C

Today I spent trying to put charge into completely MKS units. Yes, pretty much the whole day. There were breaks for lunch, seminars, and other similar things but mostly

1 Coulomb = m^a kg^b s^c

What are a,b, and c? Apparently, in SI units, current (A) is a "fundamental unit". What I'm wondering is, isn't the charge an observable independant of the parameters MKS?

One defines the current in terms of a force between two wires where the force is so many Newtons. The only problem is that force (per unit length) is given by

F \propto \mu_{o} I^2

and \mu_{o} has units of N/A^2. Thus if you give me the force between the wires I can give you a value for A but it will be in MKS+A units. A seems to depend on itself. Is this making sense? Where am I going wrong?

Today I am reading:
"Curved Space or Curved Vacuum?" by Eric Linder from gr-qc

PS: Would someone please write a Latex interpreter firefox plugin?