Cometrics
Old Physics
What this country needs is a twentyfive millimeter inch (forty to
the meter instead of 39.37), a four liter galon, and a pound that
comes two thousand to the metric ton. The names for these units
should be simple and short; terms that stick to memory like gum to the
underside of a school desk.
Three decimeters would be a "tred". Five foot two and a half
inches would be five tred three and a half tinches precisely.
Half a kilogram is about ten percent more than a pound to "lug"
around. Not only does lug imply weight; its natural abbriviation "lg"
recalls "lb". Lug pint or "huf" would be the corresponding volume of
water.
Four liters is 5.67% more than a gallon; call it a "guzzle" and
you have a truly americanized term for jug wine and gasoline. A cubic
tred is 95.3496 percent of a cubic foot, and precisely 27 liters. A
cone or pyramid one tred high with a base of a square tred would be
nine liters.
The mile is defined as 1609.344 mm. Less than six inches, 144 mm,
could be trimmed off the mile and it would be 5364 tred or 1788 metric
yards (twain). Call it a Sevit mile or 1.6092 Km for precision. One
sevit per hour would be 1.49 tred per second. A journey of a thousand
sevits would be about 500 ft short of a 1000 miles so no road signs
would have to be changed.
With these rational measures, metric conversion (liter-acy) can
feel good.
We will all stand a little taller, weigh less, and our cars will
get better mileage.
Stephen Kearney
Old Physics
> Cometrics
>
> What this country needs is a twentyfive millimeter inch (forty to
Certainly a half kilogram pound and a four liter gallon would go a
long way toward metric standardization of weight and volume. A 30cm
foot would atleast be easy to convert to meters, multiply by 0.3. The
bar of one atmosphere would be 12.5 lugs per square tinch. The
pressure lug or "plug" (0.5kg/6.25cm^2) would keep tire inflation
nearly correct.
That these measures are near their english counterparts makes for
a much easier transition.
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
You forgot something, fool.
Apparently you think you have both a lug and a lug force, continuing
the confusion inherent whenever you borrow the name of a unit of mass
for a unit of force.
How do you propose distinguishing those two separate units, one of
mass and one of force?
Furthermore, what are you going to use as your "standard acceleration
of gravity" to define your lug force? That's something that needs to
be specified, and it will affect the relationship between a lug force
and a kilogram force as well as the relationship between a lug force
and a newton and a lug force and a pound force.
Gene Nygaard
Old Physics
Excellent point. My bad. No greater fool than he that fools
himself. Units of 8000 pascals would come 12.5 to the bar, which is
now defined as 100000 pascals or newtons per meter squared. 29psi
would be close to 25 "pascal-lugs", the newton being equal to the
force that accelerates two lugs to one meter per second, in one
second. The earth's gravity is a bit more than 9.8 newtons. Correct
me if I'm wrong.
Multiply tred by 0.3 to get meters, two lugs of water fill a
liter, a metric gallon weighs eight lugs, a mile is about 1.6092 Km
and at about 18000 tred the pressure is about half a bar, 7.3psi or
6.25 plugs. It keeps a tenuous link with english measure but only has
to be multiplied by 8k to derive pascals, the measure that it is
defined by.
Fool the public into using the metric system and they will be the
wiser and more prosperous for it. Cometrics is a cheap trick that
lets americans keep a mental grip, to stay within their comfort zone.
Give it time and cometrics will be but a nuisance, but not an
obstacle, to a metric nation.
Thanks for your post, Mr. Nygaard.
Old Physics
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
You are still a fool. I don't see any new unit of force in all that
babble. You also didn't answer my question about how you would
distinguish your unit of force from your unit of mass.
So what's the relationship within your system between your unit of
force, the lug force, and your unit of pressure or force divided by
area, the plug? No conversions, just within that system.
Or the related question--is your system is any good, you ought to be
able to figure out exactly what you are using for your standard
acceleration of gravity in your system, expressed in the units of that
system such as treds per second squared.
But I doubt that you know your own system to be able to tell us the
standard acceleration of gravity in your system. You can't, can you?
One of the biggest obstacles to increased use of the metric system at
the present time is too much emphasis on making conversions. All we
really need to do is just use it. We certainly don't need a whole
bunch of new conversion factors to learn, making everything twice as
complicated as it is not.
The goal should be to eliminate most of he need to do conversions, not
to increase the need to do conversions. Even if your new ones would
be slightly simpler than the present ones, there is still no
overriding logic that would help you remember any of the new numbers
we'd have to learn.
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/t_jeff.htm
But if it be thought that, either now, or at any future time, the
citizens of the United States may be induced to undertake a thorough
reformation of their whole system of measures, weights and coins,
reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio already established
in their coins, and thus bringing the calculation of the principal
affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply
and divide plain numbers, greater changes will be necessary.
U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson
Old Physics
> >himself. Units of 8000 pascals would come 12.5 to the bar, which is
> >now defined as 100000 pascals or newtons per meter squared. 29psi
> >would be close to 25 "pascal-lugs", the newton being equal to the
> >force that accelerates two lugs to one meter per second, in one
> >second. The earth's gravity is a bit more than 9.8 newtons. Correct
> >me if I'm wrong.
> > Multiply tred by 0.3 to get meters, two lugs of water fill a
> >liter, a metric gallon weighs eight lugs, a mile is about 1.6092 Km
> >and at about 18000 tred the pressure is about half a bar, 7.3psi or
> >6.25 plugs. It keeps a tenuous link with english measure but only has
> >to be multiplied by 8k to derive pascals, the measure that it is
> >defined by.
> > Fool the public into using the metric system and they will be the
> >wiser and more prosperous for it. Cometrics is a cheap trick that
> >lets americans keep a mental grip, to stay within their comfort zone.
> >Give it time and cometrics will be but a nuisance, but not an
> >obstacle, to a metric nation.
>
> You are still a fool. I don't see any new unit of force in all that
> babble. You also didn't answer my question about how you would
> distinguish your unit of force from your unit of mass.
Cometrics is a system of derivitive units. Half a kg, four
liters, 0.3 meters and 0.08 bars. Lug, metric gallon, tred and plug
respectively.
>
> So what's the relationship within your system between your unit of
> force, the lug force, and your unit of pressure or force divided by
> area, the plug? No conversions, just within that system.
The newton is also based on the kg or two lugs (meter/sec). The
plug is simply to keep pressure measure close to the familiar psi. It
is a bite size 8000 pascals or newtons per square meter.
>
> Or the related question--is your system is any good, you ought to be
> able to figure out exactly what you are using for your standard
> acceleration of gravity in your system, expressed in the units of that
> system such as treds per second squared.
>
> But I doubt that you know your own system to be able to tell us the
> standard acceleration of gravity in your system. You can't, can you?
The acceleration of gravity at sea level is 32.68884 tred per
second per second. Multiply by 0.3 to get 9.80665 m/s^2, the familiar
value.
>
> One of the biggest obstacles to increased use of the metric system at
> the present time is too much emphasis on making conversions. All we
> really need to do is just use it. We certainly don't need a whole
> bunch of new conversion factors to learn, making everything twice as
> complicated as it is not.
Nobody complained about conversion to liters, we just use it
because its close to a quart. Just use half a kg, four liters, 30cm,
1.6092m and we will have crossed the threshhold to the metric system.
>
> The goal should be to eliminate most of he need to do conversions, not
> to increase the need to do conversions. Even if your new ones would
> be slightly simpler than the present ones, there is still no
> overriding logic that would help you remember any of the new numbers
> we'd have to learn.
Your point is well taken. Lug, "dallon" (derivitave gallon), tred
and plug; 1/2, 4, 0.3 and 0.08 respectively, are much simpler, precise
conversions, but still are conversions.
>
> Gene Nygaard
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/t_jeff.htm
> But if it be thought that, either now, or at any future time, the
> citizens of the United States may be induced to undertake a thorough
> reformation of their whole system of measures, weights and coins,
> reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio already established
> in their coins, and thus bringing the calculation of the principal
> affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply
> and divide plain numbers, greater changes will be necessary.
> U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson
If you can "multiply and divide plain numbers" greater change
(metrification) becomes easy.
Thank you for your insights,
Stephen Kearney
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
>> > Excellent point. My bad. No greater fool than he that fools
But the pascal is 1 N/m^2 = 1 kg/(s^2 m)
Your "plug" is x (unnamed force units)/tred^2. What is x?
What is the force which accelerates 1 lug at 1 tred/s^2? That's
different from the unnamed force unit in the last problem. Does this
unit get used in your system? Does it have a name?
>> Or the related question--is your system is any good, you ought to be
>> able to figure out exactly what you are using for your standard
>> acceleration of gravity in your system, expressed in the units of that
>> system such as treds per second squared.
>>
>> But I doubt that you know your own system to be able to tell us the
>> standard acceleration of gravity in your system. You can't, can you?
>
> The acceleration of gravity at sea level is 32.68884 tred per
>second per second.
False. Sea level isn't a very precise specification.
The acceleration of gravity at sea level on Earth is somewhere between
32.6011 tred/s^2 and 32.7740 tred/s^2. The earthwide average sea
level value would be about 32.6588 tred/s^2, or 0.0300 tred/s^2 less
than the value you are using for your standard acceleration of gravity
(which you actually stated incorrectly in the last digit, it should be
32.688833333333... tred/s^2, or 32 4133/6000 tred/s^2).
> Multiply by 0.3 to get 9.80665 m/s^2, the familiar
>value.
The official value for defining kilograms force, an obsolete metric
unit. But a value that serves no purpose whatsoever if you stick to
SI, the modern metric system. You only need that for conversions to
some non-SI units.
There's no reason your system would have to use the same standard
acceleration of gravity. We don't have to use the same value to
define pounds force, either. Nowadays, we probably do most often
borrow the one which defined the kilogram force, but other values such
as 32.16 ft/s^2 and 381 in/s^2 have been used as well.
>> One of the biggest obstacles to increased use of the metric system at
>> the present time is too much emphasis on making conversions. All we
>> really need to do is just use it. We certainly don't need a whole
>> bunch of new conversion factors to learn, making everything twice as
>> complicated as it is not.
>
> Nobody complained about conversion to liters, we just use it
>because its close to a quart. Just use half a kg, four liters, 30cm,
>1.6092m and we will have crossed the threshhold to the metric system.
>>
>> The goal should be to eliminate most of he need to do conversions, not
>> to increase the need to do conversions. Even if your new ones would
>> be slightly simpler than the present ones, there is still no
>> overriding logic that would help you remember any of the new numbers
>> we'd have to learn.
>
> Your point is well taken. Lug, "dallon" (derivitave gallon), tred
>and plug; 1/2, 4, 0.3 and 0.08 respectively, are much simpler, precise
>conversions, but still are conversions.
Of course they are. And it would be downright silly to have to learn
a bunch of new ones, on top of the ones we already have great
difficulty remembering, and considerable difficulty using properly to
get results with an appropriate number of digits and things like that.
And what's the point of adding a whole bunch of new words to our
languages, just to use them for 5 years and then abandon them?
Or do you imagine that it is going to take considerably more time than
that, for your stated purpose of "fooling" the American public? What
do you think, another 5 generations? If so, you won't be around to
see if you fooled them anyway.
Gene Nygaard
DWT
| The earth's gravity is a bit more than 9.8 newtons.
The earth's gravity is a bit more than 9.8 m/s². On a mass of 1 kg, it
produces a force just over 9.8 N.
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address is bluelighted through midnight (UTC -0500) on 17Jul2004.
Stefano MacGregor
> What this country needs is a twentyfive millimeter inch (forty to
> the meter instead of 39.37), a four liter galon, and a pound that
> comes two thousand to the metric ton. The names for these units
> should be simple and short; terms that stick to memory like gum to the
> underside of a school desk.
What this country (the USA) needs is fewer stupid suggestions of ways
not to use the Metric System.
--
Stefano
"Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that
is not the reason we are doing it." -- Richard Feynman
Old Physics
> skea...@earthlink.net (Old Physics) wrote in message news:<13fd3446.04070...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > What this country needs is a twentyfive millimeter inch (forty to
> > the meter instead of 39.37), a four liter galon, and a pound that
> > comes two thousand to the metric ton. The names for these units
> > should be simple and short; terms that stick to memory like gum to the
> > underside of a school desk.
>
> What this country (the USA) needs is fewer stupid suggestions of ways
> not to use the Metric System.
The 30cm tred, half kilogram lug and a four liter gallon could be
considered a way for the common American to use the metric system
without difficulty. It makes a big change with two small changes.
Make the first change to near common measure and the transition to
metrics will come naturally.
BTW, have you encountered a proposal like this before?
Old Physics
> skea...@earthlink.net (Old Physics) wrote in
> <13fd3446.04070...@posting.google.com>:
>
> | The earth's gravity is a bit more than 9.8 newtons.
>
> The earth's gravity is a bit more than 9.8 m/s². On a mass of 1 kg, it
> produces a force just over 9.8 N.
