefore, annotate current as flowing from anode to cathode.3) In P-type semiconductors let the current flow from the positive terminal to the negative terminal, following the direction of hole transport.4) In plasma: it depends on the chosen qualification factor:- If we choose energy, electrons dominate because they carry more energy than heavier ions, so current can be taken as flowing from negative to positive.- If a person selects momentum, then both electrons and ions contribute equally in opposite directions, so current could be denoted in either direction.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 07:37:15 pm
content: Indeed. One is free to choose which notation they prefer, but make it clear and don't try to force others to do the same.One reason why we won't universally change to electron flow is because most single supply DC circuits use positive voltage, conventional current, and all the signs would change to negative. Positive voltage isn't most common because of the sign. It's because having a negative supply and a positive chassis increases the risk of corrosion problems.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 07:57:40 pm
content: Speaking as a scientist, without a pointy head, I have never seen confusion about this question in scientific circles, only in electronic hobbyist and military electronics circles (WW II electronics training manuals, teaching vacuum-tube circuits, used electron current)."Current" as a general concept can mean the flow of water in a stream, where the mass "carriers" in question (water molecules) are positive-definite.One can include "electron current" as a flow of electrons, but in electromagnetism positive current is defined as a flow of positive charge and the right-hand rule follows from that to define the direction of a magnetic field.If one wears blinders, one sees only electrons as charge carriers in electrical current: in elementary physics textbooks the author usually starts by illustrating a circuit with a host of different physical cases.I remember one with a battery, a copper wire, a Van der Graaf accelerator belt moving charges up to a high-voltage electrode, an positive-ion beam accelerated in vacuum by that voltage, and a thermionic vacuum diode in a loop.In "normal matter" (not antiparticles), the number of protons (positive charge) equals the number of electrons (negative charge) in the universe: electrons are lighter, and therefore more mobile in typical situations.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2025, 08:25:24 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 23, 2025, 06:29:08 pmWith all due respect to your expertise in your field, what does it really matter what sign (+or-) you assign to parts of a circuit (whether HV or LV)? It's just a notational convention, and obviously wouldn't hinder your work in any case since you understand what's going on there.It's a distinction without a difference.

author: kite31
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 12:42:45 am
content: I have variables X and Y. If you agree with me on the X and Y assignments in a relationship then we can communicate.QWERTY keyboards remain in fashion, regrettably, but I use them efficiently.I use RPN exclusively including when writing/solving equations, except when communicating with others who do not prefer my language.

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 05:07:56 pm
content: Analog kidQuoteI disagree, in many of the systems I work with we need to know exactly where the electrons are concentrated and the charge density. It becomes even more relevant in the real world outside our circuits. For example, the Lenard effect, contact and spray electrification,https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2015-892/. Here literally everything revolves around the kinds of charged particles, concentrations, surface charges and the external environment.So in Atmospheric Electrodynamics the kinds of charges, charge concentration and surface charges are critical. Lenard and J. J. Thomson practically wrote the book on this. Of course it was J. J. Thomson who is credited with discovering the electron. Their work is absolutely brilliant and a must read imo. The thing to remember about plasma and atmospherics is everything acts in 3D and is not constrained to a conductor. It has more to do with fluid dynamics than a 2D circuit imo.I get where your coming from, I have been a computer programmer/electronics guy for 50 years. Started bread boarding robotics and automation on a Vic 20 and Commodore 64 before the internet was invented, lol. However advanced electrodynamics and atmospherics is a completely different ball game. I can't imagine not using electron flow notation.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 05:43:50 pm
content: OK, and in what way is that incompatible with learning (and teaching others) "FYI, conventional current flow is opposite to electron current flow"? It seems to me like you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 06:51:08 pm
content: There might not even be a need to mention any of this. Just teach Kirchoff laws and concept of current flowing like you normally do. What actually happens at sub-atom level is much more complicated than just "electrons moving" (good luck explaining capacitors with that), and if you are not going to teach a "full" (to our current knowledge) physical model of that (because there is no need to), why talk about any "electron direction" at all? It's an unnecessary level of abstraction in 99.99% of cases.This whole "problem" is totally made-up by teachers "helpfully" talking about the thing too early / in wrong context / blown out of proportion.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 06:55:57 pm
content: Consider this:Bank notes (positive $) are flowing to you. You are getting richer.Alternatively, debt (negative $) is flowing out from you. You are getting richer, too.What you are proposing is swapping the terms, only because you never heard about bank notes, just debt.The whole problem is that of 7th graders or something trolling on the internets.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 07:20:11 pm
content: Charge concentration can be negative charges (electrons or negative ions) or positive charges (usually positive ions) in macroscopic effects.If you apply a voltage difference to a chemical cell filled with NaCl, the positive Na+and negative Cl-ions flow in opposite directions, but the total current flows in the same direction as do the positive ions.When the ions reach the electrodes, the positive ions regain their missing electron and are neutralized, and the negative ions lose their extra electron and are neutralized.If the original positive ion is hydrogen, H+, then it is an elementary particle (proton), a positive charge carrier.The important thing is that charge exists in two polarities, as opposed to mass.Electrical forces, therefore, can be attractive or repulsive, but gravitation is always attractive.Since matter in bulk is essentially neutral in charge, the electrostatic force dies off quickly from normal material, but gravitation goes on forever and holds the universe together.

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 07:33:57 pm
content: TimFoxQuoteInteresting observations which are right up my alley. I built my own 700kV Van de Grraaf for HV plasma experiments which I later donated to my kids high school.We could ask if more (+) protons were transported up the moving belt to the top load. The answer is no, free electrons were removed from the neutral belt (equal + and -) leaving a (+) surface charge. Said (+) surface charge on the belt then traveled upward and attracted/removed some electrons from the top load, the electrons removed traveling down the other side of the belt. We now have a (+) surface charge or deficit of electrons on the top load.Here we need to be careful, our belt is simply a surface charge carrier, it doesn't actually move more (+) protons up the belt and deposit them on the top load. The number of protons does not change. Electrons were removed from the belt leaving a (+) surface charge transported to our top load.On a positive-ion beam accelerated in vacuum, a positive ion is simply atoms which have some of the electrons removed leaving more protons which were already present. Positively charged ions have fewer electrons than protons. The positively charged ions are then accelerated in a vacuum tube by an electric field from the (+) positive terminal which repels to the (-) negative terminal which attracts because the (+) ions have a positive surface charge.On the macro scale something similar could be demonstrated with pith balls instead of positive ions per say. We would use the same Van de Graaff generator to remove electrons from the belt, then move the (+) surface charge upward and apply it to the top load. We could then use a glass tube with the now (+) charged pith balls inside it. Once again the (+) pith balls would be accelerated by our electric field from (+) to (-) in vacuum. The pith balls would also exhibit a corona effect from their high surface charge not unlike your plasma did. The pith balls are much larger than your ions however the basic science has not changed.I have built and tested many HV generators. Van de Graff, Wimshurst, Bohnenberger, Tesla coils, a Dirod generator after reading A.D.Moore's awesome book on electrostatics, a Bennett doubler and so on. These machines are excellent examples of why electron flow notation is so important. I'm kind of old school.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 07:59:10 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 23, 2025, 05:18:39 pmIt's not controversial at all. The lack of controversy is why there is no motivation for change.QuotePoor kids. They will be awfully confused as their education progresses.Quote"Correctness" according to some arbitrary rule is irrelevant. The important question is whether or not something is useful.Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 24, 2025, 05:07:56 pmNone of these calculations are affected in the slightest by the choice of current flow notation. It is a matter of complete irrelevance.As noted by many people here, you seem to be trolling (in the sense of trying to stir up an ant hill), and trolling is annoying. It may cause glee for the child holding the stick, but the adults just think it is silly.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 08:31:06 pm
content: I have a better question: why don’t physicists simply switch to a notation where electrons carry a positive charge and protons a negative one?After all, it’s their fault that the electron was discovered after the conventional direction of current flow had already been proposed by early experimenters such as Benjamin Franklin and Michael Faraday, and later adopted by electrical engineers. Physicists have no problem switching between different systems of units (CGS, SI, Planck units, ...), so changing a sign would be even simpler than changing the scale of electric charge when converting between unit systems.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 08:47:16 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 23, 2025, 04:25:43 pmWhy do americans still use customary units? (insert coin)

