"NY" wrote in message
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"Wolf K" wrote in message
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On 2016-04-02 23:05, Blue Citizen wrote:
Hello you, today I was trying unit conversion with Windows Calculator
and
now it looks different. Can't find Newton unit, plus it shows new units
I've
never seen before, Tonne for example, do you know this unit?

1,000kg, aka as "metric ton" for them as can't spell. English "ton" is
2,000lb. "Long ton" is 2,200lb, or approximately 999kg.

Interesting that you refer to the 2000 lb ton as the English ton, because
that unit isn't used in England (or other parts of the UK) - instead we
use 112 lb / cwt (hundredweight) and 20 cwt / ton - ie the 2240 lb ton.

One of the big problems with the imperial system is that a unit with the
same name (pint, gallon, ton) has different meanings in different
countries (US versus UK) and even in different trades (avoirdupois versus
troy). The other problem is that no two units for the same measurement (eg
mass, length) are related by a power of ten; only by other integers such
as 8, 12, 14, 16. Finally there is not even an integer relationship
between length and volume units: eg between cubic inch and gallon. (*)


(*) I needed to work out roughly how heavy a copper water cylinder would
be when full of water. I only had an imperial tape measure. Measure
diameter and length, and volume is pi r-squared l - but this gives volume
in cubic inches and I only know that "a pint of pure water weighs a pound
and a quarter" ie that a gallon weighs 10 lb. How many cubic inches ina
gallon - buggered if I know, even to an order of magnitude. I ended up
converting lengths to centimetres (using 2.5 cm = 1 in approximation) and
working out the volume in cc, and then the mass follows from knowing that
1000 cc weighs 1 kg.

I should add, this was before the days of the internet, and I didn't have a
calculator or any reference books - I was helping my dad renovate a cottage
in the middle of nowhere and we wanted a rough estimate of the weight to
judge whether a given baulk of wood would be strong enough to take the
weight of the cylinder.