MeV, BeV, GeV, TeV, ...
t...@rosencrantz.stcloudstate.edu
first sci.physics.research-alt.usage.english crosspost. I'm such a
trailblazer.) Although discussion of standard SI practice is arguably
on-topic for sci.physics.research, we seem to be drifting away from
physics. I'll let the wise sci.physics.research moderator who handles
this post decide whether to set followups elsewhere. (Of course, said
moderator may just reject this post outright, in which case the point
is moot!)
[Moderator's note: Followups set to alt.usage.english. -MM]
In article <1f2dfpj.1t4...@de-ster.demon.nl>,
J. J. Lodder <j...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
>> (Didn't the French also use "milliard" for 10^9? Do they still?)
>
>Indeed, on the continent (not only France) 'milliard',
>in various slightly variant spellings,
>is still used with the original meaning of 10^9.
>Using 'billion' when it should be 'milliard'
>is simply an error of translation, in most cases.
To point out the obvious, the best thing to do is just to avoid the
words "billion" and "trillion" entirely in English, except in
situations where you can be sure everyone will understand what you
mean. In technical writing in physics, it seems to me that most
people do this. In popular writing, cosmologists -- including me --
often say that the Universe is about 15 billion years old, but we
probably shouldn't, except when we know it's likely to be clear to all
readers.
The place the number "billion" most often comes up, of course, is in
discussions of money. There, it seems to me, the American meaning of
the word is becoming standard even in England. In particular, the
journal Nature now has a policy (I believe) of using "billion" to mean
10^9, but only in articles about finances. In science articles, they
avoid it entirely in favor of exponential notation or SI prefixes.
>It never existed in the SI, so it exists merely as
>a demonstration of American provincialism.
>Perhaps it's that lots of Americans
>can't pronounce a G correctly?
I assume you're talking about the pronunciation of "Giga-." It's
quite common to complain about the soft-G pronunciation of this
prefix, especially in discussions of "Back to the Future." But my
dictionaries list the soft G sound as the preferred pronunciation,
with a hard G as the second choice.
It seems to me that there isn't a good general rule in English for
when the G in initial "gi-" is hard and when it's soft (Gibraltar,
gibbon, gist, gilt, gin, ...). In fact, one of the two
dictionaries I can lay my hands on right now is telling me that I've
been pronouncing "gibbous" wrong all my life, whereas the other says
I'm OK.
-Ted
R H Draney
wrote:
>To point out the obvious, the best thing to do is just to avoid the
>words "billion" and "trillion" entirely in English, except in
>situations where you can be sure everyone will understand what you
>mean. In technical writing in physics, it seems to me that most
>people do this. In popular writing, cosmologists -- including me --
>often say that the Universe is about 15 billion years old, but we
>probably shouldn't, except when we know it's likely to be clear to all
>readers.
Uh-oh...so do you want to hear the popular press saying "the universe,
until recently thought to be fifteen thousand million years
old--"?...or "one point five times ten to the tenth power years
old"?...
The former conjures up pictures of small children trying with limited
resources to name bigger and bigger numbers ("I got a hundred million,
billion, jillion, *zillion* marbles at home!")...the latter is
something I do not wish to hear from Dan Rather...the metric prefix is
hardly better, especially with computer media confusing 1000 and 1024
all over the place, and with a good chunk of the public thinking a
"gigabyte" is just a particularly good kind of byte....
>I assume you're talking about the pronunciation of "Giga-." It's
>quite common to complain about the soft-G pronunciation of this
>prefix, especially in discussions of "Back to the Future." But my
>dictionaries list the soft G sound as the preferred pronunciation,
>with a hard G as the second choice.
It's Greek; Greek doesn't *have* a soft G...that alone should settle
it....r
--
Is it true that the chip after the Pentium was called the Pentium II
because they realized Sexium would bother the prudes and Hexium the
religious fanatics?
Joona I Palaste
There is no such thing as a "BeV". The suffix immediately after M is G.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"This is a personnel commuter."
- Train driver in Scientific American
Joona I Palaste
> Non-English-usagey comment about the subject line:
> There is no such thing as a "BeV". The suffix immediately after M is G.
Doh! I meant prefix, not suffix.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"Stronger, no. More seductive, cunning, crunchier the Dark Side is."
- Mika P. Nieminen
Harvey V
wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Nov 2001 03:20:41 GMT, t...@rosencrantz.stcloudstate.edu
> wrote:
>
-snip-
>> I assume you're talking about the pronunciation of "Giga-." It's
>> quite common to complain about the soft-G pronunciation of this
>> prefix, especially in discussions of "Back to the Future." But my
>> dictionaries list the soft G sound as the preferred pronunciation,
>> with a hard G as the second choice.
>
> It's Greek; Greek doesn't *have* a soft G...that alone should
> settle it....r
The naturalisation of a word into English is, though, always a
difficult call.
I find it terribly precious to see or hear either "kinema" or
"keramic", and assume that no one gets upset any longer when faced
with the Greek/Latin hybrid of "automobile".
Harvey
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
[...]
> It's Greek; Greek doesn't *have* a soft G...that alone should settle
> it....r
In Modern Greek, the <gamma> in "agapo" is not hard (but hard to learn
how to pronounce it correctly). It's close to the French uvular <r> in
"grand."
--
Reinhold (Gamma-Rey) Aman
Murray Arnow
>Non-English-usagey comment about the subject line:
>There is no such thing as a "BeV".
>
Of course there is. Is your dictionary broken?
Raymond S. Wise
Etymology doesn't determine correct pronunciation. If it did, the
words "alibi," "fleur-de-lis," and "knight," to name just three, would
not be pronounced the way we ordinarily pronounce them.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
Joe Manfre
> Non-English-usagey comment about the subject line:
> There is no such thing as a "BeV".
But is there a W e D n E s D a Y ?
Do I have to get a sTuDlYcApS license (= UK "sTuDlYcApS licence"
(= US Southern "sTuDlYcApS licen")) in addition to my learner's
permit for the spacing? I need this Usenet-related information
and I need it now. Obi-Wan Palaste, you're my only hope!
JM
--
Joe Manfre, Hyattsville, Maryland.
Joe Fineman
> Non-English-usagey comment about the subject line: There is no such
> thing as a "BeV". The suffix immediately after M is G.
BeV is old-fashioned U.S. usage. My copy of Leighton's _Principles of
Modern Physics_ (1959) lists GeV in the table of abbreviation at the
beginning, with the footnote
*In the American literature, BeV is used to denote 10^9 eV.
An accelerator, the Berkeley Bevatron, was named after the BeV. Both
are now disused. These days, BeV would seem as quaint as millimicrons
or micromicrofarads.
--
--- Joe Fineman j...@TheWorld.com
||: Wealth adds to strength, but multiplies weakness. :||
Joe Fineman
> It seems to me that there isn't a good general rule in English for
> when the G in initial "gi-" is hard and when it's soft (Gibraltar,
> gibbon, gist, gilt, gin, ...). In fact, one of the two dictionaries
> I can lay my hands on right now is telling me that I've been
> pronouncing "gibbous" wrong all my life, whereas the other says I'm
> OK.
The fact that "giga-" was taken from the same Greek word as "gigantic"
is perhaps an argument for the soft pronunciation, which in my limited
experience is more common.
--
--- Joe Fineman j...@TheWorld.com
||: To do good is virtuous, and to wish good to be done is :||
||: amiable, but to wish to do good is as vain as it is vain. :||
Murray Arnow
>Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes:
>
>> Non-English-usagey comment about the subject line: There is no such
>> thing as a "BeV". The suffix immediately after M is G.
>
>BeV is old-fashioned U.S. usage. My copy of Leighton's _Principles of
>Modern Physics_ (1959) lists GeV in the table of abbreviation at the
>beginning, with the footnote
>
> *In the American literature, BeV is used to denote 10^9 eV.
>
>An accelerator, the Berkeley Bevatron, was named after the BeV. Both
>are now disused. These days, BeV would seem as quaint as millimicrons
>or micromicrofarads.
I can remember when there was a confusion between British and American usage
of BeV. A convention for usage was finally established with everyone
understanding what a GeV was.
As for the disappearance of millimicrons, millihenries,..., a great tradition
of engineering poetry was confounded and is sadly missed.
Joona I Palaste
> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes:
>> Non-English-usagey comment about the subject line: There is no such
>> thing as a "BeV". The suffix immediately after M is G.
> BeV is old-fashioned U.S. usage. My copy of Leighton's _Principles of
> Modern Physics_ (1959) lists GeV in the table of abbreviation at the
> beginning, with the footnote
> *In the American literature, BeV is used to denote 10^9 eV.
> An accelerator, the Berkeley Bevatron, was named after the BeV. Both
> are now disused. These days, BeV would seem as quaint as millimicrons
> or micromicrofarads.
I am, of course, referring to internationally accepted SI standards, not
some obscure American "we can use what we want" mock standards.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"A bicycle cannot stand up by itself because it's two-tyred."
- Sky Text
John O'Flaherty
> On Thu, 8 Nov 2001 03:20:41 GMT, t...@rosencrantz.stcloudstate.edu
> wrote:
>
> >To point out the obvious, the best thing to do is just to avoid the
> >words "billion" and "trillion" entirely in English, except in
> >situations where you can be sure everyone will understand what you
> >mean. In technical writing in physics, it seems to me that most
> >people do this. In popular writing, cosmologists -- including me --
> >often say that the Universe is about 15 billion years old, but we
> >probably shouldn't, except when we know it's likely to be clear to all
> >readers.
