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Admin
Actually, at normal atmospheric surface pressures, pure water freezes at -40 degrees Celsius. Impure water at standard atmospheric surface pressure will freeze at 0 degrees Celsius. The cleaner the water is, the lower the freezing point. Although it matters by the kind of impurity (salt has the opposite effect).
Also, Celsius is great for realizing temperature. 0 degrees is fricking freezing. 10 degrees is rather cold. 20 degrees is comfortable. 30 degrees is hot.
Finally, there is no such thing as degrees Kelvin!
Admin
No, the real WTF was that he could find a printer that uses fan fold paper - taping the pages together furrfu!
The more I work with computers, the better and better subsistence farming looks as an alternative
Admin
Yeah, but standard units are smooth, like a factory.
Admin
No no, you don't understand. The lowest temperature of the winter in Danzig in 1708, THAT's a very natural starting point.
Oh well, yes, there are more theories on how 0°F was derived, but I like that one the most.
Admin
The WTF on the units front is that the Americans took good old Imperial measures and then screwed them up. A pint in America is small (another weapon in keeping adult Americans from drinking?), and what the hell is a cup anyway? And Americans don't recognise the stone, the good old unit of weight for people (14lb, so a person is generally between 8 and 15 stone - nice sized numbers).
Units are generally best when values fall in a range that people can deal with. If it's an artificially bounded scale (like temperature, at least as far as everyday life is concerned), the zero point should be something people can relate to - this is why I much prefer degrees C to F, freezing point is an obvious change in how things feel. Numbers should generally end up between 0 and 20 for everyday use - small enough that people can grasp them, big enough that fractions aren't necessary.
The imperial system does that nicely:
Length: inches (body parts, small furniture, size of firewood logs), feet (people, large indoor objects), yards (rooms, houses), miles (distance to the next village). A 'precision' unit would be good (things have a tendency to be measured in 32nds of an inch). The missing middle units, the chain (22 yards) and furlong (220 yards) distances within a village and small town, are probably outdated.
Metres and km are just as good for the big stuff, but a foot-sized measurement is definitely missing.
Weight: The choice of the kg as the SI unit, not the g, is a WTF of its own. But most everyday weights are not nice numbers in either. Ingredients for cookery are typically 10-20 oz, stuff to carry generally 0-20 lb, people typically 10-20 st. None of those work terrifically well in SI units, though 'stuff to carry' can work in kilos.
Volume: Until the advent of precision science, most ordinary people's measures are well covered by the fl. oz (drinks), the pint (jugs that a person can easily move) and the gallon (the largest amount of water reasonably movable without wheels). Larger amounts are well catered for with the barrel, of course.
I do concur that scientific calculations are far easier in SI units, and I'd never dream of doing them in anything else. But for everyday experience I stick with imperial ones, because the numbers are all the right size.
Admin
So... why exactly do you still use the decimal system?
By the way, the answer's simply "1/3 kg", kilo only has one "l" and it would be 333.3... grams, not milligrams.
Admin
never worked at a large company, eh? :-)
there's no WTF there. it's just that Dilbert is non-fiction.
Admin
Well, 1/.9144 does repeat indefinitely, so I would say that there are a "crapload" of digits is a reasonable characterization.
(It also has a fairly long period: 1.093 613 298 337 707 786 526 684 164 479 440 069 991 251. All digits after the decimal repeat.)
Admin
So how many liters per hectare are you again, off the top of your head?
Admin
"The speed of light in a vacuum", since we're being pedantic. :)
Admin
Wow, apparently this isn't a troll after all.
http://www.plantpath.wisc.edu/fac/joh/Exp2TeachGuide.htm
"First, most students do not understand, and initially will not believe, that pure water freezes at -40°C. Someone in class is bound to say, “Don’t you mean 0°C?” The problem is that most of us have been taught about the freezing point of water under equilibrium conditions, i.e., when there is an ice crystal present. Given a perfect ice nucleus in pure water, the freezing point of water is 0°C. Most of us will never encounter really pure water so we will never observe water as a liquid below about -10°C. Many chemicals and contaminants, such as dust particles, will act as ice nuclei at temperatures below -5°C, though few are as effective as the ice nucleating bacteria, which are very active at -2° to -3°C. So be sure to stress that the freezing point of pure water is -40°C and that less pure water is unlikely to supercool below -8° to -10°C."
