What is a kil'ometer?

[Weasel Mender]

Just to stir the pot a bit, I learned as an apprintace blacksmith that a hunderdweight was 112 lbs.
Weasel

[Howard Clark]

It is, eight stone.

That's because of the way english anvils are marked (think Peter Wright). Hundredweight, then stone.

[O'Callaghan]

Ah, but an American cwt is still 100lb, rather than 112lb. So, although there are always 20 cwt in a ton, an American ton is only 2,000lb and an Imperial ton is 2,240lb. Sometimes these are referred to as a short ton and a long ton, if you want to confuse the issue further. Then there's a metric tonne, which is 1,000kg, or about 2,205lb.

[SteveB]

It is interesting that we have left off one of the prime measurements of consternation on this board - - Temperature.

Fahrenheit, Centigrade, now called Celsius. My house is hot at 18 degrees (C) or outside is d@%$n cold at 18 degrees (F).
Those that post and do not have a location to go by sometimes can leave the rest of us wondering which measuring system is being used.

While I was stationed in Germany, I just used Metric, it was easier than all the calculations that always rounded out just wrong. I served as a Machinist/ Mechanic, long before digital enhancements became available for the lathe and milling machine.
Slainte

[sathor]

Well, what bothers me is that noone here mentioned slugs. Kg and Lbs are not the same thing, like F/C or Miles vs Kilometer. Kg is a measure of mass, whereas pounds are mass including gravity. (I forget the formula, the one that pops in my head is the gravity formula)

You may weigh 100 pounds here, and 1/6 of that on the moon, but those aprox 50 Kg will still be 50 Kg on the moon. and i know that is a bad estimation, I have a 6 month old on my arm.

[thanmuwa]

Your alcohol in
Gill

Spirit measures are still based on Gills in the UK and Ireland, traditionally 1/6 Gill in England, 1/5 Gill in Scotland (now both standardised to 25 ml which is between the two. You occasionally see 35ml measures too, more common north of the border) and 1/4 Gill in Ireland. Ireland still serves in 1/4 Gills although is is now called 35.5 ml . My theory is that this traditional variance is down to ability to hold one's alcohol .

Kg is a measure of mass, whereas pounds are mass including gravity.

Yes, you are right, lbs are a measure of weight, kgs of mass. We should be comparing lbs and Newtons . A Newton is a measure of weight, approximately 10 * mass in kgs if measured on the Earth's surface, the 10 representing the acceleration due to gravity in m/s. Gosh the metric system is neat!

[isantop]

You may weigh 100 pounds here, and 1/6 of that on the moon, but those aprox 50 Kg will still be 50 Kg on the moon. and i know that is a bad estimation, I have a 6 month old on my arm.

Yes, you are right, lbs are a measure of weight, kgs of mass. We should be comparing lbs and Newtons . A Newton is a measure of weight, approximately 10 * mass in kgs if measured on the Earth's surface, the 10 representing the acceleration due to gravity in m/s. Gosh the metric system is neat!

Sorry, but the physics student has to barge in with technicalities.

Newtons and pounds are measures or force, not weight. When you measure your "weight", you are really measuring to force you are exerting due to gravity against the earth (indirectly, since you are really exerting it on everything between you and the earth too!), which is why you can have pounds of force. However, since most people only ever measure their "weight" on earth anyway, and to measure mass we use "weight" and a balance, then In my opinion, grams is a perfectly acceptable unit of "weight".

9.8 m/s/s, not 10. We have to use 9.8 in class, so I always use it everywhere else too. We usually use the SI units too, which all (mostly) happen to be metric. However, in all my maths classes, we use imperial units. I happen to be decent in both, though I use conversions like 2km = 1 mi, 2.5 cm = 1 in, etc. I'm not good with pounds to kg, but I am working on it.

/know it all
/off topic

I usually pronounce it Kil-AHM-iter out of force of habit, but I do try to say KEE-lo-MEE-ter (british style, since I say all the other metric units like that).

