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Smoots & other units
Posted by loyal on May 26, 2020 at 8:06 pmbill93 replied 3 years, 11 months ago 15 Members · 34 Replies- 34 Replies
I learned a couple things. Mostly stupid things, but still things I was ignorant of, like barleycorns and shoe sizes.
.I was on a trip to visit my Son in Boston. He bought us a tour bus trip around town. Crossing the Harvard Bridge I pointed out the Smoot Mark’s and started explaining…the tour guide told me to hush up ‘Cruz it was his job to tell the story…
DDSM
I know what a Smoot is. Still confused as to exactly what a vara is in Texas.
A Vara was legally established to be exactly 33 and 1/3 inches long in June of 1919
Where’s Kent at when you need him…
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will!@dougie
It depends on which State you are in, Texas is NOT the center of the Universe, despite what some (but not all) Texans appear to believe.
:d
- Posted by: @dougie
A Vara was legally established to be exactly 33 and 1/3 inches long in June of 1919
Which isn’t helpful when you are retracing a survey done before 1919 that used a different length vara.
And often a rod wasn’t 16.5′.
A buddy of mine grew tired of learning all of the weird units involved with surviving Engineering physics and related classes. He decided velocity should be expressed in furlongs per fortnight. A furlong is one-eighth of a mile and a fortnight is two weeks. Put another way, how many miles would something have traveled in 112 days.
Anyone ever head of stokes? They are the unit for measuring kinematic viscosity. Meanwhile, dynamic viscosity is measured in pascal-seconds. Please don’t ask me to define the difference between kinematic and dynamic viscosity and how that relates to SAE numbers on oil containers.
Don’t forget roods which would seem to be misspelled rods.
And meters were given to us by the…??????.French!
I don’t know why the furlong doesn’t get more respect. First the name, the best name in measurement units. And it’s 10 chains long, not too far for Grandpa to get the mail but far enough to seem like something substantial. And best of all a furlong long by a chain wide is exactly 1 acre.
@paden-cash That looks like a California Vara to me… 🙂
A friend was having difficulty, and wasn??t sure how long a rod was, so he asked me.
I said, ??well I don??t remember how long a rod is in feet.?
??really??
??all I can remember is it??s 1/4 chain.?
And then his head exploded. We were talking about questions on the test we had both just sat for. I think he got it wrong. 15 ft isn??t ??close enough??.
so, are HectoPascals really just mb? And what??s up with mmHg? My T2 is Mils, and I like it. I??m happy that Celsius and centigrade are both just C.
microns are now micrometers?
@dougie
I always considered the word “vara” to be a variation of the term variable, and a close cousin to “it depends.”
😎
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