Dimensional Analysis
David Du
BIALIGY.com
September 2020
§1 Introduction
Dimensional analysis is the use of fundamental units, like mass units, time units, and length units, in
order to convert units or ”solve a problem” up to a certain constant factor.
§2 Dimensions
All physical quantities have units, like grams, liters, meters, or joules. Any quantity can be expressed
in terms of many different units, like kilometers vs meters. There are many different categories of units,
such as time units, length units, and mass units, with each of these classifications being called dimensions,
hence where dimensional analysis comes from. The interesting thing about dimensions is that you can
only represent a quantity in one unique way using dimensions, meaning you cannot express a time unit
as a mass unit, such as trying to represent seconds purely in terms of mass units. The most fundamental
skill is to assess what representation quantities are expressed in. Let’s look at some examples
.
Example §2.1
Using basis units of m for mass, T for time, K for temperature, C for charge, L for length, M for
mol, and ρ for pressure find the representation of the following
1) Mass of a computer
2) Charge of a battery
3) Rate of a reaction
4) Velocity of a particle
5) Gas Constant
1) We can measure this in mass units m.
2) We can represent the charge as C.
M
3) The rate of a reaction is how many moles are consumed per time unit. So we can represent that as
T
L
4) The velocity of a particle is how much it moves over a certain time. So we can represent that as
T
PV ρL3
5) Since P V = nRT =⇒ R = we can write the gas constant as
nT MK
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BIALIGY.com Dimensional Analysis David Du
§2.1 Dimensional Analysis with Calculus
d
We can think of the derivative operator as a rate of change. More formally
dt
df f (t + ∆t) − f (t)
= lim
dt ∆t→0 h
Since ∆t has units of time, as we are dividing by ∆t we are adding another T term to the denominator.
d L d d2 L
So v = L would have units of . And continuing a = v = 2 L we would have units of 2
dt T dt dt T
The same can be applied to integrals. If we loosly define an integral as a Riemann Sum
Z b ∞
X
f (x)dx = lim f (x∗k )∆x
a ∆x→0
k=1
We see we are multiplying by a ∆x, so we are adding another T term to the numerator. So we have the
Z
L L
example of v(t) = a(t)dt. We see we would progress from a unit of 2 to
T T
§3 Application
We can use dimension analysis to convert from one unit to the next as we can work basically algebra with
units. Let’s convert a day to seconds.
24 hours 60 minutes 60 seconds
1 day × × × = 86400 seconds
1 day 1 hours 1 minutes
We can see how the units cancel each other out and in the end we get a nice result.
Let’s look at an example that is common in problems involving chemical reactions.
CH4 + 2 O2 −−→ CO2 + 2 H2 O
Let’s say we want to look at how many grams of CO2 are produced when we use 16.04 grams of CH4
1 mol CH4 1 mol of CO2 44 gram CO2
16.04 grams CH4 × × × = 44 gram CO2
16.04 grams CH4 1 mol CH4 1mol of CO2
We see how nice and tidy our conversions can be using dimensional analysis.
We can use dimension analysis to rule out answer choices that do not seem correct. For example, if
we have a question that asks for to solve for the bond energy. You would expect the answer’s units to be
kJ kJ
mol . If we had an answer choice that said mol2 we can immediately elimate that answer choice, solving
the problem quicker.
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BIALIGY.com Dimensional Analysis David Du
Example §3.1
A 20.0 g piece of regular vanadium at 203 ◦ C is dropped into water. How much heat energy is
delivered to the water?
kg·m2
a) 1990 s2
kg2 ·m2
b) 27000 s2
kg·m2
c) 27000 s2
kg·m2
d) 1990 s3
If we know that
kg · m · m kg · m2
J =N ·m= =
s2 s2
We can directly eliminate two options. b) and d), and keeping mind the order of magnitude we can see
that the answer is a). Doing the calculations will verify that the option is actually a), but we have already
”solved” the question without doing any calculations, which could be important in saving time.