I believe it is still correct to characterize the earth's gravity
as 9.8 newtons even when 9.8 N/kg is technically more correct. Maybe
we should ask the expert, Mr. Nygaard.
Erik Max Francis
> I believe it is still correct to characterize the earth's gravity
> as 9.8 newtons even when 9.8 N/kg is technically more correct. Maybe
> we should ask the expert, Mr. Nygaard.
It's definitely not correct. The unit of gravitational field strength
is a 9.8 N/kg, or if you acknowledge Galileo and recognize it as the
acceleration that it is, 9.8 m/s^2 (both to two significant figures). A
N is a force, not an acceleration or gravitational field strength.
--
__ Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
/ \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
\__/ They love too much that die for love.
-- (an English proverb)
Old Physics
> But the pascal is 1 N/m^2 = 1 kg/(s^2 m)
>
> Your "plug" is x (unnamed force units)/tred^2. What is x?
>
> What is the force which accelerates 1 lug at 1 tred/s^2? That's
> different from the unnamed force unit in the last problem. Does this
> unit get used in your system? Does it have a name?
The derivation of the joule- watt second is just too wonderful to
mess with. For all practical purposes, treds will have to be
converted to meters, but the conversion is simple and absolute; a
metric "trick".
>
> >> Or the related question--is your system is any good, you ought to be
> >> able to figure out exactly what you are using for your standard
> >> acceleration of gravity in your system, expressed in the units of that
> >> system such as treds per second squared.
> >>
> >> But I doubt that you know your own system to be able to tell us the
> >> standard acceleration of gravity in your system. You can't, can you?
> >
> > The acceleration of gravity at sea level is 32.68884 tred per
> >second per second.
>
> False. Sea level isn't a very precise specification.
>
> The acceleration of gravity at sea level on Earth is somewhere between
> 32.6011 tred/s^2 and 32.7740 tred/s^2. The earthwide average sea
> level value would be about 32.6588 tred/s^2, or 0.0300 tred/s^2 less
> than the value you are using for your standard acceleration of gravity
> (which you actually stated incorrectly in the last digit, it should be
> 32.688833333333... tred/s^2, or 32 4133/6000 tred/s^2).
You have mastered cometrics with greater proficiency than I have.
Essentially it comes down to three words; tred, lug and metric
gallon (fourliter?) and simple multiplication. Thirty percent, half
and one quarter to obtain the respective metric equivalents.
>
> Or do you imagine that it is going to take considerably more time than
> that, for your stated purpose of "fooling" the American public? What
> do you think, another 5 generations? If so, you won't be around to
> see if you fooled them anyway.
> Gene Nygaard
In my imagination, average people will master it within weeks of
encountering it, and the transition to metrics will be a much smaller
step there after.
On the question of force per unit area, I completly agree with
your suggestion of kilopascals or centibars over hectopascals.
It is an honour to have you respond to my post, Mr. Nygaard,
Stephen Kearney
Christoph Paeper
>> galon, and a pound that comes two thousand to the metric ton.
>
> not to use the Metric System.
A 25-mm inch, 500-ml pint and 500-g pound would probably have been a good
base for a unified British/US system of units in the 19th century to ease
fading into the metric one. I believe such units can have their place in
colloquial, informal usage. Perhaps it would have looked something like
this, although a reduction to the most important units might be preferable:
1 mile = 8 furlong = 80 chain = 320 rod = 1600 m = 8000 link = 64000
inch;
1 foot = {10 inch = 1/4 m || 12 inch = 3/10 m || 1/3 m}.
1 acre = 160 rod² = 1 furlong × 1 chain = 4000 m².
1 quarter = 8 bushel = 32 peck = 64 gallon = 256 l,
1 gallon = 4 l = 8 pint = 32 gill = 160 fl. ounce = 256 in³;
1 barrel = 40 gallon = 160 l.
1 t = 20 cwt. = 80 quarter = 160 stone = 1000 kg = 2000 pound,
1 pound = 16 ounce = 500 g; (1 libra = 12 ounce = 100 drachm = 375 g;)
1 ounce = 8 dram = 20 dwt. = 25 scruple = 500 grain = 31,25 g.
However, that chance was missed finally when the international inch was
defined to be 25,4 mm in 1958.
Like other countries, Prussia, the [North] German Confederation and/or the
/Zollverein/ did introduce some transitional values during that time:
Zentner = 50 kg (1840), Pfund = 500 g (1858),
Scheffel = 50 l (18??),
Morgen = 2500 m² (1869).
From 1869 on¹ these units exist(ed) more or less successfully (hardly
anyone knows Scheffel anymore) in coexistence with the metric system,
while their old definitions faded out. OTOH, the /Preußische Maß/ of 1816
with
1 Meile = 2000 Ruten = 7532,5 m (like before),
1 Rute = 10 Fuß = 100 Zoll = 1000 Strich
hadn't been adopted and didn't replace the traditional duodecimal system
(12, 144, 1728) to any notable degree, AFAIK.
In East Asia for another example there are even units still(?) in parallel
use, that have quite odd metric values, like Japanese 1 /shaku/ = 10/33 m
= 0,3030.. m (since 1891), but the system it is in (/shakkanhô/) is more
coherent than the US customary or Imperial.
¹ Yep, one year before fighting them in a war, the Germans legally
introduced the French measurement system.
--
"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."
Terry Pratchett
Jukka K. Korpela
> A 25-mm inch, 500-ml pint and 500-g pound would probably have been a
> good base for a unified British/US system of units in the 19th
> century to ease fading into the metric one. I believe such units can
> have their place in colloquial, informal usage.
I strongly disagree. Such units would just add to the confusion: instead
of simply moving from old established units to metric units and prefixes,
dealing with two well-defined systems, there would be third system
involved too. And that system would be new and (supposedly) transitional,
with unit names and symbols taken from the old system but with meanings
that are disturbingly different. The meanings would be different enough
to cause serious errors when the differences are ignored, small enough to
prevent people from detecting such errors with sensibility tests.
> 1 gallon = 4 l
Great - in addition to US and imperial gallons, there would have been a
metric gallon, so that you would have more alternatives to guess from
when someone says "gallon". In _most_ cases we can guess between US and
imperial (except, maybe, in Canadian usage), but how would you guess
whether someone has "gone 'metric'"?
> Like other countries, Prussia, the [North] German Confederation
> and/or the /Zollverein/ did introduce some transitional values
> during that time:
>
> Zentner = 50 kg (1840),
The EU document
http://eur-op.eu.int/code/de/de-5000300.htm
still mentions the Zentner (Ztr) without telling what it means! It seems
that the explanation to this obscurity is that the Zentner has two
meanings. An interesting document
http://www.lms-riks.se/tidskrifter/lingua/lingua202/vikten_av_q.pdf
says (my translation from the original in Swedish, slashes indicating
italics):
"In Germany /Zentner/ (to the extent that the word is used) still means
about 50 kg, but in Austria and Switzerland /Zentner/ is used (according
to /Duden Deutsches Universalwörterbuch/ 1989) for 100 kg – and is,
according to the same source, abbreviated as /q/!"
Can someone confirm this, and maybe comment on the "about" part?
Originally, it seems, Zentner was 100 pounds (Pfunde), then perhaps
rounded to exactly 50 kg, later replaced by "metric Zentner", 100 kg.
Gross!
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Erik Max Francis
> I strongly disagree. Such units would just add to the confusion:
> instead
> of simply moving from old established units to metric units and
> prefixes,
> dealing with two well-defined systems, there would be third system
> involved too. And that system would be new and (supposedly)
> transitional,
> with unit names and symbols taken from the old system but with
> meanings
> that are disturbingly different. The meanings would be different
> enough
> to cause serious errors when the differences are ignored, small enough
> to
> prevent people from detecting such errors with sensibility tests.
I have to agree. If the goal is to workaround the inertia for
metrication, the worst way to do that is to introduce a _third_ set of
units which are intended as a stepping stone. There are many reasons to
prefer metric units to Imperial or conventional units, by providing the
intermediate set, you remove several of those benefits, and retain all
of the penalties which people who oppose metrication (whether officially
or just by their actions) would cite. An intermediate set of units to
"help" will just make things worse.
--
__ Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
/ \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
\__/ What is it that shapes a species?
-- Louis Wu
Stefano MacGregor
> The 30cm tred, half kilogram lug and a four liter gallon could be
> considered a way for the common American to use the metric system
> without difficulty. It makes a big change with two small changes.
> Make the first change to near common measure and the transition to
> metrics will come naturally.
> BTW, have you encountered a proposal like this before?
Yes, and as evidenced by all other countries who have converted
without doing anything similar, I don't think any of this is
necessary.
And for other reasons, I consider 3.5 l to be the metric equivalent of
a gallon.
--
Stefano
Andreas Prilop
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> "In Germany /Zentner/ (to the extent that the word is used) still means
> about 50 kg, but in Austria and Switzerland /Zentner/ is used (according
> to /Duden Deutsches Universalwörterbuch/ 1989) for 100 kg – and is,
^
No such character in ISO-8859-1. Have a look at
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/temp/windows-chars.gif>
BTW to see how your page renders in Mozilla/Netscape.
> according to the same source, abbreviated as /q/!"
> Can someone confirm this, and maybe comment on the "about" part?
Indeed, in the 19th century a Zentner was 50 kg in Germany but 100 kg
in Austria and Switzerland. Since about 1880, use of a unit called
Zentner is *illegal* in all three countries.
--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?
Jukka K. Korpela
>> "In Germany /Zentner/ (to the extent that the word is used) still
>> means about 50 kg, but in Austria and Switzerland /Zentner/ is used
>> (according to /Duden Deutsches Universalwörterbuch/ 1989) for 100 kg
>> – and is, ^
> No such character in ISO-8859-1.
Mea maxima culpa. I plea guilty. I guess I copypasted, then edited.
I'm a naughty boy.
> Indeed, in the 19th century a Zentner was 50 kg in Germany but 100 kg
> in Austria and Switzerland. Since about 1880, use of a unit called
> Zentner is *illegal* in all three countries.
Illegal perhaps, but is it common? The EU pages mention it. A large
Finnish - German dictionary printed in 1966 says that Zentner is a
_common_ (emphasis mine) measure of weight in Germany, and equal
to 50 kg. I guess you'll find it in monolingual German dictionaries, too.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Christoph Paeper
> Christoph Paeper <christop...@nurfuerspam.de> wrote:
>
>> A 25-mm inch, 500-ml pint and 500-g pound would probably have been a
>> good base for a unified British/US system of units in the 19th
>> century to ease fading into the metric one. I believe such units can
>> have their place in colloquial, informal usage.
>
> I strongly disagree.
I knew it. JFTR: I wouldn't recommend to introduce such a system nowadays,
but 150, 100 or even 50 years ago it should have had more advantages than
disadvantages.
> Such units would just add to the confusion:
Only if you invent new names or want to use them in (official) contexts
where precision matters. It doesn't really matter much if a glass of beer
contains a US wet, US dry an English or a 'metric' pint, although the
responsible people for UK's metrication decided otherwise.
> And that system would be new
Not really, if you keep the right units. I tried to preserve all of the US
customary and Imperial ones in my list (except yard (~1 m) and quart (~
1 l)), but with only one definition for each name (with 'liquid ounce' !=
'ounce' and optional 'libra' introduced for the smaller pound). Some could
and should be left out, but as a non-user of that system I didn't want to
decide which ones were the most useful, common or popular.
> and (supposedly) transitional,
It's evolution versus revolution.
Some units live on longer than others: I expect most Germans to still know
a Pfund to be 500 g, some fewer a Zentner of 50 kg; most will also know,
that a Morgen was a unit for area measurement, but would probably fail to
tell its exact size; the Scheffel is virtually extinct. Also, locally,
some drinking glass sizes have taken the names of former units ('Pfiff',
'Seidel', 'Achtel', 'Viertel', 'Schoppen', 'Maß') with round metric values.
OTOH, when encountering 'Meile', nobody thinks of a distance of 7,5 km
('Postmeile', others 7,4 to 10 km) any more, but either a nautical mile
('Seemeile') or /the American mile/, if he knows that there's a difference
(somewhere between 1,5 and 2 km, who cares?) at all. 'Zoll' (inch) is
similar.
> The meanings would be different enough
> to cause serious errors when the differences are ignored, small enough to
> prevent people from detecting such errors with sensibility tests.
That can only happen, if you really use them as units, but most are rather
labels with added factors sometimes.
>> 1 gallon = 4 l
>
> Great - in addition to US and imperial gallons, there would have been a
> metric gallon, so that you would have more alternatives to guess from
Somehow it has worked quite well several times in history to _replace_ the
definition of a unit by a similar but different one. The problems arise,
when the old definition(s) is/are not abolished at the same time. Common
people are happy to keep using the units they are used to, although they
have in- or decreased a few percent. Their descendants wouldn't need those
traditional units with transitional definitions when they have learned the
better system in official use, but if they fill in a gap (like litre) and
have easy conversion factors, they might choose to keep using them
colloquially.
