Kelvin? Schmelvin!

As you may probably know, temperature is often expressed in Kelvin, particularly in technical and scientific papers. One Kelvin is equal in size to one degree Celsius, but the starting point differs (zero Kelvin being about minus 273 Celsius).

Although the equivalence between Celsius and Kelvin is convenient for everyday purposes, it has resulted in the original unit of temperature falling into disuse. I refer, of course, to the elvin, equal to one thousandth of a degree Celsius.

Now that temperature control (including the asymptotic pursuit of absolute zero) is becoming more advanced, the Kilo-elvin (Kelvin) has become too blunt a unit of measurement. We need to campaign to have the elvin restored as a unit of temperature measurement. Instead of claiming that "researchers have obtained temperatures as low as 0.02 Kelvin", we can save several characters by using natural units and giving the temperature as 20 elvins.

Naturally, the very lowest temperatures must be expressed in melvins (one thousandth of an elvin, equal in size to millionth of a degree Celsius), whilst extremes of temperature can conveniently be expressed in Melvins - far more sensible that microKelvins or kiloKelvins.