Units of Measurement
- Thread starter AllanR
- Start date
Quite obviously not all rocks are boulders, but despite what Google tells you, not all "boulders" are rocks either, because if it were a boulder the size of Boulder CO then it would be a meteorite?
Harpo
Getting away with it
Every time I get the bus into town (and ditto homeward afterwards, obviously) I go past a big white-painted rock beside the road. It’s locally famous, and here’s why:
en.m.wikipedia.org
Angus Graham (strongman) - Wikipedia
There's snow way he moved that....
I was looking for something else in the shed today, when I came across my dads old tape measure, which might be interesting here.
He was an architect, and I remember, as a boy, he would ask me to hld the toggled end in position so he could mesure something. Anyway, its a bit of an antique, so I also considered posting this in the old tech thread.
Here is the thing wound up. Its exactly 11cm wide and an inch deep.
The tape itself is calibrated on the main face in feet and inches
And on the reverse are alternative imperial measurements
The link
which is just under 8 inches.
And the pole which is also called a rod
Which is equal to 25 links, also equal to 5 1/2 yards or 78 inches.
This becomes more reasonable when you start from the top end and work down.
1 mile is 8 furlongs
1 furlong is 10 chains
1 chain is 4 poles
1 pole is 25 links
and one link is 7.92 inches.
Once more a wide variety of bases (8,10,4,25 and 7.92) just to keep things simple.
The tape measure itself is 50 feet long, or just over 3 poles.
I think my father only ever used the feet and inches side himself.
He was an architect, and I remember, as a boy, he would ask me to hld the toggled end in position so he could mesure something. Anyway, its a bit of an antique, so I also considered posting this in the old tech thread.
Here is the thing wound up. Its exactly 11cm wide and an inch deep.
The tape itself is calibrated on the main face in feet and inches
And on the reverse are alternative imperial measurements
The link
which is just under 8 inches.
And the pole which is also called a rod
Which is equal to 25 links, also equal to 5 1/2 yards or 78 inches.
This becomes more reasonable when you start from the top end and work down.
1 mile is 8 furlongs
1 furlong is 10 chains
1 chain is 4 poles
1 pole is 25 links
and one link is 7.92 inches.
Once more a wide variety of bases (8,10,4,25 and 7.92) just to keep things simple.
The tape measure itself is 50 feet long, or just over 3 poles.
I think my father only ever used the feet and inches side himself.
When I was doing my Dip Hort at college, we used the actual chains during basic surveying:
They're used because they don't stretch or shrink with the weather conditions. Unpleasant to use in muddy or freezing weather, though. It's also the exact length of a cricket pitch, 22 yards.
They're used because they don't stretch or shrink with the weather conditions. Unpleasant to use in muddy or freezing weather, though. It's also the exact length of a cricket pitch, 22 yards.
Matteo
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2012
- Messages
- 1,348
Snap! Except my father still has his.
Also snap.
Only just noticed this thread (not very observant me!) and it's an area that's always fascinated me. I have often considered that base 12 maths would have been far superior to base ten so long as your numbering system is also base 12. However I have also considered what could have been a downside to such a system. Base ten is very difficult to divide making fractions and, eventually, decimal numbers pretty much essential to do anything but the simplest of mathematics. However if we had had a number system in base 10, it is conceivable that it might have significantly delayed the development of more advanced mathematics simply because the idea of fractions would have been much less essential. We can never know but it's quite possible.
Incidentally I have mentioned this on here before but years ago I wrote a piece of software for, amongst other things, converting between different units. There's a snapshot of the different units of length that it handles at the bottom. Interestingly It also allowed me to include the ability to define your own units. So you could define your own units by setting up certain base ones in terms of existing ones so you would decide that one yark is 1.34567 seconds and so on. Could actually be quite handy to ensure you have accidentally got your hero riding a womblebat across the plains at what is in fact several thousand kph.
Incidentally I have mentioned this on here before but years ago I wrote a piece of software for, amongst other things, converting between different units. There's a snapshot of the different units of length that it handles at the bottom. Interestingly It also allowed me to include the ability to define your own units. So you could define your own units by setting up certain base ones in terms of existing ones so you would decide that one yark is 1.34567 seconds and so on. Could actually be quite handy to ensure you have accidentally got your hero riding a womblebat across the plains at what is in fact several thousand kph.
