Where are the Science Police when you need them?

I've got a feeling that I'm soon going to need a new battery for The Tractor. It's doing an unsettling sort of st-stu-stu-st-stuttering thing when I start the engine on cold mornings, and although it is only a shade over three years old, I have a suspicion that items like batteries, windscreen wipers and clutch pedal rubbers are where Land Rover do their cost reduction.

Anyway, I thought I'd have a quick look in my local branch of "a well known national motoring superstore", and see how much a new battery would cost. 

Very nearly a hundred quid, as it happens, but this was not what tripped me into rant mode.  

Take a look at this Specification:

Guarantee: 3 Years

Startup Power: 510 Amps

Type: Lead Acid

AH Value: 68

Bench Charge: 6.8 Amps

Dimensions (LxDxH): 187x127x227mm

Reserve capacity: 125

Weight (kg): 16.69

There are at least two things wrong with this apology for a specification. 

Firstly, it doesn’t tell you the voltage of the battery. OK, most car batteries are 12 volt, but to leave out the voltage is absurd. 

Then we come to the real crime.

“Startup Power: 510 Amps” What the . . . ?

Amps, are the unit of electrical current. If you want to describe power, you cannot use Amps. The unit of power is the Watt.

I’m sure that the value of 510 means something, but it cannot be ‘power’.

This is fundamental science, and there is simply no excuse for getting it so hopelessly wrong.

[RANT ENDS]

On a lighter note, I was tickled to see that there has been a natural history series on TV, called “The secret life of elephants”. Suggesting that something as blatantly obvious as an elephant, could do anything secretly, is just perfect.