Re: Metric Time (was Re: Why not 13 months? (Was La Systeme Metrique))
Thomas Koenig (ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de)
9 Oct 1995 18:26:47 +0100
In alt.folklore.computers, john@polo.demon.co.uk (John Winters) wrote:
>Your problem here was converting from a volumetric
>measurement to a weight measurement, which would have been just as hard
>in a metric system. Do *you* know how many litres of strawberries there
>are to the kilo?
Well, water has the convenient density of 1 kg/litre, which is fairly
easy to remember.
>Nor do I. And if you can't remember how many pints
>there are in a quart,
Ugh... a quick question: is a quart one quarter of an Imperial or a US
gallon, or both, depending on which side of the pond you live?
Time for a horror story? I once looked up the thermal conductivity of
Silicon, while working in the US. The value I got was in "BTU per
square feet for a gradient of one degree Fahrenheit per inch". That's not even
internally consistent, let alone bletcherous to the extreme :-)
(And yes, I went to my boss and asked him: "Do you have an edition of this
reference book in SI units?" Fortunately, he had.)
--
Thomas Knig, Thomas.Koenig@ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet.
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double
logarithmic diagram.
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