On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 11:44:41 +1100, Fred, better known as cantankerous
trolling senile geezer Rodent Speed, wrote:

FLUSH the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread

--
Richard addressing senile Rodent Speed:
"**** you're thick/pathetic excuse for a troll."
MID:

On 16/02/2021 17:18, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:58:24 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 16/02/2021 14:52, Roger Hayter wrote:
Of course, unlike later bits of shopping metrication which were
bitterly contested, it could have been of no interest whatever to the
Common Market what we divided our Pounds into. But I remember it being
sold as a pro-European move, as I remember Powell, ever the
opportunist, opposing it on the same grounds

I understood it to be far more about computerization of the banking and
financial system

That's an odd one. Surely computers are uniquely equipped to deal with
non-decimal systems ?

of course but its massively more complicated to for example work out
what 3.5% per annum of £1237 17'3½d is compounded as a monthly interest,
in £sd terms.

The answer was to represent all values in either binary coded decimal or
really in floating point, as far as banks went. Display in pounds and
whole pence was simply presentation.

But where it really made a difference was shop sized cash registers and
small computers like pocket calculators



What I suspect is really meant - but may not be palatable to some - is
that it was *American* software that needed decimal currency. Yet another
clear example of how the UK can only go so far in it's own little
universe until reality intrudes.

Well that is just more bigoted ********. America still uses imperial
measures!

Imperial measures and English language have outlasted Britain and its
empire massively!



--
€œProgress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee,€�

€“ Ludwig von Mises

On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 11:38:24 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread


--
Website (from 2007) dedicated to the 86-year-old senile Australian
cretin's pathological trolling:
https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/r...d-faq.2973853/

On 16/02/2021 17:31, S wrote:
On 16/02/2021 17:20, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:54:41 +0000, nightjar wrote:

On 16/02/2021 13:18, jon wrote:
...
Yes I remember this was a pre-cursor to joining the Common Market, ...

I don't. I recall it being sold as being easier to teach to children.
Apparently learning base 10 was easier than learning multiple base
systems.

Which also sounds like a crock. Were British schoolchildrenÂ* peculiarly
disadvantaged by having to learn Lsd - especially on top of imperial ?


What is imperial?

pounds, shillings, and pence,
inches, feet, yards, poles, chains, furlongs and miles,
fluid ounces, pints, quarts and gallons ,
Ounces, pounds, stones, hundredweights and tons.
Fahrenheit temperatures.
And fractions not decimals


As opposed to this revolutionary French metric ****


--
Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
Mark Twain

On 16/02/2021 17:53, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 17:51:11 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 16/02/2021 17:16, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:59:11 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 16/02/2021 15:28, Jethro_uk wrote:
The problem is, rightly or wrongly, almost every other country in the
world uses decimal money.

Almost. I am sure there is a minor Asian country that uses duodecimal

So reason enough to dump this decimal delusion and return to the Good
Old Days, eh ?

duodecimal works great if that is also your number base.
Its the number of finger joints on one hand, too

The will of the people seems otherwise though. Idiots, eh ?

I don't remember the people ever being asked actually.

Before you display more bigotry why not ask why duodecimal number
systems ever came into being if it wasn't the 'will of the people'

It was the will of the people that an inch was the length of a thumb
knuckle joint, a foot was the length of a - foot, and a yard was how
long an arrow had to be at dull draw - so a full arm and chest, just as
a cubit had been the length of a forearm . And a mile was about a
thousand steps, that turned into about 1700 yards, and then a pole was
about man height and so that became two yards, and thongs like furlongs
and acres were related to use of horses in ploughing

Only much later did they try and define exact integral relationships
between them

So imperial measurements evolved naturally from what people did.

The metric system was designed by intellectuals and imposed on post
revolutionary France. Nothing to do with the people



--
"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They
always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them"

Margaret Thatcher

On 16/02/2021 18:18, Jim Jackson wrote:
On 2021-02-16, Steve Walker wrote:
On 16/02/2021 17:20, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:54:41 +0000, nightjar wrote:

On 16/02/2021 13:18, jon wrote:
...
Yes I remember this was a pre-cursor to joining the Common Market, ...

I don't. I recall it being sold as being easier to teach to children.
Apparently learning base 10 was easier than learning multiple base
systems.

Which also sounds like a crock. Were British schoolchildren peculiarly
disadvantaged by having to learn Lsd - especially on top of imperial ?

Decimal works well with metric and metric is generally easier for
scientific and engineering calculations. So it probably makes sense to
decimalise money as well, so everything can be calculated using the
same, simple system.

However, while metric is good for such calculation, imperial has much
more everyday usable sized units and divides nicely in a variety of
different ways.

I just use both interchangeably, depending upon which suits better for
the circumstances.

ditto - but I've completely lost any appreciation of degrees F - just
doesn't mean anything to me anymore. I don't like admitting this, but I
actually had to lookup what the boiling poinbt of water was in F !


Once they started doing weather forecasts in °C it simply fell out of
modern comprehension. I do remember 212°C is boiling point tho.

The funny thing is manufactured wood still comes in 8' x 4' sheets, but
they quote the size in mm.

and structural timber may be '75mm × 50mm' but its still called
three-by-two down at the yard.



--
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as
foolish, and by the rulers as useful.

