On December 21, 2001 18:11, Timothy Covell wrote:
> As concerns the use of Traditional Units being weird, I would say that the
> motivation made a lot of since. The units were based on commonly
> available natural units of measure, eg.
>
> one inch = 1 thumb = 1 pouce
> one foot = size of a foot = 1 pied
Oh, and things like having 0 degrees being the temperature of -frozen water-
isn't really that natural... no, we'd be much better off using averagish
sizes of human body parts as a reference.
> Also, as is very appropriate to this discussion, the English Units
> made use of powers of two and three. Eg.
>
> 1 inch, 1/2 inch, 1/4 inch, 1/8 inch
Oh, that's right, only users of the Imperial system can use these new-fangled
"fractions". If only someone would invent a 1/4 centimeter, the metric system
would be a viable replacement!
How about this: Seeing there is no commonly used unit smaller than an inch,
people had to resort to using fractions of an inch to describe sizes. It
works in metric too, but people just don't, because there are a wider range
of metric units.
> 3 feet equals a yard.
>
> So, the English units were more attuned to nature. The only thing
> natural about base ten is that the majority of us have 10 fingers and
> 10 toes.
Yes, and three is a magical number decreed by God himself. You do have a good
point, though, the Imperial system fits in quite well with our
base-two-but-sometimes-three number system.
> Finally, Farhenheit units are smaller so that they make more convenient
> divisions: Eg.
Brilliant. The system with the smallest units wins. Let me introduce you to
the yocto-centigrade, where the boiling point is 10^26 degrees. Combined with
the revolutionary new "decimal point", you can obtain never before seen
precision in describing temperatures!
-Ryan
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 23 2001 - 21:00:26 EST