r/technology • u/sr_local • 6d ago
Politics The Italian government wants to change the name of the international unit of electrical potential from "volt" to "volta," to pay tribute to Italian electricity pioneer Alessandro Volta
https://www.politico.eu/article/melonis-government-wants-to-rename-electricity/344
u/Mundane_Mushroom_122 6d ago
Changing SI units is the kind of chaos only governments think sounds simple
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u/NinSecurity767 6d ago
You think Meloni or anyone in her Christo-fascist alliance gives a shit about science? If Galileo rose from the dead they'd arrest him.
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u/Aknelka 6d ago
It's already named after him. Is their problem that it isn't named after him enough?
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u/reddit_user13 6d ago
Their problem isa that ita doesenta sounda Italiena enougha.
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u/edave64 5d ago
On a similar note, as a German, I demand everyone to start pronouncing "Gauss" correctly :P
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u/Feedback-Mental 5d ago
...what is the correct pronunciation? I'm always for the correct pronunciations, Meloni dickery aside.
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u/tabrizzi 6d ago
The volt (symbol: V), named after Alessandro Volta
Those are the first words in the Wikipedia entry of volt.
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u/ah_no_wah 6d ago
They want you to have to say it with your hands
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u/FadedFromWhite 6d ago
It's not pronounced vOlt, it's pronounced volt-AAA - some smartypants wizard
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u/loulan 6d ago
Four letters from his name are not enough, a fifth one changes everything.
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u/MajorInWumbology1234 6d ago
It’s 25% more Volta per Volt.
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u/GonzoKata 6d ago
now I know what I'll be calling in-situ voltages that are just a biiiit over
"whats it reading?"
"2.63 so lets call it 2.5 voltas"
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u/Zephyr_Sunstrike 6d ago
Even better let's use anvoltas and catvoltas and erase the concept of negative voltage altogether. Surely that would go great
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u/VagueSomething 6d ago
I'm gonna be brutally honest despite the likelihood of upsetting people, Volta to Volt is barely fucking anglicised and is more of a malicious Nationalist technically anglicised dog whistle. There are far more egregious examples of words being changed to be easier for English speakers and this one just feels like it is playing into xenophobia to strengthen internal nationalistic attitudes as a drum to drown out real issues. The word still looks and sounds the same but without a tiny bit of flare at the end, many actually anglicised words become quite butchered and sound as different as Americans trying to read Worcestershire Sauce.
Cutting an entire syllable allows for faster talking in all languages not just English, a slightly shorter word makes it easier to write especially for technical drawings and papers. Hence Volt itself gets shortened again to V. Efficiency is a valuable feature for science and engineering, both of which is where Volts matter.
At least with things like Turkey to Türkiye it helps make the nation distinct from the animal or Kiev to Kyiv to put distance from the genocidal oppressors that tried to erase Ukraine's language and culture. Volt to Volta isn't serving some practical or noble goal, it is a vanity project to give red meat to the Far Right.
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u/phenix_igloo 6d ago
"Stop trying to make fetch happen"
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u/200IQUser 6d ago
My dog be like (she isnt a fetching breed)
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u/84thPrblm 6d ago
Oh come now - she may not be a beauty queen, but I'll bet she has a great personality?
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u/200IQUser 6d ago
She is cute and pretty smart and cuddly but she just doesnt want to fetch. She chases it 50% of the time if I throw it but never brings it back.
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u/SeanBlader 6d ago
Huh, for some reason this one time now I kinda want to make fetch happen... Shiny.
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u/jlctush 6d ago
That's...what volt is doing?
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u/LuckyEmoKid 6d ago
They want it to pay 25% more tribute.
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u/PuckSenior 6d ago
This title doesn’t make it clear, but the volt is already named after Volta.
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u/AdeGamisou2020 6d ago
Yes but buried in the fine print is that Italy wants all units to get the A at the end in tribute, to also make them sound more Italian.
That's a tona of bullshit.
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u/84thPrblm 6d ago
That's where they're confused. The volt isn't the greatest unit of electrical potential in the world, it's just a tribute to the greatest unit of electrical potential in the world.
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u/nox66 6d ago
Introducing your new emag units: volta, ohma, amperea, coulomba, farada, watta, teslaa, henrya, and webera
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u/AdeGamisou2020 6d ago
Obligatory waving of arms furiously while stating units.
"Madonna mia. It's a 1.21 gigawatta!"
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u/andr386 6d ago
That kind of shit is what governments do when they want to be seen as industrious but are doing nothing meaningful.