>
> Uh-oh...so do you want to hear the popular press saying "the universe,
> until recently thought to be fifteen thousand million years
> old--"?...or "one point five times ten to the tenth power years
> old"?...
>
> The former conjures up pictures of small children trying with limited
> resources to name bigger and bigger numbers ("I got a hundred million,
> billion, jillion, *zillion* marbles at home!")...the latter is
> something I do not wish to hear from Dan Rather...the metric prefix is
> hardly better, especially with computer media confusing 1000 and 1024
> all over the place, and with a good chunk of the public thinking a
> "gigabyte" is just a particularly good kind of byte....
'Fifteen gigayears' seems like a good way to do it. For numbers without
units, we could use kilon, megon, gigon, teron. The only bad one would be
'millon', a little close orthographically to an older unit. At least with
the metric prefix, anyone who wanted to understand could.
The 1000/1024 confusion is another matter- within Windows, you can get two
different characterizations of the capacity of a disk- on the same screen,
my c drive free space is shown as 1,408,278,528 bytes ... 1.31 GB.
--
john
Donna Richoux
What, really? Geometry? Geography? I never knew that. Was those soft by
the time they were in Latin?
--
It's all Greek to me -- Donna Richoux
Murray Arnow
>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes:
>
>>> Non-English-usagey comment about the subject line: There is no such
>>> thing as a "BeV". The suffix immediately after M is G.
>
>> BeV is old-fashioned U.S. usage. My copy of Leighton's _Principles of
>> Modern Physics_ (1959) lists GeV in the table of abbreviation at the
>> beginning, with the footnote
>
>> *In the American literature, BeV is used to denote 10^9 eV.
>
>> An accelerator, the Berkeley Bevatron, was named after the BeV. Both
>> are now disused. These days, BeV would seem as quaint as millimicrons
>> or micromicrofarads.
>
>I am, of course, referring to internationally accepted SI standards, not
>some obscure American "we can use what we want" mock standards.
>
Obscure to whom? BeV was used before your cherished and arbitrary SI standards
were someone's wetdream.
LarryLard
news:3BEAAC54...@toast.net...
> The 1000/1024 confusion is another matter- within Windows, you can get two
> different characterizations of the capacity of a disk- on the same screen,
> my c drive free space is shown as 1,408,278,528 bytes ... 1.31 GB.
It used to be another matter, but as I found out only today was in fact
settled in December 1998, at least according to
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html, which tells us:
>
In December 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the
leading international organization for worldwide standardization in
electrotechnology, approved as an IEC International Standard names and
symbols for prefixes for binary multiples for use in the fields of data
processing and data transmission.
>
...said prefixes being the ugly (to my eye)
2^10 kibi Ki kilobinary: (2^10)^1 derivation: kilo: (10^3)^1
2^20 mebi Mi megabinary: (2^10)^2 mega: (10^3)^2
2^30 gibi Gi gigabinary: (2^10)^3 giga: (10^3)^3
on the basis that
>
Then data storage for gigabytes, and even terabytes, became practical, and
the storage devices were not constructed on binary trees, which meant that,
for many practical purposes, binary arithmetic was less convenient than
decimal arithmetic.
>
The page on SI prefixes says:
>
Because the SI prefixes strictly represent powers of 10, they should not be
used to represent powers of 2. Thus, one kilobit, or 1 kbit, is 1000 bit and
not 210 bit = 1024 bit. To alleviate this ambiguity, prefixes for binary
multiples have been adopted by the International Electrotechnical Commission
(IEC) for use in information technology.
>
I can't actually find a page for whichever organization is responsible for
the SI units, so this will have to do. Your c drive free space, if it is
1408278528 bytes, is a little over 1.4 GB, or about 1.31 GiB (eww).
--
Larry Lard. Replies to group please.
Joona I Palaste
And zeppelins were used before you had your fancy jet fighters. So
everyone should fly zeppelins instead of jet fighters.
The BeV thingy is obsolete. Quit clinging on to it for nostalgia and
use the standard. That's what it was meant for.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"How come even in my fantasies everyone is a jerk?"
- Daria Morgendorfer
Evan Kirshenbaum
> 'Fifteen gigayears' seems like a good way to do it.
No, let's stick to metric units. It's about 475 petaseconds, if I did
the math right.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There are just two rules of
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |governance in a free society: Mind
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |your own business. Keep your hands
|to yourself.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | P.J. O'Rourke
(650)857-7572
Murray Arnow
>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>>Joe Fineman <j...@theworld.com> scribbled the following:
>>>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes:
>>>
>>>>> Non-English-usagey comment about the subject line: There is no such
>>>>> thing as a "BeV". The suffix immediately after M is G.
>>>
>>>> BeV is old-fashioned U.S. usage. My copy of Leighton's _Principles of
>>>> Modern Physics_ (1959) lists GeV in the table of abbreviation at the
>>>> beginning, with the footnote
>>>
>>>> *In the American literature, BeV is used to denote 10^9 eV.
>>>
>>>> An accelerator, the Berkeley Bevatron, was named after the BeV. Both
>>>> are now disused. These days, BeV would seem as quaint as millimicrons
>>>> or micromicrofarads.
>>>
>>>I am, of course, referring to internationally accepted SI standards, not
>>>some obscure American "we can use what we want" mock standards.
>
>> Obscure to whom? BeV was used before your cherished and arbitrary SI
> standards
>> were someone's wetdream.
>
>And zeppelins were used before you had your fancy jet fighters. So
>everyone should fly zeppelins instead of jet fighters.
Now that is a brilliant, logical and non sequitur.
>The BeV thingy is obsolete. Quit clinging on to it for nostalgia and
>use the standard. That's what it was meant for.
>
It may be obsolete, but it did exist and was commonly used before GeV came on
the scene. There is nothing standard about SI usage in the real world. The MKS
and English systems are still used by engineers. The fact is that people use
whichever system is convenient for their work. I have seen the "standard" go
from MKS to CGS to SI (there are several flavors omitted in this "to"
sequence). I hope you don't become nostalgic about your cherished SI when it
is replaced by the new and better standard.
Joona I Palaste
> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>>>Joe Fineman <j...@theworld.com> scribbled the following:
>>>>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes:
>>>>
>>>>>> Non-English-usagey comment about the subject line: There is no such
>>>>>> thing as a "BeV". The suffix immediately after M is G.
>>>>
>>>>> BeV is old-fashioned U.S. usage. My copy of Leighton's _Principles of
>>>>> Modern Physics_ (1959) lists GeV in the table of abbreviation at the
>>>>> beginning, with the footnote
>>>>
>>>>> *In the American literature, BeV is used to denote 10^9 eV.
>>>>
>>>>> An accelerator, the Berkeley Bevatron, was named after the BeV. Both
>>>>> are now disused. These days, BeV would seem as quaint as millimicrons
>>>>> or micromicrofarads.
>>>>
>>>>I am, of course, referring to internationally accepted SI standards, not
>>>>some obscure American "we can use what we want" mock standards.
>>
>>> Obscure to whom? BeV was used before your cherished and arbitrary SI
>> standards
>>> were someone's wetdream.
>>
>>And zeppelins were used before you had your fancy jet fighters. So
>>everyone should fly zeppelins instead of jet fighters.
> Now that is a brilliant, logical and non sequitur.
It's an analogy to your brilliant "it's older, so it's better" way
of thinking.
>>The BeV thingy is obsolete. Quit clinging on to it for nostalgia and
>>use the standard. That's what it was meant for.
>>
> It may be obsolete, but it did exist and was commonly used before GeV came on
> the scene. There is nothing standard about SI usage in the real world. The MKS
> and English systems are still used by engineers. The fact is that people use
> whichever system is convenient for their work. I have seen the "standard" go
> from MKS to CGS to SI (there are several flavors omitted in this "to"
> sequence). I hope you don't become nostalgic about your cherished SI when it
> is replaced by the new and better standard.
Just because something is used more doesn't mean it's better. Just in
case you forgot, SI was designed by an official, international (yes,
_proper_ international, not American) committee. Who designed the
English system? Some 19th century English monarch?
The point I'm trying to make here is that SI is standard now, whether
you like it or not. Whatever system BeV belongs to is not.
If and when SI is officially (not American-officially, international-
officially) designated obsolete and replaced by a better system I will
start using that. But my point is (and this is important, so if you're
just woken up, pay close attention) IT HAS NOT YET BEEN.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"We sorcerers don't like to eat our words, so to say."
- Sparrowhawk
Aaron Davies
I think millihenries (presumbably written mH) are still around, aren't
they? It seems like a perfectly reasonable SI construction. How else
would you measure inductance?
--
Aaron Davies
ag...@columbia.edu
sig coming Soon(tm)
Ray Heindl
<9se7m8$on4$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>:
>>An accelerator, the Berkeley Bevatron, was named after the BeV.
>>Both are now disused. These days, BeV would seem as quaint as
>>millimicrons or micromicrofarads.
>
>I can remember when there was a confusion between British and
>American usage of BeV. A convention for usage was finally
>established with everyone understanding what a GeV was.
