Talk:Specific density

This stub needs to die
There is no such thing in the year 2023 as "specific density." It is an archaic term for "relative density" as the first reference makes clear (relative to dry air). The second reference to an 1898 encyclopedia is an embarrassment. The word is defined as m/V (same as density or volume-specific mass) but in the examples, it's clear it's talking about a unitless quantity, and indeed relative density (aka substance-specific gravity aka specific gravity). So that's wrong, too. Best to redirect this term to "relative density" or at best simply note in a stub that the term is archaic for relative density and use the two references 1 and 2 for that. The 1898 one is a partly erroneous reference written by a person with no feeling for units, and I wish it would go the way of all old material which is wrong and obsolete. I will just leave this note up for awhile and reference it to whoever created the page. (By the way I note in Quora and other sources a phenomenon unique to Wikipedia, which is that bad information on WP propagates all over the web and eventually becomes self-referential. That's starting to happen to "specific density." Let's not let it get too far. S  B Harris 06:47, 7 April 2023 (UTC)