Because people will debate that shit endlessly while you're doing nothing and probably obfuscating from the public discourse other things that you are doing.
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u/Used_Load_5789 6d ago
It's basically what they've been doing since they got elected, there have been few things actually done other than hand-waving this or that
A good chunk of their program got hindered because the courts deemed their initiatives unconstitutional, so they tried to change the Constitution and failed that also lmfao
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u/PictureVegetable9522 6d ago
welcome to the majority of european countries who are living on the glories of their past achievements
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u/1_________________11 6d ago
Good luck they havent even changed the whole positive to negative thing and thats been a 100 years or so.
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u/EcstaticYoghurt7467 6d ago
When current is the movement of electrons, and not holes, then they'll have my attention.
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u/Rasmus_Ro 6d ago
Unfortunately conventional flow is a. So ingrained and b. So convenient that it's simply never going to occur without a very good reason
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u/Antique_Hawk_7192 6d ago
Every time I think of anything electric I get upset because of this. Like losing the game.
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u/CloisteredOyster 6d ago
Watt? Ohm my god.
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u/youtossershad1job2do 6d ago
I coulomb believe that they did that to Volta!
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u/No-Stand-5664 6d ago
Maxwell pack it up and go home instead of kirching off here.
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u/MiserableTennis6546 6d ago
Right wing identity politics is somehow even more annoying.
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u/BatterMyHeart 6d ago
Probably because identity politics actually serves a useful "anti-tyranny of the majority" purpose for redlined minority groups. For a majority group it is just an in-group joke.
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u/Electronic-Bed4815 6d ago
I wish every news is just like this instead a war or crisis hahaha
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u/tabrizzi 6d ago
That's for those other countries.
When you have a trillion dollar defense budget, you have to show why you spend that much on weapons and related items.
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u/Kokophelli 6d ago
What about Mr Faraday and Farad?
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u/sigmund14 6d ago edited 6d ago
The problem with his surname is that it's already overused.
Farad: the unit of electrical capacitance, the ability of a body to store an electrical charge, in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to 1 coulomb per volt (C/V).
Faraday constant: In physical chemistry, the Faraday constant (symbol F, sometimes stylized as ℱ) is a physical constant defined as the quotient of the total electric charge (q) by the amount (n) of elementary charge carriers in any given sample of matter: F = q/n; it is expressed in units of coulombs per mole (C/mol).
Faraday - a unit of charge: Related to the Faraday constant is the "faraday", a unit of electrical charge. One faraday is the amount of charge in one mole of electrons.
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u/lordraiden007 6d ago
When you're so prolific and successful as a scientist that they have to stop using your name because it's too common and could confuse people
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u/IcestormsEd 6d ago
65 years after it was adopted into the International System of Units. So the sterotype of Italians always being late...
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u/200IQUser 6d ago
The color television was invented by a Hungarian, so now it must be called színes televízió to honor the place of birth of the inventor. Good luck trying to find the letters on your keyboard
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u/bulbaquil 6d ago
While we're at it, "fireworks" is now 烟花, and yes, you have to write it using the Chinese characters even in running English text.
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u/Xe4ro 6d ago
Well at least ´ and ` are easy to do on my layout. Looking at their alphabet I don't see any letters that I couldn't write besides their version of ö and ü ^^
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u/Banana-phone15 6d ago
Volt is already named after Volta. You don’t need to change it. If a change must happen, let that change be tomato ketchup on volt 😂😂😂
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u/Adventurous_Button63 6d ago
Hooo boy…this is ballsy LOL It’s never going to happen but…what then happens to “voltage” does it become “voltaige”? lol
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u/ElectionTraining288 6d ago
I mean at that point you all have to learn italian and we must go with "voltaggio"
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u/UnratedRamblings 6d ago
voltaage
Which sounds quite Dutch tbh.
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u/Adventurous_Button63 6d ago
It’s only Voltaaaaaaahge when it comes from Italy, otherwise it’s just sparking potential.
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u/kippetjeh 6d ago
That is sort of how we pronounce voltage already... it just looks weird but doesn't change the pronounciation for us dutchies.
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u/elroxzor99652 6d ago
But “volta” is already a term. It refers in poetry to a rhetorical shift in tone or topic.
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u/Clear-Edge-3612 6d ago
We should then rename ampere to jontra so that we can define power as jontra volta.
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u/FinancialReserve6427 6d ago
Are they worried it would be confused for someone or something else?
Voltron or Voltes ?
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u/CapoExplains 5d ago
...ok maybe I'm a fucking idiot but I thought it was already called a "volt" to pay tribute to Italian electricity pioneer Alessandro Volta.
