Сантиметр-грамм-секундная система единиц измерения

Physical system of measurement that uses the centimetre, gram, and second as base units

The centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS or cgs) is a variant of the metric system based on the centimetre as the unit of length, the gram as the unit of mass, and the second as the unit of time. All CGS mechanical units are unambiguously derived from these three base units, but there are several different ways in which the CGS system was extended to cover electromagnetism. The CGS system has been largely supplanted by the MKS system based on the metre, kilogram, and second, which was in turn extended and replaced by the International System of Units (SI). In many fields of science and engineering, SI is the only system of units in use, but CGS is still prevalent in certain subfields. In measurements of purely mechanical systems (involving units of length, mass, force, energy, pressure, and so on), the differences between CGS and SI are straightforward: the unit conversion factors are all powers of 10 as 1=100 cm = 1 m and 1=1000 g = 1 kg. For example, the CGS unit of force is the dyne, which is defined as 1, so the SI unit of force, the newton (1), is equal to 100000. On the other hand, in measurements of electromagnetic phenomena (involving units of charge, electric and magnetic fields, voltage, and so on), converting between CGS and SI is less straightforward. Formulas for physical laws of electromagnetism (such as Maxwell's equations) take a form that depends on which system of units is being used, because the electromagnetic quantities are defined differently in SI and in CGS. Furthermore, within CGS, there are several plausible ways to define electromagnetic quantities, leading to different "sub systems", including Gaussian units, "ESU", "EMU", and Heaviside–Lorentz units. Among these choices, Gaussian units are the most common today, and "CGS units" is often intended to refer to CGS Gaussian units.

The CGS system goes back to a proposal in 1832 by the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss to base a system of absolute units on the three fundamental units of length, mass and time. Gauss chose the units of millimetre, milligram and second. In 1873, a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, including physicists James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson recommended the general adoption of centimetre, gram and second as fundamental units, and to express all derived electromagnetic units in these fundamental units, using the prefix "C. G. S. unit of ". The sizes of many CGS units turned out to be inconvenient for practical purposes. For example, many everyday objects are hundreds or thousands of centimetres long, such as humans, rooms and buildings. Thus the CGS system never gained wide use outside the field of science. Starting in the 1880s, and more significantly by the mid 20th century, CGS was gradually superseded internationally for scientific purposes by the MKS (metre–kilogram–second) system, which in turn developed into the modern SI standard. Since the international adoption of the MKS standard in the 1940s and the SI standard in the 1960s, the technical use of CGS units has gradually declined worldwide. CGS units have been deprecated in favor of SI units by NIST, as well as organizations such as the American Physical Society and the International Astronomical Union. SI units are predominantly used in engineering applications and physics education, while Gaussian CGS units are still commonly used in theoretical physics, describing microscopic systems, relativistic electrodynamics, and astrophysics. The units gram and centimetre remain useful as noncoherent units within the SI system, as with any other prefixed SI units.

All electromagnetic units in the CGS ESU system that have not been given names of their own are named as the corresponding SI name with an attached prefix "stat" or with a separate abbreviation "esu", and similarly with the corresponding symbols. As well as the volt and ampere, the farad (capacitance), ohm (resistance), coulomb (electric charge), and henry (inductance) are consequently also used in the practical system and are the same as the SI units. The magnetic units are those of the emu system. The electrical units, other than the volt and ampere, are determined by the requirement that any equation involving only electrical and kinematical quantities that is valid in SI should also be valid in the system. For example, since electric field strength is voltage per unit length, its unit is the volt per centimetre, which is one hundred times the SI unit. The system is electrically rationalized and magnetically unrationalized; i. e., 1=λ = 1 and 1=λ′ = 4π, but the above formula for λ is invalid. A closely related system is the International System of Electric and Magnetic Units, which has a different unit of mass so that the formula for λ′ is invalid. The unit of mass was chosen to remove powers of ten from contexts in which they were considered to be objectionable (e. g., 1=P = VI and 1=F = qE). Inevitably, the powers of ten reappeared in other contexts, but the effect was to make the familiar joule and watt the units of work and power respectively. The ampere turn system is constructed in a similar way by considering magnetomotive force and magnetic field strength to be electrical quantities and rationalizing the system by dividing the units of magnetic pole strength and magnetization by 4π. The units of the first two quantities are the ampere and the ampere per centimetre respectively. The unit of magnetic permeability is that of the emu system, and the magnetic constitutive equations are 1=B = (4π/10)μH and 1=B = (4π/10)μ0H + μ0M. Magnetic reluctance is given a hybrid unit to ensure the validity of Ohm's law for magnetic circuits.

There were at various points in time about half a dozen systems of electromagnetic units in use, most based on the CGS system. These include the Gaussian units and the Heaviside–Lorentz units.

Lack of unique unit names leads to potential confusion: "15 emu" may mean either 15 abvolts, or 15 emu units of electric dipole moment, or 15 emu units of magnetic susceptibility, sometimes (but not always) per gram, or per mole. With its system of uniquely named units, the SI removes any confusion in usage: 1 ampere is a fixed value of a specified quantity, and so are 1 henry, 1 ohm, and 1 volt. In the CGS Gaussian system, electric and magnetic fields have the same units, 4πε0 is replaced by 1, and the only dimensional constant appearing in the Maxwell equations is c, the speed of light. The Heaviside–Lorentz system has these properties as well (with ε0 equaling 1). In SI, and other rationalized systems (for example, Heaviside–Lorentz), the unit of current was chosen such that electromagnetic equations concerning charged spheres contain 4π, those concerning coils of current and straight wires contain 2π and those dealing with charged surfaces lack π entirely, which was the most convenient choice for applications in electrical engineering and relates directly to the geometric symmetry of the system being described by the equation. Specialized unit systems are used to simplify formulas further than either SI or CGS do, by eliminating constants through a convention of normalizing quantities with respect to some system of natural units. For example, in particle physics a system is in use where every quantity is expressed by only one unit of energy, the electronvolt, with lengths, times, and so on all converted into units of energy by inserting factors of speed of light c and the reduced Planck constant ħ. This unit system is convenient for calculations in particle physics, but is impractical in other contexts.