News: 1592388008

"The maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum, as defined, is unaffected by the recent changes to the law."

As it jolly well should be!

Its a pretty baa-ing definition anyway.

But is that in a Dyson or in a Hoover?

.... and if a Hoover, how full is the bag?

Or better yet, how many Jubs of crap is in the bag?

You are spelling metre correctly, why are you showing "kilogram" instead of kilogramme?

We are not in the USA (yet). Please spell it correctly.

(a) "gram" is universally the preferred spelling in English-language science

(b) "gram" has been the legal spelling in UK statutes ever since we first legalized metric measures in 1864, though actual use, even by government, has always fluctuated according to the whim of the writer.

The question is why are you so keen to re-subjugate us to the French:)

"The question is why are you so keen to re-subjugate us to the French".

I prefer kilo to kilogram or kilogramme but regarding being worried about French I believe it's a bit late as there are some ten thousand words from French in the English language. Britain was ruled in French (and Danish) for quite some time after all.

We are not in the USA (yet). Please spell it correctly.

"Gramme" is the original French spelling from the late 18th Century. The internationally accepted spelling for the SI unit of a thousand grams is (and has always been) "kilogram". The Oxford English Dictionary allow both the "gram" and the "gramme" spellings, but prefers "gram", as does the Weights and Measures Act of 1985.

If this offends you, you may instead refer to 772 scruples.

Kilogram certainly isn't USAian, their spelling is "two pounds" (or near enough, for some purposes).

"The kilogram (also kilogramme) is the base unit of mass in the metric system, formally the International System of Units (SI), having the unit symbol kg. It is a widely used measure in science, engineering, and commerce worldwide, and is often simply called a kilo in everyday speech."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram

"The metre (Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling) (from the French unit mètre, from the Greek noun μέτρον, "measure") is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI).".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre

I can't do this metric stuff. Can we have it in football pitches or London buses please?

You had better state the location of the football pitch and the type of bus - we want precision, nit fuzzy estimates!

It bugs me when TV presenters describe something being the size of x number of football pitches. As a non-sports fan; it still leaves me clueless. Besides, do they mean American football pitches or British football pitches and are they all the same size anyway? When I last played football (at infant school) I think the pitch was something like 50 feet by 100 feet.

Well, I'm glad we got that sorted.

Now we need the MPs to concentrate on a scientific issue that really matters:- Definining "Pie" as having pastry covering all sides. A circle of pastry on a bowl full of some meat in a sauce is *not* a pie. I *might* be persuaded to make a few exceptions, for dishes like fish pie (potato on top <> pastry) or lemon meringue pie (best with a biscuit base)...

Thank you.

I always (used to) ask if it's a proper pie or a dish of meat and veg with a pastry lid thrown on top.

This is WAAAYYY more important to define in law than any weights and measurement.

You're literally talking cobblers!

Pretty sure 1995 was 25 years ago, not 30.. unless you're ready this in 2025 and it's all good.

Also, the early 2000s farce caused by those idiot market traders was hardly what held Britain back from adopting metric, considering the metric system was officially introduced in 1960s and I went to school in the late 80s where we were taught only in metric. I'd say more pure pig headed stubbornness in the face of change, which is a longstanding British tradition.

"I'd say more pure pig headed stubbornness in the face of change, which is a longstanding British tradition."

It's partially stubbornness, but it's also familiarity. I know what a decent fuel economy is for a car in miles per gallon, not in litres per 100km. So I buy my petrol in litres and compute fuel efficiency in miles per gallon.

Sorry but I partly agree with OP.

I was educated in the 70s.

The only thing I measure in imperial is miles/mpg.

That is simply down to the fact that signs are in miles/yards and odometers are also in miles. No other reason.

