errors in The Ultimate Tone by K. O'Connor

[Tom Phillips]

Also... Maybe it is a useful term of Johnny Student to use when he wrote home to his parents.
"Hey Dad, I signed up for science classes. Please send more money."

[Justin Thomas]

I never did that... I just called em what they was. Okay, so, now I have to figure out how to bring the hijacks back around to Errors in TUT. Right after I make an appeal to Mark Hammer to back me up on "Social Sciences..."

Justin

[eschertron]

My standard arguement when trying to convince someone of the benefits of metric is usually "imagine if money didn't use factors of ten".
That usually does the trick, except with the tuppence and shillings crowd.

..and why are US residents so afraid of binary arithmetic? I can look at any schoolkid's ruler and see inches, inches*(1/2^1), inches*(1/2^2), inches*(1/2^3), inches*(1/2^4) ...

[J M Fahey]

Cubans *slightly* improved the money system.

Like most, they use the 2-5-1 progression, from 1$ to 1000$ (Cuban Peso) but for most common everyday small shopping they added the 3$ bill and coin.
The most used denomination and, of course, sporting Che Guevara:



It´s getting the "endangered species" rating, since every Argentine Tourist brings some back to show friends.

As a side note, Cuban bills are not printed in Russia or any communist Country but in London , by Thomas De La Rue & Co.

[bob p]

...


It´s getting the "endangered species" rating, since every Argentine Tourist brings some back to show friends...

Don't worry. If they ever run out, they can always print more.

[bob p]

... I thought that most countries in the world follow the same rules. It seems to me that USA and Canada do not follow these rules because of historical reasons (monetary system "copied" from Great Britain?).

Allow me to put on my Cliff Claven hat for a minute:

The American monetary system wasn't copied from the British Empire. The American dollar was actually based upon the Spanish Eight Royals coin, also known as the Spanish Dollar.

During it's colonial period Britain engaged in a mercantilist economy, which was designed to maximize their export trade while maximizing the import of gold and silver. These policies resulted in a shortage of British currency in the British colonies. With nowhere else to turn, colonists accepted the the Spanish dollar as a trade standard. The American colonies commonly obtained Spanish dollars through trade with the West Indes.

Because of their vast imports of gold and silver "appropriated" from their Latin American colonies, Spain enjoyed a very stable monetary system. The Spanish dollar enjoyed widespread use as an international currency standard since the 16th century because it was a genuine hard currency that was formed from fine silver and was uniform in it's production. Literally speaking, it was what everyone wanted in currency -- the coin weighed 387 grains and it was worth it's weight in pure silver -- it was the reference standard of the era in terms of monetary stability. Prior to the passage of the Coinage Act in the mid-1800s the Spanish dollar was legal tender in the United States.

So why does the US have quarters instead of a 1/5-denomination coin? Because the dollar is derived from the Spanish Piece of Eight, which used to be divided into 8-bit segments to make change. The quarter would amount to two of the 8-bit segments. That's why a quarter is also called "two-bits."

[Gnobuddy]

It would mean that capacitance can be measured (in the US) in cubic root of teaspoons

While living in the USA, I suggested to several people that automotive speedometers (and road signs) should be marked in fathoms per fortnight. Hey, if you're stuck with weird Imperial units, you might as well revel in them!

Not that we can afford to point any fingers here in Canada. Once outside the science or math classroom, we too seem to be stuck with quite a lot of insanely illogical units. Our road signs are in kilometers, but people and cities and municipalities still measure their land in acres and hectares. Gasoline is dispensed in litres, but recipes are a crazy mix of teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, fluid ounces, and maybe grams. Lumber is in board feet, and a 2x4 is not 2"x4". Wire is in American Wire Gauge units. And so on, and so forth.

So I'm thinking we need a unit for vacuum-tube (valve) goodness. Perhaps the Hoover? A 6L6 is one Hoover, a 6V6 is 500 milli-Hoovers, an EL84 is minus ten Hoovers?

-Gnobuddy

[bob p]

While living in the USA, I suggested to several people that automotive speedometers (and road signs) should be marked in fathoms per fortnight. Hey, if you're stuck with weird Imperial units, you might as well revel in them!

I'm not a big fan of having both MPH and KPH on my speedometer. In the USA we exclusively measure roadway distances in miles, and we exclusively post speed limits in MPH. There's no reason to put KPH on our speedometers. To me it just adds noise to the instrument panel that I have to train my brain to filter out.

[loudthud]

What throws me is that in the USA was have Miles/Gallon but in Europe they have something else like Liters/100 kilometers ???

[Justin Thomas]

When we went to Canada in our Pennsylvania van, we were VERY happy to have a speedometer with mph & kph. When we got to Quebec & our driver saw the first sign for 100, he gunned it. "INSIDE NUMBERS, CHANDLER! USE YOUR INSIDE NUMBERS!"

Justin

[bob p]

I prefer not to have the extraneous digits on my dash. If I ever drive to CA I'll just drive at 2/3 of what the signs say.

Dimensional analysis, lol.

On second thought, maybe I'd just drive at 100% and then claim ignorance when I get pulled over...

[Enzo]

I grew up using VTVMs, which have a whole raft of scales all on the same meter face. I had no trouble navigating that seamlessly. I certainly will not be confused by a second scale on my speedo. After maybe two days, the other one will disappear from my attention.

[catalin gramada]

Remember working in Woodland/Montreal/CA few years ago into a kitchen cabinets factory. I worked on CNC cutting machine, It was Italian made and cutting aplication works in metric sistem. The designers software for cuting plans was Imperial one and all particle board sheets dimensions comes in fractional size. I used a lot of conversion paper sheets ...it was a mess but I survived

[MarkusBass]

I think that the problem is much more complex than having automotive speedometers and road signs in miles or kilometers.
I hope you remember the Mars Orbiter crash in 1999 due to the fact that NASA was using Metric System and one of the subcontractors who wrote software for the satellite was using Imperial System (and they didn't notice this). The satellite was worth $125 million and it took just one photo. This was the most expensive photo ever made .
Here are some videos that explain the problem.
Why Imperial System is not the best (only 3 countries in the world use it):

Also, please note that that if you travel on a plane, it has all instruments calibrated in Metric System (speed, height, pressure, fuel tank volume). And what is funny is that Imperial System units are defined by means of Metric System units.

Mark

[MarkusBass]

Why the US should encourage the metric System to stay economically competitive: