A peeve but an important one - 20m is NOT 60ft!

[Blackwood]

Blackwood, I think you missed the sarcasim of the post you responded to.

Doh, probably. Sarcastic posts need some sort of smiley.

 

[DandyDon]

Excellent guide. I wish someone would make something similar for imperial units.

And I've learnt something new: that in America, the word "two" means "3" when it comes to litres

Here are some related facts, but where did you get two = 3...?

Oddities

Many cooking terms that you see in old recipes come from an medieval English 'doubling' method for measuring volumes, that went something like this (please use old classroom style chanting):

Two mouthfuls* are a jigger; two jiggers are a jack;
two jacks are a gill**; two gills are a cup;
two cups are a pint; two pints are a quart;
two quarts are a pottle; two pottles are a gallon;
two gallons are a pail; two pails are a peck;
two pecks are a bushel; two bushels are a strike;
two strikes are a coomb; two coombs are a cask;
two casks are a barrel; two barrels are a hogshead;
two hogsheads are a pipe; two pipes are a tun;
and there, my friend, my story is done!
* It's probably best to avoid cooks who use mouthfuls as measures! ** a gill was often pronounced jill.

Of these the jack and gill were very popular because they were used for selling spirituous liquors and wines. So the jack and gill were watched very closely by the public and by the tax collector. When the tax collector checked a local public house he would measure the jack and the gill, used to measure spirits and wines, and if they were a fair measure he would stamp a crown into the pewter. After the departure of the tax collector, the publican sometimes scraped some metal off the top of the measure so they held less – in this way he invalidated the crown seal by filing the top (crown) of the measure – in short, he broke the crown by breaking the crown. This practice has been recorded for us in a nursery rhyme.

Jack and Gill
Jack and Gill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Gill came tumbling after.​

Sadly for the doubling system, it never worked, because many other traders – like the cheating publicans – continually changed the sizes of their measuring containers to suit the size of their profits.

Tips

Coffee making: – Multiply by 100 to work out your coffee needs. A kilogram of ground coffee can make 100 cups of coffee. As these are 200 millilitre cups, 1 kilogram of coffee will make 20 litres.

Signs of the times

A friend, from the USA, sent this to me: 'Recently I was reminded at the rate that we, in the USA, are converting to metric. On the I-75 in Ohio there is a sign that says: 'All signs metric Next 20 miles'

Quotation

Grabel's Law: '2 is not equal to 3 – not even for very large values of 2'.

Misc

The metric system is great, but: A miss is as good as 1.6 kilometers. * A millimetre miss is a kilometre miss

Put your best 0.3048 of a meter forward. * Every journey of a thousand kilometres begins with a single millimetre.

Twenty-eight grams of prevention is worth 453.6 grams of cure. * A gram of prevention is worth a tonne of cure.

Give a man 2.54 centimeters, and he'll take 1.609 kilometers. * Give a man a millimetre and he'll take a kilometre.

Peter Piper picked 8.8 liters of pickled peppers. * Typical topical trivial trite trash! What's the good of a tongue twister with 8.8 liters in it? And I wouldn't give an 8.8 litre container to Pete's father either: Pete's pa Pete poked to the pea patch to pick a peck of peas for the poor pink pig in the pine pole pig-pen.

Is the US the only country with 750 wine and spirits bottles? Want to know why we use those...?​

By the way, we might reconsider the metric system if the rest of the world admits to the correct spellings of meter, liter, etc

 

[BHB ScubaTroll]

Yeah, 60ft is nothing like 65ft! I remember the first time I went down to 65ft - after years of only diving to 60ft. I'm not sure how I fell victim to such a runaway descent. Not sure why my computer didn't start warning me! I guess I should have noticed how much darker it got as I plummeted from 60' to 65ft. I must have been really narc'd, because I covered that entire distance in what seemed like no time. I was confused, disoriented, developed vertigo. My sac rate doubled at that dramatically increased depth. My reg started breathing really hard... in fact my tanks started to buckle under the increased pressure.

