Some good rants in there. Particularly enjoyed the Candela and Hertz ones. Plenty of small stuff I wouldn’t have thought about as well, e.g. flour measurements:
// The density of flour depends on the
// measuring method. "Scooped", or
// "dip and sweep" refers to dipping a
// measure into a bin, and then sweeping
// the excess off the top. "Spooned"
// means to lightly spoon into a measure
// and then sweep the top. Sifted means
// sifting the flour directly into a
// measure and then sweeping the top.
I loved Alan’s Spinal Tap reference while ranting discussing the “international prototype”:
// I dislike having a prefixed unit as the base reference.
// What a horrible decision. Why don't you just have it go to
// ten and make ten a little louder?
Yeah, some people preach the perfect rationality of SI so hard that you’d think they must believe that a cube one meter on a side has a volume of one liter, and if you fill it with water (at STP) that water will have a mass of one gram.
The current system of Meter - Kilogram - Second is just an historical accident. The British used to use cgs (centimeter - gram - second) while the French used MTS (metre - tonne - second).
It isn’t just a historical accident: the original metric prototypes were the mètre des archives and the kilogramme des archives made in 1799, and there’s a direct line from them via the 1880s replacement prototypes to the current SI. There were deviations like cgs and MTS, but all calibration of tools and instruments had a metrological trace back to the kilogramme.
So most of the blame goes to the savants of the académie des sciences who made a deliberate choice that their unprefixed units would be the metre (1/10000 quadrant of latitude), litre (1/1000 m^3), and gramme (mass of 1/1000 litre of water).
Yeah it’s weird. The metre and the yard are of similar dimensions, and I don’t know how the litre and contemporaneous volume definitions differ. Why is the gram so much smaller?
Part of the rationale for the metric system at the time was to harmonize/eliminate regional differences of weights and measures in France. Maybe using the smaller unit made it easier to define existing weights in terms of numbers closer to integer values instead of fractional (compare the modern pound which is 0.4536 kg or 453.6 g).
BTW the kg is not the only “irrational” unit, almost no-one uses the are as a measure of area, it’s all hectares…
Oh, cool! I’ve been doing these sorts of calculations as part of worldbuilding for an sf story set on a one-mile-diameter planetoid with a tiny black hole inside for gravity; this would’ve made them a lot quicker.
I only realized that a few weeks ago while actively looking for its implementation for some reason I’ve now forgotten. I might have been looking for this very units file and gotten into that periodic feeling of, “Well, I wonder if I could rewrite this in X.”
Some good rants in there. Particularly enjoyed the Candela and Hertz ones. Plenty of small stuff I wouldn’t have thought about as well, e.g. flour measurements:
I loved Alan’s Spinal Tap reference while
rantingdiscussing the “international prototype”:Yeah, some people preach the perfect rationality of SI so hard that you’d think they must believe that a cube one meter on a side has a volume of one liter, and if you fill it with water (at STP) that water will have a mass of one gram.
This sounds like a person made of a stere of straw.
The current system of Meter - Kilogram - Second is just an historical accident. The British used to use cgs (centimeter - gram - second) while the French used MTS (metre - tonne - second).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKS_units#History
Having the prototype being a kilogram is also more practical than one weighing just a gram or one weighing a ton…
It isn’t just a historical accident: the original metric prototypes were the mètre des archives and the kilogramme des archives made in 1799, and there’s a direct line from them via the 1880s replacement prototypes to the current SI. There were deviations like cgs and MTS, but all calibration of tools and instruments had a metrological trace back to the kilogramme.
So most of the blame goes to the savants of the académie des sciences who made a deliberate choice that their unprefixed units would be the metre (1/10000 quadrant of latitude), litre (1/1000 m^3), and gramme (mass of 1/1000 litre of water).
Yeah it’s weird. The metre and the yard are of similar dimensions, and I don’t know how the litre and contemporaneous volume definitions differ. Why is the gram so much smaller?
Part of the rationale for the metric system at the time was to harmonize/eliminate regional differences of weights and measures in France. Maybe using the smaller unit made it easier to define existing weights in terms of numbers closer to integer values instead of fractional (compare the modern pound which is 0.4536 kg or 453.6 g).
BTW the kg is not the only “irrational” unit, almost no-one uses the are as a measure of area, it’s all hectares…
Frink’s units file is great; it’s a pity the language is closed source.
There’s an open source project inspired by Frink called Rink.
Oh, cool! I’ve been doing these sorts of calculations as part of worldbuilding for an sf story set on a one-mile-diameter planetoid with a tiny black hole inside for gravity; this would’ve made them a lot quicker.
I only realized that a few weeks ago while actively looking for its implementation for some reason I’ve now forgotten. I might have been looking for this very units file and gotten into that periodic feeling of, “Well, I wonder if I could rewrite this in X.”