>
>As for the disappearance of millimicrons, millihenries,..., a great
>tradition of engineering poetry was confounded and is sadly missed.
What happened to millihenries? Has somebody invented a new unit for
inductance without telling me? Now, millimicrons I can do without;
they always remind me of megacycles, firkins, and suchlike antiquities.
--
Ray Heindl
Murray Arnow
If you read that in my reply, then you mistook my intention.
>>>The BeV thingy is obsolete. Quit clinging on to it for nostalgia and
>>>use the standard. That's what it was meant for.
>>>
>
>> It may be obsolete, but it did exist and was commonly used before GeV came on
>
>> the scene. There is nothing standard about SI usage in the real world. The
> MKS
>> and English systems are still used by engineers. The fact is that people use
>> whichever system is convenient for their work. I have seen the "standard" go
>
>> from MKS to CGS to SI (there are several flavors omitted in this "to"
>> sequence). I hope you don't become nostalgic about your cherished SI when it
>> is replaced by the new and better standard.
>
>Just because something is used more doesn't mean it's better. Just in
>case you forgot, SI was designed by an official, international (yes,
>_proper_ international, not American) committee. Who designed the
>English system? Some 19th century English monarch?
>The point I'm trying to make here is that SI is standard now, whether
>you like it or not. Whatever system BeV belongs to is not.
>If and when SI is officially (not American-officially, international-
>officially) designated obsolete and replaced by a better system I will
>start using that. But my point is (and this is important, so if you're
>just woken up, pay close attention) IT HAS NOT YET BEEN.
>
I'm awake, but you seem unable to understand what I am emphasizing. There is
nothing magical about a system of units, internationally agreed or otherwise.
The system used is the one which is most practical for the user. The system of
units does nothing to improve physics or engineering or commerce--try buying
diamonds by the kilogram or needle sizes in meters.
FYI, one thing that Gerald Ford did was make SI an official US system; there
is no mandatory usage in the US for non-governmental purposes. I don't give a
shit whether SI is or is not the standard. I use it when suites my needs, just
like everyone else. At some point you may find that not being a slave to a
committee's arbitrary choices more convenient than blind obedience.
Joe Fineman
> What, really? Geometry? Geography? I never knew that. Was those soft
> by the time they were in Latin?
They turned soft in medieval Latin, IIRC.
--
--- Joe Fineman j...@TheWorld.com
||: Scientists are linguistic engineers. :||
Donna Richoux
> tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) writes:
>
> > What, really? Geometry? Geography? I never knew that. Was those soft
> > by the time they were in Latin?
>
> They turned soft in medieval Latin, IIRC.
Thank you, Joe. What a mess I made of that question.
John Varela
> It's an analogy to your brilliant "it's older, so it's better" way
> of thinking.
He never said anything of the sort. What he said was that the term
pre-existed SI so obviously it could not have violated the SI conventions.
Get that chip off of your shoulder.
--
John Varela
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when
they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal
Glenn Booth
Evan Kirshenbaum <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote in message
news:upu6ta...@hpl.hp.com...
> John O'Flaherty <ofla...@toast.net> writes:
>
> > 'Fifteen gigayears' seems like a good way to do it.
>
> No, let's stick to metric units. It's about 475 petaseconds, if I
did
> the math right.
Metric ought to do it. We all know just how straightforward the
definition of 'one second' is, viz,
The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation
corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of
the
ground state of the cesium 133 atom
I think the world at large should understand that just fine.
Regards,
Glenn.
Glenn Booth
>
> > 'Fifteen gigayears' seems like a good way to do it.
>
> No, let's stick to metric units. It's about 475 petaseconds, if I
did
> the math right.
I agree that metric is the way to do it. After all, the definition is
nice
and simple.
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/second.html says,
"The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation
corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of
the
ground state of the cesium 133 atom".
Neither elegant or concise. I suppose that's what happens when we
insist on measuring things that nature did not intend to be measured.
Regards,
Glenn.
Joona I Palaste
> On Thu, 8 Nov 2001 20:57:54, Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>> It's an analogy to your brilliant "it's older, so it's better" way
>> of thinking.
> He never said anything of the sort. What he said was that the term
> pre-existed SI so obviously it could not have violated the SI conventions.
> Get that chip off of your shoulder.
It didn't violate them when it was invented, but it does violate them
now.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"The large yellow ships hung in the sky in exactly the same way that bricks
don't."
- Douglas Adams
R H Draney
wrote:
>In December 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the
>leading international organization for worldwide standardization in
>electrotechnology, approved as an IEC International Standard names and
>symbols for prefixes for binary multiples for use in the fields of data
>processing and data transmission.
>>
>
>...said prefixes being the ugly (to my eye)
>
>2^10 kibi Ki kilobinary: (2^10)^1 derivation: kilo: (10^3)^1
>2^20 mebi Mi megabinary: (2^10)^2 mega: (10^3)^2
>2^30 gibi Gi gigabinary: (2^10)^3 giga: (10^3)^3
It's a crying shame, then, that the people who sell hard drives, not
to mention the ones who label file sizes for downloads, don't use
these standard notations...I just wish I knew who to complain to....r
--
"It just *can't* be 2001! I'm still writing 19100 on all my checks!"
mplsray
"Murray Arnow" <ar...@iname.com> wrote in message
news:9seu9s$87m$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
The International Committee for Weights and Measures [CIPM] now lists the
"are" (a unit of area of the French *Système Métrique Décimal* of 1795)
among "Non-SI Units Temporarily Maintained," which makes the derived unit
"hectare" also non-SI. But I'm sure a lot of people in France still think of
their land in terms of hectares.
>
> FYI, one thing that Gerald Ford did was make SI an official US system;
there
> is no mandatory usage in the US for non-governmental purposes. I don't
give a
> shit whether SI is or is not the standard. I use it when suites my needs,
just
> like everyone else. At some point you may find that not being a slave to a
> committee's arbitrary choices more convenient than blind obedience.
>
mplsray
"Joe Fineman" <j...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:wk1yj8u...@TheWorld.com...
> tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) writes:
>
> > What, really? Geometry? Geography? I never knew that. Was those soft
> > by the time they were in Latin?
>
> They turned soft in medieval Latin, IIRC.
And from that developed the French version of soft G, /Z/, as in *Georges.*
Joona I Palaste
That's why we have prefixes. Did you really think the kilogram or the
metre were the only allowed SI units for mass and length? In that case
you really haven't understood a thing about the SI system.
There are these wonderful things called "kilo", "milli", "micro" and
so on. All of these (but not your "B" prefix that you cherish so much)
are official ISO standards.
Try buying diamonds by the gram or needle sizes in millimetres. You
will get a much better result - and, to your utter surprise, YOU ARE
ACTUALLY KEEPING IN THE SI STANDARD!!!!
> The International Committee for Weights and Measures [CIPM] now lists the
> "are" (a unit of area of the French *Système Métrique Décimal* of 1795)
> among "Non-SI Units Temporarily Maintained," which makes the derived unit
> "hectare" also non-SI. But I'm sure a lot of people in France still think of
> their land in terms of hectares.
So? There are probably hundreds of times more people who think
"wherefore" means "where" than those who know it means "why". (Look,
on-topic for AUE!) That doesn't mean the "where" interpretation is
right. Occam's razor says the way things ARE doesn't necessarily
correlate to the way things SHOULD BE. Occam has a point there.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"The truth is out there, man! Way out there!"
- Professor Ashfield
LarryLard
"Ray Heindl" <rhe...@nccw.net> wrote in message
news:Xns9153AA3D...@207.126.101.100...
> ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) wrote in
> <9se7m8$on4$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>:
> >As for the disappearance of millimicrons, millihenries,..., a great
> >tradition of engineering poetry was confounded and is sadly missed.
>
> What happened to millihenries? Has somebody invented a new unit for
> inductance without telling me? Now, millimicrons I can do without;
> they always remind me of megacycles, firkins, and suchlike antiquities.
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/units.html has the henry as the unit of
inductance. *shrug* but IANAPh.
Murray Arnow
>>
>> I'm awake, but you seem unable to understand what I am emphasizing. There
> is
>> nothing magical about a system of units, internationally agreed or
> otherwise.
>> The system used is the one which is most practical for the user. The
> system of
>> units does nothing to improve physics or engineering or commerce--try
> buying
>> diamonds by the kilogram or needle sizes in meters.
>That's why we have prefixes. Did you really think the kilogram or the
>metre were the only allowed SI units for mass and length? In that case
>you really haven't understood a thing about the SI system.
>There are these wonderful things called "kilo", "milli", "micro" and
>so on. All of these (but not your "B" prefix that you cherish so much)
>are official ISO standards.
>Try buying diamonds by the gram or needle sizes in millimetres. You
>will get a much better result - and, to your utter surprise, YOU ARE
>ACTUALLY KEEPING IN THE SI STANDARD!!!!
>
You're right, I'd be utterly surprised. Diamonds aren't commercially traded in
metric units of weight, SI or otherwise.
The official SI base units are meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole,
and candela. All the derived units are based on these. Technically, to be
compliant with you shouldn't do things like measure distance in
kilometers. But most people are flexible and use units more suited to the
job--ARE YOU ACTUALLY KEEPING THE SI STANDARD? I assume you do work in high
energy where the equations are normalized to set Planck's constant equal to 1.
