More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

General
21

Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

Tom Holub responded to my imperial witterings:
> )Yeah, but a mile is so much easier to visualise than a km.
>
> Uh, how so, beyond the fact that that’s what you learned when you
> were a kid? Or are you really good at visualizing 5,280 paces?

<BG>
Of course it’s the fact that’s what I learnt as a kid.

> Why not just think of a meter as about a pace for a man of average
> height? -Tom

'Cause it ain’t. A metre is an exaggerated, stretched pace.

–
Danny Colyer (remove safety to reply) ( http://www.juggler.net/danny )
Recumbent cycle page: http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/recumbents/
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” - Thomas Paine

22

Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

Danny Colyer wrote:

> Yeah, but a mile is so much easier to visualize than a km.

That might be the silliest thing I’ve read this month.

> I think
> the reason we cling to imperial distance measurements is that inches,
> feet and yards are nice, easy units to visualize. A yard is about a
> pace for man of average height, making it a very practical
> measurement. But a meter - well, how do you visualize one ten
> millionth of the distance from equator to pole?

A pace for a tall guy?
>
>> I always translate into pounds in this forum because
>> I’m not sure if US readers know about stones.
>
> Ditto. I don’t think they do. (Note for US readers, a stone is 14
> pounds).

I knew that. :wink:
>
>> Even very small distances are measured in ‘imperial’, even though 15
>> centimeters might sound better than 6 inches in some contexts.

Naughty! :wink:
>
> “6 inches” is 3 syllables, “15 centimeters” is 6. The difference in
> time it takes to speak the measurements might be another reason that
> imperial remains so popular.

Good point.
>
>> And as for the money: we have a huge slice of our population ready to
>> die in the ditches defending the Pound. Yet I can remember when the
>> Pound was a piece of green paper worth 20 shillings or 240 pence.
>> Now it’s a small coin worth 100 new pence. It’s a totally different
>> thing, but with the same name.
>
> I would love to have been around in those days, it seems to make so
> much sense.

I hope that was sarcasm.

23

Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

On Wed, 14 May 2003 09:33:11 -0500, Mikefule
<Mikefule.nfb1b@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote:

>Paddington gave Klaas Bil a hard stare…
>
>‘Ton’ is exactly what I meant.

OK I stand corrected and thank you for it.

(A ‘ton’ in Dutch is 1000 kg, and before the Euro it also was 100,000
guilders. Not sure if that now translates to 100,000 Euros.)

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict

I have not yet begun to procrastinate.

24

Re: Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

(Referring to a comment that old pounds (20 shillings, 240 pennies) made more sense than new pounds (100 pennies.)

Way off topic here, but:

A shilling was 12 pennies.
Factors of 12 are 2,3,4,6.

So it was easy to divide a shilling into halves, thirds, quarters or sixths. This was useful when a shilling had a lot of buying power.

Factors of 10 are, er… 2 and 5.

Using tens is not inherently easier. It’s just we’re used to working in base 10, and we use a numbering system with 10 digits. Computer people use base 2 (binary) and base 16 (hexadecimal).

People who were brought up using shillings were used to the addtion/multiplication needed to work in units of 12, and, given this basic skill, the system was in many ways more practical than the present one.

14 pounds to a stone makes no sense to me at all. 16 ounces to a pound at least divides into halves, quarters or eighths.

Back to unicycling, anyone? ;0)

25

Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

Mikefule wrote:
> Scott Kurland wrote:

>> I hope that was sarcasm.

> (Referring to a comment that old pounds (20 shillings, 240 pennies)
> made more sense than new pounds (100 pennies.)
>
> Way off topic here, but:
>
> A shilling was 12 pennies.
> Factors of 12 are 2,3,4,6.

And factors of 240: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 40, 48,
60, 80, 120
Factors of 100: 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50

You win. Good argument.
>
> So it was easy to divide a shilling into halves, thirds, quarters or
> sixths. This was useful when a shilling had a lot of buying power.
>
> Factors of 10 are, er… 2 and 5.

26

Your a hammer king ,and your posts,where do you get the power Mikefule? ,

27

A ‘hammer king’? Kesskersay?

Seriously, 12 mph or thereabouts is not a fantastic achievement on a Coker. My top recorded speed is around 14 mph (I think I once got 15, but that might have been on the 28, I can’t remember). So to do 12 miles in an hour (as opposed to 12 miles per hour) all I need to do is ride at about 85% of my top speed for an hour. That takes a ‘suitable’ route and a bit of determination, but no great skill or talent. I guess there are regulars in this forum (Roger is a suspect!) who could be a mile or more ahead of me after an hour.

28

Re: Re: Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

well we’re dealing with communication about unicycling.
just pity poor people who are trying to understand english
AND deal with strange measures!

this said the poetic nature of your postings makes us understand
that was Big, not so big and so on…
thanks

I was trained as an architect and with sufficient training
I could feel sizes of rooms expressed with strange measures
(or even RCH used by american carpenters ;))
But when it came to engineering making structural calculations
with imperial measures was a nightmare!

BTW I noticed you used mm for cranks!

bear (who forgot everything about inches)

29

I find a mile easier to visualise than a km, because i’ve been brought up on miles. If i went over to the continent for a few years i would be good at km as really struggle with miles.

