PhysicalQuantities - Calculation in Python with Units

Overview

PhysicalQuantities is a module for Python 3.6 that allows calculations to be aware of physical units with a focus on engineering applications. Built-in unit conversion ensures that calculations will result in the correct aggregate unit.

The module also contains an extension for IPython. This allows greatly simplified use by typing in physical quantities directly as number and unit.

Examples

In [1]: %load_ext PhysicalQuantities.ipython
In [2]: a = 100mm
In [3]: a
Out[3]: 100 mm

In [4]: a.cm
Out[5]: 10.0 cm

In [5]: a = 10_000_000 nm
In [6]: a.autoscale
Out[6]: 1.0 cm

In [7]: a = 10 m/s
In [8]: 5s * a
Out[8]: 50 m

dB calculations are supported, too:

In [1]: u = 10V
In [2]: u.dB
Out[2]: 20.0 dBV

In [3]: p = 10 dBm
In [4]: p
Out[4]: 10 dBm

In [5]: p.W
Out[5]: 0.01 W

In [6]: p.mW
Out[6]: 10.0 mW

Additional units, e.g. imperial units:

In [1]: %precision 2
Out[1]: '%.2f'

In [2]: import PhysicalQuantities.imperial
In [3]: a = 2 inch
In [4]: a
Out[4]: 2 inch

In [5]: a.mil
Out[5]: 2000.00 mil

In [6]: a.mm
Out[6]: 50.80 mm

Using PhysicalQuantities in plain Python:

>>> from PhysicalQuantities import q
>>> 1 * q.mm
1 mm
>>> 1 * q.dBm
1 dBm
>>>

Installation

This module requires Python 3.6 or above. This is due to the use of new features like f strings or supporting underscores in numeric literals.

To install, simply do a

pip install PhysicalQuantities

There also is a conda receive, so you can do

conda build

to generate a conda package. I will upload a receipe to conda-forge at a later time.

Note

This module is originally based on the IPython extension by Georg Brandl at https://bitbucket.org/birkenfeld/ipython-physics.