In this lecture, we learned many interesting units such as Lumen, Candela, Lux, and Nit. So why are they named so?
The lumen is very straightforward and it comes from leuk- meaning light, such as illumination.
Candela is from the candle, and it originated from kand- meaning shining.
Lux is also from leuk- , brightness.
It seems Nit does not have any origin. I check wiki and it comes from the Latin word nitere, meaning shining as well.. But it has few similar words using the same origin.
somaniarushi
A question with perhaps no answer: Why are these so many units to describe a handful of (extremely related!) concepts? Are there any standards that the scientific community has settled on? What should we be using in our calculations, typically?
rubywerman
I was wondering the same thing as Somania. Are certain more important for physics, robotics, vision, etc? What makes some more important for vision than others?
greeknerd1
I'm wondering why the photometric definitions are needed if there are radiometric definitions to begin with.
NKJEW
@greeknerd1 I'd guess that the photometry units (which I think are based on the candela?) are just useful because of the implications of the size of the units - maybe a "candela" is a much more naturally scaled unit for luminous intensity (relative to its use cases) rather than something based on a watt (which is fundamentally derived from something other than light).
In this lecture, we learned many interesting units such as Lumen, Candela, Lux, and Nit. So why are they named so?
The lumen is very straightforward and it comes from leuk- meaning light, such as illumination.
Candela is from the candle, and it originated from kand- meaning shining.
Lux is also from leuk- , brightness.
It seems Nit does not have any origin. I check wiki and it comes from the Latin word nitere, meaning shining as well.. But it has few similar words using the same origin.
A question with perhaps no answer: Why are these so many units to describe a handful of (extremely related!) concepts? Are there any standards that the scientific community has settled on? What should we be using in our calculations, typically?
I was wondering the same thing as Somania. Are certain more important for physics, robotics, vision, etc? What makes some more important for vision than others?
I'm wondering why the photometric definitions are needed if there are radiometric definitions to begin with.
@greeknerd1 I'd guess that the photometry units (which I think are based on the candela?) are just useful because of the implications of the size of the units - maybe a "candela" is a much more naturally scaled unit for luminous intensity (relative to its use cases) rather than something based on a watt (which is fundamentally derived from something other than light).