Paul

Kelvin is not only for the French, it is for the whole world.

Kelvin is one of the units in the International System. And luckily
Delta T of 1K equals a Delta T of 1 °C.

The funny thing is that the English speaking countries want to stick
with units that they themselves make complicated.

You use decimal system for counting and you have 12 inches in a foot, so
you have 60 inches in 5 feet. The first digit changes when you put a
zero behind it to find the equivalent. Quite practical for
multiplications and breaking up...
3 feet in a yard, what can you do with that? Why do you need a yard? I
happen to know what a furlong is but do you as English/Americans ever
use it?
Did any anglosaxon engineer come up with foot, foot, foot, foot,
afoot, foot, foot, foot units? Or am I inventing these units here?

Your English miles are different from sea miles.
Your English gallons are different from American gallons.

We are in the car business and we talk about fuel economy. On the
mainland Europe we don't know what an author means when he uses mpg
(miles per gallon). We have to try to find out from which country the
magazine comes and then we have to look up with a unit converter. Does
an American engineer understand British English units? How do Americans
and English engineers ever work together without making mistakes?

What is a psi (English or American)? Same problem. Do you have to check
on the back of your pressure gauge what pounds are meant to make sure
you don't blow the kettle up?

Thank god we all have the same understanding of RPM. It would have
ruined many engines if we hadn't.

When I read mpg it means m/g or miles/gallon
When I read Nm it means Newton meter
When I read cfm it means cubic feet per minute. Why not write that as
cf/m or as cfpm?

Why do you complicate life? Why do you complicate engineering?
Engineering can be some much simpler with the International System O:-)

Degrees Celsius (Centigrades) are 0 for freezing of water and 100 for
boiling of water, the most common liquid around us.
Why bother about alcohol boiling point?

The beauty of the International System is that everybody understands it.
Its units are explicit.
Power of electric motors in kW is clear for all. Even for Americans.
Yes, Paul why do Americans use International System here then? Why not
in BTU/second? I guess Nicola Tesla had a hand in this. And of course he
was from mainland Europe!

The International system not only has explicit units but also uses the
decimal system so moving up one or more places in the scale of units
simply moves the comma.
You don't do that with inches, feet, yards etc... You gave the example
in your email : Namely 11000 inches per second or 917 feet
per second. How did you do that? Mental calculus? Or did you need a
slide ruler?

You know there are 10 kinds of people: Those who understand
International System and those who don't :-)

I may be joking about this but it truly is complicated to need to look
for indications of the origin of scientifical writing for understanding
true values.


Best regards from European mainland where International system rules. HA!

Randolph


Yes of course. I was half joking. On the other hand Newton was a Brit.
Pounds per square inch is like dollars per square inch. Beats the heck out of Pascals.

I am relying on you Randolph to translate what I write into French :)

Paul Lamar

Since 1996 I have worked with auto engineers at Chrysler, Daimler, G.M.
and Ford. They all use the international system for measurements,
engineering, and tests. They only get converted to mpg by the EPA. Same
for the other measurements - internally they are all metric / I.S. until
they need to be published, then it is converted to the system the market
uses where it will hopefully get sold.
-dave