Built like a Mercedes (?)

Well hell you also order meat at your friendly charcuterie in FRANCE of all places in pounds (livres). Germany has its zentners (100 pounds, not kg). A lot of (most?) tires and even bicycles in Europe are measured in inches. (I have a bitch with tire sizings everywhere, why do they need to combine inches and millimeters with tire sizes? Pick one system and stick with it).

I don't mind Fahrenheit at all. With whole numbers, you get more precision with Fahrenheit than you do with Celsius. Not sure how a numberi can be antiquated.

Heh, in UK it's common to give you weight in stones.

I never did figure out why litres per 100 km. When you are stopped, you instantaneous economy is infinity. How do you average that? Similarily as your economy improves it is a limit to zero. 100 km per litre or just km per litre sure would make a lot more sense mathmatically.

Imperial? US doesn't use imperial gallons, generally.

You could say the same thing about tools in USA. If you're going to do much you need both systems. Here I wish everything was SI, but tool companies like the current situation I suppose.

In the US, it's ounces. At least that's how the laws are usually written. Cocaine on the other hand tends to use SI measurements.

On thing I've noticed is in France they tend to weigh food ingredients more than in America (North at least). For example, US cooks might sift flour and then try to measure it by volume, which is moderately precise at best. French cooks will simply weigh the flour and be done with it. Much more precise and takes a lot less time. Probably part of the reason why the food is so good.

We don't eat snails. :)

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Many measures are determined by established use. Hence the continued use of inches for wheels and tyres for cars. Also feet ( for altitude ) and knots ( for speed ) in aviation.

It doesn't *have* to make sense.

Graham

antiquated is if it's outlived it's usefulness. Can you give me any reason at all why water freezes at 32F ? I think I do know why, but geeez 32? Personally I thought 35.6 would have been better :-)

I can see that! It's a lot smaller number :-) my wife to a girl friend and 'I' weigh 32 stone.... what do you weigh? 1000 newton? LOL

l'Hopital .... that's probably why he studied limits :-)

Similarily as your

..... yeah, I agree ..... the french, go figure :-) Actually it's probably another of those DIN norms and no one will ever know why since reasons for it buried deeeeeeeep in some buroucrats files ..... the germans, go figure :-)

cheersm guenter

My French Michelin tires say "44 psi". Perhaps there is the metric equivalent, 3837402 nanozetapascaloids or something but that's the least used metric measurement I've seen here.

Modern folks often consider Daniel Fahrenheit's thermometer scale less "logical" than Anders Celsius' scale in which the difference in temperature between freezing and boiling water is set to 100 C. Fahrenheit, in his older scale, originally set the difference between freezing water and human body temperature equal to 64 F.

Why 64? Imagine making a thermometer: you fill the tube with your working liquid (mercury, or in Fahrenheit's day alcohol). You put it one of your references (say freezing water) and mark the level. Then you put it in another (in your mouth, for Fahrenheit's scale) and mark the level again. Now you need to divide the space between into equal divisions. If you have to make 100 divisions, you need a precision steel ruler. But if you have to make 64 divisions, you just need a compass and straightedge, because you just need to divide the distance exactly in half 5 times (2^6 = 64).

Furthermore, Fahrenheit took advantage of an interesting coincidence to set the freezing point of water at 32 F, and assign a third scale point, the temperature of a stable mixture of ice, salt and water, to 0 F. Since

Hence Fahrenheit's scale lent itself far easier to the manufacture of accurate thermometers at a time when precision instruments were very expensive.

The question is spurious. No matter how you express fuel economy, it is worsened by time when the engine is running and the car is not moving. This is reflected in the expression, whether it be mpg, l/100km, km/l, or whatever. There's no particular advantage to fixing the distance (as in l/100km) over fixing the fuel volume (as in mpg), but neither is there an advantage the other way.

Err, he couldn't use both of those at the same time if he wanted a linear scale. In the scale where body temperature = 64 and freezing water = 32, freezing saturated brine = 20.

It appears that in his final scale, he used 0, 32, and 96 as his fixed points.

I'm 30.

The same thing here in Canada (highways signed in km and speedometers in km/h, not "kph"), but it works this way in mph, too: Speed limit 65mph, you drive 65mph, so something 65 miles away will take 1 hr.

It's no easier or harder than mpg.

So, as I was saying...just *try* getting anything metric at Rona. No metric hardware, no metric pipefittings or pipe, no metric terminals, no metric lumber, no metric fluoro tubes...

DS

Because there was a particular salt solution that froze at 0, and Fahrenheit figured that was as cold as anybody cared about.

The better question is why average body temperature is 98.6. It was supposed to be 100. Nobody really knows whether he was running a fever that day, or if he mis-measured.

That's an explanation I've never seen before, and makes 100 times more sense than any explanation I ever have seen (including the one I posted roughly 60 seconds ago). Do you have a cite for that? I'd love to be able to claim that Fahrenheit was more logical than Celsius (or any of the other centigrade systems) because it was based on powers of two....

Bar is pretty well used and universally quoted in all car and machinery manuals. Getting to use and understand its scale is just a matter of habit as is human weight and fuel consumption.

Huw

I agree with the brine = 0 and body temp = 100F from what I've read. I have never come across the freezing water = 32F point that you make. However, I'm sure the computer types would love the argument re 2^6 = 64 'binary' divisions .... sounds like folklore started by computer departments to me though :-) ... admittedly nice strory though

cheers, guenter

"except", that most people here in Canada couldn't do the math fast enough given that signage , highway and speedos, is in 'km'

cheers, guenter

Christ, but you're obtuse. The point is that there is no advantage to having highways and speedometers in km/h over having highways and speedometers in mph.

I did late last night when I posted it -- not now, and I'm getting ready for a vacation, so it'll have to wait til I come back!

Right. That's why body temperature is not 64.