|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#51
|
|||
|
|||
"Henry Spencer" wrote in message ... Units of measure lack those advantages. You don't constantly exchange yardsticks with others, so there is no requirement for all yardsticks to be marked the same way. I buy lumber in English units (no, a 2x4 isn't two inches by four inches, but it *is* eight feet long) Actually even THIS is changing... you can buy 2x4 "studs". What? You thought an 8' 2x4 WAS for a stud? Oh no, now you can buy them 89" long. It's "quicker" (and actually saves wood) since now you don't have trim them in order to make a standard 8' wall. and network cables in metric, and the difference in units is a nuisance but not a disaster, so the incentive for standardization is reduced -- witness all the funny specialized units in use in various market niches (even in the most thoroughly metric countries, you buy diamonds by the carat and set type by the point). Similarly, there's no central group which has a hand in everyone's use of units and hence can schedule a conversion and insist that you participate. And don't get me started on racks for computers. :-) -- MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. | |
#52
|
|||
|
|||
"Kevin Willoughby" wrote in message ... Trivia: the Harvard bridge is nowhere near the town of Harvard, Massachusetts. The bridge crosses the Charles River, from Boston to Cambridge not at Harvard University, but at MIT. You have to cross the bridge and then drive through the MIT campus to reach Harvard Square. (Additional trivial: you *can't* park you car in Harvard yard. This has been illegal for many, many years.) Heck, even where you CAN legally park it's pretty tough to find an empty spot. :-) (fwiw: I attended neither Harvard nor MIT.) So fess up, where did you attend? -- Kevin Willoughby lid Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work for test pilots. -- Mike Collins |
#53
|
|||
|
|||
"Doug..." wrote in message ... Exactly. I mean, we Americans could have sat around making fun of those British who had a difficult time converting from Lsd currency to decimal currency -- we've had decimal currency since the very beginning. But, last I heard, not a single American I know ever drug the British over the coals over that one. Another benefit of decimal currency over Lsd (money, that is) is that suddenly three quarters of the time spent in school on maths could be used for something other than money sums. rgds Neil |
#54
|
|||
|
|||
"Doug..." wrote in message ... LOl, yeah -- just because I never heard it doesn't mean it didn't happen. I can still remember seeing the commercials that were run frequently during the changeover, though -- they were played in the U.S. on news magazine shows to illustrate to us Americans what the U.K. was going through. The jingle stayed with me becuase of the somewhat inappropriate context that it had in America at the time: The Australian one is part of cultural history, and one of the important milestones in television, too. It was sung by a cartoon character called Dollar Bill: "In come the dollars, in come the cents Out go the pounds and the shillings and the pence So be prepared when the money starts to mix On the fourteenth of February, nineteen sixty-six" That's right people, Valentine's Day 1966. I wonder how many girls got new decimal currency adding machines for a present? I can just imagine some American hippies watching those ads and getting ENTIRELY the wrong idea... "Let's move to Canada, man. They got it in the stores!" |
#55
|
|||
|
|||
In article ,
Mary Shafer writes: On Tue, 4 May 2004 00:15:04 +0800, "Neil Gerace" wrote: "Jay Windley" wrote in message ... For example, the relationship between liter and kilogram seems wonderfully logical until you forget to take into account just under what precise (and largely arbitrary) conditions a kilogram and a liter of water can be considered equivalent. Most normal situations. What about the relationship between the gallon and the pound? And by the way, which gallon and which pound? For everyday purposes, one gallon of water weighs eight pounds. This is for the standard cooking gallon, measured in a marked cup, and pound, measured on a scale. The corrections for temperature, etc, are smaller than the tolerance in the measurements and this is appropriate for situations using gallons. Always figured it as 8.3, myself. Of course, I wasn't cooking, but doing Percolation Tests in remote sites where you hiked in with the water. (At that point, every 0.3 counts._) And, of course, the truly important values - 6.0#/U.S. Gal. for 100/130, 6.5 #/USGal for JP-4, and 6.7#/USGal for JP-5. -- Pete Stickney A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures. -- Daniel Webster |
#57
|
|||
|
|||
"Peter Stickney" wrote in message ... Always figured it as 8.3, myself. Of course, I wasn't cooking, but doing Percolation Tests in remote sites where you hiked in with the water. (At that point, every 0.3 counts._) Bah, at that point you separate your own water at home... remove that pesky heavy water! And, of course, the truly important values - 6.0#/U.S. Gal. for 100/130, 6.5 #/USGal for JP-4, and 6.7#/USGal for JP-5. -- Pete Stickney A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures. -- Daniel Webster |
#58
|
|||
|
|||
"Neil Gerace" wrote in message . au... Another benefit of decimal currency over Lsd (money, that is) is that suddenly three quarters of the time spent in school on maths could be used for something other than money sums. That reminds me of a system we all use that's not base 10... Time. I mean come on... 24 hour days? 60 minutes to an hour... 60 seconds, but powers of 10 for subsecond intervals. Oh and 7 days in week? Geesh, who thunk those up! And you know what, we seem to manage for the most part. rgds Neil |
#59
|
|||
|
|||
In article , "Greg D. Moore
\(Strider\)" says... "Kevin Willoughby" wrote in message ... (Additional trivial: you *can't* park you car in Harvard yard. This has been illegal for many, many years.) Heck, even where you CAN legally park it's pretty tough to find an empty spot. :-) Well, if you're willing to spend $20 for an evening, there are several places to park. (Or if you have a girl friend who lives just north of Harvard Square, you can borrow her space...) Or, at the risk of being on-topic, there is an MIT parking garage just around the corner from the Volpe building. That building (named after a former governor and Secretary of Transportation) was originally the proposed location for NASA's manned Mission Control. (At the time the Mission Control decision was made, *our* President was no longer in office.) (fwiw: I attended neither Harvard nor MIT.) So fess up, where did you attend? Northeastern University, just a few blocks south of the Harvard bridge. -- Kevin Willoughby lid Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work for test pilots. -- Mike Collins |
#60
|
|||
|
|||
I've seen no mention in this threat that the ISS is half metric/ half SAE. -- A host is a host from coast to & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433 |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
The Apollo Hoax FAQ (is not spam) :-) | Nathan Jones | UK Astronomy | 8 | August 1st 04 09:08 PM |
The Apollo Hoax FAQ (is not spam) :-) | Nathan Jones | Astronomy Misc | 5 | July 29th 04 06:14 AM |
Apollo | Buzz alDredge | Astronomy Misc | 5 | July 28th 04 10:05 AM |
Apollo | Buzz alDredge | Misc | 5 | July 28th 04 10:05 AM |
The Apollo Hoax FAQ | darla | UK Astronomy | 11 | July 25th 04 02:57 PM |