Base unit (measurement) aspects of the world, such as time, distance, velocity, mass, temperature, energy, and weight, and "units" are used to describe their magnitude or quantity. Many of these quantities are related to each other by various physical laws, and as a result the units of a quantities can be generally be expressed as a product of powers of other units; for example, momentum is mass multiplied by velocity, while velocity is measured in distance divided by time. These relationships are discussed in dimensional analysis. Those that can be expressed in this fashion in terms of the base units are called .
Pulse wave velocity in the investigation of hypertension. The theory of the velocity of the transmission of the pulse through the circulation dates back to 1808 with the work of Thomas Young. The relationship between pulse wave velocity (PWV) and arterial wall stiffness can be derived from Newton's second law of motion (formula_1) applied to a small fluid element, where the force on the element equals the product of density (the mass per unit volume; formula_2) and the acceleration. The approach for calculating PWV is similar to the calculation of the speed of sound, formula_3, in a compressible fluid (e.g. air): formula_4, where