"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 12/09/2019 08:20, NY wrote:
The notation m s^-2 and kg m^-3 always strike me as perverse: what was
wrong with m/s^2 and kg/m^3? I remember being taught m/s^2, and then when
I changed school to one that did a Nuffield physics syllabus, the
notation changed to kg m^-2 which it claimed to be "better" in some
unspecified way.

It normalises notation to exponential form, that is all. The - in the
exponent is equivalent to the / of division

Yes I understand what it means: m.s^-2 or kg.m^-3 are identical to m/s^2 or
kg/m^3. All I was saying is that the former is a slightly cack-handed way of
expressing it (IMHO) and one which has to be translated back again if you
are going to refer to it in spoken form. But it does make it easier to check
that powers of units match throughout an equation.