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Interesting topic, Of course one of the first known mathematical systems - that of Sumerians/Babylonians used a system that had 12 in it - namely a sexagecimal one (technically that's having it base 60, but that's 5 times 12. If that sounds awkward, it is really quite easy to count to 60 using your fingers: Take your left hand as the 'counting hand' and your right as the 'marking hand'. The left hand thumb does the counting and you use thumb to count the knuckles of the remaining four fingers. When you reach 12, mark one on your right hand. Repeat 5 times and you get to 60!)
Greeks in the 6th century BC speculated that the Babylonians used such a system because of the reason you give above - namely that it gives rise to quite a number of very nice fractions that are easy to manage.
However...most other cultures used base 10 in their basic numerical scripts - i.e. Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, Hebrew and Brahmi. Maybe they all thought this counting to 60 with two hands, too difficult, (just keep it simple, stupid perhaps
)I don't think making fractions with a decimal system was really that difficult - the Egyptian fraction system was very well developed by ~2000BCE - essentially Egyptian fractions are of the form 1/n, where n is an integer and they used decimal. (There are reasons why you should just use these fractions and not any other - i.e. those of the form m/n where m is any number other than 1 or 0 - that do make sense!)
The earliest mathematicians were really doing lots of applied mathematics - especially those of Egypt and Mesopotamia - they were accountants calculating wages, or counting commodities, calculating areas of land or dividing up assets for wills. In these cases a base 60 or 12 system might help out with a few steps, but in general you'd be dealing with numbers that are way off the simple 'nice' fractions!
I do disagree with your statement that "decimal numbers (are) pretty much essential to do anything but the simplest of mathematics" - the type of numerical system you use when doing algebra, geometry, calculus, topology (hell, even Number theory!) etc.. is irrelevant. In Western Mathematics, decimal started to come in when John Napier built his log tables, I believe, - I think because Arabic numerals were in widespread use at the time in mathematics. I don't think any development of mathematics was held up because we had base 10.*
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* It is easy with hindsight to think 'why didn't they come to this conclusion sooner, surely it was obvious!' But there are other reasons why, perhaps, mathematics were 'held up'. For example we know that fractions are numbers, or at least we accept them as numbers, but an early classical Greek mathematician would disagree. A fraction to him is a construct that divides a number line in a proportionate way depending on two integers. Integers are numbers to him, not fractions - hell, even the number 1 isn't really a number to our ancient Greek friend! The main reason for this is that they took Geometry as the highest mathematics, and therefore 'numbers' were only valid if they could be constructed using a ruler and protractor...
Wayne Mack
Well-Known Member
I didn't quite follow this statement. Is the reference to base 10 a typo?
You're absolutely right! My apologies and it's too late for me to edit it
it should have been:However if we had had a number system in base 12, it is conceivable that it might have significantly delayed the development of more advanced mathematics simply because the idea of fractions would have been much less essential.
Wayne Mack
Well-Known Member
I would speculate the opposite. That simplifying the conversion of fractions into decimals (decimal is probably the wrong term, I don't mean it as reverting to base 10, but the concept of having the point with divisions of the base following) might aid in the development. Some of it is the logic of things like extending base 12 division. If 10 / 3 = 4, then it would seem to be a logical extension that 1 / 3 = 0.4 rather than 4/10. If the conversion is easier than it becomes a little more straight forward to convert from 1 + 2/10 + 3/100 + 4/1000 to 1.234.
Danny McG
"Anything can happen in the next half hour!"
And then there is the "how tall is a fifth grader?" debate:-
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JunkMonkey
Lord High Vizier of Nowt
Now there's a unit of measurement I don't understand - how old is a 'fifth grader'.
From the answer I found on Quora, I'm assuming a 5th grader is 12-years-old.
The fact that such an answer already existed to be searched for, means that someone must have asked it before. So, you and I were not alone in our lack of understanding.
Is the "height of a 5th Grader" something that would be commonly used in the US? Much like the "height of a double decker bus" seems to be a common measurement in the newspapers in the UK?
The fact that such an answer already existed to be searched for, means that someone must have asked it before. So, you and I were not alone in our lack of understanding.
Is the "height of a 5th Grader" something that would be commonly used in the US? Much like the "height of a double decker bus" seems to be a common measurement in the newspapers in the UK?
Harpo
Getting away with it
At least all double deckers are the same height.
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