On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 05:21 -0500, Rod Engelsman wrote: > I agree with metric on general principles but I believe they could have made > it a bit neater. For instance if the basic unit of length had been chosen so > that what is now a a decimeter would have been called the meter, then the > basic unit of mass could have been a cube one (deci)meter on a side then > what we now call a kilogram would have been the gram.
But we do have 1 cubic cm of water weighing 1 gram. 1 cubic metre of water weight one metric tonne or 100 kgs. That is pretty neat. > That way the basic units, sans prefixes, would have been a bit more more > "human-scaled". That depends on the industry you work in. People work on things from very small to very big. A person is generally about 2m tall so a metre in every day life is a pretty sensible size. It's very close to a yard which is a common imperial base unit. The kg is the same order of magnitude as a lb and the second is common to both systems. > I realize it's all a bit arbitrary in the end, but I find it > less than ideal that the units that are used most often in ordinary usage > all seem to require prefixes. A human weight is best measured in KILOgrams, > a human height in CENTImeters, etc. Human height could well be 1.67m Compare that to 5 foot 8 1/2ins or 681/2 ins. Try dividing each by 3. I don't think you can argue on the base sizes and prefixes since at least there is a pattern to the metric pre-fixes, there is no pattern from inch, foot, yard, furlong, mile etc. The words give no clue as to the relationship between each whereas I know centi is always a hundredth and kilo means a thousand. Its then simply a matter of moving a decimal point. Rather a lot easier than the more complex arithmetic caused by mixing different number systems into the units of measure. > Does any of that make sense or have I been up too late again? Probably :-) Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
