Why do we measure rainfall in 1/10ths of an inch instead of 1/8, 1/16 etc? I ain't never seen a rain guage with increments other than 1/10ths. One side is usually inches and the other is cm's.
This was a ligitimate question I had and I got my answer here. Makes sence to me. Although, it doesn't explain why we don't measure in 1/8 or 1/16. Maybe all the metric folks have something afterall with all these 1/10 units of measure. Ya think? Rib, rib, nudge nudge. ;) ;D
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wrngauge.htm
The rest of these questions are froma joke site.
Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?
Why are there personal flotation devices under plane seats instead of parachutes?
Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?
Why is it that when you transport something by car, it's called a shipment, but when you transport something by ship it's called cargo?
If nothing ever sticks to Teflon, how do they make Teflon stick to the pan?
I want to know (really) why in musical instrument terminology, a stringed instrument has a top (but not a front) and a back (but not a bottom)?
We in the machining trades always measure in decimals, so It's not too hard to get used to metric, but construction (and boatbuilding) use fractions. Why does a circle have 360 degrees? Why not 100 degrees, and decimals, instead of degrees, minutes, seconds? Aaaarghh!
We use decimal degrees on the NB Grid system (GIS). ;)
46.65 N 66.30 E Located near Bear's Head Narrows on the Dungarvin River, since we have a bearing thread. ;D
For example 97.22 minutes is ~ 1 degree, 37 minutes and 13 secs. It happens to be the angle of a cruise prism for basal area factor (BAF) of 2 m2/ha. ;)
Those "joke" questions were from Gallagher's act.........although probably not original to him. Ust'a be, his was my favorite act with his sledge-a-matic,etc ;D. Hasn't been on the telly for a while.
Rain gauges for the English market are maked in feet and mutltiples thereof. bath_smiley ;D
Thurlow,
He had a fight with his brother over show content a few years ago and both of them seemed to drop out of sight. I think it culminated in a law suit. Hard feelings that can be caused by things like that could make someone go sit in the corner. :)
TW
That's a good one. :D
OH!!!
Was that a joke??
:D
State road construction plans used to be in feet and hundredths. Now they are going metric.
Will
TW
Where's that one come from ??? :P Are you saying we have a lot of rain? ;D
Quote from: scgargoyle on October 14, 2006, 03:51:43 PM
I want to know (really) why in musical instrument terminology, a stringed instrument has a top (but not a front) and a back (but not a bottom)?
We in the machining trades always measure in decimals, so It's not too hard to get used to metric, but construction (and boatbuilding) use fractions. Why does a circle have 360 degrees? Why not 100 degrees, and decimals, instead of degrees, minutes, seconds? Aaaarghh!
In Field Artillery, a circle has 6400 mils.
Quote from: scgargoyle on October 14, 2006, 03:51:43 PM
...but construction (and boatbuilding) use fractions.
I thought they used cubits in boatbuilding. ???
And why is it that when you speak, you are giving a speech? :-\ :-\
Quote from: SwampDonkey on October 14, 2006, 03:23:34 PM
Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?
I leared the answer to why parkways are called that from my hubby's Civil Engineering magazine article about the 50th anniversary of the Interstate system.
It used to be law that if you built a road, anyone who abutted that road had the right to have a curb cut or some kind of access to the road. So, in order to build the first limited-access roads in this country, states built roads on public lands - or parks (as we really know them) - so they didn't have to allow people the ability to hop on them anywhere they pleased. They are maintained by the National Park Service (wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkway) doesn't explain it exactly like this, but its close).
So, since the roads were built in parks, they were called parkways. It also explains why most parkways are some of the most beautiful roads you can drive on with no visibility of development - because the state owns all the land on either side for some distance.
Have no clue about why driveways are named as they are.
The English rain gauge joke may be as old as England itself. I have heard it somewhere.
Abot measurement units
Before they started using metric here (in 1898?) they used Swedish units. A Swedish inch is shorter than an Imperial inch, and much shorter than a Norwegian inch and different from a Russian inch as well. A Swedish mil (mile) was about 9 km and a Russian verst about 1 km and your Imperial mile is 1,6 km. Swedish lenght measurement were based on one aln which was 2 fot (feet) or 24 tum (inch) The lenght of an aln has varied a bit throughout history and at one time it was different in different parts of Sweden.
They sawed boards to Norwegian inches and they schrunk to Swedish inches when they dried. Then the boards could not be sold to England because they were underdimension in imperial.
It must have made life much easier when all started to use the same metric units.
Nowadays inches(imperial) is just an unit for imported threads and tyres and sawn lumber dimensions. I can hardly understand why Americans continue to use their own unit for measurements.
About comma and dot
We Europeans use comma before the decimals and never anything between the number of 1000. I try to remember to use dot on this forum to make it understandable for Americans but it tends to go wrong. Why cannot you follow a standard?
By the way
Finnish rain gauges do not need any graduations at all because they leak through the frost cracks.
I suppose rain gauges were forbidden in Sovjet because the weather reports they gave could not be censored.
:D TW, we do follow a standard. Y'all aren't following it. :D :D
What it amounts to here is "teaching an old dog to learn new tricks". I was raised on measurements that were imbedded in my brain such that my brain can "picture" nothing else. If someone told me we were going to walk a couple of verst to his house, I wouldn't know whether I should put on a pair of shoes, a pair of boots, or, just go barefooted.
I almost feel that way about km's and would probably look it up in a book to be sure.
I can eyeball in inches, feet, and yards because I've learned that 20 feet was the length of our livingroom, I can look at my shoe and come close to a foot, intermediate distances are pictured as football fields, which I know is 100 yards of playing field. A quarter mile is the length of a dragstrip, eight city blocks are about a mile and a city block is about 5 acres.
When you get all that imbedded in your mind, and it works, It's pretty difficult to convince yourself to forget it and go with someone else's idea. :)
Do other people on here call their front yard a 'doyard' or 'doiyard'? Might be spelled wrong. My grandparents and mom always call it that. So, I suppose I've adopted it. But, dad never calls it that, nor did grandparents on his side. Maybe it's slang or something, never really researched it.
Around here we call it a "front yard". :D
It is srange how terms change from neighborhoods or generations.
I've heard people in Maine call it a 'dooryard', but I thought that was the back yard...? As far as metric goes, I was building boats for a living back in the early 70's. The US gummint proudly stated that we would be fully metric "in 10 years". So, I designed and built all my boats in metric. Along comes an old New England fisherman. "How big is that boat there?" "5 meters", I replied. "Well, how big is that?" I told him I didn't know in feet and inches. He looked at me like I was some kind of commie. Metric is actually easier, but not for us old-timers that have been brought up on feet and inches. We use them interchangeably at work, but it's hard to estimate sizes in metric.
scgargoyle, that must be where 'dooryard' comes from. My grandmother , on mom's side, was from Ludlow, Maine.