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 08:50:08 pm
content: And we don’t even need physicists to agree on this. Let the bureaucrats at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures simply redefine the elementary charge unit e in SI, so that a single electron carries a charge of +1e (instead of the current -1e). Then everyone else can whine about how awful inches and the old elementary charge were, and how great the meter and the new elementary charge are.This wouldn’t be the first time those bureaucrats redefined fundamental constants after all.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2025, 08:59:08 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 24, 2025, 07:33:57 pmIn my student days, I accelerated hydrogen ions (protons, an elementary particle) through a DC potential difference.No electrons passed down the evacuated tube.Nature includes both baryons and leptons.

author: johansen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 03:10:13 am
content: A top down left to right approach to drawing schematics has always been positive bus bar on top of the page, negative/ground on the bottom.It is possible that the intrinsic human understanding of things fall down has contributed to the conventional way of looking at current flow and the years spent reading schematics drawn in such a manner re-enforces it.if all the schematics are re-drawn to be negative on top, positive on the bottom, i think people would be forced to visualize and understand schematics differently, and then they would understand the "current" is actually flowing the other direction.

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 03:16:41 am
content: Quote from: johansen on September 25, 2025, 03:10:13 amThere was a time when that was common:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/old-schematics-positive-rail-at-the-bottom/

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 03:27:47 am
content: Quote from: ledtester on September 25, 2025, 03:16:41 amYabbut, that's because the circuit used a PNP transistor and people didn't draw them upside-down in them thar days.Funny thing: I remember this from when I was a kid, in the 19-ought-60s, readingPopular Electronics. For some reason I thought PNPs were the "good" transistors and NPNs were somehow "bad". (2N109s?) Had something to do with polarity but I can't exactly remember what. Weird.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 03:32:48 am
content: Quote from: johansen on September 25, 2025, 03:10:13 amWith vacuum tubes, it was natural to put the positive rail on the top of the page and the negative rail (and ground) at the bottom of the page.That convention persisted into NPN transistor circuit drawings.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 03:38:16 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 25, 2025, 03:27:47 amWhen I was a Cub Scout, the hobbyist transistors were the GE 2N107 PNP and the Raytheon CK722 PNP, both germanium. The 2N109 PNP was from RCA, and was more of a "professional" product.Apparently, "real" transistors that flunked the QA tests were re-labeled 2N107 and sold to Cub Scouts.Nostalgia:https://n4trb.com/AmateurRadio/SemiconductorHistory/Type%202N107%20Transistor%20Circuits%20for%20Experimenters%20Amateurs.pdf

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 04:38:02 am
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 23, 2025, 05:18:39 pmIt's not. That's the myth. Everyone saying the standard convention is incorrect are simply wrong.

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 06:37:50 am
content: Please postpone this debate until every country has changed to SI-units. But good luck...

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 08:16:24 am
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on September 25, 2025, 04:38:02 am

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 10:02:08 am
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on September 25, 2025, 04:38:02 amThis. It's an excellent litmus test: only a real idiot does not get something this simple. Anyone talking about "conventional vs. electron current" is simply completely incapable of participating in science/engineering. Do not hire. (And I'm one of those who think that teachers should know their stuff especially well; I'm against the idea of the dropouts who cannot afford "real" job becoming teachers.)All that is needed is understanding:- * - = +- * + = -+ * - = -+ * + = +Negative things going one way is equivalent to that of positive things (or lack of negative things) going the opposite way. Someone had to choose which particles to call "negative" and which "positive", and the rest follows. As fucking simple as that.

author: hans
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 10:15:30 am
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on September 25, 2025, 04:38:02 amThe SI standard for amperage seems to work pretty well for everyone. So I concur, its not a myth, it works.Engineering is taking applied physics and start building stuff with even more abstract models (from a physics perspective).A resistor is a resistor, a constant. Except for temperature drift, voltage drift, recovery characteristics, etc. Usually they don't matter. Or they are purposely built for it, like a NTC with a specific curve spec.I'm sure the physics is pretty exciting in how to make precision parts, or semiconductor physics, etc. But as an engineer, a very simplified 1st-order effect of a MOS transistor has always worked pretty well.I can't give a rats arse if I use 3.3V or -3.3V to power a MCU. Or if a voltage regulator delivers 1A or 6.2415e18 e/second or whatever. As long as my design works as intended..

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 10:53:50 am
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on September 25, 2025, 10:02:08 amThis. It's even less wrong when you consider special relativity and it's relationship with Maxwell's law, etc. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of to think that things work the way they do because electrons are moving. What about when you boost your reference frame so electrons aren't moving? You get the same exact physics.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 11:03:28 am
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 23, 2025, 05:18:39 pmIf true, those textbooks should be banned from schools for being confusing shit written by some stupid cowboys.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 02:41:24 pm
content: Quote from: JohanH on September 25, 2025, 06:37:50 amActually, we all have adopted SI. The US switched to metric units in 1959, but didn’t tell anyone.

author: krish2487
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 04:51:10 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 25, 2025, 02:41:24 pmAnd the Brits still have a foot in either boat...IIRC, UK still uses a mix of Imperial and Metric - speed / distance and volume (milk and water and such ) spring to mind.I could be wrong though..

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 05:37:45 pm
content: Quote from: krish2487 on September 25, 2025, 04:51:10 pmWell, unit of measure systems have no connection at all with the putative direction of current flow, but nevertheless, all food packages in the UK are labelled with either grams or millilitres. Even if you buy a pint of milk it will be marked as 568 ml (in addition to 1 pint).

