"What is The SI?" A Proposal for an Educational Adjunct to the SI Redefinition

TL;DR

This paper proposes an educational approach to teaching the redefined SI units by focusing on experiments and constants of nature, aiming to improve student understanding and engagement.

Contribution

It introduces an alternative teaching method emphasizing experiments and constants, making the redefined SI more accessible to students.

Findings

Students find the experimental approach more appealing.

The proposed method aligns with the redefined SI and enhances understanding.

The approach encourages discussion among educators.

Abstract

We discuss how the likely 2018 redefinition of the SI system of units might affect the ability of students to understand the link between the units and the new system. The likely redefinition will no longer define a set of base units, but rather a set of constants of nature, such as the speed of light c and a particular hyperfine splitting in Cs $\Delta\nu(^{133}$Cs)$_{hfs}$. We point out that this list of constants need not be the only way to introduce students to the subject, either in class or in textbooks. We suggest an alternative way to introduce high school and undergraduate students to the redefined SI, by suggesting a list of experiments for some units; this list would be completely compatible with the redefined SI, and would have all of the same scientific and technological advantages. We demonstrate by questionnaire results that this alternative is more appealing to students. We hope to spur a discussion amongst teachers regarding this important topic for high school and undergraduate physics courses.