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from the How-many-slugs-to-the-stone? dept.
AnonTechie writes:
"I have the following requests to members of this new forum:
1) Please use SI Units wherever possible. Alternative comparative units such as swimming pools, size of Florida, cars, libraries of congress, etc are also welcome ...
2) Please cover tech/science related stories from around the world. Please do not make this a US only website !!
Cheers and best wishes,
AnonTechie"
[ED Note: We as a community welcome submissions from around the world, as befits our international userbase. The Editorial team in particular is looking closely at including voices from outside the U.S. as we continue to grow. As for the units question in particular, stories will certainly arrive with a variety of units depending on the origin of the submission. We encourage, though do not require, submitters to include conversions where appropriate for clarity out of courtesy to your fellow readers. Though we try to use a light touch when making edits to story submissions, Editors may add these from time to time as well, should clarity demand and time permit.
Soylentils, does the current ad-hoc approach meet your needs, or do you favor a more formal approach from your news discussion site?]
(Score: 1, Informative) by internetguy on Monday February 24 2014, @05:51AM
A Meter can only be evenly divided into 2 or 5.
A Foot can be divided into 2, 3, 4, or 6.
So if you ever have to measure a third of a Meter, good luck!
Sig: I must be new here.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @07:01AM
Indeed.
And a pound (as a unit of currency) can be divided evenly into 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 40, 48, 60, 80 or 120 or 240 (and even more before ha'pennies & farthings were ditched), whereas a dollar can only be divided evenly into 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50 or 100.
But then again, if most of the world hadn't metricated & decimalised, we'd have to find some other excuse for basic mental arithmetic no longer being a near-universal skill...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @07:08AM
1/3 m is a foot.
Or approximately a decimeter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @07:59AM
1dm x 3 == 3dm
3.333...dm x 3 == 1m
If "approximately" means "out by a factor of 3", then this system of measurement isn't worth a cracker (== 25,416 crumbs)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @02:00PM
Or a physicist is involved
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday February 24 2014, @10:02PM
Come on, that's not even an order of magnitude! ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by beckett on Monday February 24 2014, @08:24AM
have you ever heard of decimals? centimeter, millimeter, micrometer, nanometer, picometer etc.. the unit of measurement is self-descriptive.
So if you ever have to figure how many links are in a rod, feet in a furlong, or the number of chains per mile, good luck!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @08:32AM
nah, it's decimal vs fractions.
fuck fractions, there aren't any on my keyboard.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Gbr on Monday February 24 2014, @09:10AM
Ah, if only evolution has given us 12 fingers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @03:40PM
I can do so to any precision required (if I have the right measurement equipment, of course). To start with, 1/3 meter is approximately 333 millimeters, and for the vast majority of cases that's sufficiently close. If I need something better, I can with my eye find the place where I'm roughly 1/3mm further (note that there are measuring tapes which have half-millimeter marks, which can help a lot for this). That's not exact, but I doubt that with normal equipment you'd be able to get more exact than that with imperial measures either (I'm speaking of actual measurements, not about the mathematical properties in an idealized world).
In the extremely rare case that you need more precision, you'll need specialized equipment anyway.
Now please tell me how you would measure 1/5 foot with imperial measures.