METRE...

You measure electricity with it.

... or basically anything... like mikros (mikrometer)

(I'm pretty sure the two words have the same latin root, et c., but at the moment I care sweet FA).

I know, the Americanisation of everything has gotten terrible round here!

Dunno about Americanisation - 'meter' is the Germanic spelling while 'metre' is likely the Latin (aka froggy) spelling. While one of my distant ancestors was born in France (Alsace to be exact, though back then it was called Elsaß and was patriotically Teutonic), I regard myself as more Anglo-Saxon than French.

So I use 'meter' to refer to the unit of measurement - YMMV.

They're both from the same greek root of metron or metreon, but reached us by different paths, so they now serve different purposes in British and Commonwealth English.

A meter is a measuring device, while metre is a unit of measurement, whether that be a unit of length or the frequency of a regularly recurring pattern, such as in poetry or music. You could use a one metre pendulum to time your music, giving you a metre metre meter, or a metre metronome. By extension, this means you can, by regularly tapping one metre long stick on the ground for every one metre pace you take in time to a song, have a metre metre meter metre meter.

At last - we finally know the inspiration for Lovely Rita

The SI people call it the metre, and that's good enough for me.

If that bugs you then wait to hear what they've done to "decimation".

I was worried that the Reg Standards Secretariat had been retired.

Yes, fantastic news.

Maybe they can dust off the Playmobil too

For smaller measurements, rather than Miliosmans and the like, we could introduce the Sunak.

I can't quite remember, was a Truss established as a unit of time?

If it was, then shirley the real question becomes: how many Sunaks does light travel during a Truss?

At 0.85 Osman per Sunak, that would be 6.704E14 Sunaks.

I can't quite remember, was a Truss established as a unit of time?

Does it not subordinate to a lettuce?

"we could introduce the Sunak"

Perhaps, but I believe that the said Sunak unit may soon be consigned to the history books, and will therefore become a meaningless and obsolete unit, just like the Carucate, Puddee, Rod and Slug.

And so therefore there is little need to update the Reg Standards, and sully the existing extensive range of measurement units.

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

Perhaps, but I believe that the said Sunak unit may soon be consigned to the history books, and will therefore become a meaningless and obsolete unit, just like the Carucate, Puddee, Rod and Slug.

I approve in principle, although it runs the risk of too many units, and then conversion errors. So Sunak could be used as a measurement of length. Call it 5' at STP. On which point, do we have units for temperature and pressure? Same could be done for a Truss given they're already widely used in construction.

On the subject of windmills, the have both a tower height and wingspan, as does the AoN, so there's the potential for AoNS for span, and AoN for height. Which won't confuse anyone at all.

One of them is Batman

Wikipedia may call the slug obsolete, but I recall doing fluid dynamics calculations using slugs. Granted, that was in a different millenium.

If you study fluids and thermodynamics on the left side of the Atlantic, you get full exposure to multiple systems of measurement, and you learn to appreciate the metric system.

A Sunak could be introduced as a unit of information content, ie entropy.

You’d probably have to go straight to Megasunaks though, before the unit is big enough to be usable.

Unlikely - zero times anything is zero.

A quantum of Sunaks - it exists only for as long as one does not do the test to see if it exists?

So - how many Sunaks to a rusty angel? I'd estimate around 33 1/3.

in a crazy world

Hi

As a member of the Osman clan, I would like to point out that The Reg's use of the generalised Osman term is a little misleading, as in my family it has lead to many conflicts both within the family and when going to the likes of the haberdashers (as my partner buys cloth material quite often) or when we go to B&Q and have need of some sustainable naturally grown products (which are usually available in square/rectangular cross-sections but in multiple lengths).

This is due to various family members being of different heights and thus when they use the said Osman term, they frequently receive the required item but it being either too short or too long.

So, now, we have had to use a prefix to be more specific, such as the DadOsman, Son1Osman, Son2Osman and even the MumOsman and GMumOsman when required.

This solves the issue, so can I suggest that the Reg's "Osman" be given a prefix, so that the outside world can update their records and hence prevent further embarressment or dispute.

