TWL: Water - Why Gallons & Pounds?
At 05:31 PM 07/11/2000 +0200, Daryl wrote:
I'm sure you still quote your
pounds and feet and inches when asked for certain measurements. I do agree,
though, metric has a lot of advantages...
As anyone involved with the last Mars mission will probably tell you, it
pays to just agree on the standard measurements.
Arild comments
I can't wait until they complete the metrification of navigation. We
already have metric charts with meters instead of feet and fathoms.
Just think; we will no longer have a nautical mile = one minute of latitude
We will have a kilometer = ?? decidegree of latitude
Will the new nautical kilometer be called a sealometer? :-)))
Not to be confused with a sealastomer which stretches or shrinks to fit.
Oh I forgot . . . we must also toss out the 360 degree circle and adopt a
metric circle.
How many units in a full circle, 100 or 1000?
We could maybe use the old artillery standby of mils instead of degrees.
and then of course we also need to switch to a metric clock.
Do we then end up with a metric hour; a decihour and milli hour? ( VBG >
And of course we can forget about knots for speed. Lets see, do we
adopt the kilometers per hour used for land speed or the meters per second
used in meterology for wind speed in weather forecasts. <LOL>
So now we can metricate endlessly.
We measure fuel burn in liters per sealometers, speed in decimeters per
millihour and bearing angles in mils.
And you thought it was difficult to convert chart datum shifts when using
GPS.
jokingly yours
Arild
The electronic navigator ( imperially that is )
Following the Water Weight thread reminded me why Canada switched to metric
measure about 20-25 years ago.
1 litre of sea water at 20 degrees Centigrade weighs 1 kilogram. Since all
metric measurements are based on a scale of 10, calculations are easy.
Moreover, all measurements, whether time, volume, weight, geometry,
astronomy, etc. are inter-related.
The thread demonstrated very well that requiring a table of measures and a
calculator to do the arithmetic for numbers relating to daily life is a
powerful incentive in favour of a system in which most calculation can be
done in one's head. That said, it used to be even more complicated, for I
remember from my schooling that only an ounce is common to the US and
Imperial liquid measurement systems. After that, a US pint contains 32
ounces whereas an Imperial pint has 40, so a US gallon of 4 pints contains
132 ounces while its Imperial counterpart, also with 4 pints, contains 160.
Thus, one US gallon by volume or weight is 0.8 of one Imperial gallon. An
Imperial gallon of sea water at a given temperature - was it 68 degrees
Farenheit? - weighs 64 pounds, so a US gallon is 51.2 pounds.
Notwithstanding the logic of Metric, the USA remains the world's last major
hold-out despite the fact that it is the government's stated policy to
switch. That's because changing over is not easy, and takes a generation of
living with both systems to make it work. Even though Canadian children now
have little sense of ounces, pounds, pints and gallons, it took most adult
Canadians a couple of decades to finally make the mental switch.
Systems of measures are a fundamental building block for every aspect of
life. The rest of the world cannot understand why a country that leads the
world in R&D continues to stay with one that is imperfect, hard to learn,
almost impossible to remember, and difficult to use.
Cheers, Garrett
Oh yeah, Canadian boy (disclaimer: I, too, am a Canadian)? And how many
centimetres tall are you? How many kilos you weigh? Let's face it, we
haven't quite completely made the switch. I'm sure you still quote your
pounds and feet and inches when asked for certain measurements. I do agree,
though, metric has a lot of advantages...
As anyone involved with the last Mars mission will probably tell you, it
pays to just agree on the standard measurements.
ciao!
Daryl.
(from the home of the kilogram =} ).
Daryl Manning
dmanning@interlog.com
ICQ: 43228997
Paris, France
----- Original Message -----
From: "E16" E16@telus.net
To: trawler-world-list@samurai.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2000 5:09 PM
Subject: TWL: Water - Why Gallons & Pounds?
Following the Water Weight thread reminded me why Canada switched to metric
measure about 20-25 years ago.
1 litre of sea water at 20 degrees Centigrade weighs 1 kilogram. Since all
metric measurements are based on a scale of 10, calculations are easy.
Moreover, all measurements, whether time, volume, weight, geometry,
astronomy, etc. are inter-related.
Garrett,
In your otherwise excellent post, you confused cubic feet with gallons. One
cubic foot weighs about 62.4 lbs, one US gallon weighs about 8.3 lbs,
varying slightly with salt content.
I sure don't know why the American public is so resistant to metrification.
