View Single Post
  #50  
Old May 4th 04, 01:50 AM
Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Mary Shafer" wrote in message
...

Oliver Smoot was a student in 1958, when his fraternity pledge class
measured the Harvard Bridge (364.4 smoots, plus an ear) and marked it.
The markings are renewed biennially.

(Should be noted the first time they used the actual Smoot to measure.
Since then they use a derived measure.)


One smoot is 5' 7", in case you wonder.


A professor at RPI (Meltzer for those who recall the name) used to say that
you knew you had made it big time when you had a unit of measurement named
after you (Mach, Watt, etc.)

So, on a camping trip we all developed some units....

The Welch was the length of time one would go between nearly killing oneself
in some unusual way (falling on an ice axe and just barely missing impaling
oneself, overshooting a sled while jumping on it... etc.) I think we
measured this in a few hours.

The Regan was the length of time one would go between completely missing the
point of someone's comment... that was in seconds. (Hey, he was a great guy,
just a bit oblivious at times. :-)

The Dann, I don't recall.

The Moore was the distance (in inches because we're bloody Americans) ones
hand had to move in the woodstove heated cabin before one would notice a
difference in temperature (for anyone w/o experience with a wood stove, the
difference in temp between say the floor and the ceiling of a heated room is
VERY noticable.) We later estimated to this be about 4". I of course had a
hand in creating this unit.

Unfortunately these units never achieved the popularity of the Smoot.



An American baker is happy baking cookies in Fahrenheit. A French baker

is
happy baking cookies in Celsius.


And the British baker is baking biscuits in Gas Marks.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer