A Mathematical Type for Physical Variables

Abstract

In identifying the requirements of a markup language for describing the mathematical semantics of physics-based models, we pose the question: "Is there a mathematical type for physical variables?" While this question has no a priori answer, since physics is fundamentally empirical, it appears that a large body of physics may be described with a single mathematical type. Briefly stated, that type is formed as the mathematical product of a physical unit, such as meter or second and an element of a Clifford algebra. We discuss some of the properties of this mathematical type and its use in documentation of physics-based models.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA638190

Entities

People

  • Joseph B. Collins

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computational Science
  • Differential Equations
  • Equations
  • Language
  • Markup Languages
  • Mathematics
  • Measurement
  • Numbers
  • Partial Differential Equations
  • Physical Properties
  • Physical Theories
  • Physics
  • Quantum Mechanics
  • Real Numbers
  • Scientific Theories
  • Semantics
  • Vector Analysis

Fields of Study

  • Mathematics
  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Theoretical Analysis.