Posted by little man upon the stair on November 7, 2009, 8:22 am
> It did get me curious about tires, tire ratings, etc., I looked up
> some info such as speed ratings, sizing. In a metric world it seems
> that tire diameters are measured in inches. Weird.
We started out with the English system, so we have wheels defined in
inches and speed ratings defined in miles per hour, and I have no
problem whatever with that.
It's hard enough to understand the language of engineering using the
English system, without complicating it with a system where it's easy
to be in error by a factor of 10, 100, or 1000.
Remember the American Mars probes that failed because of a problem
with a conflict between the English system and the metric system?
The metric system is a French conspiracy to undermine the Americans
and British with confusing units. It looks logical at first, and then
you discover absurdities in the basic units.
Like, anybody can understand inflation pressure in pounds per square
inch,
they deal with canned items that typically contain about a pound of
whatever.
You can get a general idea that an ounce is 1/16th of a pound, but
nobody ever talks about tire inflation pressure in terms of ounces per
square inch...
But the pascal, as I recall, is the basic pressure unit of the metric
conspiracy
and it's approximately equal to the weight of an annoying French fly
sitting on a postage stamp in a vacuum.
Is that insane, or what?
Posted by paul c on November 7, 2009, 1:24 pm
little man upon the stair wrote:
...
> But the pascal, as I recall, is the basic pressure unit of the metric
> conspiracy
> and it's approximately equal to the weight of an annoying French fly
> sitting on a postage stamp in a vacuum.
>
> Is that insane, or what?
>
Seems sane to me - he has to sit if there's no air.
Posted by Shantideva Upasaka on November 7, 2009, 2:31 pm
> Seems sane to me - he has to sit if there's no air.
He could always go for a moonwalk.
Om! Shanti! Shanti! Shanti!
Posted by The Older Gentleman on November 7, 2009, 1:43 pm
> You can get a general idea that an ounce is 1/16th of a pound
Not always ;-)
--
BMW K1100LT Ducati 750SS Honda CB400F Triumph Street Triple
Suzuki TS250ER (currently Beaving) Damn, back to five bikes!
Try Googling before asking a damn silly question.
chateau dot murray at idnet dot com
Posted by Greg.Procter on November 8, 2009, 12:18 am
On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:22:50 +1300, little man upon the stair
>> It did get me curious about tires, tire ratings, etc., I looked up
>> some info such as speed ratings, sizing. In a metric world it seems
>> that tire diameters are measured in inches. Weird.
> We started out with the English system, so we have wheels defined in
> inches and speed ratings defined in miles per hour, and I have no
> problem whatever with that.
> It's hard enough to understand the language of engineering using the
> English system, without complicating it with a system where it's easy
> to be in error by a factor of 10, 100, or 1000.
> Remember the American Mars probes that failed because of a problem
> with a conflict between the English system and the metric system?
> The metric system is a French conspiracy to undermine the Americans
> and British with confusing units. It looks logical at first, and then
> you discover absurdities in the basic units.
> Like, anybody can understand inflation pressure in pounds per square
> inch,
> they deal with canned items that typically contain about a pound of
> whatever.
> You can get a general idea that an ounce is 1/16th of a pound, but
> nobody ever talks about tire inflation pressure in terms of ounces per
> square inch...
> But the pascal, as I recall, is the basic pressure unit of the metric
> conspiracy
> and it's approximately equal to the weight of an annoying French fly
> sitting on a postage stamp in a vacuum.
> Is that insane, or what?
Insane like 16 and 20 fluid ounces per pint, 5260 feet per 1760 yards
20 links per chain, 7 separate measuring systems in common everyday use for
parts of an inch, (not counting barleycorns), US measurements that are
different to English measurements (ounces, gallons, lbs, tons etc)
Nautical miles, yanks meauring weights in millions of pounds ...
We haven't even touched on gauge, screw threads, clothing sizes ...
<Sheesh>
XML Sitemap
> some info such as speed ratings, sizing. In a metric world it seems
> that tire diameters are measured in inches. Weird.