Or maybe you are a Relativist normalizing the equations so the speed of light
equals 1? These conventions are used internationally (maybe not in Finland) to
simplify the manipulations of long mathematical expressions. You had better
crusade (I hope you're not Muslim) these poor benighted physicists to see the
light of joining the world and become SI compliant.
Finally, you keep exclaiming that I cherish "BeV." Please indicate to me where
I said "BeV" is preferable to "GeV."
mplsray
"Joona I Palaste" <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:9sg7gn$3ki$2...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
Joona I Palaste
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to
factor large prime numbers."
- Bill Gates
mplsray
"Joona I Palaste" <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:9sg7gn$3ki$2...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
Apples and oranges.
Most people have encountered "wherefore" only in the context of Juliet's
lament in "Romeo and Juliet": "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"
That people mistake Shakespeare's intent in writing this line is
regrettable, but it is nevertheless seen to be a minor error when compared
to all the other things there are to worry in the world.
(I might add, however, that as a result of the original error, "wherefore"
has taken on the meaning of "where" in mock-Elizabethan English. If you thus
attempt to interpret a sentence in mock-Elizabethan English by reading it as
"why," you are, in fact, making an error, because you are misreading the
intent of the author. It does no more good in such a case to say that the
author is in error than to say that a person from Central Illinois who says
"mango" for "bell pepper" is in error. If you wish to understand what the
author is saying, you sometimes need to look at the matter from his or her
point of view. If, on the other hand, the author is making a serious attempt
to correctly represent how an Elizabethan might have spoken, then the use of
"wherefore" for "where" is indeed an error.)
In the case of the use of "hectare" for a measurement of area, we are
talking about common usage: People say "hectare" to get something
accomplished, to transfer an idea from one person's brain to another. This
the word "hectare" does just fine in those parts of the world where it is in
everyday use. If there is truly an improvement to be had by replacing the
hectare with an SI measurement of area, it will eventually be done. (I
imagine it *is* an improvement and would expect scientists in the countries
where "hectare" is used to use the SI units instead. But considering that
some scientists and engineers here in the US still use the customary system,
I would expect not all scientists in cultures which use the hectare have
abandoned it entirely.)
The reference to Occam seemed to me to be out of place. Occam's razor is
intended to help in choosing between two competing theories. In my opinion,
it is inappropriate--puzzling, even-- to call upon it when talking about
English usage or even scientific standards. Scientific standards are not
theories, they are tools.
John O'Flaherty
> Evan Kirshenbaum <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote in message
> news:upu6ta...@hpl.hp.com...
> > John O'Flaherty <ofla...@toast.net> writes:
> >
> > > 'Fifteen gigayears' seems like a good way to do it.
> >
> > No, let's stick to metric units. It's about 475 petaseconds, if I
> did
> > the math right.
>
> I agree that metric is the way to do it. After all, the definition is
> nice
> and simple.
>
> http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/second.html says,
>
> "The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation
> corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of
> the
> ground state of the cesium 133 atom".
>
> Neither elegant or concise. I suppose that's what happens when we
> insist on measuring things that nature did not intend to be measured.
Well, you can paper over the clumsiness by just giving it a name. I
suggest 'cesiures'. Then our original 15 billion (US) years comes to ~
4,350 yottacesiures. Or, using an unofficial prefix I saw on the web, 4.35
lottacesiures.
--
john
mplsray
> Did you have something to say, mplsray?
>
I did, and I said it in another post. I didn't even realize I had sent a
message with no comments added by me, or I would have apologized in that
second post.
I did the same thing in the "Unloosen?" thread when replying to Joe Fineman.
I have no idea why.
t...@rosencrantz.stcloudstate.edu
R H Draney <dado...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Uh-oh...so do you want to hear the popular press saying "the universe,
>until recently thought to be fifteen thousand million years
>old--"?...or "one point five times ten to the tenth power years
>old"?...
What do folks actually say in the U.K.? No doubt someone who reads
this group has seen a BBC science program that mentions the age of the
Universe. As I understand it, "thousand million" is precisely the
correct form over there, although as I indicated in my previous post
it seems that U.S. terminology is gaining ground.
I should add that I've lived my entire life in the U.S., so I don't
really know. I have been in the U.K. numerous times, but I didn't
spent a lot of time there discussing subjects where numbers like 10^9
would come up.
>>I assume you're talking about the pronunciation of "Giga-." It's
>>quite common to complain about the soft-G pronunciation of this
>>prefix, especially in discussions of "Back to the Future." But my
>>dictionaries list the soft G sound as the preferred pronunciation,
>>with a hard G as the second choice.
>
>It's Greek; Greek doesn't *have* a soft G...that alone should settle
>it....r
I don't know what the antecedent of "It" is supposed to be here, but
the words I was talking about aren't Greek! I was talking about
English words like "gigawatt." The SI system of units being a
worldwide standard (except for one or two recalcitrant nations), I
assume there are various Greek words with the SI prefix "giga-" in
them, and I have no doubt that those words are pronounced with a hard
G, but that's not what I was talking about.
The prefix "giga-" that occurs in various English words is certainly
derived from Greek, but as everyone surely knows, words don't have the
same pronunciations that their constituent parts had in the languages
they were derived from. To take an obvious example, do you pronounce
the English word "gigantic" with a hard G? It's derived from
precisely the same Greek word.
-Ted
t...@rosencrantz.stcloudstate.edu
Ray Heindl <rhe...@nccw.net> wrote:
>
>What happened to millihenries?
The millihenry is a perfectly good SI unit, although I'd expect the
plural to be "millihenrys." American Heritage and Merriam-Webster
(the dictionaries I can most quickly lay my hands on right now) agree
with that but give "-ies" as an alternate.
As for BeV, as others have noted, it's a unit that's not used anymore.
It meant 10^9 electron volts, with the B standing for "billion," but
because the word "billion" means different things in different places
it was replaced quite a while ago with GeV. In fact, that's precisely
what we were talking about in sci.physics.research before the thread
wandered over here.
As long as I'm here, I will point out that the capitalization in BeV,
MeV, GeV is correct. (Someone elsewhere in the thread was wondering
about it.) The standard abbreviation for the unit of energy known as
the electron volt is eV, and the metric prefix for one million is M,
so a million electron volts is an MeV. If you made the V lowercase,
no doubt everyone would understand you correctly, but uppercase is the
standard. You definitely can't make the M lower case, of course -- m
means milli-, or 1/1000, so replacing M with m results in an error by
a factor of (ahem) a billion.
-Ted
t...@rosencrantz.stcloudstate.edu
Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>The BeV thingy is obsolete. Quit clinging on to it for nostalgia and
>use the standard. That's what it was meant for.
I completely agree. It's not clear to me who you're disagreeing with
here. I haven't seen anybody try to use BeV in any context other than
a historical one. In a historical context, of course, it's
inevitable. There's no getting away from the fact that an actual
device was made a few decades ago and called the bevatron.
-Ted
Matthew M. Huntbach
> In article <3bea2c4f....@news.earthlink.net>,
> R H Draney <dado...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >Uh-oh...so do you want to hear the popular press saying "the universe,
> >until recently thought to be fifteen thousand million years
> >old--"?...or "one point five times ten to the tenth power years
> >old"?...
> What do folks actually say in the U.K.? No doubt someone who reads
> this group has seen a BBC science program that mentions the age of the
> Universe. As I understand it, "thousand million" is precisely the
> correct form over there, although as I indicated in my previous post
> it seems that U.S. terminology is gaining ground.
These days I think the TV programme would just say "billion".
The usage of "billion" to mean "thousand million" is now universal
in the UK, and only pedants are left protesting.
Matthew Huntbach
Mike Page
Huntbach) wrote:
Concisely and accurately put.
Mike Page, BF(UU)
Let the ape escape for e-mail
Theodore Heise
> wrote:
>
> >I assume you're talking about the pronunciation of "Giga-." It's
> >quite common to complain about the soft-G pronunciation of this
> >prefix, especially in discussions of "Back to the Future." But my
> >dictionaries list the soft G sound as the preferred pronunciation,
> >with a hard G as the second choice.
>
> It's Greek; Greek doesn't *have* a soft G...that alone should settle
> it....r
Oh. That explains the pronunciation of gigantic.
--
Ted Heise <the...@netins.net> West Lafayette, IN, USA
Glenn Booth
Does anyone have a spare 'cancel' button? Mine appears
to be broken. Apologies for the double post.
Regards,
Glenn.
perchprism
"Glenn Booth" <glennr...@qtlg.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1005328306.24513....@news.demon.co.uk...
> Now how did _that_ happen?
>
> Does anyone have a spare 'cancel' button? Mine appears
> to be broken. Apologies for the double post.
Here's one I bought at a flea market. I'm not sure if it's any good, but you
can have it.
<cancel>
--
Perchprism
(southern New Jersey, near Philadelphia)
perchprism
"Glenn Booth" <glennr...@qtlg.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1005328306.24513....@news.demon.co.uk...
>
> Does anyone have a spare 'cancel' button? Mine appears
> to be broken. Apologies for the double post.
Here's one I bought at a flea market. I'm not sure if it's any good, but you
perchprism
"Glenn Booth" <glennr...@qtlg.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1005328306.24513....@news.demon.co.uk...
>
> Does anyone have a spare 'cancel' button? Mine appears
> to be broken. Apologies for the double post.
