Our Friend, The Meter 1672
dbirchall writes "Upon hearing that SpaceShipOne reached 100km today, I did some hasty math based on the altitude in feet sttated by Scaled Composites in their press release, and was surprised to come up with a number under 100,000 meters. Fortunately, a friend pointed out that my inches-to-meters conversion was flawed. Some quick Googling determined that lots of people still have no idea how many inches are in a meter, even after some folks have had big problems because of conversion errors."
It matters because (Score:0, Informative)
not the same old problem again (Score:1, Informative)
Either the world changes or the US changes. Personally I say go towards the metric system. Let's also use grams, liters, and all the other worldwide used measuring systems.
It might be tough in the beginning for those who are adjusted to the inch-system, but change has always proven to be hard in any society. Argg.. an anonymous post on slashdot won't make a difference anyways... or will it?
Re:Spaceballs (Score:1, Informative)
Google is your metric friend (Score:5, Informative)
100Km in feet [google.com]
20 inches in cm [google.com]
Instructions for the Google calculator [google.com]
Google's Calc has it right (Score:2, Informative)
2.54 cm per inch (Score:5, Informative)
Look at me, I'm Informative!
Quick Estimating (Score:3, Informative)
I also could have carried out the whole conversion, because I know that 1 in = 2.54 cm.
There are a lot of math illiterates. The poster is obviously one of them. I don't think the poster should take any comfort in the fact that other people got the wrong answer as well. I think that (s)he should realize that it's time to become educated.
This is just basic common knowledge that everyone should have.
Re:On in the US (Score:3, Informative)
Good point, but actually tons are a metric unit. One ton is 1000Kg
Re:It matters because (Score:3, Informative)
1609 m/mile
39.37 in/m
These are off the top of my head. This guy doesn't know what the conversion rates are, I didn't know how many cubic inches are in a liter which I needed today, so I fucking looked them up. Search on your favorite search engine for conversion factors this isn't news.
Re:On in the US (Score:5, Informative)
The "stone" is totally unknown in the US, by the way. I believe that's the only common Imperial (or, as we say, standard) measurement we don't have.
Re:It matters because (Score:5, Informative)
And it matters because in the linked blog he gives a long list of incorrect conversion factors from supposedly authoritative sources. I doubt he actually submitted the article; the Slashdot summary just makes him out to be an idiot who can't do simple arithmetic.
Re:Legacy Measurement System (Score:1, Informative)
There's no such thing is "English" units. The units you use are not the Imperial system used in England, they have most of the same names, but some of the values are different. Mostly volume units I believe, like Gallons.
Re:On in the US (Score:2, Informative)
Quick note.. (Score:5, Informative)
meter
n.
1. The measured arrangement of words in poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic quantity, or the number of syllables in a line.
2. A particular arrangement of words in poetry, such as iambic pentameter, determined by the kind and number of metrical units in a line.
3. The rhythmic pattern of a stanza, determined by the kind and number of lines.
As it pertains to Music:
1. Division into measures or bars.
2. A specific rhythm determined by the number of beats and the time value assigned to each note in a measure.
Of course, this is just me being a nit-picky bastard.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
This is a popular misconception. The fact is, the U.S. does use the metric system. See here for a list of laws [colostate.edu].
Re:American bashing? (Score:5, Informative)
Using prefixes to express multiples of base units?
No memorizing antiquated and imprecise ratios?
You have a base unit for every type of measurement; length(m), mass(g), weight(N), pressure(Pa), energy (J), etc. Just add prefixes and numerical values and you're all set! So easy..
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
It's not hard... Use "units" (Score:5, Informative)
Josh
Re:It matters because (Score:4, Informative)
Long or Short? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It matters because (Score:5, Informative)
There is, in fact, no Birchall in administration at NASA, and as far as I can find, there is no Birchall associated with NASA.
The program director of NASA's Mars program is Scott Hubbard. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/00 -10-26.html [nasa.gov]
(search for mars program director)
Re:It matters because (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Quick note.. (Score:1, Informative)
Of course, this is just me being a nit-picky bastard.
No, you're being a brutally retarded nit-picky bastard. From further down the same fucking page on Dictionary.com:
Main Entry: meter
Variant: or chiefly British metre
Function: noun
: the base unit of length in the International System of Units that is equal to the distance traveled in a vacuum by light in 1/299,792,458 second or to about 39.37 inches
Also, use your fucking brain about how the word is pronounced:
meter : would be pronounced "me-tEr" (as English and Americans alike pronounce it)
metre : would be pronounced "mEt-Ruh" (a la Francais)
Amazingly, you're speaking and writing English. So use the logically correct spelling, or change the way you pronounce it to match how you spell it. You fucking idiot.