>> Zentner = 50 kg (1840),
>
> "In Germany /Zentner/ (to the extent that the word is used) still means
> about 50 kg, but in Austria and Switzerland /Zentner/ is used (according
> to /Duden Deutsches Universalwörterbuch/ 1989) for 100 kg – and is,
> according to the same source, abbreviated as /q/!"
>
> Can someone confirm this, and maybe comment on the "about" part?
> Originally, it seems, Zentner was 100 pounds (Pfunde),
110 in Prussia (ca. 51,5 kg), 100 Pfund elsewhere (with different sizes of
course), which makes sense for 'centum' is 100 in Latin. It's the German
equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon hundredweight and the French /quintal/,
where the 'q' of the abbreviation comes from.
> then perhaps rounded to exactly 50 kg,
Yes. Given the young age of the metric system in that time (ca. 50 years)
and the several differing definitions of Pfund and Zentner inside the
Zollverein (let alone the whole German speaking/controlled territory) such
a unification made sense. They could as well have adopted the Prussian,
Bavarian or Austrian Zentner, but probably with transition in mind chose a
round metric value.
The metric system doesn't have a unit in this magnitude, which is common
in farming. Currently the later replacement 'Dezitonne' (dt), which is
just the metricised name for 'Doppelzentner' (dz), is fading out in favor
of t, but in modern farming you hardly encounter 50-kg sacks anymore
anyway.
I really don't know, why the French revolutionaries couldn't base their
weight/mass system on a unit closer to the several pound-like units.
Probably because a litre (~1/400000000³ earth equator) of water wouldn't
have been around 1 $unit heavy.
> later replaced by "metric Zentner", 100 kg.
That's Southern. Austria wasn't a member of the Zollverein (at least at
first) and used the term 'Meterzentner' to distinct between 100 kg and
their traditional 56 kg. In the North, 'Doppelzentner' ('Doppel' =
double)) was (informally) used instead.
By the way, the Austrians are probably the only people to actively use the
dekagram (dag), although they colloquially call it 'Deka'.
--
If the glass is half full or half empty
depends on if you are pouring or drinking.
Christoph Paeper
>
> Illegal perhaps, but is it common?
It's understood, but dying.
> The EU pages mention it.
Well, I've never heard of "Tonne Rohöleinheiten (tRÖE)". I guess it shall
be the translation of 'petrol barrel' and thus 160 l.
> A large Finnish - German dictionary printed in 1966 says that Zentner is
> a
> _common_ (emphasis mine) measure of weight in Germany, and equal to 50
> kg.
It was certainly much more common forty years ago.
> I guess you'll find it in monolingual German dictionaries, too.
Sure.
--
Ociffer, I swear to drunk, I'm not God!
Dr John Stockton
news:misc.metric-system, Erik Max Francis <m...@alcyone.com> posted at
Tue, 13 Jul 2004 00:06:05 :
>I have to agree. If the goal is to workaround the inertia for
>metrication, the worst way to do that is to introduce a _third_ set of
>units which are intended as a stepping stone. There are many reasons to
>prefer metric units to Imperial or conventional units, by providing the
>intermediate set, you remove several of those benefits, and retain all
>of the penalties which people who oppose metrication (whether officially
>or just by their actions) would cite. An intermediate set of units to
>"help" will just make things worse.
There is good reason to preserve the pound, etc.
Where would Shylock be without "a pound of flesh"? And likewise other
Imperial units are embedded throughout English literature. And the
Americans are unlikely to be willing to rename Three Mile Island in SI.
There is a solution, ISTM.
Define, by law, the Pound (of mass) as being 0.475 +- 0.030 kilograms.
Then one can ask for a Pound of beef, the butcher can work to 16 ounces
or 0.5 kg whichever he likes, and he can charge for what he supplies.
Customers who want exactness can ask for half a kilogram.
And Shylock's meaning is not affected by the uncertainty - just how big,
in his time, was a Pound anyway? Few apart from GN will know.
The same can be done in other cases where it is convenient to use
Imperial terminology to describe the quantity in question and precision
in that quantity is not required.
--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk / ??.Stoc...@physics.org ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Correct <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line precisely "-- " (SoRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SoRFC1036)
Christoph Paeper
>
> There is good reason to preserve the pound, etc. (...)
> Imperial units are embedded throughout English literature.
There are also ancient units in the Bible, so what?
People still read Jules Verne's "Vingt mille lieues sous les mers", which
is "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" in English, "Veinte mil leguas
de viaje submarino" in Spanish, "Zwanzigtausend Meilen unter den Meeren"
in German and "Twintigduizend mijlen onder zee" in Dutch.
Let's zap back to the 1870s:
20000 lieues commune ~= 89 Mm (800 equatorial degrees)
20000 lieues de poste ~= 78 Mm
20000 lieues métrique = 80 Mm
20000 lieues marine ~ 20000 leguas maritima ~ 20000 sea leagues ~= 111 Mm (1000 equatorial degrees)
20000 sea miles ~= 37 Mm
20000 leagues ~= 97 Mm
20000 miles ~= 32 Mm
20000 geographische Meilen ~= 148 Mm (1333 1/3 equatorial degrees)
20000 Postmeilen = 150 Mm
20000 mijlen ~= 117 Mm
20000 leguas ~= 84 Mm (Spain)
20000 leguas geografica ~= 127 Mm
20000 leguas nova/nueva = 100 Mm
The Swedish title "En världsomsegling under havet" and perhaps others seem
to prefer not to refer to a unit. 20000 Scandinavian /mil/ would give
around 200 Mm!
Italian and Portuguese use some sort of league (legha, légua): "Ventimila
leghe sotto i mari" and "Vinte Mil Léguas Submarinas" respectively, which
are usually somewhere between 4 and 5,6 km, or just three nautical miles.
It looks as if there is the number 20000 in the Polish title: "Dwadzieścia
tysięcy mil podmorskiej żeglugi" in front of the 8-/versta/ /mila/, that
would mean ca. 171 Mm.
The Russian version seems to use one of the English leagues: "20000 лье
под водой" ("20000 lye pod vodoy"), which makes some sense, because some
czar based Russian length units on the English inch and foot (1 versta =
3500 feet).
I wonder how Poles and Swedes /sail/ under water.
I recently, i.e. yesterday, read a thread in a German newsgroup how
translators falsify texts by adjusting names and places to local
equivalents. What's worse: John vs. Hans (both from Latin/Greek Iohannes)
or mile vs. Meile?
--
Wonko the Sane:
"See first, think later, then test. But always see first.
Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting.
Most scientists forget that."
(The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Old Physics
> Old Physics wrote:
>
> > I believe it is still correct to characterize the earth's gravity
> > as 9.8 newtons even when 9.8 N/kg is technically more correct. Maybe
> > we should ask the expert, Mr. Nygaard.
>
> It's definitely not correct. The unit of gravitational field strength
> is a 9.8 N/kg, or if you acknowledge Galileo and recognize it as the
> acceleration that it is, 9.8 m/s^2 (both to two significant figures). A
> N is a force, not an acceleration or gravitational field strength.
You are definitely correct, thankyou for catching my foul. I
would rather stand corrected than incorect. Do the initials of your
name, EMF, bring to mind electromagnetic field or electro motive
force?
I see the German Pfund (500gm) is still in use at commertial
internet sites as a measure for honey or cake. Repeat after the
decimal, 3 lugs of steak= 3.3 lbs, 5 lg of flour= 5.5 lbs. The ten
percent solution might sell the public on the half kilogram. Sure
it's snake oil to purists like yourself, but if a few candy makers
were to market 10% more chocolat, children would quickly adapt to the
benifits of decimal measure.
Old Physics
Thanks for the clue. I found a reference to "ZollPfund" as 500gm.
How is Pfund pronounced? I notice it is also a common surname. The
"zoll" (or lug)has real potential as the nearest pound equivalent
repeats after the decimal for greater accuracy, 3 zol = 3.3 lbs, 10
zu = 11 lbs, simple. It may be snake oil to the purists, but the ten
percent solution might be the key to customer satisfaction and
adoption of the term.
The Japanese shaku is just short of 30cm which I would think
impracitcal. 1/3.333333333... would be three decimeters or a "tred"
for short and it can be decimally divided into 3cm or 3mm units.
Andreas Prilop
> Well, I've never heard of "Tonne Rohöleinheiten (tRÖE)". I guess it shall
> be the translation of 'petrol barrel' and thus 160 l.
<http://google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=Tonne+Erd%C3%B6leinheiten&filter=0>
Christoph Paeper
>
> I see the German Pfund (500gm)
500 gram搶eter? No.
> is still in use at commertial
> internet sites as a measure for honey or cake.
Could you please show me such a site? I've never seen such and doubt its
existence, because the unit is illegal (for commercial purposes). It may
be used in informal recipies, though.
--
Smith & Wesson: The original point-and-click interface.
Gene Nygaard
<christop...@nurfuerspam.de> wrote:
>*Old Physics* <skea...@earthlink.net>:
>>
>> I see the German Pfund (500gm)
>
>500 gram搶eter? No.
>
>> is still in use at commertial
>> internet sites as a measure for honey or cake.
>
>Could you please show me such a site? I've never seen such and doubt its
>existence, because the unit is illegal (for commercial purposes). It may
>be used in informal recipies, though.
I certainly saw occasional use of the Pfund on signs in the stores
when I was in Germany with the U.S. Army, though that was over 30
years ago.
Gene Nygaard
Michael Dahms
>
> I certainly saw occasional use of the Pfund on signs in the stores
> when I was in Germany with the U.S. Army, though that was over 30
> years ago.
The commercial use of the unit 'Pfund' is illegal since 20 years or so.
Actually, a price for 100g or 1kg is to be shown.
Michael Dahms
Christoph Paeper
>
> Actually, a price for 100g or 1kg is to be shown.
Besides the actual price for prepackaged goods of course. This (EU) law is
rather new, though; mid-90s IIRC.
--
"You're basically killing each other to see
who's got the better imaginary friend."
Rich Jeni on war vs. religion
Christoph Paeper
> Christoph Paeper <christop...@nurfuerspam.de> wrote in message
Please only quote to what you're responding to. Thanks.
>> Like other countries, Prussia, the [North] German Confederation and/or
>> the
>> /Zollverein/ did introduce some transitional values during that time:
>> Zentner = 50 kg (1840), Pfund = 500 g (1858),
> I found a reference to "ZollPfund" as 500gm.
That would be 500 g and only "Pfund".
Should I have noted, that 'Zoll' means two different things in German:
'inch' and
'customs' (related to English 'toll')? The latter is the one in
'Zollverein'.
Thus the reference you found either refers to some inch-pound system
(English or old German) or it is an unusual abbreviation for
"Zollvereinspfund", which would be uncommon as well.
> How is Pfund pronounced?
Short u (like in 'butcher'). I expect an English speaker to pronounce it
quite correct without further knowledge, although he doesn't have 'pf' in
his language (many Germans pronounce it like /f/, very few still as /p/
like it was a few hundred years ago).
'Zoll' is pronounced /tsoll/.
> I notice it is also a common surname.
No, it isn't.
> It may be snake oil to the purists, but the ten percent solution might
> be the
> key to customer satisfaction and adoption of the term.
As I said, it's too late for such a thing and new names would just add
confusion. If you want to have transitional/additional units, you better
make them close to the coming, not the going system. Your approach is
really counter-productive and too complicated for the real world.
>> In East Asia for another example there are even units still(?) in
>> parallel use,
>> that have quite odd metric values, like Japanese
>> 1 /shaku/ = 10/33 m = 0,3030.. m (since 1891),
> The Japanese shaku is just short of 30cm which I would think impracitcal.
I don't know, what the old (pre-1891) size was, but the system is as
follows:
1 ri (里) = 36 chô (町) = 36·60 ken (間) = 2160·6 shaku (尺) = ca. 3,927
km,
1 jou (丈) = 10 shaku (尺) = ca. 3,030 m,
1 shaku (尺) = 10 sun (寸) = 10·10 bu (分) = ca. 0,303 m.
1 chô (町) = 10 tan (反) = 10 une (畝) = 30 tsubo (坪) = ca. 0,992 ha,
1 tsubo (坪) = 1 ken² = 100 gô = ca. 3,3058 m².
Actually there were two /shakus/:
1 kanejaku (曲尺) = 10/33 m = 0,¯30 m,
1 kujirajaku (鯨尺) = 25/66 m = 0,3¯78 m.
*Perhaps* they would have rounded the first one to 3 dm, but wanted do
keep the relation of 4:5 between the two and didn't like 3¾ dm. But I
guess, it was rather the /tsubo/ (36 shaku²) and the other area units
which would have been too much off: 3,24 m² vs. 3,31 m² ... 0,972 ha vs.
0,992 ha. Also /ri/ would only be 3,888 km.
The Chinese OTOH have (had) units for 1/3 µm, 1/300 mm, 1/30 mm, 1/3 mm,
1/3 cm, 1/3 dm, 1/3 m, 1/6 dam, 1/3 dam, 1/3 hm and 5 hm.