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 05:37:52 pm
content: TimFoxQuoteWell said, I believe the reason why it wasn't made public may relate to this article.https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/202408/why-are-people-so-resistant-to-changeI remember there was a huge debate and much hostility in Canada when we switched to metric. My excuses were identical to those in the article above. In effect the arguments against anything new are generally all the same.I get it, I'm old and cranky. I tend to reject change and growing up in the 80's and 90's on a farm was as good as it gets imo.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 05:48:07 pm
content: A similar problem with bilateral symmetry:Humans have two hands: why do we still call them “left” and “right”?This leads to misunderstandings about sinister and dexterous, respectively.Let’s change this convention, so that we can use the right-hand rule with electron current, and invert the helicity on screw fasteners for the new nomenclature.And don’t start about the political implications of the reformed notation.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 05:52:39 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 23, 2025, 04:25:43 pmSo standard physics models have a convention if current is flowing in a resistive element where the voltage gradient is positive, then the sign of the current flow is positive. This is natural, and it leads to positive values of resistance in Ohm's law.What do you want to change about this?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 06:06:33 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 25, 2025, 05:37:52 pmNo, it's completely different.There was a valid reason to change from imperial to metric. Having all units in powers of 10 and derived from one another has resulted in real, tangible benefits. Changing to electron flow for current would have absolutely no benefits and introduce errors.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 06:17:04 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on September 25, 2025, 06:06:33 pmExcept engineers have been doing this all along. They may work in pounds, thousands of pounds, decimal fractions of pounds. Same with feet, thousands of feet, decimal fractions of feet. Same with inches. You can buy engineer's rules that are graduated in decimal inches.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 06:24:55 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 06:17:04 pmSigh, this has been discussed to death. The real advantage with SI is all the units are derived from one another. Powers of ten is often useful, but not always. For some applications powers of two would have been more sensible.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 06:38:21 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 25, 2025, 05:48:07 pmYep.I had a friend in high school, really smart guy, no dummy.But when he went for his driving test he had to write "LEFT" on his left hand and "RIGHT" on the other.I guess he may have been borderline dyslexic.Gratuitous joke:What did the dyslexic agnostic insomniac do at night?He lay awake wondering if there was really a dog.[boom-TISH!]

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 06:47:48 pm
content: I'm not trying to end this deligtfully interesting discussion--God forbid--but I'd like to sum up from my end by saying that I'm gratified that the consensus here seems to be that this whole thing of trying to change current-flow notation to harmonize with the latest and greatest physics models is a no-go, which is my opinion as well.It seems pretty well established that this ain't gonna happen. Which is fine; both electronic design and construction of real-world stuff as well as the more abstract and abstruse theoretical research will continue on uninterrupted. So to all those Chicken Littles out there, no, the sky ain't gonna fall if people are taught the "wrong" direction of current flow.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 06:59:37 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 06:17:04 pmHow much is 2 feet +/- 7/64th of an inch?How much in PSI, the pressure made by a 12 stone object placed on a circle with this much diameter?

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 07:08:05 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on September 25, 2025, 06:59:37 pmEasy peasy: either 2' 7/64" or 1' 57/64" And I did that all in my head (and I'm not the greatest math whiz around).*QuoteNow that has me stumped. You'll have to ask someone from Blighty about that."Stone"? Doesn't that go back to Stonehenge or something?*Granted those aren't the easiest dimensions to work with, since most rules of that length won't be marked in 64ths of an inch; it'll take some marking with a longer rule followed by marking with a short (probably 6") rule graduated in 64ths. But not difficult at all. I've done it.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 07:09:46 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on September 25, 2025, 06:59:37 pmBad example. If a 168 lb weight acts over a surface area of 452 in2, the surface pressure is 168 / 452 = 0.372 psi.Now do the same with a 168 kg weight on a surface of 0.452 m2and tell me the pressure in Pa.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 07:18:40 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 25, 2025, 06:47:48 pm"Harmonize with the latest and greatest physics models" is incorrect.After the great assignment of polarity to resinous and vitrine electrical charge, the later discovery and definition of electrical current, and the great 19th century achievements in electrodynamics, the elementary particle "electron" was discovered by physicists who determined that its charge was negative.Physicists didn't change the polarity assignment, since there was no need to do so.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 07:23:00 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 05:52:39 pmThe standard convention of current direction and voltage polarity results in Ohmic devices having positive resistance. Good.There is a real difference between such a positive resistance, found in passive circuits, and the rarer examples of negative resistance, as in tunnel diodes and transitron circuits, both of which require an external power source.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 07:30:42 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 07:09:46 pmYou ignored the tolerance, your accuracy was also bad, your spaceship is now crashed into water.

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 07:57:03 pm
content: Analog KidQuoteI would agree and this is not so much a science or efficiency problem it's a people problem. I was more interested in how people react to change and their opinions. I think this link describes the problem pretty well.https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/202408/why-are-people-so-resistant-to-changeI tend to agree with you, as an old farmer and general contractor I'm old school and still use inches and feet. It makes sense to me and I can visualize the dimensions better. A 16th or an 1/8th off means little in the big picture. However as a Power Engineer always doing calculations, using CAD and when running my CNC and 3D printer I would never consider anything but metric.In the end, it's different strokes for different folks and we go with what works for us. It's cool and I would like to thank everyone for their input.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 08:06:15 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on September 25, 2025, 07:30:42 pmThat's because you ignored my comment in the first place:Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 06:17:04 pmSo engineers will quote the diameter as, for example, 24 ± 0.005 in.If they are not engineers, they have no business building a spaceship.Neither was my accuracy bad:Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 07:09:46 pmMy given values had 3 significant figures, and my answer was also given with 3 s.f.If you are going to troll, at least try to troll effectively.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 08:08:12 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 25, 2025, 07:23:00 pmAnd your point is?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 08:12:08 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 07:09:46 pmYou skipped converting the units and assumed it's on earth, not mars.It only works because psi is derived from pounds and inches.If you were given the area in square feet and the weight in troy ounces, then it wouldn't be so easy.SI units are also easy. 1 Pa is 1 N of force over 1m2.kg is a unit of mass, not weight, which depends gravity.On earth, a mass of 1kg exerts a force of 9.81 N over 1m2.p = 168*9.81/0.452 = 3646 Pa.The above is a much simpler calculation because I didn't have to convert stones to pounds and feet to inches first, which you did, but didn't show.Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 25, 2025, 07:57:03 pmI also occasionally use imperial at work. It doesn't bother me. It's only when calculating volume area and power, when SI becomes much easier.Have you thought about the implications of changing to electron flow? Would you change the sign for the voltages or just current? If you just change the sign of the current, then all resistances become negative. You must also change the sign of the voltage, to keep the resistors positive. Now think of all the devices destroyed by reverse polarity.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 08:33:22 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 08:06:15 pmI didn't ignore it, I've seen it being used. It's a terrible system, there is just no redeeming quality to it. Because if you are doing actual work with for example bolts, you are back to fractionals and bullshit calculations, like how do you give clearance to a bolt. Its every single time.You know how much the diameter of a M3 bolt is? Guess if you need to.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 08:45:54 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 08:08:12 pmThe difference between physical reality (e.g., Ohmic devices exhibit positive resistance) and commonly accepted conventions (electrons have negative charge).

