On 2008/01/30, at 2:06 AM, Pierre Abbat wrote:
The problem with using "G" for the grave is that it has since been
used for
the gauss. Even though the gauss has been replaced with the tesla,
more
people would think "gauss" when they see "G" as a unit symbol.
Pierre
Dear All,
Perhaps now is the time to re-suggest the word 'gry' as an
international unit, only this time for mass rather than length. I
would pronounce this as in 'angry' and 'hungry'. It seems to have
several properties that might make it useful:
1 It is a short word
2 It has only one syllable
3 It is not used elsewhere in the English language and I suspect that
it is not used much in other languages (although I don't know if this
is the case).
4 It has a connotation of being an abbreviation of the word,
'gravity', which is a property shared by all objects with mass
5 It fits well with the prefixes and it is easy to pronouce either
alone or in combination (say out loud: nanogry, microgry, milligry,
gry, kilogry, megagry, gigagry etc).
6 The word gry has a long (classical) history in that it is derived
from the ancient Greek word, gry, where it meant 'a small amount'.
This use seems to imply a small amount of mass rather than a small
amount of length but my Greek isn't up to such subtleties.
7 The idea of using a gry as a measuring unit (for length) goes back
to John Locke in 1679 only 11 years after John Wilkins developed the
original idea for an international system based on a 'universal
measure'.
8 Thomas Jefferson probably developed his ideas for a decimal
measuring system from John Locke's gry but he used the word point
instead in his 1790 report.
9 The clash with the gauss is not a great issue as the gauss is
deprecated anyhow. Surely it's time for our magnetic friends to move on!
10 The gry could then have the symbol G
The web site at: http://www.onlineunitconversion.com/
gry_to_shackle.html says 'In 1813, the gry was revived in another
decimal measurement scheme in Britain.' but I have never heard of
such a scheme at that time. Can anyone help me with details of a
decimal measurement scheme in the UK in 1813?
Of course there is the small problem of the gry riddle (see: http://
www.yourdictionary.com/library/article008.html ) but I digress as
this is definitely off topic.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
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