Black Holes and Cricket

[Peter Moylan]

I'm currently reading "Black Holes", by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. You
probably recognise Cox from his very good "popular science"
documentaries. Forshaw is equally well qualified. They're both
physicists, and Professors at the University of Manchester in England.

In the second chapter they mention a very fast ball in a cricket match.
"The ball travelled down the wicket at 100.2 mph." Then there is a
footnote saying "We will use Imperial units when discussing cricket".

I don't know about you, but that struck me as a deep insight.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

[Paul Wolff]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2024, at 22:00:25, Peter Moylan posted:

I'm not at all sure that a decimal fraction is Imperial. Two-tenths of a
mile is 352 yards, in Imperial. So Imperially, the speed of the ball was
one hundred miles and three hundred and fifty-two yards per hour.
--
Paul W

[Peter Moylan]

Thanks. Yes, that does sound more imperial. Victorian, even.

[J. J. Lodder]

I have a vague memory that Wimbledon clocks the serve speeds in km/h.

Jan
(may be wrong,
the locals may know better)

[Adam Funk]

I was expecting the original post to have something to do with _The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_.

Anyway, UK railway signs (for railway workers, that is) are still
marked like "## m ## ch" (miles & chains).


--
I take no pleasure in being right in my dark predictions about the
fate of our military intervention in the heart of the Muslim world. It
is immensely depressing to me. Nobody likes to be betting against the
Home team, no matter how hopeless they are. ---Hunter S Thompson

[occam]

As of 2022, mph (not km/h)

<https://www.statista.com/statistics/958826/wimbledon-championships-fast-serve-speeds-by-male-players/>

[Paul Wolff]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2024, at 12:16:33, Adam Funk posted:

>On 2024-02-14, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>> On 14/02/24 10:12, Paul Wolff wrote:
>>> On Tue, 13 Feb 2024, at 22:00:25, Peter Moylan posted:
>>>> I'm currently reading "Black Holes", by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. You
>>>> probably recognise Cox from his very good "popular science"
>>>> documentaries. Forshaw is equally well qualified. They're both
>>>> physicists, and Professors at the University of Manchester in England.
>>>>
>>>> In the second chapter they mention a very fast ball in a cricket match.
>>>> "The ball travelled down the wicket at 100.2 mph." Then there is a
>>>> footnote saying "We will use Imperial units when discussing cricket".
>>>>
>>>> I don't know about you, but that struck me as a deep insight.
>>>>
>>> I'm not at all sure that a decimal fraction is Imperial. Two-tenths of a
>>> mile is 352 yards, in Imperial. So Imperially, the speed of the ball was
>>> one hundred miles and three hundred and fifty-two yards per hour.
>>
>> Thanks. Yes, that does sound more imperial. Victorian, even.
>
>I was expecting the original post to have something to do with _The
>Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_.
>
>Anyway, UK railway signs (for railway workers, that is) are still
>marked like "## m ## ch" (miles & chains).
>

Chains are a curious length unit in the English Imperial system. A chain
is one cricket-pitch long, of course, but also one-tenth of a furlong.
On the whole, the natives didn't do tenths around here until quite
recently.

Still, that fast bowler's delivery speed could also be reported in
chains. Quite useful really, because chains are far more meaningful than
miles in a cricket ground. 8016 ch/hr? That's 133 and a half chains per
minute, or more terrifyingly for the batsman, 2.226 pitch-lengths per
second. Scary!

They are surveyors' chains, so perhaps they were standardised when
accurately surveying the kingdom caught on, probably to put an end to
argumentative protesters challenging the latest tax bill.
--
Paul W
No, I didn't check my calculations to exhaustion.

[Sam Plusnet]

Furlongs per fortnight might produce some large numbers.

--
Sam Plusnet

[Peter Moylan]

On 15/02/24 03:37, Paul Wolff wrote:

> Chains are a curious length unit in the English Imperial system. A
> chain is one cricket-pitch long, of course, but also one-tenth of a
> furlong. On the whole, the natives didn't do tenths around here
> until quite recently.

Let's also remember that there are 100 links in a chain. Links, chains
and furlongs were a surprising intrusion into an otherwise non-decimal
system. Maybe surveyors were the only people who counted on their fingers.

The only other decimal aspect to the Imperial system that I can think of
was having ten florins to the sovereign pound.

[Rich Ulrich]

"Pitch-lengths per second" seems informative.

Tennis serves are reported in mph or km/h, and I've wondered
why no one translates that to units per-second: a 120 mph serve
is ~194 km/h -- or, 176 feet per second, ~54 meters per second.

After wondering off and on for a couple of years, I finallly Googled
to find how much a tennis serve slows down. That prompt worked.
FWIW, a 120 mph serve is apt to slow to 82 mph by the time it hits
ground, it bounces at 65 mph and reaches the returner at 55 mph.

>
>They are surveyors' chains, so perhaps they were standardised when
>accurately surveying the kingdom caught on, probably to put an end to
>argumentative protesters challenging the latest tax bill.

--

Rich Ulrich

[Adam Funk]

Maybe the inverse would be interesting: 449 milliseconds to cross the
pitch.

> They are surveyors' chains, so perhaps they were standardised when
> accurately surveying the kingdom caught on, probably to put an end to
> argumentative protesters challenging the latest tax bill.