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 08:52:23 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 25, 2025, 08:45:54 pmWhat difference is that? You still need to explain.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 08:55:13 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 08:52:23 pmReality: positive resistance means current increases as voltage increases, and vice-versa.Convention: we define the charge on the electron as negative, and the transport of positive charge to the right as current flowing to the right.If we change that convention, then we still need to ensure that resistance of passive components be positive.

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 09:03:54 pm
content: Zero999QuoteAh... the math.Strangely, I agree with you 100%.Like many things we have jumped head first down the rabbit hole, creating multiple systems not founded in reality, with no conceivable way to return to the surface. Not unlike much of society as we know it so... pick your poison.I agree and in my opinion, as you suggest, there is no turning back. Coincidentally the average life span of most civilizations is about 300 years and we are around 270 years into our present time frame ie. Glubb’s Stages of Empire. In the big picture there is only one narrative that truly matters and that is adaptability. Ergo, change or die ie. Darwinism.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 09:07:08 pm
content: Which part of the conventional current notation is not founded in reality?There are elementary charge carriers of both polarities (e.g., protons and electrons), so someone had to assign a polarity convention to which most of us agree and have avoided confusion ever since.

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 09:33:03 pm
content: TimFoxQuoteQuoteIf you are not able to accept this fact which literally every credible source agrees on I'm not sure what to tell you Tim. Have you tried googling the subject?.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 09:37:08 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 25, 2025, 09:33:03 pmWhat about the holes?Why you think current should have to indicate the direction of electron flow?

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 09:50:29 pm
content: Zero999QuoteThank you, this made my day.QuoteI'm not sure why anyone would even post anything like this when you could simply google it or ask an AI comrade. Your logic eludes me.When I have a question I google it or ask an AI. It's weird, we are literally on the internet but apparently nobody has a clue how to use it. You do know how to google stuff don't you?...

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 09:53:34 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 25, 2025, 09:33:03 pmYes, conduction electrons conduct current in a solid conductor. Since we already decided to assign a negative charge to electrons, that means current flows in the opposite direction from the drift of electrons.In other situations, with positive charge carriers (protons, holes, positive ions), current flows in the same direction as the positive carriers.Big deal. I accept and live with that.For clarity, note that currentIis a scalar, but current densityJis a vector. The scalar product of that vector with the area vector normal to a surface gives the current through that surface, and the "area vector" points in the direction of current measurement.This is physics.The arrow in an NPN transistor schematic symbol is engineering, and agrees with accepted physics.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 10:09:44 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 25, 2025, 09:50:29 pmUm ... er ... I think the question you were responding to was a rhetorical one, hence your answer is ... superfluous.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2025, 10:13:36 pm
content: Why would anyone ask AI what a given person on a forum, not a published author nor authority, thinks?

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 02:20:39 am
content: Quote from: IanB on September 25, 2025, 05:52:39 pmWell I _hope_ that anyone wanting to change this understands that they would be changing the electrical charge sign so that electrons are positively charged and protons are negative. If you don't do that it's an even stupider idea.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 02:44:51 am
content: There’s a physics joke, I believe from Feynman, about establishing communication with an advanced alien society and conversing first about mathematics, progressing to particle physics (including parity and charge).When the visitors arrive, if they offer to shake hands with the left, watch out!

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 03:11:24 am
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on September 26, 2025, 02:20:39 amYes. You also need to realize that the electric potential would flip sign as well. In other words, in a vacuum diode, the anode would need to be held at a negative potential relative to the cathode in order for the positively charged electrons to flow between the electrodes. In an alkaline battery, the anode (the raised bump on a cylindrical AA cell) would become negatively charged, while the cathode (the zinc casing) would become positively charged.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 02:21:50 pm
content: Quote from: vad on September 26, 2025, 03:11:24 amAnd if you uncase the battery, you will find the traditional internal construction while the external paint job was changed.

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 02:59:44 pm
content: TimFoxQuoteThat is kind of funny, imo.First, that a primitive society like ours would judge a society we have already deemed much more advanced than ours. More so by something as petty and superficial as which hand they prefer.Imagine the aliens surprise, they used technology possibly hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than ours to travel light years to get to us. Then the first thing we do is judge their looks and hand preference. It is hilarious imo.

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 03:14:36 pm
content: ejefferyQuoteI find this notion strange.I have been using electron flow notation for 20 years and do not change the polarity. It's understood that the free electrons in a solid conductor flow from (-) to (+). In electrostatics this has generally always been the case because we are dealing with a physical particle transport mechanism. Of course, a few rules change and the right hand rule for magnetic field curl around a conductor is now the left hand rule. However I found little problem changing over to electron flow notation.I found it very intuitive because I don't generalize (used lump sums) and tend to only look at circuits on the particle-field level. I agree that if we only look at things superficially the polarity and current direction don't matter as much.

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 03:27:41 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 26, 2025, 02:59:44 pmPerhaps Feynman was thinking of matter / antimatter?

author: krish2487
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 03:39:53 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 26, 2025, 03:14:36 pmThere you go, Its just a convention for communication. The conventional convention works for 99% of the cases to explain, draw, express, talk, communicate, understand, design, think and other expression for communicationSo why change it for the sake of changing it?For the other 1% who are in a niche, specialized field they can choose their frame of reference when communicating with other like minded people.IMO, the point of any such convention is communication. As long as that is achieved without much confusion, any standard goes and works. It is just semantics at the end of the day.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 03:56:18 pm
content: Quote from: fourfathom on September 26, 2025, 03:27:41 pmYes, of course. Why would a physicist’s joke involve judgment of looks and hand preferences?

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 04:51:47 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 26, 2025, 02:21:50 pmAbsolutely. Galvanic potential exists independently of our notations. It existed long before humans discovered electricity, long before they invented negative numbers, long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and even before the Earth and the Sun themselves formed.This discussion is about some people being unhappy with certain notations, such as the markings on AA battery terminals or the direction of arrows used to depict current flow. Changing the notation, by flipping the sign of electric charge and electric potential, would satisfy those who prefer the direction of current flow to align with the actual movement of electrons.

author: johansen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 05:44:10 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on September 25, 2025, 08:12:08 pmpounds are a unit of force.

