Measurement system |
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Atkingani
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin Joined: October 21 2005 Location: Terra Brasilis Status: Offline Points: 12288 |
Topic: Measurement system Posted: December 23 2005 at 22:05 |
About the 'stone'... I'm gonna search the value for 'obolus' and 'sestertium'. |
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Guigo
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ClemofNazareth
Special Collaborator Prog Folk Researcher Joined: August 17 2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 4659 |
Posted: December 23 2005 at 18:01 |
I'm starting to see the appeal of this one... |
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"Peace is the only battle worth waging."
Albert Camus |
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ClemofNazareth
Special Collaborator Prog Folk Researcher Joined: August 17 2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 4659 |
Posted: December 23 2005 at 18:00 |
Okay, it must be a slow night, as I’ve bothered to actually go look this up. This speaks sadly to my social life, but that’s a tale for another thread. Apparently the stone is a measure of mass, and one stone equals 12.5 pounds. For our friends all over the world, one stone also equals - 23,563.24 assarion 994.72010965 bekah (bekum? bekai?) 28,349.523125 carats 3.4144968008e+27 daltons 1,472.7025 denarius 833.80950368 didrachma 5,560,277.0191 dyne 9,947.2010965 gerah 87,500 grains 5,669.904625 grams 0.0125 kip 188,505.92 lepton 16.676190074 menah 200 ounces 3,645.8333333 pennyweight 94,252.96 quadrans 4,375 scruples 0.38851187714 slugs and 15.190973101 troy pounds I feel so much more enlightened now. So now I know that a guy who weighs 20 stone is a pretty fat dude… Edited by ClemofNazareth |
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"Peace is the only battle worth waging."
Albert Camus |
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Atkingani
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin Joined: October 21 2005 Location: Terra Brasilis Status: Offline Points: 12288 |
Posted: December 23 2005 at 14:08 |
And whatever would become of trusted local measurements like "as the crow flies", "hop, skip, and a jump", "over yonder", and c*#t hair"? Naw, too much work - better just to leave things be. Would be good to know what the hell a "stone" is though... [/QUOTE] Even using metric we have here in Brazil several trust measurements like 'hand', 'finger', 'bit', 'leg', etc. And finally what means a 'stone'? |
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Guigo
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Jared
Forum Senior Member Joined: May 06 2005 Location: Hereford, UK Status: Offline Points: 17689 |
Posted: December 23 2005 at 12:43 |
The Good Old Brits introduced metric when we joined the (then) EEC in 1973.... the only problem is that they decided to 'phase it in' and are still doing so 32 years later.... That meant that kids like me had to use both systems at school, and logerithm tables beside calculaters in our Maths exams.. Pint of milk anyone??? |
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Music has always been a matter of energy to me. On some nights I believe that a car with the needle on empty can run 50 more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. Hunter S Thompson
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Philrod
Prog Reviewer Joined: May 23 2005 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 319 |
Posted: December 23 2005 at 00:58 |
depends! but mostly the metric system
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ClemofNazareth
Special Collaborator Prog Folk Researcher Joined: August 17 2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 4659 |
Posted: December 21 2005 at 21:19 |
12 inches in a foot, 5280 feet in a mile, piece of cake. I remember those days too. Two of the things that helped cause the failure of metric conversion, you may recall, were 1) oil embargo leading to very high oil prices (to our European friends - high being a relative term in this case). Many people were convinced that government was in collusion with energy companies to confuse people as to exactly how much they were paying (liters vs gallons). Also, conversions of road signs and local public facilities like swim pools, running tracks, and highway scales would have cost billions and with a high (not relatively speaking) unemployment rate and runaway inflation in the late 70's, there wasn't a lot of public support to commit tax monies to do this. And there was also a question of what this might mean to our beloved American sports (football, baseball, hockey, and basketball in particular). Somehow the idea of a 100 meter field goal just wasn't too appealing. And really - everybody knows Americans are just mule-stubborn anyway. And 2), there were a lot of conspiracy-minded religious zealots back then who were convinced that the metric system was somehow a sign of the "end times" (i.e., "mark of the beast" kind of thinking) since most of the school and public announcements pretty much suggested people needed to learn to live with the metric system or be left behind in the marketplace and elsewhere. Kind of funny considering there aren't a heck of a lot of "6s" in metric. Anyway, I'm a southpaw so driving on the left side of the road wouldn't bother me a bit, and would make it easier for me to check my mailbox without getting out of the car. But I'm so used to doing the mental math to convert inches to feet to yards to miles and grams to ounces to pounds (well, not the grams so much now that I'm grown up and with a family) that I wouldn't know what to do with the spare time if all my measurements were neatly lined up with ones and zeros. And whatever would become of trusted local measurements like "as the crow flies", "hop, skip, and a jump", "over yonder", and c*#t hair"? Naw, too much work - better just to leave things be. Would be good to know what the hell a "stone" is though... Edited by ClemofNazareth |
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"Peace is the only battle worth waging."