--
"Put it back in the horse!"
H. Allen Smith, after he drank his first American beer at a bar
Klaus von der Heyde
> The commercial use of the unit 'Pfund' is illegal since 20 years or so.
The PTB leaflet "The legal units in Germany" lists "Pfund" as
non-legal unit, along with the note "no legal unit since 1884".
A "Pfund" was 500 g back then, probably introduced during
metrification to make transition from an earlier "Pfund" unit
easier.
Anyway, the 250 g packages of butter are still colloquially known
as "1/2 Pfund" to many Germans...
Klaus
Jukka K. Korpela
> There is good reason to preserve the pound, etc.
>
> Where would Shylock be without "a pound of flesh"?
In literature.
Literature, and sayings, may well preserve old units, as they preserve
old names (and forms of names) and old concepts that nobody really knows
from actual experience these days.
In Finland, we have a saying "Parempi virsta väärää kuin vaaksa vaaraa",
'It's better to go a verst in a wrong direction than a span in danger'
(cautious people, are we not?). People are assumed to know, or guess,
that a verst is much longer than a span. They are not assumed to know,
and do not actually know, and need not know, how long a verst or a span
is in metric units, or even whether a Russian verst or a Swedish verst is
involved. Do you seriously think that we would be happier if we had
changed the words for "verst" and "span" to some meanings acquired by
rounding the old meanings to some "metrically round" quantities?
Similarly, we can quite conveniently use the phrase "ei tuumaakaan"
'not an inch' without even knowing any definition for inch.
In translations, the translator may need to decide whether a non-metric
quantity expression is replaced by its metric equivalent or translated
literally or whether, as a compromise of a kind, the text uses a literal
translation and footnote gives the metric equivalent. This might be a
close decision at times, but nothing would be achieved by some arbitrary
reassignment where old names get new meanings.
> Define, by law, the Pound (of mass) as being 0.475 +- 0.030
> kilograms.
Please tell us you're joking.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Andreas Prilop
>> I found a reference to "ZollPfund" as 500gm.
>
> That would be 500 g and only "Pfund".
> Thus the reference you found either refers to some inch-pound system
> (English or old German) or it is an unusual abbreviation for
> "Zollvereinspfund", which would be uncommon as well.
No, it was really called Zollpfund to distinguish from older units
unequal to 500 g. <http://www.google.com/images?q=Zollpfund>
Andreas Prilop
> The commercial use of the unit 'Pfund' is illegal since 20 years or so.
Make that one hundred and twenty years. See
Gesetz, betreffend die Abänderung der Maaß- und Gewichtsordnung
vom 17. August 1868. Vom 11. Juli 1884
Reichsgesetzblatt 1884, Nr. 20, S. 115
Old Physics
> As I said, it's too late for such a thing and new names would just add
> confusion. If you want to have transitional/additional units, you better
> make them close to the coming, not the going system. Your approach is
> really counter-productive and too complicated for the real world.
>
Thanks for the impressive background on the various national
systems. When do you think the USA will adopt a metric standard?
I would argue that while the tred is awkward, it is as accurate as
the meter it is based upon. Floor space in square tred multiplied by
0.09 gives square meters. A cubic tred is precisely 27 l, about 5%
less than a cubic ft. I've never seen dual measures used to sell a
house or rent an office. Cubic meters is a bit clumsy for a
refrigerator. The coming system dosn't seem to be getting anywhere,
it is likely decades away given the attitude of the average american.
Do you remember when gas pumps gave the readout in gallons and
liters? We've gone backwards. Half a kg and 4 l seem a small price
to pay for acceptence of the system we are both impatient to have as
the american standard. It is the difference between force and
persuasion. Half a loaf now is better than a full loaf in some
distant future.
It is a productive step where no other has worked. Do you
actually find it too complicated?
Highest regards,
Stephen Kearney
Michael Dahms
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Michael Dahms wrote:
>
>> The commercial use of the unit 'Pfund' is illegal since 20 years or so.
>
> Make that one hundred and twenty years. See
> Gesetz, betreffend die Abänderung der Maaß- und Gewichtsordnung
> vom 17. August 1868. Vom 11. Juli 1884
> Reichsgesetzblatt 1884, Nr. 20, S. 115
30 years ago, I saw the 'Pfund'-sign in shops and markets. Maybe, it
ought not to be used, but it was.
Michael Dahms
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
>Christoph Paeper <christop...@nurfuerspam.de> wrote in message >
>
>> As I said, it's too late for such a thing and new names would just add
>> confusion. If you want to have transitional/additional units, you better
>> make them close to the coming, not the going system. Your approach is
>> really counter-productive and too complicated for the real world.
>>
>
> Thanks for the impressive background on the various national
>systems. When do you think the USA will adopt a metric standard?
> I would argue that while the tred is awkward, it is as accurate as
>the meter it is based upon.
So what the hell do you suppose the current units are based on? How
accurate is the yard? The pound?
What's the official standard for a foot?
For a ton?
For a pound force?
>Floor space in square tred multiplied by
>0.09 gives square meters. A cubic tred is precisely 27 l, about 5%
>less than a cubic ft. I've never seen dual measures used to sell a
>house or rent an office. Cubic meters is a bit clumsy for a
>refrigerator. The coming system dosn't seem to be getting anywhere,
>it is likely decades away given the attitude of the average american.
> Do you remember when gas pumps gave the readout in gallons and
>liters? We've gone backwards.
Never happened. It was liters only--but only at some service
stations, such as Shell. Most of them remained gallons only. This
was done at the time when prices first crossed the dollar per US
gallon mark.
>Half a kg and 4 l seem a small price
>to pay for acceptence of the system we are both impatient to have as
>the american standard. It is the difference between force and
>persuasion. Half a loaf now is better than a full loaf in some
>distant future.
> It is a productive step where no other has worked. Do you
>actually find it too complicated?
Certainly. But there are several other more significant problems with
this silly idea which have already been mentioned in this thread.
Gene Nygaard
Christoph Paeper
>
> When do you think the USA will adopt a metric standard?
1876 or so.
> I would argue that while the tred is awkward, it is as accurate as
> the meter it is based upon.
From about 200 to 50 years ago (AFAIK) all systems in actual use have been
based upon the SI (or its predecessors) and/or were abolished. Sadly,
unlike others England and its (former) dominion chose to rather make their
units stay quite close to their old definitions instead of using handy
metric values. (I count 1/3 as handy, too.) Well, they didn't even manage
to unify all their units (still three pints), so that was hardly a
surprise.
> A cubic tred is precisely 27 l, about 5% less than a cubic ft.
See, no need to rename it. You (usually) don't rename a tax when you
increase it, either.
> I've never seen dual measures used to sell a house or rent an office.
IIRC it only recently has been allowed to sell stuff in the US specified
in SI measures only. A small step at least. I don't know if gram etc. were
mandatory before (on certain goods) or are now.
> Cubic meters is a bit clumsy for a refrigerator.
That's why it's measured in liters. Although for /American fridges/ m³
might actually be quite handy.
> The coming system dosn't seem to be getting anywhere,
It didn't come with a bang like in other countries, but creeps in slowly.
IMVHO too slowly.
> it is likely decades away given the attitude of the average american.
It's not in your Constitution, but it looks as if your people got the
rights to remain lazy, stupid and stubborn. (Although they are not as lazy
as the rest of the world which only learns some universal decimal prefixes
instead of tons of units.)
> Do you remember when gas pumps gave the readout in gallons and liters?
Me? How should I? I remember seeing almost the same prices like home (in
2000), but it was US$/gal. vs. €/l.
> Half a kg and 4 l seem a small price to pay for acceptence of the system
> we are both impatient to have as the american standard.
Well, officially it *is* the American standard (more or less).
> It is the difference between force and persuasion.
> It is a productive step where no other has worked.
It may be useful to teach American children the metric system only and
inform them that they should think of 4 liters, when their parents and
grandparents talk about a gallon etc. The sad thing is, that they will
eventually encounter these units not only in colloquial speech in the
USA---that's where the government(s) must kick in. To teach them another
new unit doesn't help.
It may also help to persuade some, but certainly not all, of those, who
want to keep the old "system", when you tell them that they're allowed to
continue to use their units, but would have to accept small changes. If
metric labeling is lawfully enforced people will do it themselves anyway,
just the other way around: 1 kilogram is 2 pounds, 1 ton stays 1 ton; 1
meter is 1 yard, a kilometer 2/3 mile; 1 square kilometer is 250 acres or
1/3 or 2/5 square mile; 1 liter is 2 pints, 1 quart or ¼ gallon, 1 cubic
meter is 35 cubic feet etc.
> Do you actually find it too complicated?
I don't have to use it, but I don't find it an actual waste of neurons to
know a pound (or Pfund) to be ½ kg. I wouldn't want to remember 450 g,
though, neither learn even more names.
--
"Some people say I am a terrible person,
I'm not, I have the heart of a young boy,
in a jar, on my desk."
Stephen King
Stefano MacGregor
> Thanks for the impressive background on the various national
> systems. When do you think the USA will adopt a metric standard?
Quite a bit over a century ago. We were one of the first countries to
adopt the metric system, I believe.
The question should be: When will we realize that we are on the
metric system?
--
Stefano
How many questions to a metric buttload?
Old Physics
> > Thanks for the impressive background on the various national
> >systems. When do you think the USA will adopt a metric standard?
> > I would argue that while the tred is awkward, it is as accurate as
> >the meter it is based upon.
>
> So what the hell do you suppose the current units are based on? How
> accurate is the yard? The pound?
> What's the official standard for a foot?
The yard and foot are based on the 25.4mm inch, as is the mile,
1609344mm. The pound is 453.592g. You make the point perfectly,
conversion to english units is difficult. Like the FAQ states, few
people know the conversions offhand.
>
> For a ton?
>
> For a pound force?
>
I hope someday soon these conversions will be irrelevant.
Cometrics might make this possible.
> >Floor space in square tred multiplied by
> >0.09 gives square meters. A cubic tred is precisely 27 l, about 5%
> >less than a cubic ft. I've never seen dual measures used to sell a
> >house or rent an office. Cubic meters is a bit clumsy for a
> >refrigerator. The coming system dosn't seem to be getting anywhere,
> >it is likely decades away given the attitude of the average american.
> > Do you remember when gas pumps gave the readout in gallons and
> >liters? We've gone backwards.
>
> Never happened. It was liters only--but only at some service
> stations, such as Shell. Most of them remained gallons only. This
> was done at the time when prices first crossed the dollar per US
> gallon mark.
Thanks for the correct information.
>
> >Half a kg and 4 l seem a small price
> >to pay for acceptence of the system we are both impatient to have as
> >the american standard. It is the difference between force and
> >persuasion. Half a loaf now is better than a full loaf in some
> >distant future.
> > It is a productive step where no other has worked. Do you
> >actually find it too complicated?
>
> Certainly. But there are several other more significant problems with
> this silly idea which have already been mentioned in this thread.
> Gene Nygaard
Certainly what? A small price to pay? Impatient? Force versus
persuasion? Half a loaf is better? A productive step? Too
complicated? Counter productive and confusing are the stated
problems. I wish that it could be put to the test.
Old Physics
> *Old Physics* <skea...@earthlink.net>:
> >
> > When do you think the USA will adopt a metric standard?
>
> 1876 or so.
> > I would argue that while the tred is awkward, it is as accurate as
> > the meter it is based upon.
>
> From about 200 to 50 years ago (AFAIK) all systems in actual use have been
> based upon the SI (or its predecessors) and/or were abolished. Sadly,
> unlike others England and its (former) dominion chose to rather make their
> units stay quite close to their old definitions instead of using handy
> metric values. (I count 1/3 as handy, too.) Well, they didn't even manage
> to unify all their units (still three pints), so that was hardly a
> surprise.
The English use 60 and 600 mm in the building industry according
to the faqs. Our problem is that our measures are TOO close to their
old definitions.
>
> > A cubic tred is precisely 27 l, about 5% less than a cubic ft.
>
> See, no need to rename it. You (usually) don't rename a tax when you
> increase it, either.
>
When it's an increase in product it's called a bonus. A cubic
thirty centimeters is an additional five sylables, linguistic
efficiency comes into play.
> > I've never seen dual measures used to sell a house or rent an office.
>
> IIRC it only recently has been allowed to sell stuff in the US specified
> in SI measures only. A small step at least. I don't know if gram etc. were
> mandatory before (on certain goods) or are now.
>
Irrational dual measure is the coin of the American realm.
> > Cubic meters is a bit clumsy for a refrigerator.
>
> That's why it's measured in liters. Although for /American fridges/ m³
> might actually be quite handy.
>
> > The coming system dosn't seem to be getting anywhere,
>
> It didn't come with a bang like in other countries, but creeps in slowly.
> IMVHO too slowly.
>
I have a high opinion of your humble opinion.
> > it is likely decades away given the attitude of the average american.
>
> It's not in your Constitution, but it looks as if your people got the
> rights to remain lazy, stupid and stubborn. (Although they are not as lazy
> as the rest of the world which only learns some universal decimal prefixes
> instead of tons of units.)