Here's one I bought at a flea market. I'm not sure if it's any good, but you
Murray Arnow
>
>"Glenn Booth" <glennr...@qtlg.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:1005328306.24513....@news.demon.co.uk...
>> Now how did _that_ happen?
>>
>> Does anyone have a spare 'cancel' button? Mine appears
>> to be broken. Apologies for the double post.
>
>Here's one I bought at a flea market. I'm not sure if it's any good, but you
>can have it.
>
><cancel>
>
It stutters.
R H Draney
I guess I need to increase my irony supplement....
But as long as I'm here, how do most people pronounce
"gigantopithecus", and the term "ape gigans" from "Journey to the
Center of the Earth"?...hard G or soft?...
I remember being told around third grade that "G is always soft before
E or I"...then immediately noticing all the *exceedingly* common
exceptions: girl, give, get....r
--
"I think it was when they told me that Sb stands for
antimony that I realized my teachers were not to
be trusted; I resolved thenceforth never to listen
to anything they had to say."
Joona I Palaste
Finally, someone who sees my point. I was disagreeing with Murray
Arnold. Of course, now that I've reread his words, I must say that
I overreacted a bit. He never said BeV was better than GeV. All he
said that there was no valid reason not to use BeV. I still say
there is, as it's an obsolete unit.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"A bicycle cannot stand up by itself because it's two-tyred."
- Sky Text
Gene Nygaard
> The official SI base units are meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole,
> and candela. All the derived units are based on these. Technically, to be
> compliant with you shouldn't do things like measure distance in
> kilometers.
Wrong. The prefixes are very much a part of SI.
Get it straight from the horse's mouth, in the BIPM's SI brochure at
http://www.bipm.fr
NIST SP 811 "Guide for the Use of the International System of Units
(SI),"
http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/
Murray Arnow
>ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) wrote in message
> news:<9sgoeu$790$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>...
>
>> The official SI base units are meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole,
>
>> and candela. All the derived units are based on these. Technically, to be
>> compliant with you shouldn't do things like measure distance in
>> kilometers.
>
>Wrong. The prefixes are very much a part of SI.
>
You're right. I realized the blunder after posting. I was aiming at a
different target but put the wrong caliber round in the breech.
Murray Arnow
>
>Finally, someone who sees my point. I was disagreeing with Murray
>Arnold. Of course, now that I've reread his words, I must say that
>I overreacted a bit. He never said BeV was better than GeV. All he
>said that there was no valid reason not to use BeV. I still say
>there is, as it's an obsolete unit.
>
If Murray Arnold said there was no valid reason not to use BeV, I agree with
you. But I never said any such thing. Remember this started when someone,
using your name, said there was no such thing as "BeV." My response was to
question the soundness of your dictionary. Then we were off to the races.
Joona I Palaste
First, sorry I got your surname wrong. Second, it was me all along.
I simply had not read any other measurement unit standard other than
SI.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"C++ looks like line noise."
- Fred L. Baube III
Rob Bannister
I would have preferred to say 'official' rather than universal. On the
whole, I take 'billion" to mean "large number" and look for scientific
notation (10^9) for factual information. I don't think 'trillion' has ever
been widely used in the UK, Australia or NZ.
-- Rob Bannister
Rob Bannister
> The International Committee for Weights and Measures [CIPM] now lists the
> "are" (a unit of area of the French *Système Métrique Décimal* of 1795)
> among "Non-SI Units Temporarily Maintained," which makes the derived unit
> "hectare" also non-SI. But I'm sure a lot of people in France still think of
> their land in terms of hectares.
Interesting: I thought the French were alone in using the are, along with
non-standard units like the decametre. In Australia, land is measured in
hectares, although buildings are often measured in 'squares' and I've never
really understood how big they are.
-- Rob Bannister
John Varela
> ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) wrote in message news:<9sgoeu$790$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>...
>
> > The official SI base units are meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole,
> > and candela. All the derived units are based on these. Technically, to be
> > compliant with you shouldn't do things like measure distance in
> > kilometers.
>
> Wrong. The prefixes are very much a part of SI.
That's why 1,000 kilometers is improper; it should be described as one
megameter. Right?
--
John Varela
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when
they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal
mplsray
"Rob Bannister" <rob...@it.net.au> wrote in message
news:3BEDD9C1...@it.net.au...
mplsray wrote:
From the online *Macquarie Concise Dictionary,* an Australian dictionary:
From
http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/
"square [...] _Australian Building Trades_ a former unit of surface
measurement equalling 100 square feet."
Ray Heindl
<9sm54...@enews4.newsguy.com>:
>> Interesting: I thought the French were alone in using the are,
>> along with non-standard units like the decametre. In Australia,
>> land is measured in hectares, although buildings are often
>> measured in 'squares' and I've
>never
>> really understood how big they are.
>
>From the online *Macquarie Concise Dictionary,* an Australian
>dictionary:
>
>From
>http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/
>
>"square [...] _Australian Building Trades_ a former unit of surface
>measurement equalling 100 square feet."
The same unit is used for measurement of roofing materials in the US.
It seems to be quite specialized, as it's apparently not used for any
other materials.
The resistivity of conductive films is measured in 'ohms per square'.
Everyone always asks "per square _what_?", but it turns out not to
matter what the unit of length is, as long as the area being measured
is square.
--
Ray Heindl
Rob Bannister
Thanks. I know I've been told that many times, but then I always forget whether
it was 100 sq ft or 10 sq yds or metres or what. I think my problem is that I
have no idea what 100 sq ft looks like.
BTW, mostly I had no difficulty with the change to IS in everyday life, except
with height. Ok, if someone says a hill is 1000 m high, I can think 'about
3000 ft, but with people's heights, I have no idea and can rarely remember my
own. I was discussing this with a builder friend who just looked at me and
said, "Oh, about 1730 mils." - which was pretty accurate. All our builders seem
to work exclusively in millimetres.
-- Rob Bannister
J. J. Lodder
> On Sat, 10 Nov 2001 14:08:01, gnyg...@nccray.com (Gene Nygaard) wrote:
>
> > ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) wrote in message
> > news:<9sgoeu$790$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>...
> >
> > > The official SI base units are meter, kilogram, second, ampere,
> > > kelvin, mole, and candela. All the derived units are based on these.
> > > Technically, to be compliant with you shouldn't do things like measure
> > > distance in kilometers.
> >
> > Wrong. The prefixes are very much a part of SI.
>
> That's why 1,000 kilometers is improper; it should be described as one
> megameter. Right?
Wrong. There is no rule that says you have to use the nearest metric
prefix.
The only rule is that prefixes should not accumulate:
one kilokilometer would be a mistake.
Is sometimes sinned against: as in hectokilopascal for example,
to replace the equally outdated bar.
Jan
J. J. Lodder
All over the civilized world actually, (Anglo-Saxonia excepted)
for purposes of sale of land.
You still buy ares and hectares with your house,
not square meters.
Jan
Gene Nygaard
wrote:
>On Sat, 10 Nov 2001 14:08:01, gnyg...@nccray.com (Gene Nygaard) wrote:
>
>> ar...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) wrote in message news:<9sgoeu$790$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>...
>>
>> > The official SI base units are meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole,
>> > and candela. All the derived units are based on these. Technically, to be
>> > compliant with you shouldn't do things like measure distance in
>> > kilometers.
>>
>> Wrong. The prefixes are very much a part of SI.
>
>That's why 1,000 kilometers is improper; it should be described as one
>megameter. Right?
No, that is something different, and 1,000 kilometers is generally
acceptable; it's only for larger numbers where that choice of prefix
is a matter of judgment can be criticized. There is a preference for
choosing a prefix such that the number can be expressed in the range
from 0.1 to 1000, but that is not a hard and fast rule. There is
also, for example, a preference for sticking with one prefix if most
of the numbers turn out like this but a few are outside that range.
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/
Gene Nygaard
I haven't seen that, but fuel consumption sometimes used to be
expressed in the now-improper liters per hectokilometer. Other double
prefixes that used to be common were millimicrons or micromillimeters,
and micromicrofarads. You don't see them to any significant extent
any more.
Bars are so outdated that they didn't even fit in with the cgs
predecessors of the International System of Units. The coherent cgs
unit of pressure is the barye, equal to 1 dyne per square centimeter
(i.e., only 0.000001 bar).
There is also a strong preference (dating back even to the cgs days,
with exceptions there for the base unit which didn't fit the rule) for
those prefixes which are powers of 1000. Yet there are those
screwballs who try to hang onto obsolete units by cloaking them in
pseudo-SI names, such as the meteorolists who use hectopascals in the
face of pressure to get rid of the obsolete millibars, rather than the
proper kilopascals as we hear on the Canadian weather reports.
Another example is soils scientists using dS/m (decisiemens per meter)
to hang onto their favorite obsolete unit, millimhos per centimeter.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/hectopas.htm
Gene Nygaard
Don Aitken
wrote:
>mplsray wrote:
>
>> "Rob Bannister" <rob...@it.net.au> wrote in message
>> news:3BEDD9C1...@it.net.au...
>> >In Australia, land is measured in
>> > hectares, although buildings are often measured in 'squares' and I've
>> never really understood how big they are.
>>
>> From the online *Macquarie Concise Dictionary,* an Australian dictionary:
>>
>> From
>> http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/
>>
>> "square [...] _Australian Building Trades_ a former unit of surface
>> measurement equalling 100 square feet."
