On 2009/07/16, at 7:22 AM, Bill Potts wrote:
O.K., Stan, how do you put a 50 m insert in a 50 yard pool?
Reminds me of the old expression about putting a quart in a pint pot.
Bill
Dear Bill and Stan,
Your reference to the old – now out-dated – pints and quarts reminded
me of a reference to the birth of Isaac Newton. It is said that when
he was born prematurely he wasn’t expected to live because he was too
small. The expression at the time was that he would fit inside a quart
pot. See: http://space.about.com/cs/astronomyhistory/a/isaacnewtonbio.htm
and http://www.lycos.com/info/isaac-newton--woolsthorpe-manor.html
for details of Isaac Newton's early life.
As a quart was roughly the same size as a litre we can guess that his
birth mass must have been close to 1000 grams – or perhaps even less
than this – to fit into a litre container.
I suppose that you could compare Isaac Newton with the world record
small baby. At 260 grams, this baby would go close to fitting into a
standard 250 millilitre kitchen cup. See http://news.dcealumni.com/214/1002-worlds-smallest-baby-sent-home
By the way, my rule of thumb for babies is:
Normal baby 3500 grams
Small baby 2500 grams
Big baby 4500 grams
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the forthcoming book, Metrication Leaders Guide.
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
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Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
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