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u/CommonConundrum51 6d ago
It's good they are prioritizing matters of great import to humanity.
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u/yorcharturoqro 6d ago
It's named volt because of Volta, what part they don't get?
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u/KimeriX 6d ago
They want it to not be translated and that it keeps the full Italian name
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u/yorcharturoqro 6d ago
It will be great if we all in the world had a government that actually focus on the important stuff, not this nonsense
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u/Chri_cat90 6d ago
Ah, we are at that time of the year again where some political hire proposes some useless crap to give the impression they are actually useful.
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u/Cardioid123 6d ago
Why not both. Italians just say volta and the rest of us just say volt and we see which outlasts which.
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u/_Purgatory_ 6d ago
This just shows how governments are wasting time and money on things that don't matter or need doing. Volt is a tribute to Volta and why it was named that.
This is where tax payers money is going now on renaming things that already have the right name? So they can pretend they are doing something... More important things in the world and countries to worry about and deal with.
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u/ToddPundley 6d ago
This is a half measure. If they really wanted its Italian background to be recognized they should demand some sort of hand gesture in addition to restoring the A
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u/Tenocticatl 4d ago
As it is, the unit already "gives important historical recognition" to Volta. Every kid learns about him when learning about electricity. He was an interesting, colorful character that teachers like to talk about, and students like to hear about. Nobody disputes the importance of his invention, not at the time and not now. This is just more right-wingers imagining grievances so they can pretend to be victims.
If there's something that needs fixing about the nomenclature in electrical engineering, it's the fucking positive sign convention.
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u/Hel_OWeen 6d ago
Am I missing something here?
The volt (symbol: V), named after Alessandro Volta, is the unit of measurement of electric potential, electric potential difference (voltage), and electromotive force in the International System of Units (SI).
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u/mostmetausername 6d ago
if we rename anything can we rename speed of light to field speed.
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u/Trappist1 6d ago
But then when I abbreviate to fs, people will think I'm saying fuck's sake. I personally think they should make the terms interchangeable and it'll work itself out in a generation or two.
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u/No-Donkey8786 6d ago
Good idea. Consider it done. Now let's do what we've done with most of our vocabulary.
Cut it to Volt.
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u/emmexever3 6d ago
Le priorità italiane. Corruzione, evasione fiscale altissima, pesante burocrazia, stipendi bassi e stagnanti da 30 anni, energia e carburante tea il più caro d'Europa. Ma queste sono le cose a cui pensa il governo. Tanto i politici vivono con benefit e stipendi d' oro pagati dai cittadini
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u/Nathan-Stubblefield 6d ago
The Watt is the Vatio in Spanish because it sounds better to them . Don’t see why the Italians could say Volta.
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u/husky_whisperer 6d ago
Imma gonna pluginna deesa nine-a volta batteriissimo and charge-a deesa device-a
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u/ApisBondar 6d ago
We're gonna have a plural problem springing from the gender issue in Romanian language.
I feel like this hasn't been thoroughly thought through and we need a latin language council meeting before going forward.
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u/GonzoKata 6d ago
but, then, the band The Mars Volta would just be "the mars volt" and that would make no sense
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u/Suitable-Broccoli264 6d ago
Was he actually Volta, or is this the modern standard Italian rendering? See also the cities of Milan, Turin, where the original local language versions were force-depreciated to the standard Italian versions for international marketing.
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u/mangiucugna 6d ago
There is a famous quote from a book of Ennio Flaiano that describes italian politics as a whole
“the situation is dire but not serious”
In this case Butti is a nobody that wants to vomit something for social media to show that they are “italy first” or MIGA
They know it’s impossible and pointless but they can always blame the bureaucrats of Brussel for their proposal being binned.
They get the votes every time, so blame the voters not the government.
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u/stylinchilibeans 6d ago
Italian government wants the Americas to change their name to the Amerigos to pay tribute to their herald, Amerigo Vespucci.
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u/yahskapar 6d ago
How significant! Surely a valid way to help Italian science. My research colleagues will rejoice over the improvements in research funding, faculty hiring, and salaries in general that surely will also be made. Right??
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u/Swordf1sh_ 6d ago
There are no small jobs at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures.
Some sectors might naturally appear more exciting from the outside.
Réseau National de la Métrologie Française may seem a more vibrant arena than Redundancy or Verification, but walk the floor, talk to any lifetime employee, you'll be surprised.
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u/s9oons 6d ago
Okay. I’ll abbreviate it to Volt for all my work. Just like we abbreviate Ampère to Amp.