Albert Camus |
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Atkingani
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin Joined: October 21 2005 Location: Terra Brasilis Status: Offline Points: 12288 |
Posted: December 21 2005 at 21:00 |
Only to remind that for International Agreement the Imperial measures are defined in terms of metric/SI units. So 1 inch is defined as being 25,4001 mm (not more the size of the finger of some ancient English king). The multiples are 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard and so on... Same for pounds and gallons. We may say that indirectly the 'modern' Imperial system is metric too. The only exception is for temperature. |
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Guigo
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progaeopteryx
Prog Reviewer Joined: June 03 2005 Location: Refrigerator Status: Offline Points: 3613 |
Posted: December 21 2005 at 20:49 |
12 inches in a foot, 5280 feet in a mile, piece of cake. Seriously, I understand. When I was in elementary school during the Carter administration there was a strong push to metricize the U.S., but it clearly failed. It obviously has worked better in other countries. Not sure what the problem was here. Could've been the economics of switching over? The metric system is clearly easier to use. Many products sold here use both measurements, like food for example. Our cars use both systems on the speedometers. The Fahrenheit scale was invented by the German physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit. He determined 0 degrees to be the lowest temperature he measured in the harsh winter of 1708/09 in his home town of Danzig (now Gdansk). The 100 degree mark was his own body temperature (he either was inaccurate or had a fever as the average human body temperature is 98.6). Fahrenheit chose this scale so that he could avoid negative numbers, which in most cases rarely occurs, except for high latitude parts of the planet in the northern and southern hemispheres during winter. Most scientists actually use the Kelvin scale which has no negative numbers as 0 degrees is defined as absolute zero, where molecular motion stops. I believe this is an international standard, although in everyday life, Celsius is the most popular around the world. Edited by progaeopteryx |
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Eetu Pellonpaa
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: June 17 2005 Location: Finland Status: Offline Points: 4828 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 14:32 |
Let's do it ZAPPA's way, and use chickens for measuring! |
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Bj-1
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: June 04 2005 Location: No(r)Way Status: Offline Points: 31157 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 14:32 |
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Guests
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Posted: December 12 2005 at 14:06 |
few inches more
thats what i want thats all < =text/> |
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sleeper
Prog Reviewer Joined: October 09 2005 Location: Entropia Status: Offline Points: 16449 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 13:39 |
You do like having a go at us Brits dont you As I said above I use both as do most brits. Most of use use miles for long distances, Acres for large areas, feet and inches for measuring a persons hight, and stone for measuring weight. Outside of these peramiters if startusing imperial mesurments I will have to think a bit about what your on about. As for tempereture I find Kelvin is best as theirs no possible way to get minus numbers so it allways starts at 0. And for the side of the road we drive on, its been like that for a 1000 years with coaches. |
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Spending more than I should on Prog since 2005
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goose
Forum Senior Member Joined: June 20 2004 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 4097 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 12:35 |
I'm not bothered, just right! Errrrm, left. Errm...
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Sean Trane
Special Collaborator Prog Folk Joined: April 29 2004 Location: Heart of Europe Status: Offline Points: 19710 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 11:47 |
But we saw the right side soon!! I knew I'd manage to bother at least one Brit!!!! |
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let's just stay above the moral melee
prefer the sink to the gutter keep our sand-castle virtues content to be a doer as well as a thinker, prefer lifting our pen rather than un-sheath our sword |
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goose
Forum Senior Member Joined: June 20 2004 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 4097 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 11:22 |
You used to drive on the same side as us, so don't get started with that
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Sean Trane
Special Collaborator Prog Folk Joined: April 29 2004 Location: Heart of Europe Status: Offline Points: 19710 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 10:09 |
That one is easy!!!!!! Continental Europe drive on the right side of the road. Even the Americans know that!! The Brits simply drive on the wrong side of the road
Eeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!........ .................. Could not resist that one either!!!!!!!!! |
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let's just stay above the moral melee
prefer the sink to the gutter keep our sand-castle virtues content to be a doer as well as a thinker, prefer lifting our pen rather than un-sheath our sword |
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Trotsky
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: October 25 2004 Location: Malaysia Status: Offline Points: 2771 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 08:23 |
Couldn't resist, eh, Hugues? I must that while I generally favour the metric system, it doesn't quite the trick in terms of human height ... a six footer means more than its metric equivalent (what is it 1.82m or something like that) ... but certainly we should all make the effort ... it's so human isn't it ... there are only two possible sides of the road to drive on ... and we can't agree on which ... and how about inventing a unversal sign language? Oh no, instead sign language has a few different versions |
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"Death to Utopia! Death to faith! Death to love! Death to hope?" thunders the 20th century. "Surrender, you pathetic dreamer.”
"No" replies the unhumbled optimist "You are only the present." |
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Lindsay Lohan
Forum Senior Member Joined: May 25 2005 Location: Norway Status: Offline Points: 3254 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 04:13 |
Miles and gallons is pretty confusing as this measurement is different in america and england
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Ricochet
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 27 2005 Location: Nauru Status: Offline Points: 46301 |
Posted: December 12 2005 at 03:40 |
Metres/SI
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