The last thing I recall was looking up from 65' and seeing my buddy...way above me in the distance...up at 60' and thinking "I can't believe it's going to end this way." I mean, there I was, in Poseiden's clutches at 65ft, breathing what was surely my last breath, as my buddy watched helplessly from 60ft. It was surreal, though. Calm. As if there was really nothing wrong. As the blackness began to creep in from the edges of my vision, it almost seemed as if I could reach up from the watery depths and take my buddy's hand. I know! Crazy, huh?

Fortunately my buddy recognized I was in distress. (Not sure how, as I was so out of it that I forgot to put my mask on my forehead.) He too reports the strange feeling that he could have reached down and taken me by the hand. Fortunately, he spent a few weeks in Europe during grad school, so using his computer and a dive slate he was able to calculate that, although I appeared to be 1.524m below him, I was actually FIVE FEET below him. He had a decision to make. To abandon his buddy and save himself...or to risk everything. Both our lives flashed before his eyes. He recalled the two of us growing up, fond memories of little league, and high school, then college. He remembered how I was the best man at his wedding, that he was my child's godfather, and then he recalled... that I had his truck keys in the pocket of my drysuit undies!

Taking control of the situation he abandoned all rational thought, and in a "do or die" decision he plunged from 60ft to 65ft! He somehow managed his own descent to be able to slow and stop at 65ft, and grabbed me by the tank valve while deftly venting his wing. He had to struggle a bit to find my inflator hose - a miracle in itself since he had no idea I had recently changed from the 16" version to a 14" version. Now two inches doesn't sound like much, but keep in mind that at that depth two inches is actually 50.8mm!

With incredible skill and precision, he carefully managed a controlled ascent - flaring the whole way I can only presume - and safely brought us up from from 20m all the way to 18.288m. He even ensured that we did a "deep stop" at 19.144m - no sense in risking microbubble formation by coming up so fast!


:cool2:

Whew! Did you cancel the rest of your dives & head straight for a chamber?

Man I would have freaked out if it happened to me!

 

[miketsp]

..snip..

That nicely sums up the situation.

 

[Hoomi]

I always figured the metric system would be bolstered by the fact that 6" is about 15.25 cm, which is a far more impressive sounding number for the typical macho bragging.

On the other hand, when it is applied to clothing sizes, it might be easier to understand why we're still on the old system. I don't think most women want to aspire to a 92 - 61 - 92 figure...

 

[vladimir]

I always figured the metric system would be bolstered by the fact that 6" is about 15.25 cm, which is a far more impressive sounding number for the typical macho bragging.

Yes, 23 cm does sound better...thanks.

 

[Doc Harry]

Dang! We've got a few miles to go in getting everyone converted over to the Imperial system!

 

[DandyDon]

The big change in the US started in WWII. Wine and hard liquor in the USA came in quart bottles - a quarter of a gallon. A lot of the grain that would normally go into whiskey was shipped to our allies for food, so to make scarce supplies go further, they started putting liquor in fifth of a gallon bottles. They got 5 bottles a gallon instead of four. People who were used to buying a bottle of liquor every day, week or month still bought one, it was just smaller.

After the war, "Fifths" were continued and for some reason grew more popular in retail sales, even being used for wines, altho no beers or ales.

A fifth was 25.6 ounces. When the US went semi-metric at the request of European shippers, 750 ml was the closest to a fifth that was still a sort of even number. They didn't want to use 761 ml or 742 ml because they would look funny, but the Federal agency responsible for the call did not want Europeans shipping in 700 ml bottles that could be used to confuse and maybe defraud - so the 750 was the compromise.

I don't have any bottles from prior to WWII. I have several pretty old ones, one as old as me and that is old! The labels actually say they contain "1 pint 8 ounces" or "1 pint 9 ounce" so those are 24 or 25 ounces, less than 1/5 gallon.

Around 1980 we went metric on alcohol in the US, and the 750 was adopted. Eh, I have one 1979 that is a 750. The more common bottle in Europe is actually 700 ml, but that cannot be imported into the US so we miss out on a lot.

 

[vladimir]

Dang! We've got a few miles to go in getting everyone converted over to the Imperial system!

At least we're in good company.

 

[Luku]

Britain is "officially" metric (as of 1995) but they still order beer by the pint, have road signs in miles, and measure road speeds in MPH. I guess it takes a while to be assimilated.