Impress your friends by using correct units and abbreviations

[wattmatters]

naught = never, nothing; pronoun
“with naught a concern” pre-modern pre-colonial english; 1200-1400ad

aught = zero; a digit; noun. Or: indiscriminate slight value above zero not defined by a fraction or whole number; “two aught cable” “double aught buckshot;” “seven aught miles from town, third farm on the left.” Colonial to modern english.

Interesting.

If I look up US based dictionaries (see below) there is no mention of aught/ought being representative of zero, but it is a definition for naught/nought.

I'm not by any measure saying use of "aught" is wrong, as language is a fluid dynamic thing, it's just one of those strange things you notice and sounds weird to my Aussie ears.

We also often say "oh" when we mean zero. Particularly common when giving a phone number with a zero in it, or say referring to this thread as being "Electrical Acronyms one oh one".

Definition of naught | Dictionary.com

Naught definition, nothing. See more.

www.dictionary.com

Definition of aught | Dictionary.com

Aught definition, anything whatever; any part: for aught I know. See more.

www.dictionary.com

Websters is the same:

Definition of NAUGHT

nothing… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

Definition of AUGHT

anything; all, everything… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

The Oxford English and the Australian Macquarie dictionaries don't seem to have a free to access option, so couldn't post their listings.

 

[Warpspeed]

Ain't ejucation a wonderful thing !

 

[Supervstech]

Ain't ejucation a wonderful thing !

I thought it was edjumication…

 

[Warpspeed]

I thought it was edjumication…

Sir, I stand corrected.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

If I look up US based dictionaries (see below) there is no mention of aught/ought being representative of zero, but it is a definition for naught/nought.

If you look up etymology I bet you’ll be fascinated by what you find.

Me? Mrs. Zoller was my English teacher for three years of high school (maybe four?). She had a masters in language or something and was a Latin major.
I had a better English education when i graduated high school in 1983 than most college students imho. So I typed above basically from recollection.

Language and meaning seem odd outside the contexts of sociology and etymology. That’s essentially, dramatically, why the perverted and/or cancel culture version of history or the pure lack of history beyond merely events being taught today is so dangerous and catastrophic: history, math, and grammar/language needs to be taught in a coordinated parallel manner in order to not only communicate, but also understand why and how cultures developed and what we need to know today to be humane and societally well developed.

 

[wattmatters]

Yeah, the development of language is fascinating. Looking at an etymological reference (not my field, so no idea how valid this reference is):

aught | Etymology, origin and meaning of aught by etymonline

AUGHT Meaning: "something, anything," late 12c., from Old English awiht "aught, anything, something," literally "e'er a… See definitions of aught.

www.etymonline.com

Somewhere along the line, naught became aught for some peoples.

And a wiki reference (with all the grains of salt that goes with it):

Names for the number 0 in English - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In which it would seem that the use of aught/ought to mean zero seems likely to have been an American development, possibly because the the phrase "a nought" meaning "a zero" or "a nothing" was heard as "an ought", the "n" moving place in the listener's mind. But who really knows? They also mention some accents in England (thinking northern England) lose the leading "n", e.g. "nowt" becomes "owt", both meaning "nothing".

And to round this out, that wiki page also mentions the use of "aught" when discussing AWG:

The word aught continues in use for 0 in a series of one or more for sizes larger than 1. For American Wire Gauge, the largest gauges are written 1/0, 2/0, 3/0, and 4/0 and pronounced "one aught", "two aught", etc. Shot pellet diameters 0, 00, and 000 are pronounced "single aught", "double aught", and "triple aught". Decade names with a leading zero (e.g., 1900 to 1909) were pronounced as "aught" or "nought". This leads to the year 1904 ('04) being spoken as "[nineteen] aught four" or "[nineteen] nought four". Another acceptable pronunciation is "[nineteen] oh four".

 

[Zil]

Amp Hour battery rating as conventional standard. How many, steady, amperes can be drained from the storage battery for 20 hours leaving the battery dead.
100 ah battery can be drained at constant 5 amperes for 20 hours. Battery stores amperes. Device uses watts.
The number of amperes pulled from a battery increases as voltage drops.

