Guild of Writers

I have an idea for a puzzle involving electricity, but in order to make it realistic in the context of the D'ni society I decided to derive my own units for voltage. Now, 1 Volt = 1 (m^2)(kg)(s^-3)(A^-1), or (area times mass) divided by (seconds cubed times current).
We know the D'ni units for distance and time already. The first problematic part would be the unit for mass, which is a basic unit. I don't know if this has been given to us through RAWA or any other official source, but if not, I'm rather stuck. I can't just make up an arbitrary unit without infringing on Cyan's canon, but I can't derive a mass unit from the information we have now without leading myself around in circles (believe me, I tried - I went through mass-energy equivalence to get the D'ni version of electron volts and basically drove myself nuts). Am I going to have to scrap this puzzle?

Well, we could just ask RAWA....

Oh, you'd need the D'ni equivalent for Coulomb as well.... (That or their equivalent of current)

Yeah, but mass is the big one. The ampere was developed by measuring the current needed to generate a force between two wires a certain distance apart (Wikipedia says it was 2 dynes per cm of wire when the wires were 1 cm apart), and I could get force if I knew the units for mass.

But yeah, I guess I could ask RAWA. Don't know if he'd respond or not.

I'd say from the top of my head that your calculation would yield the very same value for Amperes as if you were using normal SI units - provided you recalculate cm to the d'n unit equivalent and so on.

Basically that definition ultimately just yields a certain finite number of electrons that makes up one unit of charge (the Coulomb). Such a number is arbitrary in any culture, so there'd be no telling if the D'ni used the same value for that - or the same definition of Amperes to come by it.
(Better ask RAWA that too )

Oh, you could say to RAWA that you'd be willing to work out a working model of these parts of physics, and submit it ro RAWA for approval (I don't expect him to be able to take the time to dive into physics calculations )

I sent him an email asking, in a roundabout way, three things:

1. What was the D'ni unit of mass?
2. What was the D'ni unit of charge and how many elementary charges did it encompass (probably some big multiple of 5)?
3. What was the typical frequency of D'ni AC sources?