(Seneca the Younger, 65 AD)

On 16/02/2021 17:20, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:54:41 +0000, nightjar wrote:

On 16/02/2021 13:18, jon wrote:
...
Yes I remember this was a pre-cursor to joining the Common Market, ...

I don't. I recall it being sold as being easier to teach to children.
Apparently learning base 10 was easier than learning multiple base
systems.

Which also sounds like a crock. Were British schoolchildren peculiarly
disadvantaged by having to learn Lsd - especially on top of imperial ?


The claim was that *some* were disadvantaged, as they couldn't cope with
the concepts. Nobody I knew believed that and I think we were better off
for learning to cope with multiple base systems at an early age.

--
Colin Bignell

On 16/02/2021 18:18, Jim Jackson wrote:
On 2021-02-16, Steve Walker wrote:
On 16/02/2021 17:20, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:54:41 +0000, nightjar wrote:

On 16/02/2021 13:18, jon wrote:
...
Yes I remember this was a pre-cursor to joining the Common Market, ...

I don't. I recall it being sold as being easier to teach to children.
Apparently learning base 10 was easier than learning multiple base
systems.

Which also sounds like a crock. Were British schoolchildren peculiarly
disadvantaged by having to learn Lsd - especially on top of imperial ?

Decimal works well with metric and metric is generally easier for
scientific and engineering calculations. So it probably makes sense to
decimalise money as well, so everything can be calculated using the
same, simple system.

However, while metric is good for such calculation, imperial has much
more everyday usable sized units and divides nicely in a variety of
different ways.

I just use both interchangeably, depending upon which suits better for
the circumstances.

Something that is only available to those of use who grew up with the
old systems. I had to teach imperial measure and fractions to my
apprentices as much of the stuff we made had been designed in Britain in
the 1950s or before.

ditto - but I've completely lost any appreciation of degrees F - just
doesn't mean anything to me anymore. I don't like admitting this, but I
actually had to lookup what the boiling poinbt of water was in F !

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap up
warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that exact
temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.


--
Colin Bignell

On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 09:38:56 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 16/02/2021 17:31, S wrote:
On 16/02/2021 17:20, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:54:41 +0000, nightjar wrote:

On 16/02/2021 13:18, jon wrote:
...
Yes I remember this was a pre-cursor to joining the Common Market,
...

I don't. I recall it being sold as being easier to teach to children.
Apparently learning base 10 was easier than learning multiple base
systems.

Which also sounds like a crock. Were British schoolchildrenÂ*
peculiarly disadvantaged by having to learn Lsd - especially on top of
imperial ?


What is imperial?

pounds, shillings, and pence,
inches, feet, yards, poles, chains, furlongs and miles,
fluid ounces, pints, quarts and gallons ,
Ounces, pounds, stones, hundredweights and tons. Fahrenheit
temperatures.
And fractions not decimals


As opposed to this revolutionary French metric ****

The americans ''got to the moon'' using imperial linear measurements, but
they had trouble with volume tho'..7 UK pints to an american gallon.

"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a kid
what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap up warm
or not. It was only when I started science at school that exact
temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever devised -
apart from the one which used an inverse scale so a higher temperature was a
lower number. It seems very obvious that you devise a temperature scale that
is based on (and is easily compared with) the properties of the most
abundant liquid on Earth: water. Make 0 the freezing point of water and some
larger number the boiling point. given that we count in base 10, it's
probably sensible to make that larger number 10, 100 or 1000. But at a pinch
I could cope with a power of 12 or 16 as the interval, as long as boiling
water is a round number of that base (eg 144, if you're using base 12, or
256 if you're using base 16).

Units should be devised for ease (rather than complexity) of calculations.
If we had twelve fingers/thumbs, we'd count in base 12 and our units would
related by base 12 ratios. But we have 10 digits and are taught to count in
base 10, so that is the *only* ratio that should be used for a units system.

Computers are an exception, but there are good scientific principles why
binary is used - because logic gates can have two states. Because binary is
exceptionally tedious for calculation and for expressing large quantities,
we have evolved octal and hexadecimal. Given that computers have generally
standardised on "molecules" (bytes) of 8 "atoms" (bits), hexadecimal is more
logical than octal, in that you are dividing a byte into an *even* number of
*same-size* chunks (4 and 4), rather than unequal chunks of 3, 3 and 2 bits.

On 17/02/2021 11:25, jon wrote:
On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 09:38:56 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 16/02/2021 17:31, S wrote:
On 16/02/2021 17:20, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:54:41 +0000, nightjar wrote:

On 16/02/2021 13:18, jon wrote:
...
Yes I remember this was a pre-cursor to joining the Common Market,
...

I don't. I recall it being sold as being easier to teach to children.
Apparently learning base 10 was easier than learning multiple base
systems.

Which also sounds like a crock. Were British schoolchildren
peculiarly disadvantaged by having to learn Lsd - especially on top of
imperial ?


What is imperial?

pounds, shillings, and pence,
inches, feet, yards, poles, chains, furlongs and miles,
fluid ounces, pints, quarts and gallons ,
Ounces, pounds, stones, hundredweights and tons. Fahrenheit
temperatures.
And fractions not decimals


As opposed to this revolutionary French metric ****

The americans ''got to the moon'' using imperial linear measurements, but
they had trouble with volume tho'..7 UK pints to an american gallon.

which aircraft crashed because they needed X kg of fuel and put in X lbs
instead?

