- wah
-
a traditional unit of distance in Thailand, now aligned with the metric system
as 2 meters (6.562 feet). The Thai version of the fathom. The talangwah
is square wah (4 square meters or 4.784 square yards), a common unit of area in
Thailand.
- watch
-
another name for a shift.
- watt (W)
-
the SI unit of power. Power is the rate at which work is done, or the rate at
which energy is expended. One watt is equal to a power rate of one joule of
work per second of time. This unit is used both in mechanics and in
electricity. In mechanical terms, one watt equals about 0.001
341 02 horsepower (hp) or 0.737 562 foot-pound
per second (lbf/s). In electrical terms, one watt is the power
produced by a current of one ampere flowing through an
electric potential of one volt. The name of the unit honors
James Watt (1736-1819), the British engineer who built the first practical
steam engines.
- watt hour (W·h)
-
a common metric unit of work or energy delivered at a rate of one watt for a
period of one hour. This is equivalent to 3.6 kilojoules (kJ) of energy,
or about 3.412 141 Btu, 0.859 846 (kilogram) Calories, or about 2655 foot
pounds.
- wave or wavelength
-
a unit of relative distance equal to the length of a wave: a light wave,
a radio wave, or even an ordinary water wave.
- weber
-
the SI unit of magnetic flux, the rate (per unit of time) at which something
crosses a surface perpendicular to the flow. If a varying magnetic field
passes perpendicularly through a circular loop of conducting material, the
variation in the field induces a electric potential in the loop. If the flux is
changing at a uniform rate of one weber per second, the
induced potential is one volt. One weber is the flux
induced in this way by a current varying at the uniform rate of one ampere per
second, it equal to 108 maxwells . The unit
honors the German physicist Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804-1891), one of
the pioneers of researching magnetism.
- week (wk)
-
a unit of time, equals to seven days. The custom of the seven-day week, with
one day set aside for rest and religious observance, is from 3000 years ago,
the ancient civilizations of the Middle East. The seven days originally had an
astrological significance: one day for each of the five visible planets, one
for the sun, and one for the moon. Christians and Moslems inherited the
seven-day cycle from the Jewish religion (Sunday as the day of religious
observance). The Romans then picked up the idea by using the week as early
as the first century. Early in the fourth century, the Emperor
Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, then the Christian
version of the week became official throughout the Roman Empire.
There are different traditions of the week: in the U.S., most calendars show
Sunday as the first day of the week; but the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) specifies that the week begins with Monday.
- werst
-
a Russian distance unit: the verst in German, and
English.
- wet ton, dry ton
-
A wet ton is an ordinary ton of the material in its natural,
wet state; a dry ton is a ton of the solid material in
its dry state: all the water were removed.
- wey
-
a historic English unit, originally representing about two hundredweight,
later used as a volume unit for a variety of dry commodities. Its size
varied, about 40 bushels, 2 cubic yards, or 1.5 cubic meters. The word
comes from the old English węge , meaning weight.
- whole note
-
a unit in music, also called a semibreve.
- whole step, whole tone
-
another names for the step, a unit used in music to express the ratio in
frequency between two tones.
- Winchester bushel
-
the traditional British name for bushel.
- word
-
a unit of information in typing. Typing speed is usually expressed in words per
minute (wpm), word is defined as exactly 5 characters (spaces included).
-
a unit of information in computer science. The size of a word varies with the
computer system: most often it is 32 bits (4 bytes) or 64 bits (8
bytes); a shortword is 2 bytes, a longword (or double word)
is 4 bytes (32 bits), and a quadword is 8 bytes.
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