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 06:59:11 pm
content: Quote from: johansen on September 26, 2025, 05:44:10 pmIt's not as simple as you have stated. Colloquially it is used for both force and mass, but mostly as a measure of mass.However, the fact is that the term "pound" is ambiguous, so scientists and engineers are supposed to use 'pounds mass' (lbm) and 'pounds force' (lbf).Or even better, use SI units.😁

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 07:11:54 pm
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on September 26, 2025, 06:59:11 pmIn SI units, there is the same confusion where many people consider "kg" to be weight, while SI is clear that it is mass.I'm not sure, but I believe the founders of the metric system considered the gram to be theweightof 1 cm3of water.The official French title of the organization that governs the "SI" units is BIPM, Bureau International des Poids et Mesures.https://www.bipm.org/en/My French-English dictionary translates "poid" as "weight" in English.Further confusion from the illegitimate term "kgf" for the weight of a kg at mean sea level.The first thing I was taught in high-school physics (US) was that "lb" was a measure of force or weight, and that mass was measured in the ugly term "slug".A given portion of cheese has the same mass at sea level or in orbit, but its weight is different.US law for retail requires listing g (or kg) and lb (or oz), assuming mean sea level value for the acceleration of gravity.I have never seen "lbm" in a scientific context, but have seen "lbf" in engineering contexts to avoid confusion.

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 07:24:30 pm
content: Worth to mention that current and voltages are easy model simplification... it is cutting corners at the end of the day.Real EE always have in mind electric and magnetic fields, and Poynting vectors if necessary, even at DC.And there no discussion about notations AFAIK (thank God!).

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 07:28:59 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 26, 2025, 07:11:54 pmWell, look, some non-scientific people might get confused by kilograms, but the fact is that the SI system defines two completely separate units: newtons for force, kilograms for mass. People who don't know what they are doing might say things like 'kgf', but they are simply wrong.The older system is not so clear:the pound is used for both force and mass. Unlike the SI system, the 'm' or 'f' after it isessentialfor clarity, but often not done. Basically it's a mess. The SI system isn't a mess.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 07:34:43 pm
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on September 26, 2025, 07:28:59 pmUS scientists, when using conventional units, are trained to use “lb” for force.Everyone who uses the SI system uses “kg” for mass.However, I have seen pressure gauges on European equipment calibrated in “kgf/cm2”, which is not proper SI.Before retirement, I often needed to convert torque between N-m and lb-ft. My algorithm started from knowing that 1 kg weighs 9.8 N and 2.2 lb.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 08:02:42 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 26, 2025, 07:11:54 pmThere are two parallel systems:In one, the lbfis the unit of force, and the slug is the corresponding unit of mass that is accelerated at 1 ft/s2.In the other, the poundal is the unit of force, and the lbmis the unit of mass that is correspondingly accelerated at 1 ft/s2.Quote from: TimFox on September 26, 2025, 07:11:54 pmQuote from: SteveThackery on September 26, 2025, 07:28:59 pmAre you going to say that pretty much the whole of Asia and the Eastern Hemisphere is wrong?On thing you learn as an engineer is that the world is very varied. This idea that the USA is a last holdout of traditional units and the rest of the world uses SI is not really correct. It's a bit more nuanced than that.All over the Eastern Hemisphere you will find engineers using kg/cm2as the standard metric unit of pressure. You cannot really tell half of the world it is wrong just because it offends your sense of pedantry.

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 08:23:02 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 26, 2025, 08:02:42 pm(EDIT: I think you mean kgf/cm2.)Oh, but I certainly can! And I do. Furthermore, it isn't pedantry.The SI system was formally established in 1960, but its roots go back to the 1790s in France. Only three countries in the world have not formally adopted the SI system: US, Liberia, and Myanmar. All Asian countries have officially adopted the SI system. However, like the UK, Asian countries still use their own traditional units (ienotimperial units) for informal purposes. In 1975 the US passed a law stating that the SI system is the preferred system for weights and measures, but did not mandate its use.The SI unit for pressure is the pascal. No ifs, no buts. If Asian - or any other - engineers use anything else, they are wrong.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 08:54:04 pm
content: The correct statement is that the United Statesallows useof conventional units.(It's still a free country. Of course, we don't use Imperial units.)US Conventional Units are defined in statute law in terms of the SI units.Modern US packaging uses metric and conventional units together.My package of corn flakes states: "Net wt 8.6 oz (243 g)", following modern parallel usage of the two unit systems.Note the persistent confusion between 8.6 oz as weight (correct) and 243 g as weight (careless).A similar package in France uses the term "poids net" = net weight, in g or kg, similar to US metric labels.The United States of America was one of the initial signatories of the Metre Convention (20 May 1875).It ratified the Convention and became a Member State on 2 August 1878 (source: BIPM).Since the change from NBS, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is the US representative to the BIPM.I have also seen "kg/cm2" on pressure gauges, which is even worse than "kgf/cm2"American pressure gauges are usually calibrated in "psi" (lb/in2)."psig" = gauge pressure (above atmosphere, like in your automobile tires), "psia" = absolute pressure.Other conventional pressure measures include inches of water, atmospheres, Torr = mm Hg, mBar, and "inch Hg" (on barometers).The "kg" is the basic unit for "mass" in the SI system, but many people still use the word "kilogram" or "kilo" or the abbreviation "kg" for "weight".When Newton wrotePrincipia, the word "mass" in this sense was not yet in use.He understood the difference between mass and weight, but referred to the former as the "quantity of matter" (density and volume conjointly).

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 09:28:24 pm
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on September 26, 2025, 08:23:02 pmI watch a lot of Mentour Pilot videos, and I believe that all commercial aircraft currently use hectopascals for air pressure, and none use PSI (which was previously used in some places): is this correct?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 09:38:06 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 26, 2025, 09:28:24 pmThe used to us mbar, which is not an SI unit, so they switched to hPa, which is an SI unit, but is numerically the same as mbar.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 09:47:37 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 26, 2025, 09:28:24 pmAn old definition of "bar" was 105Pa (or N/m2before Pa was named), very close to the average air pressure at mean sea level."hecto" is an uncommon, but not unknown abbreviation for 100: one common use is in the "hectare" for a square with 100 m sides, i.e. (1 hm)2, where 1 hm = 100 m.In US common usage, I have only seen PSI used for pressurized gases or liquids (tire pressure, water pressure, pressure in a gas cylinder, etc.)For non-SI units, barometric pressure and vacuum are often measured in Torr = mm Hg.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 10:17:54 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 26, 2025, 09:47:37 pmLet's don't forget "hectograph". (Well, formerly common ...)