>
When I was a child I read that scientists were lazy, they always
look for the simplest solution. That's one group in the US that has
no patience with anything but SI units.
> > Do you remember when gas pumps gave the readout in gallons and liters?
>
> Me? How should I? I remember seeing almost the same prices like home (in
> 2000), but it was US$/gal. vs. €/l.
>
> > Half a kg and 4 l seem a small price to pay for acceptence of the system
> > we are both impatient to have as the american standard.
>
> Well, officially it *is* the American standard (more or less).
I vote that it become more.
>
> > It is the difference between force and persuasion.
> > It is a productive step where no other has worked.
>
> It may be useful to teach American children the metric system only and
> inform them that they should think of 4 liters, when their parents and
> grandparents talk about a gallon etc. The sad thing is, that they will
> eventually encounter these units not only in colloquial speech in the
> USA---that's where the government(s) must kick in. To teach them another
> new unit doesn't help.
Four liters isn't exactly a new unit, more of a composite.
Contract this to FOUr Liters and call it a "foul". Metric purists
could hardly object to that name.
>
> It may also help to persuade some, but certainly not all, of those, who
> want to keep the old "system", when you tell them that they're allowed to
> continue to use their units, but would have to accept small changes. If
> metric labeling is lawfully enforced people will do it themselves anyway,
> just the other way around: 1 kilogram is 2 pounds, 1 ton stays 1 ton; 1
> meter is 1 yard, a kilometer 2/3 mile; 1 square kilometer is 250 acres or
> 1/3 or 2/5 square mile; 1 liter is 2 pints, 1 quart or ¼ gallon, 1 cubic
> meter is 35 cubic feet etc.
A kilogram is 2.2 pounds, a ton is a thousand of those. One meter
is sacred, three and one third tred. A kilometer is 3333 and a third
in tred. A square kilometer is 11111111.111... square tred. A pint
is a pound the world around. A lug is a huf (of water), that's no
bluff. A cubic meter is 1000/27 cubic tred etc.
>
> > Do you actually find it too complicated?
>
> I don't have to use it, but I don't find it an actual waste of neurons to
> know a pound (or Pfund) to be ½ kg. I wouldn't want to remember 450 g,
> though, neither learn even more names.
All it has to do is persuade a majority.
Always a pleasure to read you,
Stephen Kearney
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
>Gene Nygaard <gnyg...@nccray.com> wrote in message
>
>> > Thanks for the impressive background on the various national
>> >systems. When do you think the USA will adopt a metric standard?
>> > I would argue that while the tred is awkward, it is as accurate as
>> >the meter it is based upon.
>>
>> So what the hell do you suppose the current units are based on? How
>> accurate is the yard? The pound?
>> What's the official standard for a foot?
>
> The yard and foot are based on the 25.4mm inch, as is the mile,
>1609344mm. The pound is 453.592g. You make the point perfectly,
>conversion to english units is difficult. Like the FAQ states, few
>people know the conversions offhand.
Not quite. It is the yard which is officially defined as 0.9144 m,
and the inch is based on it.
The pound is 0.453 592 37 kg, exactly. A number chosen in part
because division by 7 gives a terminating decimal fraction, matching
up with the redefintion of the avoirdupois pound in terms of troy
grains back in the time of Henry VIII--an advantage not thought of by
those who chose the earlier U.S. definitions.
For the current U.S. law, and a discussion of the international
agreement in 1959, and the prior U.S. law defining the yard and the
pound as slightly different exact fractions of the meter and kilogram,
see the same document at either of these sites:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/FedRegister/FRdoc59-5442.pdf
http://gssp.wva.net/html.common/refine.pdf
>> For a ton?
>>
>> For a pound force?
>>
> I hope someday soon these conversions will be irrelevant.
>Cometrics might make this possible.
No, your silly scheme would just add a whole new layer of conversions.
Not just between your "cometrics" and "metric," but also between your
"cometrics" and all the old English units. After all, if you expect
people to convert from avoirdupois pounds to whatever you call your
units of mass, they'd have to know the conversion factor, wouldn't
they? So what is that conversion factor, anyway?
How do you convert R-values for insulation to your new system?
Would you have bushels equal to 8 gallons? What would be the standard
weight of a bushel of flax in your system? How would that compare to
the current value? Where would by have price breaks for hard red
spring wheat based on the test weight (i.e., bulk density) as a
quality factor? How would that compare with current usage?
Show us the real world practicality of your system, with concrete
examples. There's an idea, tell us how you'd package concrete, and
how you'd mix it.
How would you convert a recipe for chocolate chip cookies to your new
system? Take this one, for example, from a link indexed at the URL
below, and show us how it would look in your goofy system:
http://www.skyport.com/rogue-press/chocchip/
3/4 cup Butter
1/4 cup Lard
1 cup White Sugar
1 cup Brown Sugar
2 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
2 cup Unbleached Flour
2 1/2 cups Oatmeal (thoroughly blended)
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Baking Powder
12 oz Milk Chocolate Chips (one bag)
4-6oz Finely Grated Chocolate Bar
1 1/2 cup Chopped nuts (very optional)
First some note on the ingredients. The oatmeal should be run though a
blender until it is very fine. The chocolate bar that you need to
grate is the kind you buy to eat on the way home from the grocery
store, use your favorite, but you will need to buy a pretty big one.
Chocolate also grates easier if it is nice and cold.
For the recipe, start out by creaming the butter and lard (you can
vary the ratio of these a little) with the sugars. Add in the eggs and
vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and
oatmeal, then mix it into the batter. Thoroughly mix in the grated
chocolate bar, then add in the chocolate chips (and nuts if you like.)
Bake as usual, at about 375 degrees for roughly 10 minutes depending
on the size of your cookies.
Gene Nygaard
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
>
> A kilogram is 2.2 pounds, a ton is a thousand of those.
Not if the ton is used for the deadweight of a U.S. Navy ship, there
aren't a thousand pounds in a ton.
Nor if an American newspaper article talks about the sale of "40,000
tons of wheat" to Egypt.
Nor for any of the ton of other definitions of a ton.
What would you do for "tons" of cooling capacity of an air
conditioner?
Stop and think about the real world for a change, Old Fool!
Gene Nygaard
Christoph Paeper
>
>>> A cubic tred is precisely 27 l, about 5% less than a cubic ft.
>>
>> See, no need to rename it.
>
I meant: no need to rename the (cubic/square/) foot to (cubic/square/)
tred, just make it 30 cm = 12 inch á 25 mm.
>> inform them that they should think of 4 liters, when their parents and
>> grandparents talk about a gallon etc. (...) To teach them another
>> new unit doesn't help.
>
> Four liters isn't exactly a new unit, more of a composite.
If it gets yet another name, it *is* a new unit, which you really don't
need. 4 l should be close enough to all gallons there are today in
everyday use. The arithmetic mean of all three is about 4¼ l, of the two
US ones about 4,1 l.
> A kilogram is 2.2 pounds, a ton is a thousand of those.
With a kilogram of two pounds you can nicely get rid of short and long
Avoirdupois units:
1 quarter = ¼ cwt. = 12½ kg,
1 cwt. = 100 pound = 50 kg,
1 ton = 20 cwt. = 1000 kg.
That's 'short' definitions with rounded 'long' values, which are also just
about 10% off the 'short' ones (less than the 4-l gallon!). Note that the
hundredweight (cwt.) is actually 100 pounds (the quarter is ¼ cwt. in all
systems). For reference:
*short*:
1 quarter = ¼ cwt. = 11,34 kg => ¼ cwt.,
1 cwt. = 100 pound = 45,36 kg => 100 pound,
1 ton = 20 cwt. = 907,18 kg => 20 cwt.;
*long*:
1 stone = 14 pound = 6,35 kg => 6,25 kg,
1 quarter = 2 stone = 12,70 kg => 12,50 kg,
1 cwt. = 4 quarter = 50,80 kg => 50,00 kg,
1 ton = 20 cwt. = 1016,05 kg => 1000,00 kg.
> One meter is sacred, three and one third tred.
I absolutely cannot understand, why you want to stick to your invented
names. They would only be useful if you wanted to distinguish between old
and new definitions, but for that Americans are used to prefixes anyway
('long', 'short', 'Imperial', 'US', 'Troy', 'Avoirdupois', 'apothecaries',
'metric'), when needed. They would just have to default on 'metric'. But
these approximate units shouldn't be used in serious contexts any more
than the old ones---they're just hints.
> A kilometer is 3333 and a third in tred.
It's five furlongs (á 200 m), i.e. 5/8 mile.
>> I don't find it an actual waste of neurons to know a pound (or Pfund)
>> to be ½ kg. I wouldn't want to remember 450 g, though, neither learn
>> even more names.
>
> All it has to do is persuade a majority.
And I'm very sure that a 500-g mental pound does the job better than a
450-g one.
--
"What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to."
Hansell B. Duckett
Old Physics
I should have written that a ton should be 1000 kg. You're the
expert, how many types of tons are there? The 2240 lb ton of
displacement is said to represent 100 cu ft, shouldn't it be more than
twice what it is?
But back to the subject of metrification. When do you think that
Americans will be using meters, kms, kgs, square meters etc? Can you
think of any steps to bring about the change?
Old Physics
I like the play on "what this country needs...". While I like
your solution better than my own, I think it will lead to confusion
during any transition phase. You can move a behive miles away and the
bees will find their way back, but move it just a few feet and many
will die seeking it in its former position. Tred, lug, foul and dunce
(31.25 g) are a way to make a small move into a small inconvenience.
Thanks again for your insights.
Old Physics
> skea...@earthlink.net (Old Physics) wrote in message news:<13fd3446.04071...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > Thanks for the impressive background on the various national
> > systems. When do you think the USA will adopt a metric standard?
>
> Quite a bit over a century ago. We were one of the first countries to
> adopt the metric system, I believe.
>
> The question should be: When will we realize that we are on the
> metric system?
One consideration that noone has presented would be the tendency
to derive other units out of faulty cometric ones, like three
centimeters (trec?) and three mm (hundredths of a tred). A surveyer I
talked to about it thought it would be a good idea, being used to both
meters and tenths of a foot.
If other measures were metric, this could work in favor of
metrification from the lug (1/2 kg), glug (1/2 l) and foul (4 l).
Tenths and hundredths are so much better than fifths and fiftieths.
Back to the question, when will America actually use the meter, kg
and their decimal derivatives?
tan...@mylaptop.mydomain.fi
Hash: SHA1
Je 2004-07-13, Christoph Paeper <christop...@nurfuerspam.de>
skribis:
> By the way, the Austrians are probably the only people to actively use the
> dekagram (dag), although they colloquially call it 'Deka'.
I've run into dekas in Hungary and Poland.
Taneli Huuskonen
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All messages will be PGP signed, | Hélas, jamais je ne deviendrai
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http://www.helsinki.fi/~huuskone/ | peux plus changer.
Guantánamo macht frei! | -- Ionesco: Rhinocéros
Old Physics
> *Dr John Stockton* <sp...@merlyn.demon.co.uk>:
> >
> > There is good reason to preserve the pound, etc. (...)
> > Imperial units are embedded throughout English literature.
>
> There are also ancient units in the Bible, so what?
>
> People still read Jules Verne's "Vingt mille lieues sous les mers", which
> is "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" in English, "Veinte mil leguas
> de viaje submarino" in Spanish, "Zwanzigtausend Meilen unter den Meeren"
> in German and "Twintigduizend mijlen onder zee" in Dutch.
>
> Let's zap back to the 1870s:
> 20000 lieues commune ~= 89 Mm (800 equatorial degrees)
> 20000 lieues de poste ~= 78 Mm
> 20000 lieues métrique = 80 Mm
> 20000 lieues marine ~ 20000 leguas maritima ~ 20000 sea leagues ~= 111 Mm (1000 equatorial degrees)
> 20000 sea miles ~= 37 Mm
> 20000 leagues ~= 97 Mm
> 20000 miles ~= 32 Mm
> 20000 geographische Meilen ~= 148 Mm (1333 1/3 equatorial degrees)
> 20000 Postmeilen = 150 Mm
> 20000 mijlen ~= 117 Mm
> 20000 leguas ~= 84 Mm (Spain)
> 20000 leguas geografica ~= 127 Mm
> 20000 leguas nova/nueva = 100 Mm
>
> The Swedish title "En världsomsegling under havet" and perhaps others seem
> to prefer not to refer to a unit. 20000 Scandinavian /mil/ would give
> around 200 Mm!
> Italian and Portuguese use some sort of league (legha, légua): "Ventimila
> leghe sotto i mari" and "Vinte Mil Léguas Submarinas" respectively, which
> are usually somewhere between 4 and 5,6 km, or just three nautical miles.
> It looks as if there is the number 20000 in the Polish title: "Dwadzieścia
> tysięcy mil podmorskiej żeglugi" in front of the 8-/versta/ /mila/, that
> would mean ca. 171 Mm.