I couldn't tell you how many ounces are in a pound; pounds in a stone and stones in a whatever. Inches in a yard or yards in a mile.

y/w :)

16 ounces to the pound of 108.003 milijub

14 pounds to the stone or 1.5119 jub

8 stones in a hundredweight or 5.8397 adult badgers

36 inches to the yard or 6.5317 linguine

1760 yards to the mile or 174.5721 double decker buses

16 ounces in a pound, 14 pounds in a stone, 160 stone in a long ton.

360 inches in a yard, showing its very remote derivation from the base 60 counting system used by the ancient Sumerians. Don't talk to me about miles. They made more sense before Elizabeth fiddled with the definition.

It was a mistake to settle on base 10, just because we have ten fingers. Base 12 is much more flexible.

Miles make sense if you un-abolish the furlong. 220 yards for a furlong, 8 furlongs to a mile

Revive the furlong! Cast on the chains of liberation!

I was educated in the 70s.... I couldn't tell you how many .... pounds in a stone

I'm skeptical. Did you go out of your way not to learn that?

For any left-pondians it's 14, which is why a British hundredweight is 112lb / 8 st, which in turn is why our tons are different - they're both defined as 20 hundredweight.

"So I buy my petrol in litres and compute fuel efficiency in miles per gallon."

I also buy my petrol in litres, but stubbornly refuse to compute the fuel efficiency of my 6.0L V12 in any unit - "frightening" is enough to cover it.

I can't say when Ireland actually 'went metric', but when I was there in early 2004 the area around Cork was still in the throes of conversion.

Road signs giving distances in miles vs. speed limits in km//hr made for some interesting navigation...

> Only true boffins will be able to grasp Blighty's new legal definitions of the humble metre and kilogram

Are you suggesting that MPs were voting on a legislation change which they may not have understood? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

Well, not that shocked.

I expect a fair few dozed in the benches until it was time for the party whips to herd them to vote with the electric cattle prods.

Man went to the moon using imperial measures; the German camps were built using metric.

and a rover crashed into Mars using both!

What is the new full definition of the Candela? It is an interesting SI unit because it is not defined wholly in physical terms. It is a psychophysical unit in that it takes into account the function relating the sensitivity of the human visual system to lights of different wavelengths (V(lambda)). There should only be one wavelength where the candela can be defined wholly physically, for every other wavelength that value (in watts per steradian - that's where you can get the caesium atom transitions and fractions of the speed of light in) there must be multiplication by V(lambda). Someone just has to measure that (V(lambda)) with real people by asking them to make judgements about the relative brightness of lights of different colours (wavelengths). How is that bit (measurement of V(lambda)) now defined?

ask NPL in Teddington?, I got them to admit privately last November that the ur-Kilo’s had been losing weight, and that wasn’t understood...

The notation of /s and s^-1 are used in the same paragraph to indicate per second (be consistent!), and it appears that the character "v" (for vendetta) has replaced the greek character "nu" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_(letter)), the SI unit for frequency. Who proof-read this? (not someone with a GCSE/O-level in Physics, clearly!)

".for which the symbol "kg" is used, is the SI unit of mass, defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the Planck constant h to be 6.626 070 15 x 10-34 when expressed in the unit J s, which is equal to kg m2 s-1"

I haven't the foggiest what this means, but it looks like the definition of a kilogram is reliant on another measure which is expressed partly in kilograms...

Does anyone else get a slightly uncomfortable feeling when seeing the definition of the second defined in terms of something that is measured per second

Or just me?

I know what you mean, but I think it's awkward wording - it's not measured in terms of Hz, it's measured in terms of a count.

Find yourself a caesium 133 atom. Start counting transitions: 1,2,3,... When you hit 9 192 631 770, a second has passed.

What about the SI unit of beauty? Is the milliHelen still defined as the amount of beauty required to launch exactly one ship?

You mean I'll have to stop using my '90s WH Smith plastic ruler?

Given the mass of the ass and the angle of the dangle . . . .

. . . . can they use them to calculate the measure of the pleasure?