F
Fredxx
Guest
On 22/03/2023 14:06, NY wrote:
Which in itself is quite a shame. Base 12 would be easier and I spend
too much time with hexadecimal!
There are also some issues over the mile, where there is more than one
standard: The US survey mile is 0.999998 statute mile.
The statute mile being exactly 1,609.344m
\"The Natural Philosopher\" <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:tvf08h$l0k5$2@dont-email.me...
On 22/03/2023 01:12, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 21 Mar 2023 23:24:59 +0000, NY wrote:
At least Celsius makes the freezing and boiling point of the
earth\'s most common liquid nice round numbers 0 and 100.
I suppose you get used to it and it doesn\'t make all that much
difference
in everyday life but the compression throws me.
Indeed you DO get used to it.
And its difficult to tell the difference between one celsius and the
next one up.
By \"compression\" do you mean the fact that the range from freezing to
boiling is only 100 degrees Celsius but is 180 degrees Fahrenheit?
Given that there are fewer degrees C than degrees F in a given range of
temperatures (so each degree is \"bigger\"), I\'d have thought that a
change from n deg C to n+1 deg C would be *more* noticeable than a
change from n deg F to n+1 deg F.
I imagine that apart from in America, the number of people who still use
and prefer F to C is dwindling as older people (who know F) die off and
new people (who are brought up with C) are born.
I like a lot of things about \"the way we sued to do it in the past\" but
I draw the line at absurd systems of measurement like deg F, inches,
feet, yard, miles, ounces, pounds, stones, hundredweight which use every
base under the sun except the only one that matters - base 10 which we
are taught to calculate in.
Which in itself is quite a shame. Base 12 would be easier and I spend
too much time with hexadecimal!
There are also units which have the same
name but different sizes: for example the apothecaries, troy and
avoirdupois definitions of the dram/drachm and ounce, and the UK and US
definition of pint and gallon having different numbers of fluid ounces.
And the \"little\" problem that the volumetric and linear measurements are
not related by a simple integer: in the UK, 1 gallon is 277.4 in^3
https://www.convertunits.com/from/cubic+inch/to/imperial+gallon. When I
wanted to estimate the weight of a full hot water cylinder (which was
not marked with its volume), having only an inches tape measure and no
calculator (and no access to a phone to phone-a-friend) I had to convert
everything to metric because I knew that 1000 cc was a litre whcih
weighed a kilogramme, whereas I hadn\'t the remotest idea of the imperial
equivalent cubic inches to gallons (where a gallon weighs 10 lb - I knew
that bit).
There are also some issues over the mile, where there is more than one
standard: The US survey mile is 0.999998 statute mile.
The statute mile being exactly 1,609.344m