Admin
(While we're at it...)
Another interesting fact about common water is that it begins freezing at 4C and doesn't reach 0C until it's completely frozen. It is most dense at 4C and actually expands as it approaches 0C, because it reorders itself into its crystal structure. It's because this crystal structure is less dense that ice actually floats on water.
As for us Canadians, we use SI for everything except force, in which case we typically use pounds. For engineering applications, SI is a godsend. The fact that it works well over large scale changes (like 10^12) make it exceptionally useful. For example, how many microns are in a kilometer? Now how many mils are in a mile? Not so easy...
Admin
Don't you mean -40 degrees Fahrenheit?
Admin
Based on the thorough study of american movies it seems that you already use the SI system in USA. Namely when measuring illegal drugs such as cocaine ;-)
Admin
True, but what you assume is there are only 2 systems: metric and British. Which is only true because the metric system replaced all the others. In the early 19th century there was a plethora of systems, almost every country had its own traditional system. There were at least six different miles and other horrible things. And with the coming of the golden era of steam there was good reason to abandon these as engineers and workers from different countries had to work together on large projects, a real tower of Babel unless you agree on one particular system. The CGS system's main advantage was that it was easier to calculate with it on paper.
However, standardization has its quirks. There is an urban legend about the size of the space shuttle's solid-fuel rockets which says it's size is based on what can be carried on a railway. The distance of the rails however is based on the distance of the wheels of the coaches of the 19th century. Which in turn is based on the distance of the trenches in Europe's most frequented roads. Which is based on the size of the ancient Roman coaches. And Roman coaches were drawn typically by two horses so the space shuttle's rockets were eventually designed to match the size of the backsides of two Roman horses.
This actually might not be true but tells a lot about how standards evolve.
Admin
Nonononono. I know water can be taken down to -40 °C without freezing - but that's supercooling. And homogeneous nucleation depends on random fluctuations, so the -40 °C is just when it becomes likely on short timescales. Left to itself for much longer, pure water at -n °C will freeze, probably as a single crystal, and quite rapidly after a long, random, wait.
The temperature at which the stable phase at 1 atm changes from water to ice is 0 °C (+/- those little fractions someone discussed earlier). Below that ice is stable, above water. Of course water can persist metastably below 0. It depends on what is meant by freezing point, I would normally take it as the change in the stable phase. I guess that's why the switch was made to the triple point for the temperature definition.
Admin
That is the Stone Cold Steve Austin way of saying it.
Admin
Well, no, actually it's an axiom.
Admin
Once I had to reverse engineer the requirements from a 25kloc Cobol program. The main program consisted of a single 16kloc routine spanning over 20 pages of printed code. It failed the taller than me law.
Admin
The real WTF is that anonymous is this stupid.
Captcha: wtf
Admin
I have been known to measure time in units of volume, particularly on a Friday night:
"How long have you been in the pub?" "About two pints."
Admin
About the unit discussion:
I don't realy care if Celcius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin are used, those are all kind of arbitrary, what matters is that there is only one scale to measure temperatures in each system. For the rest of the SI vs. Imperial usint debate, I side definately on the SI side, for one main reason: the number of different units. In the Imperial system you have a lot of different units to measure what is essentially the same quantity. For example length is measured in meters in SI, but in inches, feet, yards, miles, hands, and what have you, in the Imperial system. And I'm not even talking about surfaces and volumes, which also use the metre in SI, but often completely new units in the Imperial system.
