Edwards air show B-1 speed record attempt

"Andreas Parsch" wrote in message
...
Not any easier than with U.S. or Imperial units. BTW, a few years
there was this unfortuante incident involving a multi-million $ NASA
space probe and incompetent usage of U.S. units of distance ;-) ...

Naw, it was because some idiot provided some of the terms in
metric instead of proper units.

Huh?? "Meter" isn't any more similar to "gram" than, say, "foot" is to
"ounce". If you refer to the common prefixes, this is the big
_advantage_. If you know that a kilometer is 1000 meters, you
immediately know that a kilogram is 1000 grams, a kilovolt is 1000
volts, etc. No need to memorize all the factors to convert inches -
feet - miles, ounces - pounds, and whatever.

But nobody weighs things in "grams", it's always "kilograms".
Nor do the measure things in "meters" (as was stated concerning
building a house) they measure in "milimeters".

John Keeney wrote:

"Andreas Parsch" wrote in message
...

Not any easier than with U.S. or Imperial units. BTW, a few years
there was this unfortuante incident involving a multi-million $ NASA
space probe and incompetent usage of U.S. units of distance ;-) ...


Naw, it was because some idiot provided some of the terms in
metric instead of proper units.


It wouldn't have happened if they had used proper (i.e. _metric_ ;-) )
units consistently.


Huh?? "Meter" isn't any more similar to "gram" than, say, "foot" is to
"ounce". If you refer to the common prefixes, this is the big
_advantage_. If you know that a kilometer is 1000 meters, you
immediately know that a kilogram is 1000 grams, a kilovolt is 1000
volts, etc. No need to memorize all the factors to convert inches -
feet - miles, ounces - pounds, and whatever.


But nobody weighs things in "grams", it's always "kilograms".


Nonsense. It depends - of course - on the size of the items.


Nor do the measure things in "meters" (as was stated concerning
building a house) they measure in "milimeters".


And so what? The OP said metric units had "usability
problems (like similar sounding names for various units)". Neither
"meter" nor "millimeter" sound similar to other non-distance metric units.

Andreas

From: Andreas Parsch a
the size of the items.

snip

And so what? The OP said metric units had "usability
problems (like similar sounding names for various units)". Neither
"meter" nor "millimeter" sound similar to other non-distance metric units.

Andreas

Milliliter and millimeter perhaps?

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

B2431 wrote:

And so what? The OP said metric units had "usability
problems (like similar sounding names for various units)". Neither
"meter" nor "millimeter" sound similar to other non-distance metric units.


Milliliter and millimeter perhaps?


"liter" and "meter" do indeed sound similar. However, from the context
it should be fairly easy to guess if the speaker means a distance or a
volume. And BTW, I'm not too familiar with English units, but maybe
there are also two similar sounding names of units. As long as units
with similar names are used for different kinds of measurements, the
risk of confusion should be negligible.

As for the identical prefixes, I already said why this is actually an
advantage.

Andreas

Andreas Parsch wrote:
I'm not too familiar with English units, but maybe there are also two
similar sounding names of units.

"There are only 18 ounces of cottage cheese in a 24 ounce tub".

On or about Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:46:16 +0100, "Terry Simpson"
allegedly uttered:

Andreas Parsch wrote:
I'm not too familiar with English units, but maybe there are also two
similar sounding names of units.

"There are only 18 ounces of cottage cheese in a 24 ounce tub".


But 20 (Imperial) fluid ounces in a (US) pint that consists of 16 (US)
fluid ounces.

Who says Imperial/English/Archaic measurements are sensible? When was
the last time you worked out length in rods chains and leagues?

---
Peter Kemp

Life is short - Drink Faster

Who says Imperial/English/Archaic measurements are sensible? When was
the last time you worked out length in rods chains

Chains are still used somewhat as a measurement on the ground side of wildland
firefighting...


Ron
Pilot/Wildland Firefighter

Who says Imperial/English/Archaic measurements are sensible? When was
the last time you worked out length in rods chains and leagues?

---
Peter Kemp

I say we should start measuring velocity in furlongs per fortnight.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

B2431 wrote:

From: Andreas Parsch a
Neither "meter" nor "millimeter" sound similar to other non-distance metric units.

Milliliter and millimeter perhaps?



Ok, now I noticed my stupid typo. Of course I wanted to say "Neither
'meter' nor 'millimeter' sound similar to other metric units _for
distance_". Sorry!

Andreas

B2431 wrote:

From: Andreas Parsch a
the size of the items.


snip

And so what? The OP said metric units had "usability
problems (like similar sounding names for various units)". Neither
"meter" nor "millimeter" sound similar to other non-distance metric units.

Andreas


Milliliter and millimeter perhaps?

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired



Yes, they sound vaguely similar, but I fail to see why that would be a
problem. If any builder would be told to build a doorway of 2200
milliliters tall, I'm sure he'd know that that doesn't make a whole lot
of sense.

Regards,

Ralph Savelsberg