> The Russian version seems to use one of the English leagues: "20000 лье
> под водой" ("20000 lye pod vodoy"), which makes some sense, because some
> czar based Russian length units on the English inch and foot (1 versta =
> 3500 feet).
>
> I wonder how Poles and Swedes /sail/ under water.
Jules Vern's original Captain Nemo was Polish with an ax to grind
against the Russians. His editor thought that was a bit to
provacative. I saw the Disney movie when I was 11. I thought the
internal conflict of a man who wanted to end war by destroying the
means to wage it, was a better story line. Collision speed into
warships from both sides would make him something of an sympathetic
antihero, doomed, but with a noble motivation.
Thanks for the reference to "shaku". Standardizing it as 30cm
would make the sun= 3cm, ken= 3m and the ri would be 30m. The
reference fom a Japan group indicated it might still be used for cloth
and carpet.
You seem to be sympathetic to a 30cm foot and a 1/2 kg pound.
Wouldn't it be worth the metric infraction if Americans would accept
it? "The pints a pound the world around" was once a standard, if
slightly inaccurate, part of a child's education. "Thirty percent,
half and four; meter, key, say no more". Whether shaku, pfund and
FOUr Liters, or tred, lug and foul, whatever half measures it takes to
get people hooked on metrics, it's worth it.
Chris
...
> You seem to be sympathetic to a 30cm foot and a 1/2 kg pound.
> Wouldn't it be worth the metric infraction if Americans would accept
> it? "The pints a pound the world around" was once a standard, if
> slightly inaccurate, part of a child's education.
Neither accurate nor true!
--
Chris
UK Metric Assoc: ukma.org.uk
Old Physics
against the Russians. His editor thought that was a bit to
provacative. I saw the Disney movie when I was 11. I thought the
internal conflict of a man who wanted to end war by destroying the
means to wage it, was a better story line. Collision speed into
warships from both sides would make him something of an sympathetic
antihero, doomed, but with a noble motivation.
Thanks for the reference to "shaku". Standardizing it as 30cm
reference fom a Japan group indicated it might still be used for cloth
shaku. It is difficult to see how plumbing and material measures
could change
anytime soon.
Half liter bottles are common. Mental grasp of a 30cm foot and a
half kg pound would be immediate. Wouldn't it be worth the metric
infraction if Americans would accept it? "The pints a pound the world
around" was once a standard, if slightly inaccurate, part of a child's
education. "Thirty percent, half and four; meter, key, say no more".
Whether shaku, pfund and
to
get people hooked on metrics, isn't it worth it?
Old Physics
> On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 23:31:49 -0700, Old Physics wrote:
> ...
> > You seem to be sympathetic to a 30cm foot and a 1/2 kg pound.
> > Wouldn't it be worth the metric infraction if Americans would accept
> > it? "The pints a pound the world around" was once a standard, if
> > slightly inaccurate, part of a child's education.
>
> Neither accurate nor true!
Mr. Paeper suggested that a 25mm inch, 1/2 liter pint and 1/2 kg
pound might have been a good idea in the 19th century. Could you be
more specific about what is neither accurate nor true? The pint's a
pound may be slightly inaccurate, but the rhym has be repeated to me
by many an old timer.
Christoph Paeper
> a Japan group indicated it might still be used for cloth and carpet.
I've seen "曲尺" ("Kanejaku") being translated to "carpenter's square", at
Infoseek.
> You seem to be sympathetic to a 30cm foot and a 1/2 kg pound.
I'm sympathetic to easy numbers; powers of 10 being the easiest. These
were certainly handier than the actual definitions.
I'm also sympathetic to precision despite few digits. The odd conversion
factors between US and metric units enforce unnecessarily long floating
parts and thus rounding errors.
I'm also not unsympathetic to *colloquial* units, that are well and evenly
defined although not being the 10^(3·n)th multiple of the appropriate SI
unit, *if* they are benefical for some application (e.g. liter).
Accordingly I'm fine with centi, deci, deka and hecto---even myria.
Recognizing that decimeter is quite unused, I can't see a use for foot,
though. (I'm 1,84 m tall, not 6" and 6" 1' neither. Both are more than
1 cm off (in current US units). 1 cm and 1 in. respectively being the
usual precision in body height.) Anything with a prime factor of 3 hardly
fits into the SI, too; you'd need a whole parallel series, e.g.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_unit>.
> "The pints a pound the world around" was once a standard, if
> slightly inaccurate, part of a child's education.
Finally I get it (after seeing the apostrophe in your later reply)!
"The liter's a kilogram" doesn't make a rhyme (do your invented names?),
but is already correct (for certain precision or certain liquid,
temperature and pressure).
--
Proudly sent from eContinent.
Andreas Prilop
>> "The pints a pound the world around" was once a standard, if
>> slightly inaccurate, part of a child's education.
Slightly inaccurate?
A pint's not even a pint the world around!
Brian Inglis
skea...@earthlink.net (Old Physics) wrote:
Outside the US it is:
"A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter" (at S.T.P.)
The Imperial pint (as in beer) is 20 fl.oz. (0.59147059 L) and the
gallon is 160 fl.oz. (4.7317647 L), so you'd need to drink 10 US pints
for our 8, and 12-13.75 US pints to consume the same quantity of
ethanol.
--
Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Brian....@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca)
fake address use address above to reply
Gene Nygaard
<Brian....@SystematicSw.Invalid> wrote:
>On 25 Jul 2004 23:34:29 -0700 in misc.metric-system,
>skea...@earthlink.net (Old Physics) wrote:
>
>>Chris <ukme...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message news:<pan.2004.07.25....@tiscali.co.uk>...
>>> On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 23:31:49 -0700, Old Physics wrote:
>>> ...
>>> > You seem to be sympathetic to a 30cm foot and a 1/2 kg pound.
>>> > Wouldn't it be worth the metric infraction if Americans would accept
>>> > it? "The pints a pound the world around" was once a standard, if
>>> > slightly inaccurate, part of a child's education.
>>>
>>> Neither accurate nor true!
>>
>> Mr. Paeper suggested that a 25mm inch, 1/2 liter pint and 1/2 kg
>>pound might have been a good idea in the 19th century. Could you be
>>more specific about what is neither accurate nor true? The pint's a
>>pound may be slightly inaccurate, but the rhym has be repeated to me
>>by many an old timer.
>
>Outside the US it is:
>
>"A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter" (at S.T.P.)
>
>The Imperial pint (as in beer) is 20 fl.oz. (0.59147059 L) and the
>gallon is 160 fl.oz. (4.7317647 L), so you'd need to drink 10 US pints
>for our 8, and 12-13.75 US pints to consume the same quantity of
>ethanol.
No, you are mixing up U.S. fluid ounces, which are not based on water,
and the smaller imperial fluid ounces, which are based on water
(weighed in air with brass weights, without correction for buoyancy,
at 62 °F). The imperial gallon is 4.54609 L. Since the imperial
fluid ounce is very close to 0.96 U.S. fluid ounce, the imperial
gallon is only about 6/5 U.S. gallons, not the 5/4 ratio of the number
of ounces.
Gene Nygaard
Old Physics
> > Thanks for the reference to "shaku". (...) The reference fom
> > a Japan group indicated it might still be used for cloth and carpet.
>
> I've seen "曲尺" ("Kanejaku") being translated to "carpenter's square", at
> Infoseek.
>
> > You seem to be sympathetic to a 30cm foot and a 1/2 kg pound.
>
> I'm sympathetic to easy numbers; powers of 10 being the easiest. These
> were certainly handier than the actual definitions.
> I'm also sympathetic to precision despite few digits. The odd conversion
> factors between US and metric units enforce unnecessarily long floating
> parts and thus rounding errors.
> I'm also not unsympathetic to *colloquial* units, that are well and evenly
> defined although not being the 10^(3·n)th multiple of the appropriate SI
> unit, *if* they are benefical for some application (e.g. liter).
> Accordingly I'm fine with centi, deci, deka and hecto---even myria.
>
> Recognizing that decimeter is quite unused, I can't see a use for foot,
> though. (I'm 1,84 m tall, not 6" and 6" 1' neither. Both are more than
> 1 cm off (in current US units). 1 cm and 1 in. respectively being the
> usual precision in body height.) Anything with a prime factor of 3 hardly
> fits into the SI, too; you'd need a whole parallel series, e.g.
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_unit>.
Thanks again for the reference. It is interesting that in both
cultures there is a measure so close to the foot; the chi and shaku.
You are six tred and four centimeters tall. Tred is just a
contraction of three decimeters. It may be that its only use is to
convert meters mentally to just shy of feet. Leave the remainder in
cm and the convenience of meters becomes apparent. It's still a good
trick.
>
> > "The pints a pound the world around" was once a standard, if
> > slightly inaccurate, part of a child's education.
>
> Finally I get it (after seeing the apostrophe in your later reply)!
> "The liter's a kilogram" doesn't make a rhyme (do your invented names?),
> but is already correct (for certain precision or certain liquid,
> temperature and pressure).
The liter's a key, we all agree. A pfund's a jin, a lug their
twin. Three decimeters a tred, a lot less to be said. A half liter's
a lug, that will fill a mug. Call a foul four liters and you won't
have cheaters. The names are atleast appropriate.
Brian Inglis
<gnyg...@nccray.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:53:57 GMT, Brian Inglis
><Brian....@SystematicSw.Invalid> wrote:
>
>>On 25 Jul 2004 23:34:29 -0700 in misc.metric-system,
>>skea...@earthlink.net (Old Physics) wrote:
>>
>>>Chris <ukme...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message news:<pan.2004.07.25....@tiscali.co.uk>...
>>>> On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 23:31:49 -0700, Old Physics wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>> > You seem to be sympathetic to a 30cm foot and a 1/2 kg pound.
>>>> > Wouldn't it be worth the metric infraction if Americans would accept
>>>> > it? "The pints a pound the world around" was once a standard, if
>>>> > slightly inaccurate, part of a child's education.
>>>>
>>>> Neither accurate nor true!
>>>
>>> Mr. Paeper suggested that a 25mm inch, 1/2 liter pint and 1/2 kg
>>>pound might have been a good idea in the 19th century. Could you be
>>>more specific about what is neither accurate nor true? The pint's a
>>>pound may be slightly inaccurate, but the rhym has be repeated to me
>>>by many an old timer.
>>
>>Outside the US it is:
>>
>>"A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter" (at S.T.P.)
>>
>>The Imperial pint (as in beer) is 20fl.oz. (0.59147059 L) and the
>>gallon is 160fl.oz. (4.7317647 L), so you'd need to drink 10 US pints
>>for our 8, and 12-13.75 US pints to consume the same quantity of
>>ethanol.
Should have checked the quantities using the assumed density of water
== 1 kg/L, which would have given me 20fl.oz == 0.56699046 L and
160fl.oz == 4.5359237 L, which are within 1% of correct.
>No, you are mixing up U.S. fluid ounces, which are not based on water,
>and the smaller imperial fluid ounces, which are based on water
>(weighed in air with brass weights, without correction for buoyancy,
>at 62 °F). The imperial gallon is 4.54609 L. Since the imperial
>fluid ounce is very close to 0.96 U.S. fluid ounce, the imperial
>gallon is only about 6/5 U.S. gallons, not the 5/4 ratio of the number
>of ounces.
Your statement is inconsistent with the quoted sayings reflecting
common knowledge stating the weight (presumably in the same
avoirdupois pounds) of a pint (presumably of water at S.T.P.) and the
number of fluid ounces defined in each pint, and in stating that the
galllons have different ratios in volume and weight: something here is
incorrect.
Further research turned up three definitions of the UK standard unit
gallon (pints, fl.oz. are derived, I was surprised to find).
The US gallon is also the standard unit, defined as 231 in3.
These included your old (1824) definition, and your new (1976)
definition.
The other (1963) definition was the volume occupied by 10 pounds of
distilled water of density 0.998859 g/ml weighed in air of density
0.001217 g/ml against weights of density 8.136 g/ml. (Ugh -- what an
ugly mix!) This gave a volume of 4.5459645 litres with the old litre
definition in effect at that time (?)
Your new (1976) definition uses the new litre definition in effect at
that time (1 L == 1 dm3).
Now (assuming water at density 1 kg/L) that gives a US gallon of
3.7854118 L, mass 8.3454045 lb, 1.0431756 lb/pint or oz/fl.oz (US);
and the UK gallon mass 10.022413 lb, 1.2528016 lb/pint, or 1.0022413
oz/fl.oz (UK); with a ratio of 1.2009499, close to 6/5 as you stated.
So the US colloquial estimate of the mass of a pint of water and of a
fluid ounce of water is low by just over 4%/under 5%, which explains
the difference in the ratios, and a significant difference in mass
estimates if you multiply it to any significant degree, even just the
gallon.
It looks like the US colloquial saying could have been promoted by
someone supplying liquid products by weight instead of volume ("So
this gallon weighs ... 8lbs -- good deal!"), and reaping a sizable
bonus.
Thanks, once again, for the education.
