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From: mcdonald@aries.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,rec.ham-radio,sci.astro,sci.space
Subject: Re: Trying to build a fluxgate magnetometer -- help!
Keywords: MKS cgs flames
Message-ID: <1989Oct29.174631.12960@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 29 Oct 89 17:46:31 GMT
References: <1914@sactoh0.UUCP> <28601@buckaroo.mips.COM>
Sender: paul@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Paul Pomes)
Reply-To: mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald)
Organization: ^
Lines: 24

>>
>>I would like to measure changes at least as small as
>>10 gammas (.001 Gauss), and if possible, even smaller.
>>
>
>?  You mean of course, nanotesla (nT), since 1954.  :-)

I have been in the science business for over 20 years and have
never heard anyone refer to magnetic fields in Tesla - everyone
uses gauss. It is true that people know that someone somewhere
created a unit of magnetic field called a Tesla, but no one
remembers how many gauss are in one Tesla, and no one uses it.
Sometimes it might appear in a textbook (usually directed at
freshmen or sophmores - more advanced books use gauss).

There are lots of names of units out there that are simply not used.

(Also, I might add, a lot of people refer to actual physical
magnets, though not the fields they create, in megahertz - as
in "it's a 500 MHz magnet" meaning, of course, that the NMR
resonance frequency of protons in it would be 500 MHz." Even the
people who do this snicker a bit while doing it, however.)

Doug McDonald