>
>Thanks. I know I've been told that many times, but then I always forget
>whether it was 100 sq ft or 10 sq yds or metres or what. I think my
>problem is that I have no idea what 100 sq ft looks like.
>
But you know what 10 feet looks like, right? 100 sq ft=(10 ft)^2.
--
Don Aitken
Joona I Palaste
> Rob Bannister <rob...@it.net.au> wrote:
> Jan
At least here in Finland an are happens to be exactly one square
decametre, i.e. 100 square metres, and a hectare happens to be exactly
one square hectometre, i.e. 10000 square metres. You can see how they
coexist happily with the SI system.
Try that with your square feet or your square miles...
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"It was, er, quite bookish."
- Horace Boothroyd
Evan Kirshenbaum
> At least here in Finland an are happens to be exactly one square
> decametre, i.e. 100 square metres, and a hectare happens to be
> exactly one square hectometre, i.e. 10000 square metres. You can see
> how they coexist happily with the SI system. Try that with your
> square feet or your square miles...
Do you often find yourself converting between hectares and square
meters or square kilometers? Around here the conversion between
square feet, acres, and square miles happens sufficiently seldom that
it's no great hardship to have to look it up the few times a decade
you need to remember that there are 640 acres in a square mile or
43,560 square feet in an acre.[1] Pretty much everything ordinary
people are likely to deal with is in square feet (occasionally square
yards; for small areas, square inches).
[1] Yeah, it's ugly, but, as I said, you never care.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |All tax revenue is the result of
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |holding a gun to somebody's head.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |Not paying taxes is against the law.
|If you don't pay your taxes, you'll
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |be fined. If you don't pay the fine,
(650)857-7572 |you'll be jailed. If you try to
|escape from jail, you'll be shot.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | P.J. O'Rourke
J. J. Lodder
> On Mon, 12 Nov 2001 12:30:50 +0100, nos...@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J.
> Lodder) wrote:
> >Is sometimes sinned against: as in hectokilopascal for example,
> >to replace the equally outdated bar.
>
> I haven't seen that, but fuel consumption sometimes used to be
> expressed in the now-improper liters per hectokilometer.
Never seen a hectokilometer,
always as liter/100 km.
> Other double
> prefixes that used to be common were millimicrons or micromillimeters,
> and micromicrofarads. You don't see them to any significant extent
> any more.
>
> Bars are so outdated that they didn't even fit in with the cgs
> predecessors of the International System of Units. The coherent cgs
> unit of pressure is the barye, equal to 1 dyne per square centimeter
> (i.e., only 0.000001 bar).
???????????
Tyre pressures are often given in bar.
Just look at the booklet that came with your car,
or on the list at a filling station.
(assuming you're out of psi country)
Only quite recently beginning to be replaced by the kiloPascal (kPa)
And not cgs at all, a bar is defined as 10^5 Pa.
I even have a new tyre that says: max load ... N, at ...kPa,
next to ther obligatory DOT rating in pounds and psi.
> There is also a strong preference (dating back even to the cgs days,
> with exceptions there for the base unit which didn't fit the rule) for
> those prefixes which are powers of 1000. Yet there are those
> screwballs who try to hang onto obsolete units by cloaking them in
> pseudo-SI names, such as the meteorolists who use hectopascals in the
> face of pressure to get rid of the obsolete millibars, rather than the
> proper kilopascals as we hear on the Canadian weather reports.
Styles vary with country: some use hectopascals,
which is of course just millibar by another name,
others have switched to kPa.
Best,
Jan
J. J. Lodder
> No, that is something different, and 1,000 kilometers is generally
> acceptable; it's only for larger numbers where that choice of prefix
> is a matter of judgment can be criticized. There is a preference for
> choosing a prefix such that the number can be expressed in the range
> from 0.1 to 1000, but that is not a hard and fast rule. There is
> also, for example, a preference for sticking with one prefix if most
> of the numbers turn out like this but a few are outside that range.
From a 'nuclear winter' report:
"Explosion of 1000 Megatons total of nuclear weapons
will lift order 1000 teragrams of dust into the stratosphere"
Obvious: nukes are big, dust is fine :-)
Jan
Joe Manfre
> ???????????
> Tyre pressures are often given in bar.
> Just look at the booklet that came with your car,
> or on the list at a filling station.
> (assuming you're out of psi country)
Eh?
In what sort of accent does "station" rhyme with "country"?
JM
--
Joe Manfre, Hyattsville, Maryland.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is
the dismemberment plan." -- MegaHAL
Gene Nygaard
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes:
>
>> At least here in Finland an are happens to be exactly one square
>> decametre, i.e. 100 square metres, and a hectare happens to be
>> exactly one square hectometre, i.e. 10000 square metres. You can see
>> how they coexist happily with the SI system. Try that with your
>> square feet or your square miles...
>
>Do you often find yourself converting between hectares and square
>meters or square kilometers? Around here the conversion between
>square feet, acres, and square miles happens sufficiently seldom that
>it's no great hardship to have to look it up the few times a decade
>you need to remember that there are 640 acres in a square mile or
>43,560 square feet in an acre.[1] Pretty much everything ordinary
>people are likely to deal with is in square feet (occasionally square
>yards; for small areas, square inches).
>
>[1] Yeah, it's ugly, but, as I said, you never care.
I can never understand reports in the media of a wildfire covering
370,000 acres or even a few million acres until I convert it to either
square kilometers or square miles. Yet that's something we see all
the time.
My measuring wheel with 0.1 chain per revolution is handy. They are
readily available, yet few people know how to use them to measure
areas of rectangular fields in acres. In ordinary conversation in
this still-agricultural area, rods are still often used for distances
in reference to fields; they are easier to use than feet in
calculating acres, but not a whole lot easier. When I was young, I
used to help my Dad when he measured fields for the U.S. government,
using 1 100 ft tape, resulting of course in the more difficult
calculations of acres.
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/
Evan Kirshenbaum
> From a 'nuclear winter' report:
>
> "Explosion of 1000 Megatons total of nuclear weapons
> will lift order 1000 teragrams of dust into the stratosphere"
>
> Obvious: nukes are big, dust is fine :-)
With whom?
I'm not actually sure that you can do explosive force in less than
tons without resorting to something like "equivalent to n
pounds/kilograms of TNT". I see that Google reports a few hundred
hits for "n kilogram bomb", but they seem to be split between speaking
about the power of the bomb and its actual weight. I might be tempted
to resort to "millitons".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The misinformation that passes for
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |gospel wisdom about English usage
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |is sometimes astounding.
| Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | of English Usage
(650)857-7572
Rob Bannister
Like a small room. OK. I was going to dig out my title deed to check how big my
unit (condo?) is, but I'm too lazy.
-- Rob Bannister
Evan Kirshenbaum
> I can never understand reports in the media of a wildfire covering
> 370,000 acres or even a few million acres until I convert it to
> either square kilometers or square miles. Yet that's something we
> see all the time.
But does it really help? That is, do you have any better referent for
500-odd square miles than for 370,000 acres? Does it ever cause you
to say "oh, that's not as big as I thought it was"? Or is it just a
convenient way of saying "a really big area, and by the way, about
three times as big as the one reported last week"? I tend to treat it
as the latter, having neither the referent nor a good conception of
how that size relates to the area in general.
I guess that if I really want to picture it, I can come up with a
referent for a square about 24 miles on a side, but I don't know that
that's that much better than "about two million times the size of my
parents' lot".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If I am ever forced to make a
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |choice between learning and using
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |win32, or leaving the computer
|industry, let me just say it was
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |nice knowing all of you. :-)
(650)857-7572 | Randal Schwartz
Gene Nygaard
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>gnyg...@nccray.com (Gene Nygaard) writes:
>
>> I can never understand reports in the media of a wildfire covering
>> 370,000 acres or even a few million acres until I convert it to
>> either square kilometers or square miles. Yet that's something we
>> see all the time.
>
>But does it really help? That is, do you have any better referent for
>500-odd square miles than for 370,000 acres?
Sure. It's about 24 miles square. Or roughly 20 miles by 30 miles.
Or convert it further into 16 townships, or a block 4 townships on a
side. That works in areas such as the western United States where
areas are neatly laid out in these survey townships.
>Does it ever cause you
>to say "oh, that's not as big as I thought it was"?
Yes.
>Or is it just a
>convenient way of saying "a really big area, and by the way, about
>three times as big as the one reported last week"?
You can tell the change. But if that's all it is, why stop there--you
can really wow everybody if you start talking "billions" and
"trillions" of square inches, and I don't really care how you define
the -illionsd. Why mess around with Fred Flintstone units if they are
only used to give us that size relative to last week's figure? Square
kilometers will do as well, won't they?
>I tend to treat it
>as the latter, having neither the referent nor a good conception of
>how that size relates to the area in general.
Exactly. We don't have any referent, so there is no good reason to
use these units. Furthermore, if you look carefully at the reported
numbers, they are usually converted from whole sections or quarter
sections in the first place--or from some other sum of rectangular
areas measured in miles. So why not just use square miles?
>I guess that if I really want to picture it, I can come up with a
>referent for a square about 24 miles on a side, but I don't know that
>that's that much better than "about two million times the size of my
>parents' lot".