--

In the future, a culturally mandated forty-hour workweek may seem as
odd and cruel as does seven-year-old children working in Victorian
cotton mills. ---Douglas Coupland

[lar3ryca]

And for the smaller numbers, there's light years per leap year

--
Attention Spam:
The amount of time it takes to determine that a piece
of email is not worth reading.

[Hibou]

But that was cumbersome even in the past. I think fractions were popular
- one hundred and one fifth miles per hour. These examples are from the
19th C.:

<https://www.cjoint.com/c/NBrg1Jn62kZ>

<https://www.cjoint.com/c/NBrg2oRrEJZ>

<https://www.cjoint.com/c/NBrg2LPZmMZ>

(Links valid 21 days)

[Hibou]

The second paragraph there does use decimals (and a proper decimal
point, not a full stop). That would certainly be more convenient in the
middle of a calculation.

[Sam Plusnet]

On 17-Feb-24 6:55, Hibou wrote:
> Le 13/02/2024 à 23:12, Paul Wolff a écrit :
>> On Tue, 13 Feb 2024, at 22:00:25, Peter Moylan posted:
>>>
>>> I'm currently reading "Black Holes", by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. You
>>> probably recognise Cox from his very good "popular science"
>>> documentaries. Forshaw is equally well qualified. They're both
>>> physicists, and Professors at the University of Manchester in England.
>>>
>>> In the second chapter they mention a very fast ball in a cricket match.
>>> "The ball travelled down the wicket at 100.2 mph." Then there is a
>>> footnote saying "We will use Imperial units when discussing cricket".
>>>
>>> I don't know about you, but that struck me as a deep insight.
>>
>> I'm not at all sure that a decimal fraction is Imperial. Two-tenths of
>> a mile is 352 yards, in Imperial. So Imperially, the speed of the ball
>> was one hundred miles and three hundred and fifty-two yards per hour.
>
> But that was cumbersome even in the past. I think fractions were popular
> - one hundred and one fifth miles per hour. These examples are from the
> 19th C.:

Fractions are not Imperial.
If you want to build a really big Empire, you do nothing by halves.

--
Sam Plusnet

[Peter Moylan]

Two of those seem to be American. (I'm not sure about the middle one.)
Even today, it looks to me as if fractions are given more emphasis in
American schools than elsewhere. This shows up in various ways. For
example, you can't write "twenty cents" on an American check; it has to
be "20/100 dollars".

[Paul Wolff]

On Sat, 17 Feb 2024, at 19:04:10, Sam Plusnet posted:

<Thumbs-up>
--
Paul W

[Hibou]

Yes, went a bit agley there. The middle one is British, from the
Ordnance Survey.

> Even today, it looks to me as if fractions are given more emphasis in
> American schools than elsewhere. This shows up in various ways. For
> example, you can't write "twenty cents" on an American check; it has to
> be "20/100 dollars".

Well, the Americans are a law unto themselves, but are they the better
for it?

I think fractions were important, used when sub-units would have been
cumbersome - a 3/8" bolt, not 375 mil or thou; 4-foot-8-and-a-half-inch
track; a mile and a half; four and a half fathoms....

<https://i2-prod.somersetlive.co.uk/news/article320385.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/post-2.jpg>
(Think this one's a replacement, not actually 200 years old.)

I have a one-foot steel ruler dated London 1942 which on its four edges
is marked in 16ths, 32nds, and 64ths of an inch; 10ths, 20ths, and
50ths; 12ths, 24ths, and 48ths; and millimetres. Fractions were
important - though I think machining would have been in thous. (I assume
my father used this ruler when repairing Swordfish that the FAA had been
careless with.)

Clever chaps, our ancestors, to find their way through all this.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Peter Moylan wrote:

> Two of those seem to be American. (I'm not sure about the middle one.)
> Even today, it looks to me as if fractions are given more emphasis in
> American schools than elsewhere. This shows up in various ways. For
> example, you can't write "twenty cents" on an American check; it has to
> be "20/100 dollars".

Given that you can write a check at all today, that is what we do in
Denmark as well - except for the dollars of course.


--
Bertel, Denmark

[Silvano]

Bertel Lund Hansen hat am 18.02.2024 um 12:23 geschrieben:

Of course you can write a cheque today, but why should you do it in the
eurozone? Even if you have to pay something outside the eurozone, there
are bank transfers, Skrill (formerly known as Moneybookers), PayPal and
other similar systems.

[J. J. Lodder]

That is a secondary source.
I went into grave error, and did some primary research.
(looking for images) As of 2023 it is still MPH.
I must have confused it with some other place,

Jan

[Adam Funk]

Would a bank accept a check ending in "1/5 dollars"?


--
By those who see with their eyes closed
You'll know me by my black telescope

[Snidely]

Wednesday, Rich Ulrich quipped:

So the curving path from there is volleyed to the seat of the Dukes of
Beaufort. Does Wiltshire have baths that compete with Bath?

>> They are surveyors' chains, so perhaps they were standardised when
>> accurately surveying the kingdom caught on, probably to put an end to
>> argumentative protesters challenging the latest tax bill.

/dps "or is the mint grown there especially terrible?"

--
You could try being nicer and politer
> instead, and see how that works out.
-- Katy Jennison