Like with all things its not what the standard is, its that there is a
standard and everyone uses it.

Diversity simply doesn't cut it


--
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a
kind word alone.

Al Capone

On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 10:19:15 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

On 17 Feb 2021 at 10:11:52 GMT, nightjar wrote:

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap up
warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that exact
temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

It depends where you are. When I moved to Geneva I got a feel for temps
in C. Then I moved to the US and (re)gained a feel for temps in F. Now
I'm back here and it's a feel in C again.

Someone says a number, for a temp, using the units you're used to, and
you know how warm/cold that is, without having to think about it.

Degrees K are the most sensible, keeps people alert.

On 17/02/2021 11:26, NY wrote:
"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap
up warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that
exact temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever
devised - apart from the one which used an inverse scale so a higher
temperature was a lower number. It seems very obvious that you devise a
temperature scale that is based on (and is easily compared with) the
properties of the most abundant liquid on Earth: water. Make 0 the
freezing point of water and some larger number the boiling point. given
that we count in base 10, it's probably sensible to make that larger
number 10, 100 or 1000. But at a pinch I could cope with a power of 12
or 16 as the interval, as long as boiling water is a round number of
that base (eg 144, if you're using base 12, or 256 if you're using base
16).

Fahrenheit was extremely logical. Mr Fahrenheit put ticks on his
thermometer for the hottest ever summer day and the coldest ever winter
night and divided it into 100.

It was a perfect scale. For weather



Units should be devised for ease (rather than complexity) of
calculations. If we had twelve fingers/thumbs, we'd count in base 12 and
our units would related by base 12 ratios. But we have 10 digits and are
taught to count in base 10, so that is the *only* ratio that should be
used for a units system.

we have 12 finger joints on each hand.

and, with toes, twenty digits on both hands and feet
We have two eyes and one arsehole

Computers are an exception, but there are good scientific principles why
binary is used - because logic gates can have two states.

Logic gates cam have a lot more than that, and its a bit sad that people
now think in boolean logic rather then real world stuff

But that's art students and lefty****s for you,
4 legs good two legs bad


Because binary
is exceptionally tedious for calculation

not with a computer it aint. its a doddle

and for expressing large
quantities, we have evolved octal and hexadecimal.

that is simply a more compact way to display binary

Given that computers
have generally standardised on "molecules" (bytes) of 8 "atoms" (bits),
hexadecimal is more logical than octal, in that you are dividing a byte
into an *even* number of *same-size* chunks (4 and 4), rather than
unequal chunks of 3, 3 and 2 bits.

And avoids having to memorise 256 symbols


--
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain

On 17/02/2021 11:26, NY wrote:
"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap
up warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that
exact temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever
devised - apart from the one which used an inverse scale so a higher
temperature was a lower number. It seems very obvious that you devise a
temperature scale that is based on (and is easily compared with) the
properties of the most abundant liquid on Earth: water. Make 0 the
freezing point of water and some larger number the boiling point. given
that we count in base 10,...

Fahrenheit used two fixed points that were available to him at the time.

Zero is the freezing point of saturated brine, which makes more sense
than that of water in an era when you can't be sure how pure the water
you have is. By deliberately contaminating it with a known substance, he
got a repeatable temperature.

He set 100 at something else readily available to him at the time - the
temperature of the human body. Today, we know it can vary between 97F
and 99F, but it has been suggested that the prevalence of mild
infections would have made 100F more likely in his time.



--
Colin Bignell

In article ,
NY wrote:
"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap
up warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that
exact temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever devised -
It was based on two sensible ideas. Lowest known temperature 0 degrees &
body heat + 100 degrees.
Sadly neither these two parameters was correct

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

In article , Tim Streater
wrote:
On 17 Feb 2021 at 11:25:53 GMT, jon wrote:

On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 09:38:56 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 16/02/2021 17:31, S wrote:
On 16/02/2021 17:20, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:54:41 +0000, nightjar wrote:

On 16/02/2021 13:18, jon wrote: ...
Yes I remember this was a pre-cursor to joining the Common
Market, ...

I don't. I recall it being sold as being easier to teach to
children. Apparently learning base 10 was easier than learning
multiple base systems.

Which also sounds like a crock. Were British schoolchildren
peculiarly disadvantaged by having to learn Lsd - especially on top
of imperial ?


What is imperial?

pounds, shillings, and pence, inches, feet, yards, poles, chains,
furlongs and miles, fluid ounces, pints, quarts and gallons , Ounces,
pounds, stones, hundredweights and tons. Fahrenheit temperatures. And
fractions not decimals


As opposed to this revolutionary French metric ****

The americans ''got to the moon'' using imperial linear measurements,
but they had trouble with volume tho'..7 UK pints to an american
gallon.

It's their cheese-paring short-measure pint: 16 Fl Oz instead of 20.