I would suggest "RsOsman" be considered - which would then be a standard R Osman compared to the non-standard versions used in my extended family's nomenclature. :-)

I'm sorry to hear your family doesn't meet ElReg standards. Perhaps they could be adjusted to avoid further confusion?

You are [1]Procrustes , and I claim my 100 shillings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes

Is one GMumOsman 1,000,000,000 MumOsmans?

I suspect the Reg standard osman, tour-eiffel, big-ben, and the geordie-angel don't bear a rational relation teach each other let alone an integral ratio. As el Reg units should be - relating to the real world - not the myopic fantasies of 18th gallic rationalists :)

I am surprised this demented Tory crew and fellow travellers haven't proposed de-decimalizing the UK currency (GPB) £sd just looks better and a chap just know he better than the common lot when he is paid in guineas. Lock £ to gold's spot price and florin to silver's - what a wonderful arbitrage opportunity for a chap in the city. Think of the IT contracts for subcontinental outsourcers.

How fast are wind turbine supposed to rotate (rpm or rad/sec)? Having a 150m (1.5 big-ben) blades rotating at appreciable rpm is going to be a bigger-bill price. As [1]flower pot would have said [someone has been smoking] weeeed!

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c6/%22Flower_Pot_Men%22.jpg

Oh I would love that. May I suggest 12 pounds to a guinea, 16 crowns to a pound and 20 pence to a crown.

Top it off with 6 coppers to a pence.

Now I feel like dusting off one of my old AD&D adventures and implementing that . . .

"How fast are wind turbine supposed to rotate (rpm or rad/sec)?"

Typically the limit is airspeed of the blade tip, where you don't want more than 180 mph airspeed as that shortens the blade lifetime due to coating and blade erosion. Which means the bigger the rotor, the slower the rpm. For really big offshore turbines, consider the max operating rpm as about 11 rpm, some of the monsters currently on test are looking at 8 rpm, although for the typically smaller onshore units you're in the 20-30 rpm range. Whilst possible to design differently, there's little value in higher rpm as power varies with rotor diameter rather than rotation speed, and as you comment there's a big cost to designing a GTi wind turbine.

As an aside, if high winds threaten to take the rotation speed above the permitted speed the blades will be feathered to prevent over-speed, the alternative is blade damage, bearing or gearbox failure, all of which can result in complete loss of the rotor, turbine and mast, although China claim that they've had a 15MW wind turbine generate continuously during a typhoon, albeit a "mere" Cat 1 typhoon.

I've always been puzzled why large wind turbines rotate on a horizontal axis, which always requires a tower taller than a blade length with the inevitable flex issues. Wouldn't it be simpler to put a cage of blades on a vertical axis, with the generator at ground level? No need then to have it pivot to follow the wind, either.

@Phil O'Sophical

Efficiency? Look up Savonius rotor.

The do exist, mostly as fashion accessories for eco-business parks, government or academic campus installations. Nominally they're more efficient and don't have to turn into the wind, most designs don't scale well, as a result they're too close to the ground to get decent wind speeds or high outputs, and there have been problems of cost and reliability.

There have been a few serious attempts to build large scale vertical axis turbines, but so far results have not has persuaded investors that its a better bet than the well proven horizontal axis turbines. One main proponent is Norway's "World Wide Wind", who have a funky two stage contra-rotating vertical axis design as their web site shows, and claim very high potential outputs that eclipse the largest horizontal models of today, but it's still at the government-funded seed capital stage. As a personal observation, most things that involve the words "contra-rotating" never really become mainstream, and even if it is in fact better technology, it's in danger of being the Betamax of wind power.

Is a bell, unlike Sunak, who is a bell end.

Elizabeth Tower would have been more appropriate. Of course, from a man who doesn't know how contactless or hammers work, I'm not really surprised

54m vs 50m might not seem much by the Reg's louche standards, but if the blades end up 4m closer to the ground than passers-by are expecting, there could be some interesting consequences.

That's easy to solve: simply dig a shallow trench below the blade's path. Do I have to think of everything around here?