Gene Nygaard
<Brian....@SystematicSw.Invalid> wrote:
So why would you expect Queen Anne's wine gallon to have anything to
do with water?
>
>Further research turned up three definitions of the UK standard unit
>gallon (pints, fl.oz. are derived, I was surprised to find).
>The US gallon is also the standard unit, defined as 231 in3.
>These included your old (1824) definition, and your new (1976)
>definition.
>The other (1963) definition was the volume occupied by 10 pounds of
>distilled water of density 0.998859 g/ml
a restatement of the 62 °F criterion, figured as if measured in a
vacuum
>weighed in air of density 0.001217 g/ml
There probably wasn't a standard atmosphere in 1824. Haven't checked,
but this is probably the density of air at 101.325 kPa, as best known
in 1963 in terms of the 1901-1964 definition of the litre.
>against weights of density 8.136 g/ml.
a restatement of the original "brass weights."
>(Ugh -- what an
>ugly mix!) This gave a volume of 4.5459645 litres with the old litre
>definition in effect at that time (?)
>Your new (1976) definition uses the new litre definition in effect at
>that time (1 L == 1 dm3).
Not "mine" (I'm in the U.S.A.).
Note that there were in addition at least quasi-official definitions
in terms of liters--but from the 1970s or thereabouts until the late
1990s, these differed in the U.K. where a gallon was 4.546092 litre,
and in Canada where a gallon was 4.54609 litre. I don't know about
the rest of the world. The old conventional U.K. value had the
advantage of being divisible by 2 more times before lengthening the
number of digits, but it was the conventional Canadian value that the
U.K. switched to in the 1990s, which is probably a better reflection
of the actual precision with which the original definition could be
achieved. See the U.K. Units of Measurement Regulation 1995,
http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1995/Uksi_19951804_en_2.htm
You can still find many lists of conversion factors, and built in
tables in calculators, which distinguish between the Canadian imperial
gallon and the U.K. imperial gallon. Just a couple--
http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200312/msg00043.html
http://www.superjamie.net/garage/formulas.html
>Now (assuming water at density 1 kg/L) that gives a US gallon of
>3.7854118 L,
To be precise, exactly 3.785411784 L now.
> mass 8.3454045 lb,
Not quite. Since the maximum density of water is 0.999972 kg/L =
0.999972 Mg/m^3, a U.S. gallon of water would be 8.34517 lb at maximum
density.
>1.0431756 lb/pint or oz/fl.oz (US);
thus 1.04315 in either units
>and the UK gallon mass 10.022413 lb,
At 39.2 °F, rather than 62 °F, with correction for buoyancy, though
you still need to multiply by 0.999972.
> 1.2528016 lb/pint, or 1.0022413
>oz/fl.oz (UK); with a ratio of 1.2009499, close to 6/5 as you stated.
With the conventional value of 4.54609 L now pretty uniformly agreed
on, divide that by 3.785411784 L/U.S. gal and you get the number you
arrived at, 1.2009499, though that's one digit too many, I'd say.
Call it 1.20095 U.S. gal = 1 imp. gal.
>So the US colloquial estimate of the mass of a pint of water and of a
>fluid ounce of water is low by just over 4%/under 5%, which explains
>the difference in the ratios, and a significant difference in mass
>estimates if you multiply it to any significant degree, even just the
>gallon.
So why would you expect Queen Anne's wine gallon to have anything to
do with water?
>It looks like the US colloquial saying could have been promoted by
>someone supplying liquid products by weight instead of volume ("So
>this gallon weighs ... 8lbs -- good deal!"), and reaping a sizable
>bonus.
I suspect it is of pre-1824 origins, though the first I've heard of
its use was in an anti-metric ditty half a century later. The only
way it can possibly make sense is if it refers to a time when a pound
of wine was a (wine) pint, a pound of corn (i.e., wheat, not maize)
was a (corn) pint, a pound of milk was a (milk) pint, a pound of ale
was an (ale) pint, etc. There was even a time when a gallon in the
range of size of the wine gallons was considered to be 8 troy pounds
of wheat, in contrast to the 8 avoirdupois pounds of wheat for a corn
gallon.
Gene Nygaard
Jukka K. Korpela
> [Unreadable in Outlook, here's why: http://viewport.co.uk/outlook ]
> begin Old Physics's quote in misc.metric-system
Isn't that "joke" a bit old by now?
> If these are typical analogs of the crazy mnemonics that one would
> have to remember to recollect all the zany archaic units of measure,
> I'm so glad the metric system makes it simple:
>
>
> 1 l = 1000 ml = 1000 cmł = 1000 g,
There's nothing particularly simple in the varying methods of expressing
volumes in the SI; au contraire, this is an area of considerable
confusion. I would like to remind that _the_ SI unit for volume is the
cubic meter, and the varying expressions above carefully avoid using this
unit.
And 1000 g does not come into the picture at all. It is an expression of
mass, not volume.
Or did I miss some subtle irony here?
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
DWT
| Everywhere else, a pint (of water, one assumes), is 568 ml and
| therefore weighs 568 g. A pound is 454 g, somewhat less.
|
| Your statement is therefore accurate for only around 300M/6G of the
| world's population, that's a pretty large inaccuracy in anybody's book.
It is not accurate for anyone at all. One US pint of water (being over
473 ml) also weighs more than one pound.
The greater problem with the old saw is that it was taught as a law that
applied to all liquids, if not to all substances. I have posted the ice
cream story on this newsgroup before and won't repeat it this soon.
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address is bluelighted until 0500 UTC on 06Aug2004 or until the
ice cream melts in the north temperate zone's estival heat.
Joona I Palaste
> David Marsh wrote in <slrncgiobv.91v.Th...@pepper.viewport.lan>:
> | Everywhere else, a pint (of water, one assumes), is 568 ml and
> | therefore weighs 568 g. A pound is 454 g, somewhat less.
> |
> | Your statement is therefore accurate for only around 300M/6G of the
> | world's population, that's a pretty large inaccuracy in anybody's book.
> It is not accurate for anyone at all. One US pint of water (being over
> 473 ml) also weighs more than one pound.
> The greater problem with the old saw is that it was taught as a law that
> applied to all liquids, if not to all substances. I have posted the ice
> cream story on this newsgroup before and won't repeat it this soon.
There might well be some strange liquid which actually does have a
density of one pound (English or American) per pint. But water isn't it.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"When a man talks dirty to a woman, that's sexual harassment. When a woman talks
dirty to a man, that's 14.99 per minute + local telephone charges!"
- Ruben Stiller
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
>DWT <nobody@[127.0.0.1]> scribbled the following:
>> David Marsh wrote in <slrncgiobv.91v.Th...@pepper.viewport.lan>:
>> | Everywhere else, a pint (of water, one assumes), is 568 ml and
>> | therefore weighs 568 g. A pound is 454 g, somewhat less.
>> |
>> | Your statement is therefore accurate for only around 300M/6G of the
>> | world's population, that's a pretty large inaccuracy in anybody's book.
>
>> It is not accurate for anyone at all. One US pint of water (being over
>> 473 ml) also weighs more than one pound.
>
>> The greater problem with the old saw is that it was taught as a law that
>> applied to all liquids, if not to all substances. I have posted the ice
>> cream story on this newsgroup before and won't repeat it this soon.
>
>There might well be some strange liquid which actually does have a
>density of one pound (English or American) per pint. But water isn't it.
Yes, water does indeed have a density of 1.00000 pound per U.S. liquid
pint. At least it can, if you are somewhere where the air pressure is
enough to keep it from boiling away earlier; I probably can't get
there without a pressure cooker where I live, and I'm not that high
up. Water reaches that density somewhere between 99 °C and 100 °C.
Not a good temperature to choose for fixing a standard, obviously.
Gene Nygaard
DWT
<cevaqp$clo$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>:
| There might well be some strange liquid which actually does have a
| density of one pound (English or American) per pint. But water isn't it.
Settle for a solid? I've seen claims that at room temperature butter,
stick margarine, or shortening comes very close.
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address is bluelighted until 0500 UTC on 14Aug2004, but it's
full of saturated fat.
Joona I Palaste
>>> 1 l = 1000 ml = 1000 cm³ = 1000 g,
>> There's nothing particularly simple in the varying methods of expressing
>> volumes in the SI; au contraire, this is an area of considerable
>> confusion. I would like to remind that _the_ SI unit for volume is the
>> cubic meter, and the varying expressions above carefully avoid using this
>> unit.
> Indeed, I could equally have expressed the volue as 0.001m², but I'd say
> that's "less elegant" for the layperson.
I suppose you mean 0.001m³ instead of 0.001m²?
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"Bad things only happen to scoundrels."
- Moominmamma
Jukka K. Korpela
> [Outlook error: message invisible. See http://viewport.co.uk/outlook
> ] begin Jukka K. Korpela's quote in misc.metric-system
> about: Re: Old Units in Literature
>
>> David Marsh <ThereIsNo...@your.newsreader.may.be.broken>
>> wrote:
>> Physics's quote in misc.metric-system
>>
>> Isn't that "joke" a bit old by now?
>
> As you know, I'm not doing it as a joke, but for a specific purpose.
"Old joke" was a polite way of describing it. Now that you refused to
catch the hint, I have to note that you are doing worse than pointless
propaganda. If you have to proclaim something on every occasion and every
newsgroup, at least take some noble cause, like world peace.
> I'm sorry it annoys you.
I don't think you are.
> Indeed, I could equally have expressed the volue as 0.001m˛, but I'd
> say that's "less elegant" for the layperson.
That would have been incorrect. The correct SI notation in such an
approach is either 0,001 mł or 0.001 mł, depending on cultural settings.
I don't think there's _any_ official recommendation that does not leave a
space between the number and the unit, and the SI rules surely require
it.
> Indeed, the conversion factor between the two is almost intrinsic to
> the metric system, but the fact is that not everybody has the maths
> skills to do that.
What two? What conversion factor? (Just being rhetorical.)
> Whereas a mnemonic with three identical numbers in it is pretty much
> guaranteed to stick in one's head.
Are you serious? About what? (Again, just rhetoric.)
(More rhetorics suppressed.)
> Even now, if I need to stop to think, I can instantly hold my hands
> /like so/[1], and say: that's a litre, it weighs a kilo.
As you wish, but then you are making guesses on the properties of
particular matter you have in your hands.
> Indeed. But a litre of water does weigh a kilo, which was the
> original counterclaim to those various assorted "pint" weights.
Oh. I must have missed that argument. Anyway, whether 0.001 mł of water
has the mass 1 kg is a matter of facts of nature (and may depend on your
definition of "water"), and its weight is yet another thing.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Julian Bradfield
> That would have been incorrect. The correct SI notation in such an
> approach is either 0,001 mł or 0.001 mł, depending on cultural settings.
> I don't think there's _any_ official recommendation that does not leave a
> space between the number and the unit, and the SI rules surely require
> it.
Oh? Show me the SI rule that requires it. (ISO 31 is not an SI rule!)
Andreas Prilop
>> I don't think there's _any_ official recommendation that does not leave a
>> space between the number and the unit, and the SI rules surely require
>> it.
>
> Oh? Show me the SI rule that requires it.
<http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html> #15
<http://physics.nist.gov/Document/checklist.pdf> #15
<http://www1.bipm.org/utils/en/pdf/si-brochure.pdf> chapter 5
> (ISO 31 is not an SI rule!)
Not? What, then, is an SI rule?
Julian Bradfield
> >> I don't think there's _any_ official recommendation that does not leave a
> >> space between the number and the unit, and the SI rules surely require
> >> it.
> > Oh? Show me the SI rule that requires it.
>
> <http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html> #15
Not an SI rule.
> <http://physics.nist.gov/Document/checklist.pdf> #15
Not an SI rule.
> <http://www1.bipm.org/utils/en/pdf/si-brochure.pdf> chapter 5
SI rules certainly, but it doesn't mention spaces between numbers and
units, unless I have managed to read it four times without seeing!
> > (ISO 31 is not an SI rule!)
> Not? What, then, is an SI rule?
A rule for the SI approved by resolution of the CGPM.
Andreas Prilop
> Organization: School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh
>
> [...]
> Not an SI rule.
>
> [...]
> Not an SI rule.
>
>>> (ISO 31 is not an SI rule!)
BS 5555 should be good enough for you - even in Scotland.
Jukka K. Korpela
> [Outlook error: message invisible. See http://viewport.co.uk/outlook
> ]
OK, now that we have discussed this, I will assume that you will keep
your sermon at the start of your messages as long as it is the _most
important_ thing you have to say. Actually, I think I won't check for it,
since your From field with a forged address is a sufficient hint.
ObMetric:
> It's not my fault nobody taught me the correct way to format typed
> metric symbols.
Perhaps. It depends on whether you had some chances of affecting what
will be taught to you. If you are an adult, the odds are that you can
actually affect it quite a lot. And even schoolchildren might find some
time to read something beyond their textbooks.
So maybe you should start studying the FAQ and the resources mentioned in
it.
