I have a typesetting ruler on my desk which has scales in, on one side, inches and 10ths and 1/60's and 1/300's of an inch and on the other side, points and millimeters. I use it all the time...
Mine can.
M.
I am a moderately progressive pro-euro type (you could describe me as the opposite of UKIP/Vanitas). There are about 1.5 countries in the world which are not metric. we live in the 0.5 country.
As for units I don't give a damn. What is important is to understand what any measurement means in the context of what you are doing. That's good enough for most people in most contexts. Think about the fuel gauge on a vehicle it's probably not even calibrated you only have to know what it means in terms of where the needle is.
I have no idea what units blood cholesterol is measured in I just know that 5.5 is pretty bad and 2.5 is pretty good.
When it comes to serious calculations where units have to be combined then a consistent set is far to be preferred. However, anyone who is fairly competent with numbers should be able to hack it with whatever units they are presented with. It reminds me of a lab experiment as college we had a gas engine to test out (circa 1904) which was connected to an array of test instruments many of which look like they had come _from_ a museum. The job was to calculate the engine's efficiency.
In short 'wars' about imperial/metric (and currency) are not about the technicalities they are an accessible hook on which to hang other complaints. These probably stem from a (mis)perceived loss of identity and loss of control in the face of the federalisation and globalisation.
While Gabriel Mouton is claimed to be the spirtual father of the metric system, his base unit of length would have been the swing length of a pendulum with a frequency of one beat per second, which is roughly 25cm. He did, however, provide the central ideas that were developed by later French scientists.
I would view a defining quality of the metric system to be that is based upon the metre, rather than simply being decimal. Otherwise, the centimetre / gram / second system I was taught at school (along with the metre / kilogram / second and foot / pound / second systems) would be equally qualified for the name.
Interestingly, that seems to have been based upon Mouton's work, rather than on the system then being developed in France.
It is more usually credited to Talleyrand and the French Revolutionary National Assembly
Colin Bignell
FYI:
'The amount of cholesterol in your blood is measured in units called millimoles per litre of blood, usually shortened to "mmol/litre" or "mmol/l". America uses the units milligrams per decilitre of blood: "mg/dl" instead. Current UK guidelines state that it is desirable to have a total cholesterol level under 5mmol/l, and an LDL level under
3mmol/l.'Interesting that "they" have changed from to . Changes it from a measurement to counting?
-- Rod
The message from "nightjar" contains these words:
You sure about that. I haven't looked up Mouton but I would have thought a 10" pendulum would have been a one second pendulum - ie one complete cycle or 2 beats a second. Grandfather clocks have 2 second pendulums and tick once a second.
I think you and I might be much the same age but I was taught that the cgs system was metric. ISO metric only dates back to 1960.
Incidentally at what stage did you come across the slug? I never saw as much as a mention of the unit until I got to college.
The Bastille fell in 1789. In 1790 Louis XVI still had his head but not his liberty but he could have authorised the start of the work the year before or even earlier. It wouldn't have been finished overnight. The French revolution could even have delayed the introduction of the metric system.
You were in college in 1904? :P
Andy
In message , Roger writes
There was a program on BBC2 last year about the Englishman who first proposed the metric system
unfortunately I missed it, I bet I have it on DVD though
The message from geoff contains these words:
Maybe MPs in those days had a better grasp of science than the current crop.
Be interested to know who it was.
Could be Miller who, according to wikipedia, seems to have been a leading light in the quest for a metric system based on a pendulum. One of histories big ifs I suppose. If the then Foreign Secretary had jumped the other way we might have all grown up with a version of the metric system based on the 2 second pendulum (rather than the circumference of the earth) and with little or no knowledge of Imperial units.
In message , Roger writes
YEah - first year university
together with degrees rankine
Came across degrees reamur first on a work of art in germany
He wears it well ...
The message from geoff contains these words:
IIRC Rankine was on a par with Kelvin when I did A level Physics. (1960-62)
That didn't ring a bell at all but Google kindly inserted a u and vague memories of eightieths came flooding back. Memories I think of a previous mention on this ng. :-)
5.5 ain't so bad. 8.6 is bad. (Don't ask me how I know...)
If you know the molecular weight of what is being measured, it's the same thing, and biochemistry 'traditionally' uses molar measurements.
Current thinking (well, my doctor's anyway) is that it's the *ratio* of LDL to HDL that's more important than the total amount cholesterol in the blood. So if it's the ratio that's quoted, that is of course dimensionless.
LDL = low density lipoprotein or "bad" cholesterol HDL = high density lipoprotein or "good" cholesterol
Which reminds me that Fahrenheit chose the freezing/boiling points on his scale to be 180 degrees apart - two right angles/half a circle - with normal human blood temperature at approximately one right angle above freezing/below boiling. (Which obviously also applies to Rankine.)
The message from Rod contains these words:
The tale I heard (maybe also on Usenet) was that F decided on 100 degrees as blood heat and choose Mrs F as datum. Unfortunately Mrs F had a chronic illness and was running hot. That doesn't seem to square with the 180 degrees except by accident. Perhaps he just used 100 as a first approximation.
The other fact about temperature scales that bears repeating is the renaming of Centigrade as Celsius.
In some obscure backwaters of Europe (and possibly elsewhere) a Grad is a right angle and a Centigrad marginally smaller than a degree so in order to avoid confusion a sensible name for a scale based on 100 degrees was abandoned for a name originally applied to really unsensible temperature scale.
"Celsius founded the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in 1741, and in
1742 he proposed the Celsius temperature scale in a paper to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. His thermometer had 100 for the freezing point of water and 0 for the boiling point. The scale was reversed by Carolus Linnaeus in 1745, to how it is today".We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember geoff saying something like:
Little old-fashioned, but...
The year before last, 6.0 was OK
it isn't now
So a change of goalposts gives me a high cholesterol level now
Indeed - which makes me wonder why the US perpetuates lots of mass-based measurements in medicine.
Oh - and cholesterol levels are likely to be raised in people who suffer from hypothyroidism.
measure twice cut once..
sometimes i do my measuring in both metric and inches, so if the pencil marks the same place then ive probably got my sums right!
at the moment im measuring my garden in local yards, which are about a metre, but adjusted so theres a whole number of yards between walls and fences and things so i can do it on squared paper for marking which plant is where...
dont know if this is a good idea!
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