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Holy crap, a [literal] tea party. By Blue.
pwhodges:
When I was young, a billion was a million million, a trillion was a million million million, and so on; and some people still cling nostalgically to that definition. In that regime, a milliard (which tends to mean "a lot") was reserved for a thousand million.
Oh, and "a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter", "a gallon of water weighs ten pounds" - there'll be none of your penny-pinching US pints and gallons for me, thanks.
cesium133:
On the subject of English-vs-Metric units, I find it interesting that the U.S. has indirectly been using metric units since 1896, when all the U.S./English units were redefined in terms of metric units: for example, 1 inch = exactly 25.4 mm.
And as for the gallon, I think the U.S. gets to dictate what that is now, since the British have switched to using the metric system. Plus, in the words of Alton Brown, "a pint is a pound the world around." If we can't believe Alton Brown, who can we believe? :psyduck: (for people from outside the U.S. who might not know who he is, Alton Brown is a TV cooking-show host)
pwhodges:
A UK pint is still the standard measure of beer and such in a pub. Actually, both gallons originated in the UK, as was mentioned in a similar discussion in this thread.
The imperial measures of volume (in the US form) follow a long trail of binary relationships, as listed later in that same thread.
Skewbrow:
--- Quote from: Bluesummers on 18 Feb 2013, 06:10 ---How could a billion possibly be something other than a billion? :psyduck:
--- End quote ---
It is, of course, a billion, but is it 10 to 9 or 10 to 12? The former is milliard here (I think we have been following German practice there for quite some time).
--- Quote from: Bluesummers on 18 Feb 2013, 06:10 ---1 pint = 1 pound (assuming volume density 1:1 relative to water, same as 1mL = 1cm3.
1 gallon = 231 in3 (exactly 231...no rounding or whatever)
--- End quote ---
US liquid pint is 473 milliliters, but a pound is 454 grams, so a US liquid pint of water weighs 473 grams. Much like a fluid ounce of water weighs more than an ounce. Avoiding conversion factors like 231 cubic inches to a gallon is the essence of the metric system. Of course the basic units don't need to match with models in Paris for it work well in physics classes - they could be something else.
Having said that I do like beer in UK pints (568 milliliters).
More about comma vs point. We use point here to indicate ordinals, so "1." is "the first" and so on. This is used e.g. in dates, so "18.02." is "February 18th". Programs like MSExcel tries to cope (the different kind of separators and such are regionally configurable in Excel), so when I copy numerical tables produced in the US to a Finnish edition of Excel, it interprets figures containing a decimal point as dates, and performs an irreversible conversion (at least I haven't figured out how to revert it). Arrggh.
cesium133:
And as for English units in science, the velocity unit feet/nanosecond is particularly useful. :roll:
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