Reducing the amount of conversions you have to do and conversion constants you have to remember is a great advantage for two reasons:
- You can't make errors doing the conversions either rounding errors or computational errors.
- You don't need a lookup table for the conversions, any system that supports decimal computations will suffice.
When using computers this usually gets even worse as those actually represent decimal numbers in binary usually (you can do BCD), so every conversion you do adds to more conversions internally with the associated loss in precission.
Admin
The bad thing about thisn WTF is that I've seen it happen at one of my old employers..
The whole thing: reports manufactured by a process involving a dozen manual steps, programmers scorned on for improving because it was "not their responsibility", the pointy haired boss embarassed by a printout...
ARGH...
captcha: random, like management.
Admin
I don't know about the US, but the UK is slowly on the way to conversion to SI units. When I was taught science and maths at school, we were taught in SI units. The imperial system was certainly mentioned, but not really dwelled upon that much. Most Brits under the age of about 30 (at a guess) will probably favour the metric system.
Admin
Admin
The imperial system -only- works for everyday work because people are used to using it all their life, because that's exactly what the rest of the world is saying about SI.
SI works just as well for everday work as Fahrenheit. It's just that SI works better for everything else.
Admin
I think Abe "Grandpa" Simpson said it best...
<font size="-1">"My car gets fourty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!"
</font>
Admin
I propose we compromise: 1012!
Lowercase K, actually; "kelvins".
Admin
It's really kind of sad that among a population of people who are supposed to be gathered here to laugh at silly ideas from a point of view of rationality and detachment, there are so many repeating the 'metric mantra', as if 10 is the Proper Factor For Numbers To Have and the met[re|er] is somehow The Right Length To Use. The problem is not that the USA and parts of the UK refuse to 'modernize'; the problem is that people are so prone to follow ideas that sound good in meetings but don't actually improve life.
Having said that, of course there are some things that the metric units happen to be more comfortable for. For me it breaks up like this:
Distance: mm and cm for small, precise things. Inches, feet, and miles for 'human sized' distances. SI for astronomical distances. Sun for certain kinds of fittings and furniture (it's a well known unit in some places).
Weight: kg all the way! Why? Because I have a 'feel' for how much a full can of Coke weighs, and I can imagine holding three of them to imagine a kg. Also, I find pounds a bit too small. There's one large exception to this: stones are an excellent, comfortable way of measuring people's weight.
Volume: pints for milk and beer. Lit[er|re]s for anything else. How do you even measure the capacity of a bag in traditional units? I have no idea. Cups for flour, sugar etc.
Time: I don't think anyone uses the metric time measurements any more, and of course SI adopted the second.
Area: square feet or square met[re|er]s. I don't find either of them more intuitive than the other. Jo (again, it's a well known unit for some) for areas of rooms. Acres for large areas, square miles for even larger ones.
Temperature: Well, fahrenheit is just weird. I don't really like Centigrade but it's still better than fahrenheit. Exception: human body temperature.
Absent from my personal measurement vocabulary: Nautical miles, other funky miles, and fathoms. 'ounces' and the whole incomprehensible Imperial volume system. Pounds, except in groups of 14. Hectares and whatnot (I don't measure farms). Gallons.
Admin
Besides, in certain areas Imperial is better suited to computing, being based on powers of 2 and all.
2 cups = 1 pint
2 pints = 1 quart
4 quarts = 1 gallon
etc.
or
2 pecks = 1 kenning
2 kennings = 1 bushell
2 bushells = 1 strike
16 strikes = 1 chaldron
etc.
See? Much better than that silly base 10 for computing.Admin
The original poster meant celsius, but another irony to all this is that -40C and -40F is almost exactly the same. Look at a thermometer.
Admin
Way late to the game here, but this sounds an awful lot like a financial services place in Boulder, CO that I used to work.
If the Darren is around, is this the place you're talking about?