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2025, 10:18:35 pm
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on September 26, 2025, 08:23:02 pmNo, I really don't. I meant what I wrote, kg/m2. This is what people use, what you will find inscribed on the dials of instrumentation, and seen on displays and in technical manuals.The "f" is redundant, since it is understood from the context. If I put some potatoes on my kitchen scale and they weigh 1.5 kg, then that kg is a unit of force (weight is force). I don't see any weigh scales that read in lbfof kgf.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2025, 12:05:11 am
content: Quote from: fourfathom on September 26, 2025, 03:27:41 pmThis is exactly correct, and it's because there is a definite asymmetry here re: right and left and you can define right and left. Which is really strange, actually, and related to why some things have mass. Einstein was wrong. Nature is a weak left hander.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2025, 11:58:07 am
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 25, 2025, 05:48:07 pmMost people don’t know this, but there are a handful of languages (such asGuugu Yimithirr) that do not have relative positions (like left and right) at all — they always use cardinal directions (north/south, east/west). So if I were facing north and you wanted to refer to my right hand, you’d refer to my “east hand”. But if I turn 90 degrees clockwise, my right hand becomes my south hand! Speakers of such languages subconsciously practice keeping track of the sun (and thus, the direction they’re facing) from the beginning of childhood, and consequently end up having extremely good “intuitive” navigation skills compared to speakers of other languages!

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2025, 02:28:04 pm
content: SteveThackeryQuoteI would agree and most people make the same mistakes with a kW (power) and a kWh (energy).QuoteI agree and much of old system is a mess because it was based on a limited perspective and knowledge base. It does not easily translate in a universal sense. It may work okay for a mechanic but not so much when trying to land a spacecraft on the moon. Did the person mean pounds of force or mass because objects "weigh" less on the moon.I like to use first principals to avoid confusion. In effect, objects, forces, mass, velocity and how they relate to one another in a system. We can then expand on these basic components after we have defined what is in the system and what it is doing at the time.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2025, 03:21:35 pm
content: In common English prose and speech, aside from technical language in science and engineering, there is little difference between the meaning of words "power", "energy", "force", "strength", etc.That's why careful technical language uses the SI for units.(In the US, conventional units are legally defined in terms of SI units.)Note that physics itself is independent of the units used, although there is some difference in the exact form of the equations used for electromagnetism in rationalized MKS units (SI) and unrationalized CGS units (Gaussian).Newton understood the difference between mass and weight, but the term "mass" was not yet used in this sense, and the units adopted originally in the metric system used "weight" for what we now call "mass".The equation describing massmand weightwisw=mxg, where (lower-case)gis the local acceleration of gravity.That works regardless of measuringgin cm/s2, or m/s2, or ft/s2; with mass in g, kg, or slugs; resulting in weights in dynes, Newtons, or lb av.If someone says "kgf in SI units", he is wrong.If someone puts kgf/cm2on a pressure gauge, he is not using SI units properly, but that is careless, not "wrong".Similarly, "psig" on a pressure gauge is not wrong, 'though it be not SI.

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2025, 07:29:56 pm
content: Quote from: Electrodynamic on September 27, 2025, 02:28:04 pmIndeed, although actually you've pressed another one of my buttons.😄It's high time we all dropped kWh - not an SI unit - and switched over to the proper unit: joules.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2025, 08:16:38 pm
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on September 27, 2025, 07:29:56 pmYeah, but no. It's a pretty convenient unit for anything electrical.Actually, as a compound of SI units*, it's accepted by the SI. But the correct way of writing it would be either kW.h (with a dot) or kW h (with a space). "kWh" is not correct, but largely accepted.* The hour is not a SI unit, but it's accepted for use with SI:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#Non-SI_units_accepted_for_use_with_SI

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2025, 08:38:23 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on September 27, 2025, 08:16:38 pmI don't get it;Ah(amp-hour) is accepted (and in common usage), yes? so why not kWh?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2025, 09:37:28 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 27, 2025, 08:38:23 pmBecause they are two, completely different things. kWh is a unit of energy. Ah is a unit of charge.EDIT: Oh I missed your point. Well kWh is accepted, as its Ah.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 06:18:12 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on September 27, 2025, 08:16:38 pmWhat a weird idea. . is 100% incorrect; you must be thinking about multiplication symbol ⋅, which indeed looks like a dot, but is located higher up which makes a big difference. Period (.) would be super confusing - never seen anyone write kW.h.Space, sure, we can add whitespace, it doesn't matter. But just putting symbols after each otheristhe standard way of expressing multiplication, used in physics all the time everywhere, and definitely correct. Sure that carries a small risk of confusion with multi-character symbols (like mol in chemistry, which is not m⋅o⋅l), but those are rare. Note that even the kilo prefix can be though as 1000, and as such, just multiplication: k⋅W⋅h.kWh is most definitely correct. It is not the base SI unit for energy (which is J, equal to Ws), but that doesn't make it incorrect.

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 09:31:34 am
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on September 28, 2025, 06:18:12 amCorrect in the sense of not wrong, but it seems illogical and irrational to me to make up another unit, like kWh, when there's a perfectly good base unit already - joules.If kWh are correct, how about kilowatt-seconds, or watt-hours? They are both presumably "correct", but both superfluous.@Zero999 mentioned amp-hours: equally superfluous when we have coulombs.The big advantage of using the actual SI units is that there is a mathematically simple relationship between them, whereas kilowatt-hours require '3600' to be inserted into the calculations. Although it might seem nit-picking, everything is so much easier when we use the actual SI units: consistent, simple, logical, rational.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 09:41:04 am
content: Quote from: SteveThackery on September 28, 2025, 09:31:34 amReason for that is exactly the same why some non-SI units are still popular in the US: people feel that these alternative units are more intuitive to them, and keep using them. Maybe someone felt that for purposes of billing, an hour is in more correct timescale than a second, but I'm not sure if that's really a solid argument. kWh numbers end up still quite large in bills. How about watt-days? Watt-years?I would support transitioning into Joules with the relevant SI prefixes. Sure, now consumers see Mega in our annual energy bills. With Joules we would see Giga. No big difference, both are large numbers.

author: SteveThackery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 11:46:23 am
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on September 28, 2025, 09:41:04 amIndeed. The unit isn't important to the average consumer. 500 kWh is probably no more or less meaningful than 1,800 MJ (or 1.8 GJ). It's just a number with some letters after it.I've noticed that people associate kWh almost exclusively with electricity. Here in the UK this has led to the energy companies specifying gas consumption in kWh, too, so that people can compare them, but it also leads to confusion because the energy companies have to explain why they are doing it.Perhaps bizarrely, though, gas is metered by the cubic metre, which is then converted into kWh by a formula which includes temperature and pressure.Anyway, even though I argue for the correct SI units to be used, it won't happen. Kilowatt-hours are here to stay. As are amp-hours for batteries.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 02:23:32 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on September 28, 2025, 06:18:12 amI don’t have a problem with “kWh” for electrical billing: its meaning is obvious to the consumer/payer.If one wants a dot in this forum, the superscript (“sup”) button works with the period: kW.h