But it means a pint weighs a pound - which is vaguely logical

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 17/02/2021 11:26, NY wrote:
"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap up
warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that exact
temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever
devised - apart from the one which used an inverse scale so a higher
temperature was a lower number. It seems very obvious that you devise a
temperature scale that is based on (and is easily compared with) the
properties of the most abundant liquid on Earth: water. Make 0 the
freezing point of water and some larger number the boiling point. given
that we count in base 10, it's probably sensible to make that larger
number 10, 100 or 1000. But at a pinch I could cope with a power of 12 or
16 as the interval, as long as boiling water is a round number of that
base (eg 144, if you're using base 12, or 256 if you're using base 16).

Fahrenheit was extremely logical. Mr Fahrenheit put ticks on his
thermometer for the hottest ever summer day and the coldest ever winter
night and divided it into 100.

It was a perfect scale. For weather

Yes, so he chose some arbitrary limits for the hottest/coldest days for his
location, and then the rest of the scale had to fit in around it.

Units should be devised for ease (rather than complexity) of
calculations. If we had twelve fingers/thumbs, we'd count in base 12 and
our units would related by base 12 ratios. But we have 10 digits and are
taught to count in base 10, so that is the *only* ratio that should be
used for a units system.

we have 12 finger joints on each hand.

Yes, but what's that got to do with it? Five fingers/thumbs for each of two
hands is easier to see.

But it doesn't really matter. We could count in base 17, as long as we have
separate symbols for all those 17 values. But then *all* our unit systems
should use base 17. The problem is that we learn base 10 at school and
become proficient at adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing base-10
numbers using the standard algorithms for dealing with carry/borrow digits
etc. But then we have to try to use those techniques for dealing with
relationships that are not base 10. I wouldn't mind so much if the whole
imperial system was centred around a *single* non-10 base. But it is a
horrible mish-mash of 16 fl oz in a pint, 8 pints in a gallon, 16 oz in a
lb, 14 lb in a stone, 112 lb (or 8 stone) in a hundredweight (*), 20 cwt in
a ton, 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in yard (and then you get into esoteric
units like rods, pole, perches, furlongs, acres, leagues etc). 12 pence in a
shilling, 20 shillings ina pound. What a mess! It has all the disadvantages
of a system that has evolved over the years, instead of one that has been
designed to be logically consistent.

Base 12 has a lot going for it. It has small factors (2, 2 and 3) that are
almost identical (unlike 10 which has 2 and 5) so objects can be packed in
almost-square boxes. 9 would be even better - 3x3 boxes.

If only the imperial system had used 12 throughout, and we had been taught
to do base-12 rather than base-10 arithmetic... with two additional symbols
to denote what in base-10 need two symbols 10 and 11.


and, with toes, twenty digits on both hands and feet
We have two eyes and one arsehole

Computers are an exception, but there are good scientific principles why
binary is used - because logic gates can have two states.

Logic gates can have a lot more than that, and its a bit sad that people
now think in boolean logic rather then real world stuff

They think in whatever logic (two-state) is the one that has prevailed and
stood the test of time. Why should people know about three- or four-state
logic if it's not been used in the real world. Two-state logic *is*
real-world logic.


There is a lot about bygone days that was better (eg community spirit), but
I'm glad we consigned non-base-10 measurement/currency to the dustbin of
history where it belongs. Calculation should be easy: there are no extra
marks for using a system that is any more complicated that it needs to be.

Calculators have made arithmetic easier. Would you choose to perform a
non-trivial calculation in your head or on paper if you had a calculator?
However , it is important that people have *some* knowledge of carry-digits
and the mechanics of long-multiplication and division, as a laborious,
slower way of getting an answer if your calculator stops working.

I am fine with "manual" calculation, as long as I have a pen and paper. What
I cannot do (and never have been able to do) is *mental* arithmetic, without
a pen and paper to allow me to keep track of the carry/borrow digits. My
wife had a Saturday job while at school, working in a bakery. This required
her to become proficient at adding up three doughnuts at 14 p each, plus a 7
p loaf and three 11 p loaves etc - only using the till to ring up the final
amount rather each item. How she does it is something that bewilders me: how
do you *remember* all the numbers (each item and the sum so far)? It helps
that she has a "visual memory" - she says that she can look at a map, and
then (without the map) she can "see" its image in her mind so she can work
out routes etc. (*) On the other hand, my memory for the real-world
"waypoints" of a route (the white house with a thatched roof, the crossroads
with a brick-and-flint building on the corner etc) is a lot better than
hers.


(*) She evolved this as a coping strategy because she can't read or look at
a map in a moving vehicle, something which has never affected me, so she has
to remember the map and "read" it mentally afterwards.

On 17/02/2021 11:31, jon wrote:
On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 10:19:15 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

On 17 Feb 2021 at 10:11:52 GMT, nightjar wrote:

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap up
warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that exact
temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

It depends where you are. When I moved to Geneva I got a feel for temps
in C. Then I moved to the US and (re)gained a feel for temps in F. Now
I'm back here and it's a feel in C again.

Someone says a number, for a temp, using the units you're used to, and
you know how warm/cold that is, without having to think about it.

Degrees K are the most sensible, keeps people alert.

If you want to keep people alert, what about degrees Rankine?

