I’m having some startup difficulty with the first example in Guide to Modern Physics (James W. Rohlf). The book has all the right topics but I cannot enter the examples successfully.
I am running Mathematica 14.3 on a Mac Book Pro with M5 Pro, OS Tahoe and 24 GB of memory. The file myFile.nb shows what I typed. Notice that the N[UnitConvert[e, C],4] does not give the expected answer. I am not sure what to type for e. If I use the Basic Math Paclet, e is that transcendental number, not the ElementaryCharge definition. I can get the correct answer with a copy/paste from the original Quantity definition. But notice that I copied 1 C, not just C.
Quantity["ElementaryCharge"]
returns e
Quantity["Coulambs"]
returns 1 C
N[UnitConvert[e,C]
returns UnitConvert[e,1 C],4]
N[UnitConvert[e,1 C],4]
returns 1.602 x 10-19
Then I went on Rohlf’s site and bought the files that contain the example Mathmatica code. They were not what I expected. It was just the code without any further explanation. I want to be able to type the code in, not use copy/paste.But if I copy/paste the code from this file, it works fine. And yes, the e is in italic, indicating it is the definition of ElementaryCharge. I don’t know how to input that number.
Because I bought the file from Rohlf, I don't think it is appropriate to include it. I may be breaking some copyright rule by posting a file that I bought in a forum. When I copy/paste I get
N[UnitConvert[e,C],4]
returns 1.602 x 10-19
I can also get the example to work by explicitly using Quantity to define ElementaryCharge and Coulambs, but that’s not what th example does.
N[UnitConvert[Quantity["ElementaryCharge"],Quantity["Coulombs"]],4
returns 1.602 x 10-19
So I don't know how to run this example the way that the book does. This is just the first example and I fear I may experience the same problem with the others. What am I doing wrong?
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