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 02:47:12 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on September 28, 2025, 06:18:12 amNo. I was not making this up. Yes, the dot is correct when using SI compound units. Anyone with a scientific background should have used that a lot.For instance, speed can be correctly expressed as m.s^-1, acceleration as m.s^-2, although the SI also allows using m/s and m/s^2You can write 1 C = 1 A.sIn the official SI brochure, one can find:QuoteDownload:https://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si-brochure/SI-Brochure-9-EN.pdfRegarding kWh in particular, the details are there:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt-hour

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 02:53:19 pm
content: See my post above on how to make a half-high centered dot.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 03:14:43 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 28, 2025, 02:53:19 pmOk, he was playing smartass. Uh huh. Sure you'd use the correct typesetting when publishing a paper or book. On an internet forum, or even in handwritten form, a simple dot will do fine. Using a dot as a sign for product is ultra-common.As to the space, yes, it's also allowed by the SI (as quoted from the SI brochure) and it's also used in maths for expressing products in expressions.

author: Electrodynamic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 03:49:19 pm
content: SteveThackeryQuoteHow many buttons do you have?.I prefer kWh because it's intuitive. X Volts x Y Amps gives me Z watts of power, times the number of hours gives me kWh in energy. So the term kWh basically explains itself based on the units (watts and hours) in question.Now you have me arguing against my own post claiming we use a given term or form of notation because it's easier and more intuitive. I think everyone may have convinced me this is the case. To each his own.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 04:12:06 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on September 28, 2025, 03:14:43 pmNo, not necessarily. In the anglophone world, the dot is the decimal separator. Therefore 3∙4 might be three times four, but 3.4 is three decimal four. Since this can lead to ambiguity, it is common to write 3×4 or (3)(4) instead. When I was in elementary school and decimal numbers were being introduced, we were taught to use the middle dot for decimals, so 3∙4 was three decimal four. The tradition in that part of the world was always to use × for multiplication. It is a multi-cultural world, and everywhere is different.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 04:42:56 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on September 28, 2025, 03:14:43 pmOr, maybe genuinely thought you were suggesting usage of "."? I mean, I can see a lot of strange stuff being suggested. You spent absolutelyzeroeffort trying to explain what you meant by .The world is full of stupid conventions (e.g., Americans expressing numbers like .1 when they mean 0.1), so I indeed I thought you were seriously suggesting what you said: kW.h.Google "multiplication dot" and copy-paste it. If you don't want to, all you had to say "center dot" or something. You did not even suggest that. Just said kW.h, so I really took it seriously. Was not intentional smart-assery. Communication is two ways, you are also responsible for communicating clearly, can't just push blame from your own miscommunication to whomever misunderstood by calling them names.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 05:22:47 pm
content: Further comments on punctuation of units:A common punctuation is using a hyphen for the product of units, butneverfor the product of variables in an algebraic expression.Example: kW-hr.Now consider torque and energy/work.Physics defines work as the scalar product of the two vectors displacement and force, and torque as the vector product of the vectors radius and force, so the basic units (distance and force) are the same.English unit systems do not have a named unit for work, and the standard unit is ft-lb. Torque is usually given in lb-ft.Of course, although the units are the same, torque is quite different from work or energy.In the SI, work uses the named unit Joule, but torque is given in N-m, following the same convention.Variations in English and metric torque units exist, such as oz-in and dyne-cm.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 05:26:15 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on September 28, 2025, 04:42:56 pmMy physics professor was European and kept saying "zero one" when he meant "0.1", which was very confusing.I learned to say 0.1, which is not uncommon in the US, but when you get smaller, such as 0.000001, many people omit the first zero.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 06:26:58 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on September 28, 2025, 04:42:56 pmOh, come on, give me an effing break: you're complaining about.1because there's no preceding zero?How anal can one get? It may not be elegant, but it's perfectly correct.So far as I can tell this falls in the same category as people who are so afraid of the possibility of decimal points being obliterated by Xerox copies that they insist on the "0R1" notation, instead of ".1" or "0.1".Just as bad as those who insist that numbers in dates contain superfluous leading zeros, like "04/08/25" where "4/8/25" does just as well. Anal-compulsive mindset where columns of numbers must line up just so.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 09:22:29 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 28, 2025, 06:26:58 pmThe largest unit should always come first, so the correct way to write a date is YYYY/MM/DD. A big advantage of this is, if it's sorted alphabetically, then the dates are listed in order.Regarding omitting the leading zero with decimals: yes, its not good, but not the worst thing. Most software accepts it as correct input.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 09:36:15 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on September 28, 2025, 09:22:29 pmNot where I live it isn't. We use DD/MM/YY.Sheesh; could you possibly get any more provincial about this? "Because that's the way we do it, that's the way everyone should do it."

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 10:18:23 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 28, 2025, 06:26:58 pmIn my checking account spreadsheet, I always use the leading zeros so that the columns line up.This has nothing to do with my recent intestinal surgery.The problem with 04/08/25 is that people will get confused between April and August.It's bad enough that September, October, etc. are 09, 10, etc. instead of the eponymous 07, 08, etc., thanks to Julius Caesar.Different countries' common usage differs as to month or date first, but software types prefer putting the year first to simplify their algorithms.Most Americans write the month first, corresponding to the spoken "August the eighth, 2025", while others prefer month first for "Eighth of August, 2025".One idea I like, but nobody uses, is to put the month in Roman numerals, so that today, September 28, becomes IX/28/2025, even though no one expects month no. 28, to prevent confusion earlier in the month.Since modern industry insists on making components as small as possible, the "R" in place of "." makes more sense every year for components that still qualify for quantitative marking.None of this is intended as an insult.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 10:24:01 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 28, 2025, 10:18:23 pmThis makes sense for teeny-tiny SMT components. I'm talking about schematics.QuoteNor is it taken that way.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 10:25:20 pm
content: One might as well notate the schematic in the same way as the component label, when possible.

