EU gives up on 'metric Britain'

[Cort Haus]

WTF has the EU got to do with a Maple-syrup-munching Kiwi anyway?

[dannubis]

Originally posted by C0ckney


look at the little belgian, thinking he's all important because he gets to use the same money as his french and german overlords. so cute.

Still basking in the glaze of being a FORMER empire aren't we ?

[C0ckney]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
FWIW, I think temperature in Celsius, petrol prices in litres, but petrol consumption in gallons, beer and milk in pints, wine and soft drinks in litres.

Not that I take illegal substances, of course, but if I did, hash would be in fractions of an ounce, and powders in grams.

TBH this is more about the benefits of the EU ceding a drop of it's authority than the practicalities of measuring systems. I agree that 'old money' was insane.

that is exactly the example i first thought of.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
WTF has the EU got to do with a Maple-syrup-munching Kiwi anyway?

I'm an EU citizen, I'll have you know.

[C0ckney]

my country gave you a passport?! good grief, we'll let anyone in these days.

[C0ckney]

and don't you mean british subject btw?

[Whaleboy]

Considering that the metric system relies on the ability to use multiples of 10 I can understand why the EU has given up on us .

[Agathon]

The French are superior in that the last presidential election fielded two candidates who were both sexually attractive. I can't see why women like Sarkozy, but Segolene Royal has the hint of a cougar about her, so between both there was something for everyone, except the furries.

Meanwhile.. in Britain

[Cort Haus]

Or did some other country extended the hand of citizenship?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Or did some other country extended the hand of citizenship?

The Geordie nation, ye knaa.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Not that I take illegal substances, of course, but if I did, hash would be in fractions of an ounce, and powders in grams.

As to the topic, EU does overregulate stuff and needs a slap on the wrist now and then.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by C0ckney


so you measure distance in kilometres? your height in centremetres? drink half litres of beer? etc.

somehow i don't think so.

I can measure in km, I am more sure of my height and weight in metric and a pint is a pint - I think of it as a half litre and a bit

[thesilentone]

Originally posted by Agathon
The French are superior in that the last presidential election fielded two candidates who were both sexually attractive. I can't see why women like Sarkozy, but Segolene Royal has the hint of a cougar about her, so between both there was something for everyone, except the furries.

Meanwhile.. in Britain

Whilst I wouldn't complain if our leaders were more attractive are you honestly suggesting we should exclude the ugly ones?

And I've seen this thread on 3 different forums now, never fails to bring out the anti-britain trolls, it's hilarious how angry people can get about us not putting 60 year old grocers in jail for selling a pound of fruit.

[Wezil]

PARIS (AP) - A kilogram just isn't what it used to be.

A 118-year-old cylinder that has been the international prototype for the metric mass, and kept tightly under lock and key outside Paris, is mysteriously losing its weight - if ever so slightly.

Physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, southwest of Paris, says the reference kilo appears to have lost 50 micrograms compared with the average of dozens of copies.

"The mystery is that they were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart," he said.

"We don't really have a good hypothesis for it," Davis said in a phone interview Wednesday.

But only the one in Sevres really counts. It is kept in a triple-locked safe at a chateau and only rarely sees the light of day - mostly for comparison with other cylinders shipped in periodically from around the world.

"It's not clear whether the original has become lighter, or the national prototypes have become heavier," said Michael Borys, a senior researcher with Germany's national measures institute in Braunschweig. "But by definition, only the original represents exactly a kilogram."

The kilogram's inconstancy illustrates how technological progress is leaving science's most basic measurements in its dust. The cylinder was high-tech for its day in 1889 when cast from a platinum and iridium alloy, measuring 3.9 centimetres in diameter and height.

At a November meeting of scientists in Paris, an advisory panel on measurements will present possible steps toward basing the kilogram and other measures - like Kelvin for temperature, and the mole for amount - on more precise calculations. Ultimately, policy-makers from around the world would have to agree to any change.

Even countries that don't use the metric system could be affected by the kilogram's uncertainty: the kilogram is also the ultimate weight standard for the U.S. customary system, where it equals 2.2 pounds.

But don't expect the questions about the kilo to lead to public campaigns to lower the price of bread, or cause wary waistline-watchers to re-examine their weights: 50 micrograms is roughly equivalent to the weight of a fingerprint.

"For the lay person, it won't mean anything," said Davis. "The kilogram will stay the kilogram, and the weights you have in a weight set will all still be correct."

But for scientists who rely on the official kilogram for minute measurements every day, the inconstant metric constant is a nuisance - threatening calculation of things like electricity generation.

"They depend on a mass measurement and it's inconvenient for them to have a definition of the kilogram which is based on some artifact," said Davis, who is American.

Many measurements have undergone makeovers over the years.

The metre was once defined as roughly the distance between scratches on a bar, a far cry from today's high-tech standard involving the distance that light travels in a vacuum.

One of the leading alternatives considered for a 21st-century kilogram is a sphere made out of a Silicon-28 isotope crystal, which would involve a single type of atom and have a fixed mass.

"We could obviously use a better definition," Davis said.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2007/09/12/4490478-ap.html

[Chemical Ollie]

Morans