We already have (Score:5, Informative)
So really we use a mix of both here. In school they teach almost entirely in metric... makes the math easier to deal with when to have to convert to smaller/larger units. Common stuff like speed limits, weight, tempature, and long distances are measured in mph/pounds/fahrenheit/miles. If you go to the store, or use any tools though it's 50/50.. so smaller units like liters/grams/centimeters I think most people know pretty well.
Re:On in the US (Score:5, Informative)
An imperial pint is 20 fluid ounces (a little over half a litre). A US pint is 16 fluid ounces (under half a litre), leading to the factually incorrect US maxim "a pint's a pound the world around". I think there is a small difference in the fluid ounce as well.
Steve
PS 1 stone is 14 pounds.
Re:It matters because (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It matters because (Score:3, Informative)
Well, if your favorite search engine happens to be Google [google.com], the search engine itself will do the math for you [google.com].
But that's just Google...
Re:It matters because (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, it's closer to 5.7 L. 2.54^3*350/1000=5.7354724. 5.7 L is also the number GM has used for years in reference to its 350s.
Re:It matters because (Score:5, Informative)
This may, or may not, prove or disprove that I am the "right" Dan Birchall.
Metadiscussion is great.
Re:At first i thought this post was stupid (Score:5, Informative)
And that looks like a relatively good division, yeah. I tried to get an answer out of Perl using:
which returned: 39.3700787401574814339255681261420249938964843750But Jeff "Bud" Fields did it by hand (which may or may not give better results than asking Perl for lots of precision) and got (quoting him):
I had hoped it'd resolve nicely as it did in Perl, since 2.54 ends with a "4," but unfortunately the factors of 254 are 2 and 127 and 127 had to go be prime on me. Bleah.Re:American bashing? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:On in the US (Score:4, Informative)
If over here is Britain, you are wrong. The unit of measurement is spelt "metre" after the French spelling, in just the same way that we (Brits that can spell) use "centre" instead of the American "center".
A "meter" is a measuring device, such as a "water meter" or a "tachometer".
Re:On in the US (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Legacy Measurement System (Score:3, Informative)
That's why you have to bite the bullet and make the conversion complete. When you have nothing to remind you of the old units, you soon start thinking metric (as ungrammatic as "think differetn", but that's slogans for you).
Road signs were one of the easiest conversions. Either just unscrew and replace, or respray and/or sticker in situ. At least initially, all the new signs have a prominent "km" or "kph" to make it clear. For car speedos you could go to a garage and have a gearwheel changed so it clocked up in km, should be a setup option for digital ones I expect.
Re:meter (Score:4, Informative)
Jeroen
Re:At first i thought this post was stupid (Score:3, Informative)
Re:At first i thought this post was stupid (Score:1, Informative)
prinft("%.70f\n",100/2.54);
which returned: 39.3700787401574814339255681261420249938964843750
Perl was designed to handle strings, not numbers - try using a language with decent numerical processing. 512 digits should be enough, right?Hmm, looks like it loops pretty quickly...
Re:Why should I care? (Score:2, Informative)
Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann were continuing those experiments in the following years and were proving chemically, that indeed there were new cores produced by shooting neutrons on Uranium. But the physical results (density et.al.) didn't fit the expectations for Transuranium. In 1937 Lise Meitner, who was physicist, found the right explanation and concluded that the neutron had rather split the atom core instead of being added to it.
Mr. Hahn in lieu for the whole group got the Chemistry Nobel prize in 1944 for this achievement. Lise Meitner should have been awarded the Physics Nobel prize though, which never happened.
Enrico Fermi, after being exiled to the U.S. was starting a fission reactor project in 1942 in the basement of a stadium and invented the carbon-water moderated reactor.
I remember to have read in an Otto Hahn biography, that the idea to explain the phenomenom as split of atoms has been suggested before 1937 in a conference, where Otto Hahn was presenting his results as proof for creating Transuranium, but the scientist, being a woman from Yugoslavia, didn't have enough credit with the audience.