(The difference between "1 m" and "1m" is orthographical, and exactly one
of them is correct. The width of the space is, within reasonable limits,
a typographic question, which you might wish to address when you have an
opportunity to do some typography. If you don't have, or if you don't
know what I'm talking about, just use "1 m".)
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Julian Bradfield
Andreas Prilop <nhtc...@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote:
>BS 5555 should be good enough for you - even in Scotland.
Why? It's not an SI rule. The original post asserted that spaces
between numbers and units were mandated by SI rules. That's the only
point I'm arguing.
As it happens, I don't think spaces are appropriate in ASCII text, but
I've discussed that before.
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
No. The CGPM provides the basic framework, and leaves many of the
details to other standards organizations. See the introduction to the
BIPM's SI brochure, for example:
The ISO and numerous countries have also
published standards and guides to the use of SI units.
The BIPM also follows the ISO standards themselves:
In this respect , the English text presented here follows
the International Standard ISO 31 (1992), Quantities and units.
Then they tell us:
The system of quantities used with the SI units is dealt
with by Technical Committee 12 of the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO/TC 12) and is not
treated here. Since 1955, the ISO/TC 12 has published a
series of International Standards on quantities and
their units which strongly recommends the use of the
International System of Units.
Other organizations are mentioned in the BIPM SI brochure as well:
The question of proper units is addressed in Resolution A 4
adopted by the XXIst General Assembly of the International
Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1991 and by the report of the
CCDS working group on the application of general relativity
to metrology (Metrologia, 1997, 34, 261 - 290).
Gene Nygaard
Gene Nygaard
Gene Nygaard
The biggest problem with not putting in the spaces in Usenet or
Internet text is that it screws up the usefulness of search engines.
You can do a much better job of finding what you are looking for or
eliminating spurious results if the numbers and the unit symbols are
separate "words" when using those search engines.
Gene Nygaard
Gene Nygaard
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
>Andreas Prilop <nhtc...@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de> writes:
In your view of "SI rules" there is no SI rule that we should use
newton meters rather than joules for torque. There are many other
such "rules" that have been stated by someone other than the CGPM,
some of which are almost universally followed, others by a majority
with a significant number of scofflaws.
You do have the "rule by example" in CGPM and BIPM publications, which
do use spaces between the number and the symbol. I've criticized
others on this newsgroup in the past for reading too much into various
rules by example, without an explicit statement of the rule, but it is
something to take into consideration.
Rules by other standard organization which contradict what the CGPM
says is a different story. What we have here is rules by other
organizations--ISO, NIST, BS5555 (does that stand for British Standard
or something similar?) on an issue about which the CGPM is silent.
Of course, you sometimes get conflicting rules by various standards
organizations on points about which the CGPM is silent. But we don't
have that at this time concerning the issue at hand (spaces between
number and unit symbol), at least not among the major international
standards organizations and national standards laboratories, though
somebody must once have recommended the no-space variety in Britian
judging by it frequency of use there.
Gene Nygaard
Gene Nygaard
Markus Kuhn
>As it happens, I don't think spaces are appropriate in ASCII text, but
>I've discussed that before.
You don't write 1apple, 2bananas and 50people either in English,
so why would you want to stick appreviated unit names to the
preceeding digits in such an unwieldy way? The number and the
unit are in any sense to separate words, and words are separated
by spaces in all European languages, including, perhaps most of
all, English.
You are right in that there is no formal CIPM resolution on
the space between digit and unit symbol, but all the recent CIPM/BIPM
documents clearly do follow the ISO 31 standard in this respect,
which demands a space, as do all the US and UK national standards.
Markus
P.S.: I do see here in Cambridge occasionally City Council planning
applications on lamp posts, which announce that someone wants to
build "2no detached 2-story 3-bedroom houses and 4no apartments".
Where does this odd notation "1no" come from? Is this an odd legal
tradition, and if so is it restricted to planning permissions, or
is it also used in other fields? Is it formally specified
somewhere, or just an old silly habit, to scare away the mere mortal
(like the silly overuse of the word "plurality" by patent lawyers).
See http://www.google.com/search?q=planning-application+1no+2no
for numerous online examples.
--
Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain
Markus Kuhn
>BS5555 (does that stand for British Standard
>or something similar?)
Try http://bsonline.techindex.co.uk/, and you will see that BS 5555
was the old national equivalent of ISO 1000, which has now been withdrawn
and replaced by BS ISO 1000.
Markus
Julian Bradfield
>>As it happens, I don't think spaces are appropriate in ASCII text, but
>>I've discussed that before.
>
> You don't write 1apple, 2bananas and 50people either in English,
> so why would you want to stick appreviated unit names to the
> preceeding digits in such an unwieldy way? The number and the
> unit are in any sense to separate words, and words are separated
> by spaces in all European languages, including, perhaps most of
> all, English.
But neither the number nor the unit abbreviation is a word!
"250" is not a word - it's a number, which is pronounced as four words
(in English). Similarly, "m" is not a word; it's a symbol, which
happens to pronounced as one word.
"m" isn't even a normal abbreviation, because abbreviations end with a
full stop (unless they include the last letter of the unabbreviated
word - or, as in "oz" for "ounce", they include a letter that itself
represents a terminal flourish).
You can't use the symbol "m" on its own to stand for "metre" in an
arbitrary (literate) English sentence, so it doesn't make sense to
isolate it with spaces to make it look like a stand-alone entity.
Andreas Prilop
> Try http://bsonline.techindex.co.uk/,
I tried - and the result was
| To view this site you need to have your browser set
| to accept cookies and to enable JavaScript.
although I *do* had both enabled for this session.
The responsible webpupil is clueless!
> and you will see that BS 5555
> was the old national equivalent of ISO 1000, which has now been withdrawn
> and replaced by BS ISO 1000.
Your search
<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22BS+ISO+1000%22>
did not match any documents.
Markus Kuhn
>But neither the number nor the unit abbreviation is a word!
You clearly argue only on a subset of contemporary English
grammar here, possibly chosen for the sake of your argument.
OK, the term "word" has perhaps too many meanings here to be of
much use, and I may have used it more in the sense in which the
term "token" is used in computational linguistics today, where
both "250" and "m" are distinct single tokens. So are punctuation
symbols, which admittedly are not separated by space. So the
question is, whether the tokens formed by SI symbols should
be treated more like punctuation signs or more like nouns in
written language. I suspect, that from the 5'11" and £5 notations,
there is a bit of a tradition in the English language to see unit
symbols as some form of punctuation. Nevertheless, I still find that
it looks cruel and unusual to treat sequences of alphabetic letters
like punctuation. I'm most grateful that ISO TC12 had the same view,
though it boils down ultimately merely to a matter of taste,
habit and convention.
Markus
DWT
<e6ck6vv...@palau.inf.ed.ac.uk>:
| "250" is not a word - it's a number, which is pronounced as four words
| (in English).
It is pronounced as three words: "two hundred fifty."
My guess here is that Mr. Bradfield's four words are "two hundred and fifty."
I wouldn't know what he was taught in Britian, but in the US we're taught
that "and" in reading a number represents a decimal point or the second
syllable of "thousand," and that it is a substandard usage to say "and" for
"I'm now moving from the hundreds' place of this triad to its tens' place."
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address is bluelighted until 0500 UTC on 27Aug2004.
Julian Bradfield
DWT <12650.rsfk=dr...@dattier.users.panix.com> wrote:
>Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote in
><e6ck6vv...@palau.inf.ed.ac.uk>:
>
>| "250" is not a word - it's a number, which is pronounced as four words
>| (in English).
>
>It is pronounced as three words: "two hundred fifty."
I said "in English". "Two hundred fifty" is non-standard usage in English.
"Two hundred and fifty" is standard; if we need to save words, in a
context such as auctions, we say "two fifty". You might hear "two
hundred fifty" somewhere in England, but to me it sounds an obvious
Americanism.
(By "English", of course, I meant "Standard English".)
>I wouldn't know what he was taught in Britian, but in the US we're taught
>that "and" in reading a number represents a decimal point or the second
How bizarre. Do you really say "the value of pi is about three and one
four seven"?
Erik Max Francis
> How bizarre. Do you really say "the value of pi is about three and one
> four seven"?
No, you say "three and one-hundred forty-seventh thousandths." Of
course that isn't the value of pi, either.
--
__ Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
/ \ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
\__/ Dead men have no victory.
-- Euripides
DWT
| How bizarre. Do you really say "the value of pi is about three and one
| four seven"?
No, on two counts. First, if one is going to approximate pi to three decimal
places, one should not come up with 3.147.
Second, usually the only decimal points read as "and" rather than as "point"
are those dividing whole dollars from cents.
We would say "pi is about three point one four one six," though "about three
and one thousand four hundred sixteen ten-thousandths," while awkward, would
be correct as well. Any additional conjunctions between "one thousand" and
"four hundred" or between "four hundred" and "sixteen" would be incorrect.
Brian Inglis
nobody@[127.0.0.1] (DWT) wrote:
>Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote in
><e6ck6vv...@palau.inf.ed.ac.uk>:
>
>| "250" is not a word - it's a number, which is pronounced as four words
>| (in English).
>
>It is pronounced as three words: "two hundred fifty."
>
>My guess here is that Mr. Bradfield's four words are "two hundred and fifty."
>I wouldn't know what he was taught in Britian, but in the US we're taught
>that "and" in reading a number represents a decimal point or the second
>syllable of "thousand," and that it is a substandard usage to say "and" for
>"I'm now moving from the hundreds' place of this triad to its tens' place."
Standard English usage is only before the tens digit e.g. one million
and ninety nine, one thousand and ninety nine, one hundred and ninety
nine.
--
Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Brian....@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca)
fake address use address above to reply
Julian Bradfield
> j...@inf.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield) wrote in <cg2iob$g99$1...@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>:
> | How bizarre. Do you really say "the value of pi is about three and one
> | four seven"?
> No, on two counts. First, if one is going to approximate pi to three decimal
> places, one should not come up with 3.147.
Of course not. Actually, that was supposed to be deliberately wrong as
a pedant trap for those who can't understand the word "about", but
owing to neural interference from my parents'-in-law 'phone number, it
was rather more wrong than I intended!
Don Aitken
<ThereIsNo...@your.newsreader.may.be.broken> wrote:
>[Outlook error: message invisible. See http://viewport.co.uk/outlook ]
>begin DWT's quote in misc.metric-system
> about: Re: Old Units in Literature
>
>> We would say "pi is about three point one four one six," though "about three
>> and one thousand four hundred sixteen ten-thousandths," while awkward, would
>> be correct as well. Any additional conjunctions between "one thousand" and
>> "four hundred" or between "four hundred" and "sixteen" would be incorrect.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Depends on your localisation rules ;-)
>
>There are several dialects of English (as there are of most languages),
>rules differ between them. As long as what is meant is mutually
>comprehensible, there's no problem.
>
>
>"Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.." :)
It is not really a matter of dialect, at least in its origin. This was
gone into with characteristic throughness in alt.usage.english
recently, and it was discovered that the "rules" referred to were
invented by the national organisation of American mathematics teachers
in response to a perceived problem with children understanding decimal
fractions. Hence the insistence on this being a "rule", in a way which
may be familiar to mathematicians but is pretty strange in the context
of language, where these things are a matter of usage or, as you say,
of dialect. It always comes as a shock to Americans to discover that
no-one outside the US has ever heard of these "rules".
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the addresses given in the headers is no longer being
read. To mail me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com".
DWT
<8vaci0te8fa5s51ou...@4ax.com>:
| It always comes as a shock to Americans to discover that no-one outside the
| US has ever heard of these "rules".
"Always"? "Shock"?
The adverb is a gross generalization (that's "generalisation" as you'd know
the word) and the noun is a silly exaggeration.
I'm American, and it came to me as information, not as a shock nor even as a
surprise.
So standard English expresses the numeral 250 in four words, and standard
American expresses it in three. Both write the numeral with three digits,
and there should be a space between the numeral and the unit. OK now?
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address is bluelighted until 0500 UTC on 28Aug2004.
Don Aitken
>Don Aitken <don-a...@freeuk.com> wrote in
><8vaci0te8fa5s51ou...@4ax.com>:
>
>| It always comes as a shock to Americans to discover that no-one outside the
>| US has ever heard of these "rules".
>
>"Always"? "Shock"?
>
>The adverb is a gross generalization (that's "generalisation" as you'd know
>the word) and the noun is a silly exaggeration.
>
>I'm American, and it came to me as information, not as a shock nor even as a
>surprise.
>
>So standard English expresses the numeral 250 in four words, and standard
>American expresses it in three. Both write the numeral with three digits,
>and there should be a space between the numeral and the unit. OK now?
Hm. You are the person who posted this:
>My guess here is that Mr. Bradfield's four words are "two hundred and fifty."
>I wouldn't know what he was taught in Britian, but in the US we're taught
>that "and" in reading a number represents a decimal point or the second
>syllable of "thousand," and that it is a substandard usage to say "and" for
>"I'm now moving from the hundreds' place of this triad to its tens' place."
Are you not?