author: kite31
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 10:49:12 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 28, 2025, 09:36:15 pmISO 8601 specifies UTC date as YYYY-MM-DDhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601We normally use DD/MM/YY also. I have largely switched to the ISO format both for communication with people from some other countries and to simplify data management in software.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2025, 10:57:26 pm
content: ISO is often used in the US, but does not always have force of law.It will not stop me from writing (in prose) April 18th, 1775, although the poet wrote:" On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:Hardly a man is now aliveWho remembers that famous day and year. "There are valid reasons to prefer the ISO format, but that doesn't make other formats incorrect.When communicating between countries, ISO used carefully minimizes misunderstandings.Note that the ISO standard requires the redundant leading zeros for month and date: some alphabetizing algorithms will get confused otherwise.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 01:04:14 am
content: We standardized on yyyymmdd simply because it sorts when you use it as part of filenames. And you should have a standard. And this is the one that makes sense TO US, so there.It's more important to have a standard than what the standard is. Ideally, you decide on one for some reason that makes sense to you and intersects with what's important to you.This is part of being a pro. You standardize and enforce. It's part of what seperates pros from hobbyists and hacks.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 01:08:50 am
content: Quote from: John Coloccia on September 29, 2025, 01:04:14 amYabbut, none of this applies in the least to non-technical folks who don't give a shit whether their dates are easy to sort.(Like me, f'rinstnce, even though I dabble in technology.)So most people are just going to ignore your advice here.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 01:27:24 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 29, 2025, 01:08:50 amI don't expect it to apply to you. You can do what you want. I'm simply telling you what pros do, and why. No one cares what you do. And honestly, a lot of companies don't care either, and they build up decades of technical debt that is crushing.And sometimes they end up with us and we have to fix it. And we're happy for the work, but we always feel bad because it's sooo much work that didn't have to be.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 01:37:53 am
content: Quote from: John Coloccia on September 29, 2025, 01:27:24 am1. I still don't see what being a "pro" has to do with it; I'm talking about the date format thatmost people in a society use, not what technical folks do.2. Even if someone, like say a client of yours, uses the "wrong" format, how hard is it to reformat it to the "proper" format?I would think that any programmer worth their keystrokes could do that in 10 minutes flat.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 01:43:28 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 29, 2025, 01:37:53 amYou've missed the point, and you win.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 01:45:50 am
content: Quote from: John Coloccia on September 29, 2025, 01:43:28 amHow did I miss the point?Please let me know.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 07:50:50 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 28, 2025, 10:24:01 pmI’m pretty sure the R-as-decimal notation predates SMD components, and actually originated on schematics. My understanding is that its use began because when photocopying a schematic, it was easy for a decimal point to go missing in the copy — or be mistaken for a random speck introduced by copying.I also know it was (and still is) used on through-hole and chassis-mount power resistors and shunts. (Not all through-hole resistors use color bands.)

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 08:06:10 am
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 28, 2025, 10:18:23 pmSimply using ISO for dates solves that problem. Those who are familiar with it will know it's YYYY/MM/DD and those who aren't will either look it up or ask a question.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 10:05:00 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on September 29, 2025, 08:06:10 amBut then, you managed to get the ISO standards wrong twice already.It's YYYY-MM-DD, not YYYY/MM/DD

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 10:50:19 am
content: Quote from: tszaboo on September 29, 2025, 10:05:00 amI didn't realise the separator character was important. Yes, '-' makes more sense, since most file systems support it, unlike '/'.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 04:17:00 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 29, 2025, 01:45:50 amBecause you're just interacting with yourself, not with a team of people and with customers. You don't have multiple large projects, with multiple people working on them over multiple years, and having to go back and revisit them 5 or 10 years later, and then pickup like it was yesterday, sometimes without the guy that originally designed it. This becomes an unmanageable mess very quickly if everyone just does their own thing. That said, there are tons of people that don't agree with that, and people should have artistic expression and just do things however they feel like it that day, and tons of companies that operate like that. But it's just kind of amateurish. Projects are so much easier to understand and work with if you follow a standard....any standard. Even a bad standard that I think is stupid and ugly is better than nothing.The flip side is amateurs or hobbyists that put together a huge infrastructure, and it takes forever to get the simplest things out the door. Like oh no, my spacing on this bit of silk isn't perfect, so now I have to move all these components to fix that and follow my standard.There's a happy middle ground no matter what level you're at where you figure out what is important to you and/or your team.For example, if you're a hobbyist, you might just have one golden rule - thou shalt always put a name and a version# on a PCB. And maybe that's enough.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 07:53:17 pm
content: Quote from: John Coloccia on September 29, 2025, 04:17:00 pmOK, fine; granted. You, as a professional data-cruncher, prefer that your clients submit their dates in the ISO format. I get it.But you didn't address my second point, which is that it would take any decent programmer a matter of minutes toreformat the datesif they were submitted in the "wrong" format. Could probably even be done in Excel.In fact, thinking back to my company's dealings with data processing*, I remember that exactly such things were done when crunching our data.*Back when I worked for this company, I remember we sent over our customer data to be processed into a report, as we didn't have that capability.I'll never forget the name of the company we used:Lou's Data. A perfect Herb Caen name.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 08:03:10 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 29, 2025, 07:53:17 pmPlease explain how to reformat 06/05/25 into the correct format?

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 08:08:45 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 29, 2025, 08:03:10 pmIt can be easily done provided you know that "06" is the month and "05" is the day.I'm not talking about completely randomized data, where the format is unknown; the submitter of the data has to know what format the dates are in and that the dates are consistently formatted. Which is usually the case when the submitter is the creator of the dataset.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 09:06:24 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 29, 2025, 07:53:17 pmWe're not data crunchers and we don't tell our customers how to format their dates. I have no idea what you're talking about.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 09:10:09 pm
content: Quote from: John Coloccia on September 29, 2025, 09:06:24 pmI was referring to whatever it is you do with data that contains dates.No intention of insulting you by using the term "data cruncher".But you obviously dosomethingwith data that contains dates, correct?Either receiving it from your clients or generating it yourself, right?

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 09:19:03 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on September 29, 2025, 10:50:19 amSorry, I might have sounded condescending. I woke up 4 AM today for a flight and a feel bit cranky.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 09:23:54 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 29, 2025, 08:03:10 pmNo problem, that's correctly written as 06:05:25. Very early in the morning.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2025, 10:48:51 pm
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on September 29, 2025, 09:10:09 pmIt's just as I said. We standardized on that specific ISO format because it's simple and names containing dates sort. For example:faultLog_20230913_15_06_40_799.logSo we decided that's important to us and that's what we use. Someone else might decide it's important to make it more human readable, or to format it MM-DD-YYYY because that's what we mostly use in the US. I'm not sure why I'd care what anyone else uses for date formats.If you want to use Mayan k'atuns, knock yourself out.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2025, 01:44:14 am
content: Quote from: John Coloccia on September 29, 2025, 01:04:14 amI have been doing that in filenames for decades now for exactly that reason, but sometimes YYYYMMDD and sometimes YYYY-MM-DD.Quote from: TimFox on September 28, 2025, 10:57:26 pmIn writing I use 18th April 1775 so no comma is needed; I do not care what the standard is.Quote from: TimFox on September 28, 2025, 05:26:15 pmFor me, said "zero point one" and written "0.1" always, with added zeros after the one to show significance if relevant.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2025, 01:55:17 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on September 30, 2025, 01:44:14 amThat sounds veddy British to me.Most of us 'muricans would write April 18th, 1775. (With comma or without.)

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2025, 03:06:12 am
content: See my Longfellow quotation above:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/why-do-people-still-use-conventional-current-notation/msg6052535/#msg6052535

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2025, 03:11:25 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on September 30, 2025, 01:44:14 amI also always try to follow the YYYY-MM-DD format in file names.In the department of the multinational company where I work, the rule is to use the D-MMM-YYYY format (such as 5-Jun-2025) for short dates in all reports, presentations and written communications.