With the latter, I'd have no idea whatsoever how far I'd need to go to
encompass that area.
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, 1790
R J Valentine
} J. J. Lodder (nos...@de-ster.demon.nl) wrote:
}
}> ???????????
}> Tyre pressures are often given in bar.
}> Just look at the booklet that came with your car,
}> or on the list at a filling station.
}> (assuming you're out of psi country)
}
} Eh?
}
} In what sort of accent does "station" rhyme with "country"?
Aren't they both pronounced "chumley" in England?
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@smart.net>
(Of course in Ireland there'd be another line after.)
Joona I Palaste
> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes:
>> At least here in Finland an are happens to be exactly one square
>> decametre, i.e. 100 square metres, and a hectare happens to be
>> exactly one square hectometre, i.e. 10000 square metres. You can see
>> how they coexist happily with the SI system. Try that with your
>> square feet or your square miles...
> Do you often find yourself converting between hectares and square
> meters or square kilometers? Around here the conversion between
> square feet, acres, and square miles happens sufficiently seldom that
> it's no great hardship to have to look it up the few times a decade
> you need to remember that there are 640 acres in a square mile or
> 43,560 square feet in an acre.[1] Pretty much everything ordinary
> people are likely to deal with is in square feet (occasionally square
> yards; for small areas, square inches).
> [1] Yeah, it's ugly, but, as I said, you never care.
If you'd taken the trouble to learn the SI system in the first place
you would see that it is so much easier than your system that you
actually find yourself converting between hectares and square metres
and square kilometres in your head, just because it's so easy.
It's a classic American argument against the SI system that "No one
will ever learn it, so why use it?" They're missing the fact that
about 90% of the whole world (which in itself seems to be an unknown
concept to some Americans) use the SI system intuitively and have
troubles understanding the American system.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"Shh! The maestro is decomposing!"
- Gary Larson
J. J. Lodder
> J. J. Lodder <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> scribbled the following:
> > All over the civilized world actually, (Anglo-Saxonia excepted)
> > for purposes of sale of land.
>
> > You still buy ares and hectares with your house,
> > not square meters.
> At least here in Finland an are happens to be exactly one square
> decametre, i.e. 100 square metres, and a hectare happens to be exactly
> one square hectometre, i.e. 10000 square metres. You can see how they
> coexist happily with the SI system.
> Try that with your square feet or your square miles...
Indeed, and perhaps more surprisingly,
A square meter is called a centiare,
at least in legal documents.
The founding fathers of SI thought a separarate area unit useful:
in their day there were many measures of area in use,
with all kinds of curious names,
based on for example what a team of oxen could plow in a day.
Accurate mapping based on linear measurement and triangulation
become the norm only in the 19th.
(With the 'cadastre' ordered by Napoleon, for taxation purposes.)
And it hasn't really penetrated yet:
builders and real estate salesman still often say 'meters'
when they mean 'square meters',
Jan
J. J. Lodder
> Do you often find yourself converting between hectares and square
> meters or square kilometers? Around here the conversion between
> square feet, acres, and square miles happens sufficiently seldom that
> it's no great hardship to have to look it up the few times a decade
> you need to remember that there are 640 acres in a square mile or
> 43,560 square feet in an acre.
If you want to level your terrain,
or design a swimming pool,
or order concrete to be poured,
the metric system does have some added conveniences :-)
Not to mention guiding Mars-landers.
But we are getting off-topic, for aue,
Jan
R H Draney
wrote:
>If you'd taken the trouble to learn the SI system in the first place
>you would see that it is so much easier than your system that you
>actually find yourself converting between hectares and square metres
>and square kilometres in your head, just because it's so easy.
>It's a classic American argument against the SI system that "No one
>will ever learn it, so why use it?" They're missing the fact that
>about 90% of the whole world (which in itself seems to be an unknown
>concept to some Americans) use the SI system intuitively and have
>troubles understanding the American system.
How familiar are you with the Japanese method for describing the size
of rooms?...at http://fp.uni.edu/ljohnson/apartmen.htm there is an
example with explanation, from which I quote the pertinent passage:
"Our tatami room is 8 tatami's big. They measure the room by the
number of tatami mats that fit into the room. A tatami mat measures
about 175cmx85cm."
Imagine that...a non-square unit of area...I'd be interested in
hearing from anyone (Iwasaki-san?) familiar enough with this system to
tell us whether it sounds strange to hear a room described in square
feet or square meters....r
--
"The difference between a viola and a
trampoline is that you have to take off
your shoes to jump on a trampoline."
Murray Arnow
>will ever learn it, so why use it?" They're missing the fact that
>about 90% of the whole world (which in itself seems to be an unknown
>concept to some Americans) use the SI system intuitively and have
>troubles understanding the American system.
>
We actually tripped over a usage problem. I interpret "classic American
argument" to mean the government or its agencies argue against the SI system.
In fact it is official and in use. The military is the largest user of SI
units. American industry waivers in its adoption. It is an expensive
conversion and the rewards are sometimes doubtful, particularly when you are
mostly interested in domestic consumption. When the economic benefit is
demonstrable, I assure that the SI system will become ubiquitous.
Joona I Palaste
The American military may well use SI, but there's more to the USA than
the military. Every slack-jawed redneck who says "No un undahstoods da
new-fangled SI siss-tem" is a hindrace of the SI system's ubiquity.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"It's not survival of the fattest, it's survival of the fittest."
- Ludvig von Drake
Murray Arnow
>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>>
>>>It's a classic American argument against the SI system that "No one
>>>will ever learn it, so why use it?" They're missing the fact that
>>>about 90% of the whole world (which in itself seems to be an unknown
>>>concept to some Americans) use the SI system intuitively and have
>>>troubles understanding the American system.
>
>> We actually tripped over a usage problem. I interpret "classic American
>> argument" to mean the government or its agencies argue against the SI system.
>
>> In fact it is official and in use. The military is the largest user of SI
>> units. American industry waivers in its adoption. It is an expensive
>> conversion and the rewards are sometimes doubtful, particularly when you are
>> mostly interested in domestic consumption. When the economic benefit is
>> demonstrable, I assure that the SI system will become ubiquitous.
>
>The American military may well use SI, but there's more to the USA than
>the military. Every slack-jawed redneck who says "No un undahstoods da
>new-fangled SI siss-tem" is a hindrace of the SI system's ubiquity.
>
I think you are being overcome by fervor. It isn't a question of
understanding; it is a question of economics.
Joona I Palaste
Sorry. Before I can decide whether or not to make a counterargument I
need to know what "fervor" is. I have never seen that word before.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"A bicycle cannot stand up by itself because it's two-tyred."
- Sky Text
Murray Arnow
Joona I Palaste
Thanks. So fervor is "intensity of feeling, as in passion". Hmm. You
could be right. So the problem is not that Americans are too stupid -
which most of them aren't - it's that the change costs too much.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"I am looking for myself. Have you seen me somewhere?"
- Anon
Joona I Palaste
It could also read:
"Explosion of 1 gigaton total of nuclear weapons will lift order 1
petagram of dust into the stratosphere"
Peta means "one thousand million million". After that come exa, zetta
and yotta. Yotta is 10^24 and big enough for most everyday needs.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"The large yellow ships hung in the sky in exactly the same way that bricks
don't."
- Douglas Adams
Murray Arnow
>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>>>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>>>>The American military may well use SI, but there's more to the USA than
>>>>>the military. Every slack-jawed redneck who says "No un undahstoods da
>>>>>new-fangled SI siss-tem" is a hindrace of the SI system's ubiquity.
>>>
>>>> I think you are being overcome by fervor. It isn't a question of
>>>> understanding; it is a question of economics.
>>>
>>>Sorry. Before I can decide whether or not to make a counterargument I
>>>need to know what "fervor" is. I have never seen that word before.
>>>
>
>> If you don't have a good English dictionary at hand, I recommend
>
>> www.m-w.com
>
>Thanks. So fervor is "intensity of feeling, as in passion". Hmm. You
>could be right. So the problem is not that Americans are too stupid -
>which most of them aren't - it's that the change costs too much.
>
Not that it costs too much, but that there is insufficient reward to change.
Joona I Palaste
Being finally able to understand 90% of the world and have 90% of the
world understand them is "insufficient" for the Americans? Excuse me?
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"To know me IS to love me."
- JIPsoft
Murray Arnow
>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>>>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>>>>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>>>>>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>>>>>>The American military may well use SI, but there's more to the USA than
>>>>>>>the military. Every slack-jawed redneck who says "No un undahstoods da
>>>>>>>new-fangled SI siss-tem" is a hindrace of the SI system's ubiquity.
>>>>>
>>>>>> I think you are being overcome by fervor. It isn't a question of
>>>>>> understanding; it is a question of economics.
>>>>>
>>>>>Sorry. Before I can decide whether or not to make a counterargument I
>>>>>need to know what "fervor" is. I have never seen that word before.
>>>>>
>>>
>>>> If you don't have a good English dictionary at hand, I recommend
>>>
>>>> www.m-w.com
>>>
>>>Thanks. So fervor is "intensity of feeling, as in passion". Hmm. You
>>>could be right. So the problem is not that Americans are too stupid -
>>>which most of them aren't - it's that the change costs too much.
>>>
>
>> Not that it costs too much, but that there is insufficient reward to change.