On 17/02/2021 11:26, NY wrote:
"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap
up warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that
exact temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever
devised - apart from the one which used an inverse scale so a higher
temperature was a lower number. It seems very obvious that you devise a
temperature scale that is based on (and is easily compared with) the
properties of the most abundant liquid on Earth: water.

Neither are particularly sensible, as that the freezing and particularly
boiling points of water can vary considerably with variations in
pressure. Yes, I know that they are defined at Standard Pressure, but
that means that you also need an accurate means of establishing the
pressure.

"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...

But it means a pint weighs a pound - which is vaguely logical

And a litre weighs a kilo ...

And, even more important, a cubic centimetre weighs a gramme or a cubic
decimetre (a litre) weighs a kilogramme or a cubic metre weighs a tonne.
There you have a nice simple relationship between linear and volumetric
measurement. What's the equivalent conversion factor for imperial? A UK
gallon is 277.419 cubic inches. Not a nice round number. Not even an
integer. Duh! What were they smoking when they came up with that?

Many years ago my dad and I were installing a hot water cylinder at our
holiday cottage. We had no calculator and only a tape measure calibrated in
inches. We wanted to work out how heavy the cylinder would be when it was
full of water to decide what thickness of timber we needed for supporting it
above the stairwell. Volume is pi r^2 l. For the sake of an approximation,
take pi is being roughly 3. We calculated the volume in cubic inches. We
knew the the approximation that "a pint of pure water / weighs a pound and
a quarter" or a gallon weighs about 10 pounds. But neither of us knew how
many cubic inches were in a gallon - not even roughly.

I ended up converting the linear measurements to centimetres (using the
approximation of 1 inch is roughly 2.5 cm), getting the volume in cubic
centimetres, getting the equivalent weight in grammes - and then converting
back to pounds because dad could "visualise" a weight in pounds better than
one in kilogrammes. All because we didn't know how many gallons (ie tens of
pounds) corresponded to the volume in cubic inches.

We'd have done better to have walked up to the phone box half a mile away,
read out the figures and get my mum to do the calculations. She may even
(long before Google) have managed to find the cubic inch / gallon conversion
factor in a book somewhere, to save conversion to/from metric. But it was
pouring with rain so we couldn't be arsed to get in the car to go to the
phone box.

(We judged that a couple of baulks of 2x4" timber would be good enough, and
40 years later the cylinder hasn't fallen down the stairwell, so we
evidently erred on the side of caution.)

In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:
The americans ''got to the moon'' using imperial linear measurements,
but they had trouble with volume tho'..7 UK pints to an american
gallon.

It's their cheese-paring short-measure pint: 16 Fl Oz instead of 20.
Still 8 US pints to a US gallon, though.

But IIRC our US cousins are traditionalists. They are using the imperial
measurements from independence times. It was the UK that changed them
later.

Surely you, being against aligning with any other countries, approve of
this?

--
*Frustration is trying to find your glasses without your glasses.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 17/02/2021 14:22, NY wrote:
And, even more important, a cubic centimetre weighs a gramme or a cubic
decimetre (a litre) weighs a kilogramme or a cubic metre weighs a tonne.
Only of water. a cubic meter of gravel weighs 3 and a bit tonnes


--
€œThose who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit
atrocities.€�

€• Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles Ã* M. Claparede, Professeur de
Théologie Ã* Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de
M. de Voltaire

On 17/02/2021 12:27, charles wrote:
In article ,
NY wrote:
"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap
up warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that
exact temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever devised -
It was based on two sensible ideas. Lowest known temperature 0 degrees &
body heat + 100 degrees.
Sadly neither these two parameters was correct

Cold end was based on a year in Danzig and the coldest it was, and
was redefined several times. 100 was human temp, but again was redefined.

The nice thing about it is that 0 is bloody cold and 100 is bloody hot.
Air temperature wise

Given the tools and techniques available I still think its a damned
sight better scale fore 'weather' than Celsius.



--
€œThose who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit
atrocities.€�

€• Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles Ã* M. Claparede, Professeur de
Théologie Ã* Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de
M. de Voltaire

On 17/02/2021 12:44, NY wrote:


Logic gates can have a lot more than that, and its a bit sad that
people now think in boolean logic rather then real world stuff

They think in whatever logic (two-state) is the one that has prevailed
and stood the test of time. Why should people know about three- or
four-state logic if it's not been used in the real world. Two-state
logic *is* real-world logic.

No, it isn't. Nothing in the real world is yes or no.
50 shades of grey is what we have, and Boolean logic is entirely a human
mental invention designed for simplicity with no regard for accuracy.




--
€œPuritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.€�

H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

On 17/02/2021 15:38, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/02/2021 14:22, NY wrote:
And, even more important, a cubic centimetre weighs a gramme or a
cubic decimetre (a litre) weighs a kilogramme or a cubic metre weighs
a tonne.
Only of water. a cubic meter of gravel weighs 3 and a bit tonnes



No it doesn't. About 1.6 tonnes.

On 17/02/2021 15:16, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Tim Streater wrote:
The americans ''got to the moon'' using imperial linear measurements,
but they had trouble with volume tho'..7 UK pints to an american
gallon.

It's their cheese-paring short-measure pint: 16 Fl Oz instead of 20.
Still 8 US pints to a US gallon, though.

But IIRC our US cousins are traditionalists. They are using the imperial
measurements from independence times. It was the UK that changed them
later.

Surely you, being against aligning with any other countries, approve of
this?

The UK did not change and the US was not more traditionalist. There were
many different gallons and the US and UK just happened to standardise on
different ones.

The UK standardised (roughly) on the Ale Gallon, while the US
standardised on the Wine Gallon - both of which were one of many
different gallons used in the UK until they were abolished by the 1924 act.

On 17/02/2021 13:04, Steve Walker wrote:
On 17/02/2021 11:31, jon wrote:
On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 10:19:15 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

On 17 Feb 2021 at 10:11:52 GMT, nightjar wrote:

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap up
warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that exact
temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

It depends where you are. When I moved to Geneva I got a feel for temps
in C. Then I moved to the US and (re)gained a feel for temps in F. Now
I'm back here and it's a feel in C again.

Someone says a number, for a temp, using the units you're used to, and
you know how warm/cold that is, without having to think about it.

Degrees K are the most sensible, keeps people alert.

If you want to keep people alert, what about degrees Rankine?

and what about Reaumur?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9aumur_scale

On 17/02/2021 13:09, Steve Walker wrote:
On 17/02/2021 11:26, NY wrote:
"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap
up warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that
exact temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever
devised - apart from the one which used an inverse scale so a higher
temperature was a lower number. It seems very obvious that you devise
a temperature scale that is based on (and is easily compared with) the
properties of the most abundant liquid on Earth: water.

Neither are particularly sensible, as that the freezing and particularly
boiling points of water can vary considerably with variations in
pressure. Yes, I know that they are defined at Standard Pressure, but
that means that you also need an accurate means of establishing the
pressure.

Which had existed for a century when Celcius proposed his scale. He set
100 as the freezing point of water and zero as the boiling point at the
mean atmospheric pressure at sea level. The scale we know as Celcius
today is actually the reverse of his.

--
Colin Bignell

On 17/02/2021 16:50, nightjar wrote:
On 17/02/2021 13:09, Steve Walker wrote:
On 17/02/2021 11:26, NY wrote:
"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as
a kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to
wrap up warm or not. It was only when I started science at school
that exact temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever
devised - apart from the one which used an inverse scale so a higher
temperature was a lower number. It seems very obvious that you devise
a temperature scale that is based on (and is easily compared with)
the properties of the most abundant liquid on Earth: water.

Neither are particularly sensible, as that the freezing and
particularly boiling points of water can vary considerably with
variations in pressure. Yes, I know that they are defined at Standard
Pressure, but that means that you also need an accurate means of
establishing the pressure.

Which had existed for a century when Celcius proposed his scale. He set
100 as the freezing point of water and zero as the boiling point at the
mean atmospheric pressure at sea level. The scale we know as Celcius
today is actually the reverse of his.


and The Kelvin scale is set as 0K to be the triple point of water where
it exists in 3 sates of matter (solid, liquid & gas) all at the same
time, which is about 0.4 °C IIRC.

On 2021-02-17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

What I suspect is really meant - but may not be palatable to some - is
that it was *American* software that needed decimal currency. Yet another
clear example of how the UK can only go so far in it's own little
universe until reality intrudes.

Well that is just more bigoted ********. America still uses imperial
measures!

But has used a decimal currency for a long time! Which is what was being
discussed. Do keep up!

On 2021-02-17, NY wrote:
"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...

But it means a pint weighs a pound - which is vaguely logical

And a litre weighs a kilo ...

Ok pedantry time ...

And, even more important, a cubic centimetre weighs a gramme or a cubic
decimetre (a litre) weighs a kilogramme or a cubic metre weighs a tonne.

.... only when you specify the material, Water, and the temperature
(20C?), and pressure (dunno), and maybe other stuff?

On 17/02/2021 17:48, Jim Jackson wrote:
On 2021-02-17, NY wrote:
"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...

But it means a pint weighs a pound - which is vaguely logical

And a litre weighs a kilo ...

And a litre wieghs a kilo..... a kilo of what? Kilo is a prefix meaning
1 thousand, which is a number, and you have not stated the *exact*
measure....

For all I know you could be talking kilowatt, kilometre, kiloOhms,
Kilofarads or KiloHenries.....

"NY" wrote in message
...
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 17/02/2021 11:26, NY wrote:
"nightjar" wrote in message
...

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap up
warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that exact
temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

Fahrenheit has to be the most hare-brained temperature scale ever
devised - apart from the one which used an inverse scale so a higher
temperature was a lower number. It seems very obvious that you devise a
temperature scale that is based on (and is easily compared with) the
properties of the most abundant liquid on Earth: water. Make 0 the
freezing point of water and some larger number the boiling point. given
that we count in base 10, it's probably sensible to make that larger
number 10, 100 or 1000. But at a pinch I could cope with a power of 12
or 16 as the interval, as long as boiling water is a round number of
that base (eg 144, if you're using base 12, or 256 if you're using base
16).

Fahrenheit was extremely logical. Mr Fahrenheit put ticks on his
thermometer for the hottest ever summer day and the coldest ever winter
night and divided it into 100.

It was a perfect scale. For weather

Yes, so he chose some arbitrary limits for the hottest/coldest days for
his location, and then the rest of the scale had to fit in around it.

