Removing technical barriers to understanding (TBU): tutorials in ACQUAL

Abstract

When thinking about mutual understanding in matters involving measurement results, it is useful to think about the ultimate reasons why we perform measurements. These seem to be: to go from qualitative knowledge (something is larger, taller, bigger, ... than something else) to quantitative knowledge (something is so many times larger, taller, bigger, ... than something else), and to communicate to others the magnitude of the quantities we use in describing our observations of nature, carrying out our scientific experiments using measurements, and performing measurements in trade or in the verification of the implementation of regulations. In communication between parties, a specific language is needed as a vehicle for the ideas we want to exchange and discuss. When measurement results are expressed in such a language, various concepts around ‘measurement’ that are understood in the same way by all parties concerned are necessary. Commonly agreed terms—which nowadays means intercontinentally agreed terms—in one language are necessary to ‘label’ these concepts. Such terms are the tools needed to interpret these concepts across cultures. Such a set of intercontinentally understood concepts and associated intercontinentally agreed terms seems to be the only conceivable base for translation into necessarily different terms in 30–40 other languages. In addition, we also need to talk clearly to ourselves in the first place, in order to precisely formulate our thoughts. There too, clarity is of the utmost importance. Lack of clarity in conceptual thinking about measurement and all its features generates not only ambiguity in the text we write; lack of clarity in our writing also influences (unconsciously) the clarity of our thinking. For the sake of clarity and unambiguity in scientific and technical communication, it is highly desirable that intercontinentally agreed quantities, symbols and measurement units are also used throughout in practice. Our school and university curricula currently pay no, or insufficient, attention to meeting this need. Until this is achieved more systematically, other initiatives such as workshops, education and training sessions, teaching aids, and tutorials, etc., will have to do the job. The advent in 2007 of the revised International Vocabulary of Metrology—Basic and General Concepts and Associated Terms (VIM), 3rd edn, ‘VIM3’, and the Green Book, on Quantities, Units, and Symbols in Physical Chemistry, 3rd edn, of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), are opportunities to remind authors and readers of ACQUAL of the availability and usefulness of such tools for global communication. The revised VIM, especially, provides the opportunity to make a big step forward in the chemical measurement community, where uniformity in concepts with their associated terms and symbols is ‘essential for Metrology in Chemistry