As you all know there are many articles on wikipedia, and their quality varies greatly. However the main problem is that in many cases it is impossible to tell if a particular article is accurate or not. For example, I just found the following article on wikipedia:
Beard-second
The beard-second is a unit of length inspired by the light year, but used for extremely short distances such as those in nuclear physics. The beard-second is defined as the length an average physicist's beard grows in a second, or about 5 nanometers[1].
One beard-second equals 50 Ångströms (10^-10 m). 20000 Beard seconds equal 1 RCH. 2000 Beard seconds = 1 RBC.
Google search supports the beard-second for unit conversions.[2]
Unsurprisingly, this article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy. Suprisingly, the part about Google supporting beard second in unit conversion is actually true. After a quick search on the internet, it seems that the beard second was invented as a teaching exercise a few years ago.
In this case, the article seems to be a joke, but in reality it is about a funny teaching exercise....
No comments:
Post a Comment