[BC] need a NON-technical explanation

[PeterH]

On Nov 11, 2010, at 9:20 AM, Donna Halper wrote:

> But to further confuse the neo-Luddites like me, today's radio  
> receivers are in kilohertz-- I grew up with using "kc" and it all  
> changed further at some point to "kHz", but I never understood that  
> change either.  Soooo, if somebody could explain these changes and  
> the reasons for them, in English that the average non-techie could  
> understand, I'd be grateful.

kHz is simply a metricization of kc. Additionally, Hz honors Hertz,  
whereas c (cycles) is an English term.

Frequency and frequency conversion involves oscillators (as did the  
early "regenerative" detector). The customary units for electrical  
engineering, in this context, is radians per second, where there are  
2? radians per cycle, so it was perhaps natural that cycles per unit  
time, and not wavelength, would be preferred.