So here’s what i use:

Large distances, miles
Small distances, metres
heights (buildings, trees, cliffs etc), feet
less than a metre, cms
small distances, inches (only a couple of inches across, ratehr than only 4ish cms)

Cranks, mm

Strange mixture i know, but that is what makes most sense to me

30

Oh, yes, back to uniing:

12 mph (19.3km/h for the imperially challenged, 5.63m/s for the physicists) isnt difficult on a coker, but it is a fairly good average speed. Where I ride it is very hilly, so going as fast as I can over 7 miles (11.3km FtIC) I usually average about 11mph (17.7km/h FtIC, 4.91m/s FtP). I guess on the flat, an average of 12mph wouldn’t be too difficult for the experienced cokeur. And if Roger Davies reads this, just remember we dont all use 110mm (4.33" FtMC) cranks!!

Ok, take tongue out of cheek…

31

Sorry, yet another boring post by me, third in a row!

I noticed among all this pavlova about yards, feet, shillings, °F etc, that You chose to use yards in the name of your post. I sat and thought for a couple of seconds as to why you would choose yds over metres, then it suddenly dawned on me; 36"!! Being a child of the metric revolution, it took me qute a while to link 1 yd with 36", another perfect example of confusion.

So then your name got me thinking, If you travel at 6m/s over a distance of 11 km, how many revolutions per second would that be??? now theres a mix of different systems for you!

32

WOOOHOO! four boring posts in a row! :smiley:

33

Sorry, that was just taking it too far!

34

ok I’ll shut up now

35

Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

Mikefule pointed out:
> A shilling was 12 pennies.
> Factors of 12 are 2,3,4,6.
>
> So it was easy to divide a shilling into halves, thirds, quarters or
> sixths. This was useful when a shilling had a lot of buying power.

I was certainly being slightly sarcastic, but only a bit, and I was
being more serious than sarcastic. Partly because of the factors as
mentioned above.

I’m also the sort of person that derives a certain amount of pleasure
from mental arithmetic. A lot of people blame decimalisation for the
decline in standards of mental arithmetic over recent decades. Seems
reasonable, though I think the emergence of the electronic calculator
may also have had a little to do with it. Anyway, I have no way of
knowing whether standards have declined. I know that standards today
are generally pretty poor in the UK, but I have no idea what they were
like 30 years ago.

As an amusing aside, when our currency was first decimalised (before I
was born), I understand a lot of people (particularly the elderly) found
it rather confusing. I remember a vox pop recorded shortly before
decimalisation. It showed an elderly lady expressing her opinion: “I
think they should wait until all the old people are dead.”

–
Danny Colyer (remove safety to reply) ( http://www.juggler.net/danny )
Recumbent cycle page: http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/recumbents/
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” - Thomas Paine

36

Uni parts sizes are forcing everyone to use both inches and millimeters. Wheels are in inches, seatposts in millimeters and tire widths are just odd, with 2.0 being bigger than 47 unless of course it isn’t. :thinking:

37

Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

Mikefule <Mikefule.ney2s@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote:
> The trail goes ever on and on
> Down from the gate where it began
> Now far ahead the trail has gone
> And I must follow if I can
> Perched upon my Viscount seat
> Until it joins some larger way
> Where many paths and errands meet
> And whither then? I cannot say.

Thanks Mike
Now I’ve got some new words to sing in my head to the same tune. The tune
used in the radio version of LotR for that song has never quite left
me, and is one of my favourite hums.

ttfn
Sarah
Thinking of the lonliness of the long distance rider.

–
Union of UK Unicyclists
By and for UK riders

38

My two cents/contributions to this post:

  1. A metric century is 64 miles. The value 64 in hexadecimal is 100 decimal (64x=100d). The systems are not related, but the correlation is odd.

  2. Your computer max speed is not always correct. It happens to me very often. I think it’s because all you have to do is dismount at a high rate of speed and catch the seat, holding the wheel above the ground. It will spin really fast for a few revolutions until stopped. It can also happen if you let it fly away from you. I’ve seen my max speed (on my 26") at over 25mph (Yes, I really do think in miles and set my computer the same way.). I seriously doubt I can ever pedal that fast, and my magnet is also placed where it is impossible to “fake” it by idling/etc.

The story was great, the digression… interesting.
Jer

39

Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

In article <jerryg.njt2n@timelimit.unicyclist.com>,
jerryg <jerryg.njt2n@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote:
)
)My two cents/contributions to this post:
)
)1) A metric century is 64 miles. The value 64 in hexadecimal is 100
)decimal (64x=100d). The systems are not related, but the correlation is
)odd.

A metric century is actually 62 miles. Also, 10 miles is about 16.1 km,
so it’s not exactly coincidence that a system where 10x=16d correlates.
-Tom

40

Re: More fun at Pi yards per rev. :0)

jerryg wrote:
> My two cents/contributions to this post:
>
> 1) A metric century is 64 miles. The value 64 in hexadecimal is 100
> decimal (64x=100d). The systems are not related, but the correlation
> is odd.

100 kilometers equals roughly 62 miles, not 64.