Units should be devised for ease (rather than complexity) of
calculations. If we had twelve fingers/thumbs, we'd count in base 12 and
our units would related by base 12 ratios. But we have 10 digits and are
taught to count in base 10, so that is the *only* ratio that should be
used for a units system.

we have 12 finger joints on each hand.

Yes, but what's that got to do with it? Five fingers/thumbs for each of
two hands is easier to see.

But it doesn't really matter. We could count in base 17, as long as we
have separate symbols for all those 17 values. But then *all* our unit
systems should use base 17. The problem is that we learn base 10 at school
and become proficient at adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing
base-10 numbers using the standard algorithms for dealing with
carry/borrow digits etc. But then we have to try to use those techniques
for dealing with relationships that are not base 10. I wouldn't mind so
much if the whole imperial system was centred around a *single* non-10
base. But it is a horrible mish-mash of 16 fl oz in a pint, 8 pints in a
gallon, 16 oz in a lb, 14 lb in a stone, 112 lb (or 8 stone) in a
hundredweight (*), 20 cwt in a ton, 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in yard
(and then you get into esoteric units like rods, pole, perches, furlongs,
acres, leagues etc). 12 pence in a shilling, 20 shillings ina pound. What
a mess! It has all the disadvantages of a system that has evolved over the
years, instead of one that has been designed to be logically consistent.

Base 12 has a lot going for it. It has small factors (2, 2 and 3) that are
almost identical (unlike 10 which has 2 and 5) so objects can be packed in
almost-square boxes. 9 would be even better - 3x3 boxes.

If only the imperial system had used 12 throughout, and we had been taught
to do base-12 rather than base-10 arithmetic... with two additional
symbols to denote what in base-10 need two symbols 10 and 11.


and, with toes, twenty digits on both hands and feet
We have two eyes and one arsehole

Computers are an exception, but there are good scientific principles why
binary is used - because logic gates can have two states.

Logic gates can have a lot more than that, and its a bit sad that people
now think in boolean logic rather then real world stuff

They think in whatever logic (two-state) is the one that has prevailed and
stood the test of time. Why should people know about three- or four-state
logic if it's not been used in the real world. Two-state logic *is*
real-world logic.


There is a lot about bygone days that was better (eg community spirit),
but I'm glad we consigned non-base-10 measurement/currency to the dustbin
of history where it belongs. Calculation should be easy: there are no
extra marks for using a system that is any more complicated that it needs
to be.

Calculators have made arithmetic easier. Would you choose to perform a
non-trivial calculation in your head or on paper if you had a calculator?
However , it is important that people have *some* knowledge of
carry-digits and the mechanics of long-multiplication and division, as a
laborious, slower way of getting an answer if your calculator stops
working.

I am fine with "manual" calculation, as long as I have a pen and paper.
What I cannot do (and never have been able to do) is *mental* arithmetic,
without a pen and paper to allow me to keep track of the carry/borrow
digits. My wife had a Saturday job while at school, working in a bakery.
This required her to become proficient at adding up three doughnuts at 14
p each, plus a 7 p loaf and three 11 p loaves etc - only using the till to
ring up the final amount rather each item. How she does it is something
that bewilders me: how do you *remember* all the numbers (each item and
the sum so far)? It helps that she has a "visual memory" - she says that
she can look at a map, and then (without the map) she can "see" its image
in her mind so she can work out routes etc. (*)

Yeah, I can too.

On the other hand, my memory for the real-world "waypoints" of a route
(the white house with a thatched roof, the crossroads with a
brick-and-flint building on the corner etc) is a lot better than hers.

I do it your way too.

(*) She evolved this as a coping strategy because she can't read or look
at a map in a moving vehicle, something which has never affected me, so
she has to remember the map and "read" it mentally afterwards.

I do it for convenience, I mostly drive alone.

On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 13:19:11 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread

--
Marland answering senile Rodent's statement, "I don't leak":
"That¢s because so much **** and ****e emanates from your gob that there is
nothing left to exit normally, your arsehole has clammed shut through disuse
and the end of prick is only clear because you are such a ******."
Message-ID:

On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 16:50:42 +0000, S wrote:

On 17/02/2021 13:04, Steve Walker wrote:
On 17/02/2021 11:31, jon wrote:
On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 10:19:15 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

On 17 Feb 2021 at 10:11:52 GMT, nightjar wrote:

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap up
warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that exact
temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

It depends where you are. When I moved to Geneva I got a feel for temps
in C. Then I moved to the US and (re)gained a feel for temps in F. Now
I'm back here and it's a feel in C again.

Someone says a number, for a temp, using the units you're used to, and
you know how warm/cold that is, without having to think about it.

Degrees K are the most sensible, keeps people alert.

If you want to keep people alert, what about degrees Rankine?

and what about Reaumur?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9aumur_scale

Kelvin and Rankine don't have degrees - they're absolute.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On 18/02/2021 09:31, PeterC wrote:
On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 16:50:42 +0000, S wrote:

On 17/02/2021 13:04, Steve Walker wrote:
On 17/02/2021 11:31, jon wrote:
On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 10:19:15 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

On 17 Feb 2021 at 10:11:52 GMT, nightjar wrote:

I never had a feel for Fahrenheit. It didn't really matter to me as a
kid what the outside temperature was beyond whether I needed to wrap up
warm or not. It was only when I started science at school that exact
temperatures mattered and we used the cgs system for that.

It depends where you are. When I moved to Geneva I got a feel for temps
in C. Then I moved to the US and (re)gained a feel for temps in F. Now
I'm back here and it's a feel in C again.

Someone says a number, for a temp, using the units you're used to, and
you know how warm/cold that is, without having to think about it.

Degrees K are the most sensible, keeps people alert.

If you want to keep people alert, what about degrees Rankine?

and what about Reaumur?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9aumur_scale

Kelvin and Rankine don't have degrees - they're absolute.


Fahrenheit has had a bad, bad, press over the centuries

It was, after all, the ORIGINAL centigrade temperature scale.

Celsius was a relatively late-coming plagiarist !

PA

"Peter Able" wrote in message
...

Fahrenheit has had a bad, bad, press over the centuries

It was, after all, the ORIGINAL centigrade temperature scale.

Celsius was a relatively late-coming plagiarist !

It may have been centigrade, but those hundred degrees were relative to
random temperatures (the coldest and hottest that Fahrenheit could achieve).
The freezing and boiling point of water are easier for a layman to
understand than the freezing point of saturated brine or whatever was used
for 100. OK, so freezing/boiling of water are fairly inexact, and will vary
according to pressure, and impurities in water.


I've always wondered: why is it that F and C are denoted as "degrees F/C"
whereas Kelvin (like all other physical units) is just "Kelvin" (not
"degrees Kelvin")?

"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
Sometimes the colloquial and the scientific don't always align.

No amount of logic to the metric system is going to make it easier to say
"568ml please" rather than "a pint please".

And as noted in this thread, most people just say "2x4" in the same way
they'd say "the blue one".

I really struggled to understand that some people failed to grasp that
there can - and often is - a difference between what you measure in, and
what you call things. To the extent I suspect a lot of them are putting
more effort into being dim than clever.

When supermarkets started selling loose items by metric rather than imperial
weight, Tesco initially put up signs saying that you could now only *ask*
for items in grammes rather than ounces. There was lots of guff about "which
is easier to say - an ounce or 28 grammes", but that rather missed the
point. When you ask for "four ounces of boiled ham" you don't mean "exactly
four ounces, to three decimal places". You mean "about 4 ounces - add slices
until it's either just under or just over". And on that basis, you wouldn't
ask for "113 grammes" (the exact equivalent). You'd ask for the nearest
round number in that measurement system - 100, 120, 150 grammes or whatever.

I'm old enough (58) that I was taught (parents, grandparents, primary
school) imperial rather than metric as my "folk units" - for everyday use. I
know my height in feet and inches, and my weight in stones and pounds,
whereas I don't know them in the metric equivalent. I estimate and judge in
imperial - "it's about ten feet away". But I always measure in metric, for
ease of calculation. And for me, ease of calculation is *far* more important
than whether the units are "human-sized". The only change I'd make to the
metric system is to make the base units for measurement the centimetre (ie
give that distance the simple name "metre") to avoid the multiple syllables
of "centimetre" for the human-size unit. Or else invent a new,
single-syllable name for the centimetre.

I'd also make it a hanging offence (!) to pronounce kilometre (KILLoMETre)
as "kill-OMMi-TAH" ;-) That really gets my goat, because the "folk"
pronunciation is different to that of every other SI unit and SI prefix:
MIcro, MILLi, KILo, MEGa, and SEcond, MEtre, FARad, AMPere. The only
exception I can think of immediately is becquerel - and that's because it's
his name. It's amusing to hear scientist-presenters such as Brian May. They
switch between the two pronunciations, sometimes in the same sentence:
evidently the director has said "pronounce it the popular way" and they
usually remember but sometimes instinctively revert to the scientific
pronunciation.

In article , NY wrote:
"Peter Able" wrote in message
...

Fahrenheit has had a bad, bad, press over the centuries

It was, after all, the ORIGINAL centigrade temperature scale.

Celsius was a relatively late-coming plagiarist !

It may have been centigrade, but those hundred degrees were relative to
random temperatures (the coldest and hottest that Fahrenheit could
achieve). The freezing and boiling point of water are easier for a
layman to understand than the freezing point of saturated brine or
whatever was used for 100.

i was taught that it was blood heat.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

On 18/02/2021 11:12, Tim Streater wrote:
On 18 Feb 2021 at 10:57:34 GMT, charles wrote:

In article , NY wrote:
"Peter Able" wrote in message
...

Fahrenheit has had a bad, bad, press over the centuries

It was, after all, the ORIGINAL centigrade temperature scale.

Celsius was a relatively late-coming plagiarist !

It may have been centigrade, but those hundred degrees were relative to
random temperatures (the coldest and hottest that Fahrenheit could
achieve). The freezing and boiling point of water are easier for a
layman to understand than the freezing point of saturated brine or
whatever was used for 100.

i was taught that it was blood heat.

IOW, not arbitrary. Unlike the metre, which *is* arbitrary.

Absolutely not. One 40 millionth of the earths circumference measured by
a Frenchmens in Paris, or summat



--
No Apple devices were knowingly used in the preparation of this post.