(There is another prominent case of mistrusting women in science in the first half of the 20th century: When Lise Meitner was the first woman who got awarded her Doctor's degree from the University of Vienna, it was anounced in the local newspapers as a thesis about "Problems in cosmetic physics". Indeed she wrote her thesis about "Problems in cosmic physics".)
Re:On in the US (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Arguments against the metric system (Score:5, Informative)
The number system is not Arabic. It is Hindu and was transmitted to the west by the Arabs. Please see Hindu-Arabic Numerals [wlv.ac.uk]
Re:I highly doubt this webpage. (Score:4, Informative)
"Imperial units were an outgrowth of kooky base-12 that was used by Germanic tribes -- it's why English uses eleven and twelve instead of oneteen and twoteen."
Oh dear, when are we going to get a "-1 complete made-up bullshit" modifier? Here are some facts.
1. In the first place, with 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone and 3 feet to the yard, it's perfectly clear that the imperial system is not a pure base-12 system anyway.
2. The "imperial" system was not Germanic in origin. The metric system was invented in the 18th century. Before that, every country in Europe used a variant of the "imperial" system, which is descended from the Roman system of measurements. They're the folk that came up with 12 inches to the foot, 16 ounces to the pound etc.
3. Given that these units are Roman in origin, note that in latin, 11 is "undecim" (i.e. one-ten) and twelve is "duodecim" (two-ten). So clearly, language has nothing to do with it. And incidently, "eleven" comes from the Old English expression for "one left over (from ten)", so even the Germanic tribes counted in decimal.
4. Use of base-12 systems long predates even the Romans. The 12-hour clock and 360-degree system for angles were developed by the Babylonians several thousand years ago.
5. Then again, if you need to convert 5/16 to decimal to figure out that it's more than a quarter and less than a half, you're probably beyond my ability to help.
Re:On in the US (Score:4, Informative)
google.com:
1 meter = 9.84251969 hands
Re:Poster (Score:4, Informative)
Here in (metric) Europe, the commonly used paper/poster size that comes closest is 59.4 cm by 84.1 cm.
Those numbers don't sound like round numbers in metric, do they?
But it makes sense. The format is known as A1. Its surface area is about 5000 square cm, or half a square meter. A0 is twice as big: a square meter (84.1 cm by 118.9 cm). The ratio of all An formats is sqrt(2), so that the width of An equals the length of A(n+1).
Hence: A4, the standard lettre size, measures 21.0 cm by 29.7 cm; its surface area is 1/16 square meter.
Re:Quick note.. (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it's all about arrogance. It has nothing to do with natural evolution of a language. Those wacky spaniards call the meter a "metro"! They completely CHANGED a letter! What arrogant bastards!!
American English is NOT the same exact language as British English. Languages evolve differently depending on where they're used and who is using them. Someone from Guatemala speaks a whole different Spanish than someone from Madrid. Complete with random "arrogant" spelling changes.
Wrap your head around that.
Re:Why should I care? (Score:2, Informative)
1 litre of pure water (density 1 kg/dm3) = 1 kilogram (1000 grams) of water
1 m = 10 dm = 100 cm = 1000 mm
1 m2 = 100 dm2 = 10000 cm2 = 1e6 mm2
1 m3 = 1e3 dm3 = 1e6 cm3 = 1e9 mm3
God save the metric system!!
Don't mean to troll, but (Score:1, Informative)
"News flash! Some idiot can't convert units and thinks a lot of other people have trouble, too!"
I guess I'm the real idiot for actually posting how dumb it it.
Go ahead mod me down. I have a life. Kinda.
the conversion ins an EXACT one... (Score:3, Informative)
I remember seeing this in a conversion table given out by some TA while I was at LSU. It specifically stated that the figure was exact.
Re:Why should I care? (Score:2, Informative)
A gallon of water is actually ~ 8 pounds. Or 8.345404 [fourmilab.ch] to be exact.
Re:On in the US (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't just because they like confusing people; 1/3 of a mile is about 1/2 of a kilometer, so this will allow them to switch over to metric without having to move any signs.
No, but I've noticed them at a 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and 1 mile. That's why they say pithy things like "Exit 1 mile ahead on right".
Re:Why should I care? (Score:2, Informative)
No, julesh is actually right.
An Imperial gallon is 8 Imperial pints. An Imperial pint is 20 fluid ounces.
This is different than in American Standard units where a gallon is 8 pints, each being 16 fluid ounces.
