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#31
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"Henry Spencer" wrote in message ... | | Hardly. He's criticizing SI because this particular relationship doesn't | work in practice, but SI has never claimed it did... That's true, Henry. I momentarily blurred the distinction between SI and "the metric system". -- | The universe is not required to conform | Jay Windley to the expectations of the ignorant. | webmaster @ clavius.org |
#32
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An American baker is happy baking cookies in Fahrenheit. A French baker is happy baking cookies in Celsius. Does it really matter? My argument is that it does not, and that any measurement system that claims to be based on "natural" relationships is probably not. And a British baker is happy baking cookies in "Gas Marks". Are these actually calibrated, or correspond to anything? It confuses me when I watch Jamie Oliver on the Food Network. |
#33
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In article ,
Doug... wrote: But remember -- a pint's a pound the world around! Costs a lot more than a pound these days ... Nick |
#34
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On Mon, 3 May 2004 11:22:40 -0600, "Jay Windley"
wrote: I'm reminded of a (probably apocryphal) story about MIT engineering students who were asked to design and construct a bridge using the unit of "smoot", Professor Smoot being their instructor. His linear, volumetric, and mass properties were the measurement units for the project. Steel had a density of so many smoots-mass per smoots-volume, for example. In doing that, you would gain a deeper appreciation for where these "accepted" values for everything actually come from, and greater insight into the arbitrary nature of practically any measurement system. Your version is apocryphal. The truth is much less complex and much more random. 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. One smoot is 5' 7", in case you wonder. 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 |
#35
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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. Mary -- Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer |
#36
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Am Sun, 02 May 2004 16:23:50 -0500 schrieb "Herb Schaltegger":
[...] There are no "localized versions" at issue with any of them vis a vis Apollo. [...] 1 U.S. gallon = 3.79 liters US gallon... localized version... QED scnr cu, ZiLi aka HKZL (Heinrich Zinndorf-Linker) -- /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign \ / http://zili.de X No HTML in / \ email & news |
#37
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In article ,
"Heinrich Zinndorf-Linker (zili@home)" wrote: Am Sun, 02 May 2004 16:23:50 -0500 schrieb "Herb Schaltegger": [...] There are no "localized versions" at issue with any of them vis a vis Apollo. [...] 1 U.S. gallon = 3.79 liters US gallon... localized version... QED scnr Look at the Subject header, why don't you? Does the word "Apollo" provide any context? It should, after all. If understand that Project Apollo was a U.S. program, than any "localization" issue with regard to the subject at hand is moot. -- Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D. Reformed Aerospace Engineer Columbia Loss FAQ: http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html |
#38
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In article ,
Doug... wrote: 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. Believe me, there were some. Canadians too. :-) -- MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. | |
#39
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In article ,
Jay Windley wrote: I've seen kilograms-force (kgf) gain popularity as a competing unit of force. In my mind that's just revisiting the fiasco between pounds-mass and pounds-force in English units... Fortunately, I think that use is fading rather than growing -- it's a relic of some of the pre-SI metric systems. -- MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. | |
#40
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"Henry Spencer" wrote in message ... | | The least he can do is extend the same courtesy to the | metric system. Yes, fair enough. I think my opinion lacks focus. You're obviously correct in that any system intended to be consistent can be used consistently as long as its practitioners take appropriate care. Obviously someone who uses meters and kilograms may also (inconsistently, according to SI) use Celsius, and that's not really any better than Fahrenheit when it comes to scientific applications. That's why SI wisely uses Kelvin for temperature. If you're asking me to justify the confusion between variants of English units, of course I can't. I think what I was trying to look at -- and what got sidetracked into the consistency argument -- was the notion that SI was physically-based. That is, derived from "natural" basic relationships and not from the size of King George's shoe or whatever. When you get right down to it, the basic pieces of any measurement system will be arbitrary. Let me emphasize that I'm not trying to trash *any* measurement system. Are there good arguments for using SI and also the metric system? Yes, there are. -- | The universe is not required to conform | Jay Windley to the expectations of the ignorant. | webmaster @ clavius.org |
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