Dimensional Explanations
NOUSˆ 43:4 (2009) 742–775
Dimensional Explanations
MARC LANGE The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
1. Introduction Consider a small stone tied to a string and whirled around at a constant speed (figure 1). Why, one might ask, is the tension in the string proportional to the square of the stone’s angular speed (rather than, say, varying linearly with its speed, or varying with the cube of its speed)? This is a why-question—a request for a scientific explanation. Here, perhaps, is an answer to the why-question. To a sufficiently good approximation (for example, when the string’s mass and the stone’s size are negligible), the tension F depends on no more than the following three quantities: (i) the stone’s mass m, (ii) its angular speed ω, and (iii) the string’s length r. These three quantities suffice to physically characterize the system. In terms of the dimensions of length (L), mass (M), and time (T), F’s di- mensions are LMT−2, m’s dimension is M, ω’s dimension is T−1,andr’s dimension is L. In tabular form,
Fmω r
L1001
M1 1 00
T −20−10
If (to a sufficiently good approximation) F is proportional to mα ωβ rγ , then the table gives us three simple simultaneous equations (one from each line) with three unknowns: