Talk:Cycle per second/Archive 1

Why it is "cycles-", not "cycle-", per second
Some folks, at this time namely User:Michael Hardy, seem to be struggling with the whole "cycles per second" thing. I'm going to try to explain why that's wrong using nice small words...but forgive me if I confuse anyone, and feel free to ask questions about what I say. I may very well provide a crappy explanation, the same way I probably would when explaining to a person who insisted that 2 + 2 = 39 why it is that they're wrong.

And that brings me to my first point: "Cycles per second" is a common-knowledge thing. Ask anyone who was alive before the Hertz system was implemented, who would have had an interest in knowing -- an electrician, or an electrical engineer, or a small motor repairman, or a hobbyist, or some such thing. Ask anyone who is a collector of vintage/antique electrical motors (as I am). No one has ever said "cycle per second", and now let me explain why.

This is a very simple piece of grammar. "Cycles per second" is nothing more than a unit of measurement. Therefore, it is applicable to any measure of frequency (i.e. alternating electrical current, sound waves, etc.). It is very, VERY rare for something to have a frequency of precisely ONE cycle per second. If it did, "cycle per second" would be the correct term. In any other case, you have to say "CYCLES per second" in order to be correct. It's the same thing as the difference between "one apples" and "nine apple". It's simply wrong, end of story. You wouldn't ask someone "How many apple do you have?", any more than you'd ask someone "How many cycle per second is that object's frequency?". If you had one apple, I'd still ask "How many apples do you have?", and you'd reply "one".

The most common use of the term was in relation to alternating-current electricity...a big thing during the 20th, and late 19th, centuries. A/C electricity most often operates between 25 and 60 (typically 25, 50, or 60) cycles per second (note again, that I cannot say "cycle per second", rendering that incarnation of the term useless). Hence in over 95% of the term's use, it is said/written as such ("cycles per second")...making that the appropriate usage for an article such as this one.

Note that Google pulls up over 12 times more pages for "cycles per second" than "cycle per second".

This truly is common knowledge. The fact that you don't know it carries all the same connotations that not knowing 2 + 2 = 4 would.

A lot of people don't understand the difference between "it's" and "its". They're wrong too.

If you still honestly have trouble believing this, I challenge you to find one credible source which uses the term "cycle per second" (without the word "one" in front of it). In this case, a credible source would be a formal publication in a well-respected, mainstream scientific journal, as this is a scientific term.

I can provide at least 25 such sources showing that it's "CYCLES per second".

Any questions? Feel free to ask. Piercetheorganist 04:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


 * FYI, I've raised an RfC on the issue of plurality of units; see Talk:Kilometres per hour. Oli Filth(talk) 23:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Untitled
Why merge an article about the Hertz, which is officially a reciprocal second, with an article about the cycle per second? --Alma Teao Wilson 02:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

In the absence of supporting argument from proposer, suggestion to re-merge with Hertz removed.--Alma Teao Wilson 03:22, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

The article begins thus:
 * Cycle per second was a once-common unit of frequency.
 * With the organisation of the International System of Units (abbreviated SI from the French) in 1960, the cycle per second was officially replaced by the hertz, or reciprocal second&mdash;i.e. the cycle in cycle per second was dropped. Perhaps because of the convenient brevity it brings to both speech and writing, this particular mandate has been so widely adopted as to render the old cycle per second all but extinct.
 * With the organisation of the International System of Units (abbreviated SI from the French) in 1960, the cycle per second was officially replaced by the hertz, or reciprocal second&mdash;i.e. the cycle in cycle per second was dropped. Perhaps because of the convenient brevity it brings to both speech and writing, this particular mandate has been so widely adopted as to render the old cycle per second all but extinct.

But the cycle per second is the same thing as the hertz. Only the name has changed. It's not a different unit; only a different name for the unit. Michael Hardy 21:26, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The SI unit for dimensionless angle is the radian. There are $$2\pi$$ radians per cycle. Hence one could argue that a cycle per second is $$2\pi$$ Hertz (or at the very least $$2\pi$$ radians per second), hence a cps is more than 6 times larger than an Hz. Whether the dimensionless count is a count of full cycles or of radians plays an important role in how to convert to other quantities.  Examples include Albert Einstein's expression for photon energy $$E = hf$$ or $$E = \hbar\omega$$. 67.86.74.107 (talk) 01:43, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Refining the "Criticism" section
As currently written, the Criticism section needs references. Also, the arguments given contain two implicit assumptions: (1) purely sinusoidal phenomena, (2) identifying cycle with the size of a "full revolution" or turn. In general, however, (1) the phenomena need not be sinusoidal, only cyclic (periodic), (2) a cycle (by definition the shortest pattern whose periodic repetition models the phenomenon), can be anything, and a "cycle" can at most play the role of an ad hoc unit, which is conceptually independent of regular units or the radian. For a cycle, the only attribute of interest here is its duration (the period), say, $$T$$, and its frequency $$f$$ is by definition given by $$f = 1/T$$. If $$f = x\text{ Hz}$$, then $$x = (1\text{ s})/T$$, which shows that $$x$$ is indeed the number of cycles per second. Identifying Hz or the reciprocal second with "radians per second" would be misleading (since Hz = 1/s, the reciprocal second, nothing more or less), and restrict its use to sinusoidal behavior only. In case a cycle consists in a rotation over a full turn $$\text{τ}$$ ($$\text{τ} = 1\text{ r} = 2\text{π } (\text{rad}) = 360\text{°}$$), then the (average, but in modeling sinusoidal behavior constant) angular speed or frequency ω is given by $$\text{ω} = \text{τ} f = 2\text{π}f$$. Example: if $$f = 50\text{ Hz}$$ then $$\text{ω} = 100\text{π/s} = 50\text{τ/s} = 50\text{ r/s} = 3000\text{ r/min} $$. Boute (talk) 10:53, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Convenient brevity?
I removed the phrase "Perhaps because of the convenient brevity it brings to both speech and writing," in attempting explain the widespread adoption of the term "hertz." The reality (at least in the U.S.) was exactly the opposite. Prior to 1960 the written terms widely used for frequency were kilocycles and megacycles, abbreviated kc. and Mc. or mc. Kilocycles per second or megacycles per second might be mentioned in an introductory text, but not in general technical writing. Lower frequencies were abbreviated and pronounced c.p.s. or just "cycle" as in "60 cycle AC." In speech, the abbreviation for kilocycles was generally verbalized, not the word itself: e.g. "five hundred kay-see" vs. the modern "five hundred kilohertz." So there was little gain in brevity and in many situations a net loss, which was often cited by those resisting the change. The adoption of hertz was not instantaneous after the 1960 standards introduction; here is an article from 1967 that still used "Mc": It was perhaps more of a generational change.

I also made clear that the terms were generally pluralized. This was in accordance with normal English grammar; while SI says units should never be pluralized, before it came along it would not occur to an English speaker not to pluralize where needed. However, to answer an earlier comment above, it would have been perfectly appropriate to say back then that "the unit of frequency is the 'cycle per second.'" --agr (talk) 15:45, 24 March 2014 (UTC)