Why use the "W" for ohms

Thread Starter

Georgetc

Joined May 11, 2008
3
In the "Worksheet" section for "Resistors", questions 8 and 9 use the symbol "W" in place of the omega sign Ω or for the word 'ohm' when dealing with specific resistance of resistors, for both the question and subsequent answers.

Why are you using "W" to denote ohmic values?

Isn't "W" normally used to indicate power rating in watts for resistors?

Maybe I missed something here but please provide me an explanation because its a little confusing for me.

Thanks:confused:
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
This sounds more like a browser incompatiblility. What symbol do you see here (Ω)? It's the ohm symbol BTW.

Could you point to a specific example?
 

Thread Starter

Georgetc

Joined May 11, 2008
3
I see the Greek omega sign in your post. So I guess this rules out the browser issue. Thanks for the suggestion. Sounds like more troubleshooting for me.
 

Thread Starter

Georgetc

Joined May 11, 2008
3
The letter I see is definitely the upper case "W" and not the lower case Greek omega symbol. In fact as I worked several more of the worksheet questions, I found the same thing in numerous other areas in addition to the my original questions 8 and 9.
Come to think of it, I noticed any words beginning in upper case "S", the S was replaced with the upper case Greek letter for Beta.
This is sounding more like a set up issue on my end.

Thanks again for all the help guys.
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Thanks for the feedback Georgetc.

This is a browser quirk and will display differently on different browsers. Those using Internet Explorer will see the Ω symbol, however those using other browsers, namely Firefox and Opera, will see the W symbol. I haven't checked to see the rendering in Safari.

These worksheets have been ported across from other documents and the project is still very much a beta, so there may be rendering issues such as these. Please let us know if you come across any others, this will require some investigation and work to root out all problems.

Thanks for bringing this up.

Dave
 

J.Carre

Joined Dec 31, 1969
0
For years of my career as electronic technician I noticed that for resistor values less than
1 KikoOhm the capital letter Omega was replaced by R, probably because typing machines
did'nt have the greek letters on the keyboard, for resistor's values above 1000R, letters
K and M were used. No confusions were possible.
pleased to read your technical litterature.
Regards
 

bertus

Joined Apr 5, 2008
22,270
Hello,

When I look at those questions I also see a "W".
In the other question I see the Ohm-sign.

In the old days germans used the "W" for the resistance value, it says "Wiederstands werte".

Greetings,
Bertus
 

bertus

Joined Apr 5, 2008
22,270
Hello Dave,

I am using firefox 3.0.1 both on windows and linux.
Both systems give the "W" on these questions.

Greetings,
Bertus
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Hello Dave,

I am using firefox 3.0.1 both on windows and linux.
Both systems give the "W" on these questions.

Greetings,
Bertus
Apologies bertus, just to clarify, you only see the W on the worksheets and not the Ω symbol? Or are there questions in the worksheets where you see the Ω symbol using Firefox 3.0.1?

Thanks.

Dave
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Thanks for the screenshot bertus, that clears things up. The Ω symbol is visible in the images as it if formatted that way apriori, and doesn't require rendering as a symbol; however is rendered incorrectly in the worksheet text - this is the part that is causing the problems. You will note IE formats it correctly, but other browsers don't (in fact it is probably more a case of the page is formatted to the quirks of IE rather than the more standards compliant browsers).

Thanks for your help.

Dave
 

AlexR

Joined Jan 16, 2008
732
The problem is that Firefox3.X does not respond to the "font face" tag. From what I can gather this is not a bug but rather a deliberate decision on the part of the developers to be pedantic in the their interpretation of the HTML4 standard (the "font" tag is depreciated in HTML4 and in theory should not be used in new documents).

The work around could be to use the unicode character "Ω" or maybe the font-family" tag in conjunction with cascading style sheets.
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
The problem is that Firefox3.X does not respond to the "font face" tag. From what I can gather this is not a bug but rather a deliberate decision on the part of the developers to be pedantic in the their interpretation of the HTML4 standard (the "font" tag is depreciated in HTML4 and in theory should not be used in new documents).

The work around could be to use the unicode character "Ω" or maybe the font-family" tag in conjunction with cascading style sheets.
Thanks for the input Alex. I'm sure this will make more sense to the webmaster Rob who can use your comments to make a decision on how best to address this. This section of the site is very much a beta, so its good that this has been brought up.

Dave
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Hello,

In the browsers Opera and Konquerer the "W" is also shown in those queations.

Greetings,
Bertus
Thanks bertus. I have tested it in Opera, however was not aware that it didn't show in Konquerer. It seems that this only displays correctly in IE (although I haven't checked it in webkit-based browsers).

Dave
 

Voltboy

Joined Jan 10, 2007
197
In the new Google Chrome browser it does show as "Ω". But in the answer of question 1 it replaces the S with the Beta symbol anyways. In the page source, instead of being an S, its #223.
 
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