Just to make things additionally confusing, the fluid ounce is also defined differently in Imperial (1 fluid ounce = 1 weight ounce) -vs- American Standard (1 fluid ounce = 1.04 weight ounce).
So, an Imperial gallon really does weigh (160/16 * 1) 10 pounds while an American gallon weighs (128/16 * 1.04) ~8.33.
Re:Why should I care? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why should I care? (Score:3, Informative)
Ernest Rutherford is thus recognized as the person to first demonstrate the change of atom cores. John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton were the first to use protons, which are quite easy to generate (they are basicly positively charged Hydrogenium or Hydrogenium nuclei).
Enrico Fermi got interested in those experiments and was using neutrons because he hoped that neutrons would be easier to add to the core, because they don't get rejected by the positive charge of the atom core. On the other hand you can't get neutron radiation that easily, you need radioactive elements which send out neutrons during their reaction.
The big breakthrough for Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann was to realize that neutrons don't just get added to the atom cores, but they cause the cores to swing and in this process to split into two about equal sized smaller cores. And Otto Hahn got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for exactly this: To discover the splitting of the atom.
Re:Quick note.. (Score:2, Informative)
30 degrees is hot
20 degrees is nice
10 degrees is cold
0 degrees is ice
In Fahrenheit, that's 86 (hot), 68 (nice), 50 (cold), and of course 32 (ice).
Re:On in the US (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why should I care? (Score:3, Informative)
Also ammunition comes in a mishmash of metric and English units. The caliber (as in 45 caliber) of a round is based on it's size in inches. For example the bore of a 45 caliber handgun is
So what was your point again?
Re:THIS IS NOT FUNNY 1.0 inch = 2.540000cm (Score:5, Informative)
The US Metric Law of 1866 said that one meter was equal to 39.37 inches, exactly. In 1959, the relationship between inches and centimeters was redefined to be that one inch is equal to 2.54 centimeters, exactly. Maps produced by the US Coast and Geodetic Survey continued to use the old standard. To clarify which foot you are talking about, the old foot, derived from 1 meter = 39.37 inches (exactly), is referred to as the "US survey foot". The new foot, derived from 1 inch = 2.54 cm (exactly), is referred to as the "international foot".
Re:I really don't understand this. (Score:3, Informative)
The other, known as the U.S. survey inch gives 39.37 inches per metre, which gives 1 inch = 2.540000508cm
Both are only really used in the U.S. now (except for, among a small handful of other places, certain industries in Canada who have to trade with the U.S., as well as the old farts who are too stubborn to give it up). However, if you can't even agree on a single definition of the thing, no wonder there are so many conversion errors.
Nooo... (Score:2, Informative)
Noooo! Year-Month-Day, you insensitive clod!
It's ISO standard and collates properly if zero-padded.
Oh yea? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:THIS IS NOT FUNNY 1.0 inch = 2.540000cm (Score:1, Informative)
Under the command of test pilot Mike Melvill, SpaceShipOne reached a record breaking altitude of 328,491 feet (approximately 62 miles or 100 km), making Melvill the first civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere and the first private pilot to earn astronaut wings.
-Scaled Composites press release [scaled.com]
Sure sounds like the foot measurement is the most accurate, given that it's both the most precise and not prefaced by "approximately". Also, 100 km is 328,084 [google.com] feet, so how they'd round up to 491 I'm not sure.
[sic] (offtopic) (Score:3, Informative)
in other words, it's used in a quotation that contains something that may be considered a mistake (misspell or using a non-existant word) and is included so the reader know it was intended (or explicitly stating that it is taken as a direct quote).
Re:THIS IS NOT FUNNY 1.0 inch = 2.540000cm (Score:3, Informative)
Pi is a natural constant, defined as the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter.
A "meter" is an artificial definition. And, in particular, the "definition" of a meter has changed many times over the year, starting with the first adoption in 1791, being re-defined many times over the years, and only ending (for the moment) with the current definition in terms of c, the speed of light, in 1983. This article gives a history [nist.gov]
Nobody was trying to legislate reality, just clarify definitions.
Ever heard of The Gimli Goose? (Score:3, Informative)
It turned out that 39.37 was an approximation (Score:2, Informative)
They eliminated the two yard standards and redefined the "English" system based on the metric system.
In other words, there is only one system of standards, the metric system.
The conventional units might be in meters, kilograms, feet, pounds, yards, etc., but for the industrial world, all are based on the metric system BY DEFINITION.