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Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 14:14:32 -0600
From: Bob White <bob@bob-white.com>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Subject: Re: [FlyRotary] Re: Units of measure - say what?
Message-Id: <20050501141432.3da7b306.bob@bob-white.com>
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Well dang it Al, why didn't you say you were just being stubborn an not
accepting a commonly used unit of measure as valid?  I don't think the
argument holds water though. :)  I don't have a Handbook of Chemistry
and Physics handy, but I did dig out my 12th edition CRC Standard
Mathematical Tables which tells me I can convert an ounce (fluid) to
1.080469 cubic inches. 

The International General Conference on Weights and Measures deals is
the standards of metric units, so why should it be there?  Looking at
the history of units, I can't see anything special about fluid ounces
to object too.  All of them have a checkered histroy and the design of
all the common units were developed from everyday usage (and finally
standardized).  Interestingly, Jefferson almost got the US on a decimal
system of units (not Metric), but it didn't quite get implemented.  I
would reccomend "Measuring America" by Andro Linklater for anyone
interested in how we got to where we are and why we aren't metric (yet).

Bob W. (Radical Conformist, at least today.)


On Sun, 1 May 2005 08:30:04 -0700
"Al Gietzen" <ALVentures@cox.net> wrote:

> I know Al,
> 
> But it was LOTS of fun.
> 
> Jack
> 
>  
> 
> Ah, yes; but I think it may have been at I my expense; although I was
> confused about who was disagreeing with who, or who was mixing weights and
> volumes.  But it was my fault for bringing up this technicality, and I guess
> somewhere in there I got caught cross-wise with it.
> 
>  
> 
> But now that my anniversary celebrations are over, and my headache is almost
> gone; allow me to digress.  The culprit is this *fluid* oz; which, dang-it,
> is a slang unit.  Just like "dang-it" is not in the dictionary; the fluid oz
> is not in the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, or in the official listings
> of the International General Conference on Weights and Measures.  Ounces and
> pounds are units of weight, and teaspoons and pints and quarts are units of
> volume.
> 
>  
> 
> You see, somewhere is the distant past; some of our ancestors were measuring
> other fluids with a measure calibrated in ounces of water at 59F, and
> calling it a certain number of ounces of that fluid.  When their error was
> pointed out; they were like - "er, ah; OK, we'll call it a 'fluid' ounce
> then", and it has been commonly used as a measure of 'volume' ever since for
> recipes in the kitchen - and in measuring 2-cycle oil.
> 
>  
> 
> But as long as we agree that a quart is always 0.94645 liters, and that a
> pint is not always a pound, we can get along quite well.
> 
>  
> 
> Now if we could get rid of this strange and ambiguous 'British' system of
> units this confusion would all go away. Did you know that in 1960, at the
> Eleventh General Conference on Weights and Measures, 36 countries, including
> the United States, officially sanctioned and agreed to adopt the
> 'International System of units' (known as Systeme International d'Inites,
> designated SI in all languages) based on the metric system?  Even the
> National Bureau of Standards officially adopted it.  Unfortunately, in this
> country the effort to convert failed due to the immense mental inertia; and,
> of course the billions of dollars invested in tooling.
> 
>  
> 
> So now we are stuck with building our airplanes in inches and feet, while we
> build our engines millimeters and centimeters; and measuring 2-cycle oil in
> FLUID oz.
> 
>  
> 
> Al (maybe I'll go back and lie down now)
> 
> 


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