Admin
But in the real world, how often do you need to calculate that alone. Typically if you start calculating in feet, you stay there, and the occasions when a conversion is needed, that's only one of several that the particular situation called for that need a calculator anyhow.
Sure the 10 base sounds nice, but in the real world you almost never encouter such a conversion in isolation.
jay
Admin
Why is SI bad for human sized distances yet fine for areas? Or, why is one system bad but that system to the power of 2 good?
Admin
This is exactly what Faranheit is, except it's 0 to 100.
Admin
I don't think this is true, unless you have an interesting definition of 'begins freezing'. It does become more ordered the colder it gets but this is true from steam downwards. You can have water at 0C.
This part is true though, it is densest at 4C even though it is not a crystal at this point.
Admin
This happens to me too!
I cut out and keep all the lonely curly braces, and use them as confetti at weddings.
Admin
Well, Daren did not really challenge the Director's judgment, the Director inappropriately challenged Darens judgment. When you hire someone, you are hiring their experience, skills, and wisdom. When you get too high up the chain, you often get a bit removed from the technology, especially newer technology, and you have to recognize that others may something that you do not. (Note that I am not saying that challenging someone's experience/wisdom/judgment is wrong, doing so without good reason is wrong.)
Additionally, the whole printout thingy was fine. The directory further challenged Daren's wisdom by demanding to know "what was wrong" with the code. Daren, in response to a request from a more senior member in the chain of command, simply did as was instructed and and presented the requested information in an easy to see format. WIth ample highlighting used to draw attention to specific areas, no less. It is that simple.
Moral - be careful what you ask for... you just might get it.
Peace!
Admin
Who would use feet to measure length anyway?
My girlfriend? When describing me ;-]
Admin
Centigrade / Celsius is fairly pointless; there's nothing particular to recommend it. Kelvin is an absolute measure, which is useful. The reference points for degrees-C aren't significantly meaningful.
Fahrenheit, on the other hand, is fairly clever, considering the requirements it was designed to meet. It's based on two reference temperatures, which are assigned to 32 and 96 degrees. The difference between 96 and 32 is 64. Do those numbers look familiar?
If that's not clear enough, think about this: you have a linear gauge, with two reference points marked on it. Now you want to mark it in gradations corresponding to a unit you've developed. What kinds of intervals will give you an easy geometric construction procedure so you can do that mechanically?
The other SI units are useful, and the correspondence of the Celsius/Centigrade/Kelvin degree to the other SI units is sometimes useful, but the actual reference points of the C scale not so much.
Admin
Imperial 69 == metric 181
Admin
But (kilo)grams aren't a measure of weight, they are a measure of mass. That's why a kilogram of sand weighs more on Earth than on the Moon, whereas a pound of sand has more mass on the Moon.
Admin
That's all fine, but try to avoid the racial slurs next time!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani
Admin
I know one reason:)
To avoid launching rocket to the space while getting the calculations in meters, thinking they are in foots and sending the rocket way off....
Admin
Nope, and even though we no longer purchase Quarts or pints of Whiskey as it comes in liters, we really won't be officialy on the SI system until BEER is sold in other than 12 oz., 16 oz, and Quart sizes
Admin
Actually it is exactly: -40 * 9/5 + 32 = -8*9 + 32 = -72 + 32 = -40
But I'm pretty sure the poster that said "don't you mean -40 degrees fahrenheit" was making a funny...
Admin
By "begins freezing", I think he is referring to the fact that it is at this point that it starts crystallizing into ice.
Admin
So you sell the land by measuring it by foot right? Now lets eval. Lets assume you bought 50 feet land when you were 10 years old and now you are 30 years old. I assume your feet grew with you so now you will sell the same land but you will sell it as 25 feet but then again the person getting may only get 20 feet???
Admin
You just proved my point. The Imperial system was already well established. By introducing another system, you get the result you just described.
Admin
Kilo = 1000
Kibi = 1024
1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes
1 kibibyte = 1024 bytes
KiB vs. kB