From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sat Mar 04 2000 - 17:14:04 MST
> >Mike someone asked me the other day what was 7.4 meters in
> >English units. I said very loudly "English schmingliiiish! Think metric!"
>
> Amara Graps wrote: How about cgs? (centimeter-gram-sec)
> Those are the astronomers' units. Unfortunately, cgs *electrodynamics*
> calculations are not as easy to use...
> Maybe horseturds per fortnight makes sense to me now. :{
Actually all the units systems we have now are messed up in some
way. The MKS is just less messed up than some of the others.
For instance, the fundamental units should not need a prefix.
Unfortunately grams and meters are not really well matched
in scale, so the MGS is never used. We are stuck with either
meters- *kilo*grams - seconds or the even uglier *centi*meter-
gram-second system.
The thing we now call a kilogram should have been called a
gram to start with. This would make things a little more symmetric:
a cubic meter of water would have a mass of a kilogram,
and a cubic millimeter would have a mass of a microgram, and
not only that but we would much sooner have been able to
use that really cool prefix nano, for such things as expressing
the daily requirement of vitamins for instance. I even like to
saaay nano. nanonanonano. {8^D
Now that Im thinking, I recall having tried to invent a system
years ago that used the speed of light defined as 1, then
derive the other units to go with that, but it didnt work out
too well. Ideas? spike
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