Schwas, they're sure to cause confusion when pronouncing words. I like romantic languages and japanese better since they don't have them. (Except japanese u, which is almost always a schwa and less of a concern anyway.)

again, /off topic

[sathor]

In a few of my classes, the teacher would give 'local' gravity for the calculations, I think usually 9.81 but sometimes 9.78 and I think I remember at least twice we had 3 decimals for G. I think the 9.8 is one of those 'sea level' numbers, though I may be wrong, that was 6 or 7 years ago. Of course, 10 is as good a number as any when you have to do the math in your head, since you have other issues like reaction time, local gravity difference, the gravity of the object pulling up, other objects pulling to a different direction, solar and lunar pull, wind resistance, time for light to travel from the object to the observer, which is rarely the same at the endpoint as it was at the start,...

There was once a study I read of, but never found more info on, that talked about a series of studies done on some clams, at their native locale, they would open when the moon was overhead. They were taken to Northwestern (near Chicago) and at first they were on their old times, like jet lagged, but after a short time, they started opening up when the moon was above them again, just as they had before they were moved, but set at a new time. They were indoors, and there was no cues in the lab that should have reset their internal clocks, yet...

Sorry, but the physics student has to barge in with technicalities.
9.8 m/s/s, not 10. We have to use 9.8 in class, so I always use it everywhere else too.

[Bugbear]

Don't leave out String Theory in all this...

[Southern Breeze]

Don't leave out String Theory in all this...

Now that String Theory has come up, we can continue into the off topic zone.


Consider the cat and buttered toast problem:

The cat can be conditioned using operant conditioning, a simple
stimulus-response training. In other words, the cat can be reinforced
everytime it lands on its feet, which, fortunately, is its natural
instinct. The toast is another problem. It cannot be trained. Training
toast would require sequestering a confirmed geek 24 hours a day in a room
with no other companionship than the toast, butter, and the knife to spread
it with, a chart to record the number of times it falls buttered side down,
which, of course, will be every single time. These two experiments would
prove that each proposition is correct, i.e., the cat always lands on its
feet and the toast always lands on the buttered side, usually over a pile
of hair or dust. Once the two are tied together, and after, as the
engineer has noted, substantial damage to the geek, the next step of the
experiment begins. It would follow an AB design, as the spinning of the
cat and toast would prevent return to baseline. The A phase, dropping the
cat and dropping the toast, has established baseline. The first condition
would be the last, dropping the cat with the buttered toast, which, as has
been amply proven before, would result in an incredible spinning. It is
quite clear, as Leonardo da Vinci noted and now we know, that many fluid
motions happen in a whirlpooling motion. Hence the galaxies are nothing
more than spinning bathwater to the giant black hole at the center. Such
holes start small and get bigger. The spinning of the cat would quickly
begin to draw in matter, including the geek and all surrounding data, then
all interested observers outside the room, and their families, neighbors,
and eventually, their neighbors until all was sucked into the whirring
little greasy hole with the claws. It would continue until two billion
years from now when the Andromeda galaxy collides with the milky way, one
arm of which had been by then sucked up by the silently meowing hole, all
combining to make a giant black hole, which eventually would sit,
hibernate, and when the big crunch came, or the universal black
discombobulating whimper into darkness, leave all meaning aside. Hence,
philosophy is the real solution. What is the meaning of the cat? What is
the meaning of toast and how is its essence changed by the spreading of
butter? Where does the Cat's Self begin and the Butteredtoast's Self end?
When it all combines, will there be a navel? Will it dream? How can we
become one with it voluntarily rather than by force? Will we be one with
the cat, the butter, the toast, the buttered toast, or the unity of the
three? When that vast blackness recoalesces, will it explode to restart
the giagantic cycle again, passing the sins of the previous on to the
subsequent? Will we again have physics, cats, butter, toast, and geeks?
It's all in the strings.

We now return you to your thread on measurements.