Units and Dimensional Analysis

TA Data: W. R. Bomstad, NPB2038, 392-4033, bomstad@phys.ufl.edu

Office Hour: Thursday 6th period or by appointment

1 Overview of unit and dimensional analysis

Many of us are already familiar with the now-famous situation of the Mars
rover crash landing being as a result of Lockheed Martin, a commercial
entity, and JPL, a governmental entity engineering the spacecraft with two
different systems of units. And, it makes sense to you, when I say it will help
reduce errors on your tests and homeworks by checking units. All of this is
boring compared to potential power of unit analysis, and its generalization,
dimensional analysis. True mastery of these concepts enables one in essence
to hack into the physics of a problem the way hackers hack into servers in
the computer world.
This type of analysis allows the user to bypass the typical methods of
physics, which is: identify the physics, apply the math, derive formulae to
suit the problem, calculate the quantities of interest. Instead of applying
the formula and doing the math, you can take the backdoor to the core of
the problem, and bypass much of the mathematics by identifying exactly
the form the answer must take. Now, I stress the form, simply because
often the particular mathematics will give you factors of 2, /pi, 1/2, etc.
, enabling you to get the answer exactly. Those who refute this hacking
metaphor: consider the case of G. I. Taylor: this British physicist was able
to ḧack intoẗhe secret of the world’s first atomic bomb using only dimensional
analysis, basic knowledge of physics, and the cover of 1944’s Time magazine!
He estimated within one order of magnitude, the yield of the world’s first
atomic bomb, one of the most closely held secrets of its time.
At the very least, for you the student during this semester, units and
dimensions will allow you to narrow down the possibilities facing you on
quizzes and tests, and to help ensure you get the right answers.

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2 Unit analysis
Unit analysis is the process of finding out the fundamental units of a quantity
in terms of a given or standardized system of units, by use of a mathematical
formula or algebraically reducing the starting quantity by use of conversion
factors. We will use SI throughout the course, that is, commonly, we will
work in units where mass is expressed in kilograms (kg), length in meters
(m), and time in seconds (s). You treat these kg’s, m’s and s’s just like
algebraic quantities.
For instance, the SI unit of force is a Newton. Let us compute what a
Newton is in terms of kg, m, and s ( the fundamental SI units). We will
learn, the formula for force is

F = ma. (2.1)

Mass we may express as kg, but acceleration still needs to be reduced to the
requested units. We also will soon learn that acceleration is the double time
derivative of position, or
µ ¶2
d2 x d
a = = x (2.2)
dt2 dt
m
a ∝ s2
, (2.3)

where the second line indicates we are expressing the symbolic quantity on
the left in terms of only its units. So, read ∝ as meaning ḧas units of.̈
In unit-land, you should observe that the d’s themselves are unitless, so
d2 /dt2 ∝ 1/s2 .
The other form of unit analysis happens when you wish to express the
units of something, in terms of something else, through only the use of con-
version factors. For instance, light travels to us from the sun at a velocity
of 186,000 mi/s ( miles per second). Let us express this in terms of funda-
mental SI units again. We can simply multiply the original 186,000 mi/s by
1 in the form of the conversion factor 1 = 1609meters/1mile, cleverly set
up so that the miles will cancel, leaving our answer in terms of only meters
and seconds. This reduces our answer into the desired form:
186, 000miles 1.86 × 105 miles 1609meters
= × = 3 × 108 m/s.(2.4)
1sec 1s 1mile
Notice how you treat units like any algebraic quantity: you can multiply
and divide quantities with different units. You may not add and subtract

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two different quantities with two different units. Put them in the same units
first!
The student should be also be very aware of units when using any sort of
mathematical function like sine, cosine, log. These functions are functions
of real numbers only, and can only act on real, unitless numbers. So make
sure all units cancel before the function is computed. The output of these
basic real functions are also real, unitless numbers! This is a very important
caveat, often missed by introductory physics students.

3 Dimensional Analysis
Dimensional analysis is very much like unit analysis, only one does not pay
attention to particular units involved, and only seeks to express quantities
in terms of more fundamental quantities like length (L), time (T), and mass
(M). The reduction procedure proceeds just like the first example of unit
analysis.
For instance, say we seek to discover the dimensions of torque, τ , knowing
the formula of
τ = F d sin(θ) (3.1)
for the torque of a force F applied a distance d away from the rotation axis.
The angle θ is the angle between the vectors F and d. However, the details
of each quantity in (3.1) and the vector math involved are unimportant to
our dimensional analysis. We know that with the dimensions of d is length
and is expressed by d ∝ L. Likewise, the dimensions of F are found by

F = ma, (3.2)
L
F ∝ M 2, (3.3)
T
using (2.1) and 2.2). Putting this together, we see that

M L2
τ ∝F L∝ (3.4)
T2
since the sin(θ) term is both dimensionless and unitless.