>
>Being finally able to understand 90% of the world and have 90% of the
>world understand them is "insufficient" for the Americans? Excuse me?
>
When "understand" has an economic benefit, then there is sufficiency. We
Americans seem to be communistic than the rest of the world.
Joona I Palaste
> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>>
>>Being finally able to understand 90% of the world and have 90% of the
>>world understand them is "insufficient" for the Americans? Excuse me?
>>
> When "understand" has an economic benefit, then there is sufficiency. We
> Americans seem to be communistic than the rest of the world.
"Communistic than"? Does that mean "more communistic than" or "less
communistic than"? I never thought I'd hear an American call Americans
"communistic".
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On 12 Nov 2001 17:07:12 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
> <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>
> >gnyg...@nccray.com (Gene Nygaard) writes:
> >
> >> I can never understand reports in the media of a wildfire
> >> covering 370,000 acres or even a few million acres until I
> >> convert it to either square kilometers or square miles. Yet
> >> that's something we see all the time.
> >
> >But does it really help? That is, do you have any better referent
> >for 500-odd square miles than for 370,000 acres?
>
> Sure. It's about 24 miles square. Or roughly 20 miles by 30 miles.
Which one? :-)
> Or convert it further into 16 townships, or a block 4 townships on a
> side. That works in areas such as the western United States where
> areas are neatly laid out in these survey townships.
Okay, I guess I lied, since I grew up in a city laid out on a similar
grid, and 10 acres was precisely a square block. But "37,000 square
blocks" is just as much a gee-whiz number as "370,000 acres" or "500
square miles".
> >Does it ever cause you to say "oh, that's not as big as I thought
> >it was"?
>
> Yes.
I suspect you (and even I) may be unusual in that regard.
> >Or is it just a convenient way of saying "a really big area, and by
> >the way, about three times as big as the one reported last week"?
>
> You can tell the change. But if that's all it is, why stop
> there--you can really wow everybody if you start talking "billions"
> and "trillions" of square inches, and I don't really care how you
> define the -illionsd. Why mess around with Fred Flintstone units if
> they are only used to give us that size relative to last week's
> figure? Square kilometers will do as well, won't they?
Sure they would, except for the few times people actually care to
convert. If the press wanted to replace one meaningless but
comparable unit for a seldom-measured quantity with another, I suspect
that people would cope in much the same way they did when
pharmaceutical strength stopped being given in grains and started
being given in milligrams or car manufacturers started talking about
liters. Hectares would work, too. So would chos. Acres and square
miles have the advantage that there is a reference object for most
people.
> >I tend to treat it as the latter, having neither the referent nor a
> >good conception of how that size relates to the area in general.
>
> Exactly. We don't have any referent, so there is no good reason to
> use these units. Furthermore, if you look carefully at the reported
> numbers, they are usually converted from whole sections or quarter
> sections in the first place--or from some other sum of rectangular
> areas measured in miles. So why not just use square miles?
Tradition, I suspect, as well as the fact that while we tend to see
reports of large fires, I suspect that the vast majority of fires that
are reported are of a size for which a referent of a single acre would
be useful, and they just use the same units when things are larger.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There are two types of people -
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |those who are one of the two types
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |of people, and those who are not.
| Leigh Blue Caldwell
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Skitt
"Joona I Palaste" <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:9srrus$eos$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
> Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
> > When "understand" has an economic benefit, then there is sufficiency. We
> > Americans seem to be communistic than the rest of the world.
>
> "Communistic than"? Does that mean "more communistic than" or "less
> communistic than"? I never thought I'd hear an American call Americans
> "communistic".
ObAUE: That little mistake reminds me of what I do on a daily basis --
adjust my wife's "<something> than" to "more <something> than" in all cases.
She is not making a mistake, as that is a Filipino usage. I have no idea
how they express the "less" version. Must be by an entirely different
locution, as I have never noticed an interpretation problem with it.
The above also applies to the what would normally be the -er suffixed
qualities. Expressions like "Jane is pretty than Mary" are common to
Filipinos, I have found.
--
Skitt (in SF Bay Area) http://www.geocities.com/opus731/
I speak English well -- I learn it from a book!
-- Manuel of "Fawlty Towers" (he's from Barcelona).
Murray Arnow
>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
>>>Murray Arnow <ar...@iname.com> scribbled the following:
>>>> Not that it costs too much, but that there is insufficient reward to
> change.
>>>
>>>Being finally able to understand 90% of the world and have 90% of the
>>>world understand them is "insufficient" for the Americans? Excuse me?
>>>
>
>> When "understand" has an economic benefit, then there is sufficiency. We
>> Americans seem to be communistic than the rest of the world.
>
>"Communistic than"? Does that mean "more communistic than" or "less
>communistic than"? I never thought I'd hear an American call Americans
>"communistic".
>
You're quite young aren't you?
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Evan Kirshenbaum <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> scribbled the following:
> > Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> writes:
>
> >> At least here in Finland an are happens to be exactly one square
> >> decametre, i.e. 100 square metres, and a hectare happens to be
> >> exactly one square hectometre, i.e. 10000 square metres. You can
> >> see how they coexist happily with the SI system. Try that with
> >> your square feet or your square miles...
>
> > Do you often find yourself converting between hectares and square
> > meters or square kilometers? Around here the conversion between
> > square feet, acres, and square miles happens sufficiently seldom
> > that it's no great hardship to have to look it up the few times a
> > decade you need to remember that there are 640 acres in a square
> > mile or 43,560 square feet in an acre.[1] Pretty much everything
> > ordinary people are likely to deal with is in square feet
> > (occasionally square yards; for small areas, square inches).
>
> > [1] Yeah, it's ugly, but, as I said, you never care.
>
> If you'd taken the trouble to learn the SI system in the first place
> you would see that it is so much easier than your system that you
> actually find yourself converting between hectares and square metres
> and square kilometres in your head, just because it's so easy.
Then I'm glad I didn't[1], as I have plenty to occupy my time without
resorting to performing useless unit conversions. Here, pretty much
anything you're likely to deal with will be given in square feet, and
the conversion from this to square feet is pretty trivial.
(Occasionally you'll see things sold by the square yard, but most
people will do the math in square feet and divide by nine at the end.)
> It's a classic American argument against the SI system that "No one
> will ever learn it, so why use it?" They're missing the fact that
> about 90% of the whole world (which in itself seems to be an unknown
> concept to some Americans) use the SI system intuitively and have
> troubles understanding the American system.
It may be a classic American argument, but it was *not* the one I put
forth. My argument was that the difficulties non-Americans see in our
system tend to hinge on unpleasant conversions that people rarely, if
ever, in fact have to perform. The actual system *as actually used*
is pretty straightforward, certainly no more difficult than the system
of time that people in the rest of the world handle with ease. So the
argument is more "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." There are, of
course, good reasons[2] why 10 *isn't* necessarily a good base for a
measurement system, and a good case can be made that there is a
psychological salience to a unit about the size of a foot that the
metric system lacks, but those are different arguments as well.
[1] Actually, I did, but why burst your assumptions? We learned SI
units as kids--along with all of the "more common" units, and they
were pretty much the only units used in science classes after a
certain age. (This was back in the 1970s.) What I didn't do was
*internalize* them to the extent that they mean anything without
conversion to other units. Luckily, the approximate conversions
(a meter is a bit over three feet, a centimeter is about two and a
half inches, a kilometer is 1.6 miles, a kilogram is a bit over
two pounds, a liter is a little more than a quart) are simple
enough that they don't cause problems in practice.
[2] Having largely to do with the number of factors, important when
trying to partition things.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |I believe there are more instances
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |of the abridgment of the freedom of
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |the people by gradual and silent
|encroachments of those in power
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |than by violent and sudden
(650)857-7572 |usurpations.
| James Madison
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Joona I Palaste
> units as kids--along with all of the "more common" units, and they
> were pretty much the only units used in science classes after a
> certain age. (This was back in the 1970s.) What I didn't do was
> *internalize* them to the extent that they mean anything without
> conversion to other units. Luckily, the approximate conversions
> (a meter is a bit over three feet, a centimeter is about two and a
> half inches, a kilometer is 1.6 miles, a kilogram is a bit over
> two pounds, a liter is a little more than a quart) are simple
> enough that they don't cause problems in practice.
If the conversion factors between the American system and SI are the
only thing Americans know about SI, then it's no wonder people are
reluctant to accept it.
If they concentrated instead on the fact that in SI, every unit ever
is based on the number 10 - because that's the base of our natural
counting system, like it or not - they would find out the SI system
makes more sense than the American system.
People teaching the SI system in the USA should stop telling people how
many yards a metre is, how many miles a kilometre is, and so on. This
will only make Americans think "Oh, great. More ugly numbers we have
to worry about".
Instead, the people should teach that one metre is 1000 millimetres,
and one kilometre is 1000 metres. How much is 1000 times 1000? This can
be calculated in about one tenth of a second. 1 million. So one
kilometre is 1 million millimetres.
Try converting a mile into inches. I know a foot is 12 inches, and a
mile is something like 1544 feet or whatever[1]. 12 times 1544 is
18528, but this usually takes tens of seconds to minutes to calculate
in your head.
Minutes versus tenths of seconds - there is a visible efficiency
difference.
[1] My apologies if (no - because) this number is completely wrong.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"Nothing lasts forever - so why not destroy it now?"
- Quake