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#131
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US going metric?
"Hatunen" wrote in message
... On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 14:01:40 -0800, Don Kirkman wrote: ISTM there's been a strong movement to honor all the historical figures, sometimes at the cost of clarity. Cycles per second Hertz, centigrade Celsius. My gauss is that it's just a way of paying ohmage. Having originally worked in radio when the term was cycles/second I have always felt the hertz to be something of a ******* unit, but it did lead to the rather cute joke a few decades ago about the "cycle" being an "Avis", or a Hertz-second. Ah, not to go off on a tangent, but, that was back in the daze you had to know about sine waves, vacuum tubes and superheterodyne receivers in order to get a first class ticket from the FCC. KM -- (-:alohacyberian:-) At my website there are 3000 live cameras or visit NASA, play games, read jokes, send greeting cards & connect to CNN news, NBA, the White House, Academy Awards or learn all about Hawaii, Israel and mo http://keith.martin.home.att.net/ |
#132
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US going metric?
On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 05:45:23 GMT, "alohacyberian"
wrote: "Hatunen" wrote in message .. . On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 14:01:40 -0800, Don Kirkman wrote: ISTM there's been a strong movement to honor all the historical figures, sometimes at the cost of clarity. Cycles per second Hertz, centigrade Celsius. My gauss is that it's just a way of paying ohmage. Having originally worked in radio when the term was cycles/second I have always felt the hertz to be something of a ******* unit, but it did lead to the rather cute joke a few decades ago about the "cycle" being an "Avis", or a Hertz-second. Ah, not to go off on a tangent, but, that was back in the daze you had to know about sine waves, vacuum tubes and superheterodyne receivers in order to get a first class ticket from the FCC. KM Or even a General Class. If you mean amateur tickets. 73 Ex-W8LBU ************* DAVE HATUNEN ) ************* * Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow * * My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps * |
#133
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US going metric?
metric and imperial. Perhaps he didn't count this as 'metric' Huh. We have five tape measures around the house and not one has metric on it at all. Maybe you should go to Home Depot and do a survey. I was referring to ones sold in Canada. |
#134
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US going metric?
"Hatunen" wrote in message
... On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 05:45:23 GMT, "alohacyberian" wrote: "Hatunen" wrote in message .. . On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 14:01:40 -0800, Don Kirkman wrote: ISTM there's been a strong movement to honor all the historical figures, sometimes at the cost of clarity. Cycles per second Hertz, centigrade Celsius. My gauss is that it's just a way of paying ohmage. Having originally worked in radio when the term was cycles/second I have always felt the hertz to be something of a ******* unit, but it did lead to the rather cute joke a few decades ago about the "cycle" being an "Avis", or a Hertz-second. Ah, not to go off on a tangent, but, that was back in the daze you had to know about sine waves, vacuum tubes and superheterodyne receivers in order to get a first class ticket from the FCC. KM Or even a General Class. If you mean amateur tickets. 73 Ex-W8LBU No, I meant commercial radio-telephone tickets. Ex-WB6CAS - Advanced. KM -- (-:alohacyberian:-) At my website there are 3000 live cameras or visit NASA, play games, read jokes, send greeting cards & connect to CNN news, NBA, the White House, Academy Awards or learn all about Hawaii, Israel and mo http://keith.martin.home.att.net/ |
#135
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US going metric?
alohacyberian wrote:
"Mark Hewitt" wrote in message ... "alohacyberian" wrote in message ... But, as I said, media weather reporting and forecasting is unlikely to use decimals. KM True. But the forecasts are never that accurate to mean 20C is likely to give different weather from 20.5C. I've grown up with nothing but the celcius scale being used on forecasts. Unfortunately newspapers always use Farenheight when reporting hot temperatures as they are bigger numbers so looks more impressive! Yes, I remember seeing a newspaper headline in the U.K. which read, "London Sizzles in the 70's!" It wouldn't sound very impressive as "London Sizzles in the Low to Mid 20's!" Which I've often thought is the reason TV and radio stations in cooler climates in the United States use Celsius, because 5 degrees below zero seems much colder than 23 degrees above zero. And, of course, they're also enamored with "wind chill factor" which makes it seem even colder than it really is, but, of course "wind chill factor" would only come into play for people who are naked, an unlikelyhood when it's 23 degrees Fahrenheit or minus five degrees Celsius. KM Wind chill factor comes in to play when one is well clothed too. Any little exposed piece of flesh feels it especially (face, hands, ears, those foolish enough to wear skirts when it's freezing) and gives a good idea as to how much more quickly it would take to get frostbite on said parts. A lot of cold winds are biting enough to go right through pants and jackets as well. -20°C feels a lot different with an extra -20°C wind chill on top of it. I'd found living in a more Northern climate with less wind, winter felt warmer -- my theory being you got to carry a warm pocket of air around you (ie.within your winter clothes), whereas in windier areas, that warm pocket was whisked away, along with more body heat taken away as well. DMW (-25.1°C, very light wind so no reported wind chill at the moment) |
#136
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US going metric?
Don Kirkman wrote in message . ..
It seems to me I heard somewhere that Greg Johnson wrote in article : I learned both many years ago, and while I use fahrenheit, I can still do the conversion in my head. My question, though, is why was the usage of the explanatory "centigrade" changed to the astrological "celsius"? It explains nothing. The prefix "centi-" in this case has a different meaning from the prefix "centi-" for the SI units. There is no "grade" in use of which this centigrade is the hundredth part. Furthermore, in many languages "grade" or something similar has the same meaning as "degree" in English, so degree centigrade is confusing and redundant. Furthermore, it is ambiguous since a grade (or grad, or gon) is a unit of angular measure. A centigrade is to a kilometer as a minute of arc is to a nautical mile. Why isn't "Fahrenheit" something like "duocentiduodecigrade"? :-) ISTM there's been a strong movement to honor all the historical figures, sometimes at the cost of clarity. Cycles per second Hertz, centigrade Celsius. My gauss is that it's just a way of paying ohmage. You are overlooking the most important factor. It is an *International* System of Units. Names are more portable between languages than other words. Basing the names of units on names makes it easier to get uniform symbols for the units worldwide. Gene Nygaard http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...ard/t_jeff.htm But if it be thought that, either now, or at any future time, the citizens of the United States may be induced to undertake a thorough reformation of their whole system of measures, weights and coins, reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio already established in their coins, and thus bringing the calculation of the principal affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply and divide plain numbers, greater changes will be necessary. U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, 1790 |
#137
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US going metric?
What about paper sizes? Are A4, A3 etc. catching on? So much easier than US Letter size. A3 is half of A2, A4 is half of A3, A5 is half of A4 etc., etc. Mike |
#138
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US going metric?
Mike@com (Mike Groves) wrote in message ...
What about paper sizes? Are A4, A3 etc. catching on? So much easier than US Letter size. A3 is half of A2, A4 is half of A3, A5 is half of A4 etc., etc. Mike um, A sheet (letter) is half of B, two B's make a C etc. An E sheet is 34 x 44, do the math. |
#139
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US going metric?
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#140
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US going metric?
(Markus Kuhn) wrote :
Was "centigrade" ever widely used in other languages than English? It was in french. -- Erwan |
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