Chapter 3 – Extensive Measurement

Publisher Summary A theory of extensive measurement is a set of assumptions. Among the physical quantities that are considered extensive, several are basically periodic. The two most familiar examples are clock time, which has a period of either 12 or 24 hours, and angle, which has a period of 2π radians. In both cases, the periodic measure relates simply to an ordinary extensive measure. For example, the time duration of 76:35 hours is the same as 3 days and 4:35 hours, and so in terms of clock time, it is simply equivalent to 4:35 hours, because the complete cycles drop out. This chapter presents several classical empirical examples of extensive measurement in physics. In all these examples, the primitives have a natural physical interpretation, and the axioms reduce to well-known physical principles.