 

[wattmatters]

Battery stores amperes

A battery stores energy, not current.

 

[Supervstech]

A battery stores energy, not current.

Amperes is a measure of the flow of current...

AmpHOURS is a measure of energy stored measured in time per draw rate... so, while Zil may be argumentative, he has a valid opinion.

My point was simply that Ah is a confusing number that is easily misunderstood and easily gains the wrong opinion...

Wh is a pure number with no ambiguous confusing connotations...

I think Zil is arguing a moot point.

 

[wattmatters]

AmpHOURS is a measure of energy stored

No, it's not.

A dimensional unit analysis will show you Ah is not a unit of energy.

Ah is a unit of electric charge. 1 Ah = 3600 coulombs.

Energy = Electric charge x Electric potential

With electric potential being the voltage.

Hence VAh is a unit of energy.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

Wh is a pure number with no ambiguous confusing connotations...

The 20-hour discharge eventually landing on “amp-hours” for the label is revealing as to build quality and ability to put out. Watt-hours doesn’t incorporate the testing time period at a load which is a useful comparison.

 

[Zil]

Seems to me, a great many confuse amperes with amp hour rating. As well as watts with watt hours.

 

[Supervstech]

No, it's not.

A dimensional unit analysis will show you Ah is not a unit of energy.

Ah is a unit of electric charge. 1 Ah = 3600 coulombs.

Energy = Electric charge x Electric potential

With electric potential being the voltage.

Hence VAh is a unit of energy.

VAh? That's a new one on me.
So it is safe to say the Ah is an indication of usable charge, no?

 

[wattmatters]

VAh? That's a new one on me.

Dimensionally it is a unit of energy.

Just like dimensionally energy can be expressed in units of kg.m².s⁻² (which by the way = 1 joule).

So it is safe to say the Ah is an indication of usable charge, no?

Yes.

But not of the work capacity of that charge. For that you need to know the potential (voltage) of the available charge.

An analogy is the amount of work water in a hydro dam can do. In this instance the volume of water in a dam is analogous to the amount of charge in a battery, while the dam's hydraulic head (gravitational potential) is analogous to the battery's voltage.

You can have a large dam or a small one. The large one can store more "charge" but the amount of work the water can do is dependent on the hydraulic head (height differential from top of water in the dam to the lower reservoir or river release point), IOW the gravitational potential.

A smaller dam with a greater hydraulic head may well have more energy storage / capacity to do work than a larger dam with a smaller head.

In the same way a 100 Ah 3.2 V battery has a lower capacity to do work than a 30 Ah 12.8 V battery.

 

[Hedges]

VA isn't power, so VAh isn't energy.

Connect a circuit of inductors and/or capacitors to an AC source, and VA will flow but W = zero.
Connect a resistor and same VA will flow but W = VA


A battery stores electrons, coulombs. It has varying voltage while taking in and releasing those electrons depending on loading and other parameters.

 

[wattmatters]

VA isn't power, so VAh isn't energy.

Yes it is. It's the apparent power. You are referring only to the real power component.

I took out the asterisk from my earlier post in which I was going to say:

* with AC it's a bit more complicated though since VA involves vectors and phase space, so the capacity to do real work also requires an understanding of the power factor of a circuit due to things like capacitance and inductance.

Since we were talking specifically and only about the energy storage of batteries DC I left it as is.

From a dimensional analysis sense, V.A.h is a unit of energy. But it will have a real and an apparent component.

VA isn't power

You mean VA isn't the real component of power.

 

[Hedges]

You're imagining things

I heard that the math department at UCB had a phone message: You have reached an imaginary number. Please rotate your telephone 90 degrees and try again.

 

[Hedges]

Euler's identity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[wattmatters]

You're imagining things

It's unreal.

 

[Supervstech]

Wow…

With all THIS info, we can REALLY impress our friends!