George Cornelius wrote:
In article , Jeff writes:
Tony Hwang wrote:
What is therm? Here in Alberta measurement is by the Giga Joule.

At last! Someone using a rational energy unit.

By definition it is 100,000 BTU's. Blame the British and their Thermal
Units!

In fact, the BTU is one of the best of the British (actually now just
American) units.

It's fairly useful for energy calculations when everything else is in
SAE, or whatever you call not metric. Insulation (in the US) is rated in
BTUs, square feet and degrees F. The amount of specific heat stored is 1
BTU per degree F per pound of water. Now if you mix in any metric, it
all becomes completely unwieldly. Either all metric or none at all makes
the most sense. I think we've had some rockets that smacked Mars because
of that.

Jeff


It's 1055 Joules, but as a rule of thumb you can think
of it as a kJ.

But having different units for every single energy source is just nuts.

Who else uses the therm, roughly .1 GJ, but the U.S. Gas industry?

www.oilnergy.com lists natural gas prices in MMBtu, where MM=1000*1000
or one million. That's pretty nice, just about the same thing as a GJ,
so we and the Canucks can actually think we are talking the same language.

[And MMBtu ~= MCF, so we have a three-way match]

--
George Cornelius cornelius ( A T ) eisner.decus.org