Here at the University of Michigan (where we point out that MIT is the
Michigan of the East! <g>) we teach our courses about 50/50 English and SI
units. By the way, we are NOT the only country still using non-metric
units. I still bitingly remember an ^%#^%# visiting prof from Poland whose
English units (he was in chemical engineering) were different than our
English units over in civil engineering. The heck with just remembering if
pounds is weight or force, some clever idiot created pounds-mass and called
them "poundals." Really. Here is a good trivia question, what is the
English unit of mass (as known by civil/hydraulic engineers)? I will mail a
bright shiny half-dollar to the first person who posts or emails me the answer.
My book "Foundation Design," by Coduto says that 2,000 lb force is equal to
8.9 kN. My book "Drilled Pier Foundations," by Woodward et al, (the
Woodward who founded Woodward-Clyde) has a nice little appendix on
conversion factors, and has a footnote which states:
"Note that the measurements of density of any material are measurements of
mass per unit volume - not weight (force). A pound and a ton are units of
force; a pound-mass is the mass that would weigh one pound on earth at sea
level. A kilogram is a unit of mass, convertible to pounds mass"
I hope this improves your boating experience.
Typical disclaimer: I have no financial ties to either water, pounds, or
kilograms. However, I do get a cut from the "Newton," and I encourage
everyone to buy those tasty little fruit cookies every chance you get.
Regards,
John
The thread demonstrated very well that requiring a table of measures and a
calculator to do the arithmetic for numbers relating to daily life is a
powerful incentive in favour of a system in which most calculation can be
done in one's head. That said, it used to be even more complicated, for I
remember from my schooling that only an ounce is common to the US and
Imperial liquid measurement systems. After that, a US pint contains 32
ounces whereas an Imperial pint has 40, so a US gallon of 4 pints contains
132 ounces while its Imperial counterpart, also with 4 pints, contains
160. Thus, one US gallon by volume or weight is 0.8 of one Imperial
gallon. An Imperial gallon of sea water at a given temperature - was it 68
degrees Farenheit? - weighs 64 pounds, so a US gallon is 51.2 pounds.
John W. Norton, Jr. E.I.T
Doctoral Student - Geotechnical Engineering
University of Michigan: office-(734) 764-3648
"Teaching and motivating the engineers of the future!"
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~jnorton/
Your life is God's gift to you,
what you do with it is your gift to God.
---Unknown
We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France, we shall
fight in the seas or oceans, we shall fight with growing
confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend
our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the
beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall
fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender.
--Winston Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons
on British resistance to the Nazis, June 1940
Just capital!
As I recall metric time has been seriously discussed a few different times.
A long time ago in student government, we convinced a bunch of future
democrats that we were going to switch to metric time. One woman was VERY
concerned, she had just bought her dad a nice, non-metric watch. I guess
this would be a pretty good example of "geek" humor.
John
----- Original Message -----
From: John the Civil Engineer jnorton@umich.edu
Here is a good trivia question, what is the
English unit of mass (as known by civil/hydraulic engineers)? I will mail
a
bright shiny half-dollar to the first person who posts or emails me the
answer.
Hi John,
The answer is the "slug", but please hold on to your money. This is an easy
question for a Washington state native since the slug is also our state
animal.
Our state bird is the Goldfinch but we should probably change it to that
"flying window" thing from the Microsoft screen saver.
Our state song is "Washington My Home" but we really tried to change that to
"Louie Louie". We would have succeeded too if it hadn't been for infighting
between the Wailers faction and the Kingsmen faction.
Trivially yours,
Alex (who tries not to measure anything)
"Oh yeah, Canadian boy (disclaimer: I, too, am a Canadian)? And how many
centimetres tall are you? How many kilos you weigh? Let's face it, we
haven't quite completely made the switch. I'm sure you still quote your
pounds and feet and inches when asked for certain measurements."
I may be a member of the Australian metric transition generation, but I
know that I'm 176cm and 73kg.
Regards, Robert Bryett
Sydney, Australia.
mailto:rbryett@ibm.net
Amidst all this fretting about the United States versus the rest of the
wrold, has anyone considered the complete implications of a 100 percent
metric system?
No more 360 degrees in a circle (after all we've given up the nautical mile,
thus a minute is a mile no longer applies)
And since time is not metric (one hour = 15 degrees of arc of the sun) we'll
need to throw out all our clocks and watches!
Dennis Mills
dennis@thecapn.com
www.thecapn.com