tilt head 90 degrees
Okay this is old -- I've used it as a PizzaQ before -- and mathematically stoopid.
I was bored and uninspired. This has been a really bleak, punishing winter.
When a physics or engineering professor is trying to cram students' heads with different units of measurement -- metric, English -- and the techniques to convert from one set of units to another, this is a famous Nightmare Quiz:
Convert the Velocity of Light (in a vacuum) from Meters per Second to Furlongs per Fortnight.
A Furlong is a unit of length of interest to horse racing fans -- there are 8 furlongs to 1 mile.
A Fortnight is a unit of time (14 days, 2 weeks) from Shakespeare's amd Chaucer's day. It's not likely to pop up very often in physics textbooks.
But this is the 8-alarm algebra nightmare you have to drag your suffering brain through to get the right answer. Some students weep as they try to figure it out within 40 minutes.
If you get the right answer, no problem in unit conversions will ever frighten you again. You can figure out if gasoline at an Imperial Gallon or Liter pump is cheap or expensive. You can figure out if lox or smoked whitefish is a bargain or a sucker deal, in the Metric or Commonwealth world.
The number crunching was done on the wonderful (and free) Reverse Polish Notation desktop calculator from Norway, XCALC. (Well, it's free, but the guy would like you to send him some fresh spices, he's an amateur gourmet cook.) I don't see how you can possibly rule the Galaxy without XCALC.
4 comments:
Sorting out how long is a furlong can be a bit tricky, especially as some horse racing courses show their distances in meters, but then many do everything in furlongs
The problem comes when the distance isnt exact and you get things like 7furlongs 89yards - thats because when someone set up the racetrack they didnt measure the distance right and just took a guess on the distance!
I've also found that some of the courses state the prevous form of horses in furlongs only - so if a race is 2miles 6 furlongs, you end up with 22 furlongs
You can find out more at my Horse Racing Blog
Hiya Tim --
Oh no! You mean there AREN'T 8 Furlongs to 1 Mile???
This is really going to mess up the velocity of light in a vacuum.
If you'd written a year ago, I would have advised you to stop betting on horse and dog races.
But in today's global economic environment, betting on the ponies and puppies is probably as good as most investments. Good luck!
I won a Trifecta once. When the lady gave me my money, I grabbed it and ran out of that race track as fast as I could. We had a great lobster dinner that night!
Definition of Furlong from Webster's :
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/furlong
Definition of Furlong from Encyclopedica Britannica:
old English unit of length, based on the length of an average plowed furrow (hence “furrow-long,” or furlong) in the English open- or common-field system. Each furrow ran the length of a 40 × 4-rod acre, or 660 modern feet. The standardization of such linear units as the yard, foot, and inch—begun by government enactment sometime between 1266 and 1303—recognized the traditional sizes of rods, furlongs, and acres as fixed and therefore simply redefined them in terms of the newly standardized units. Thus, the furlong, often measured as 625 northern (German) feet, became 660 standard English feet, and the mile, always 8 furlongs, became 5,280 feet. Today, the furlong is used almost exclusively in horse racing.
Eeeek, for one second I thought my brane got the furlong wrong. Color me very relieved. Wikipedia:
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A furlong is a measure of distance in imperial units and U.S. customary units. It is equal to
*** one-eighth of a mile, ***
220 yards, 660 feet or 201.168 metres.[1]
Five furlongs are approximately 1 kilometre (1.00584 km to be exact). Since the original definition of the metre was one-quarter of one ten-millionth of the circumference of the Earth (along the great circle coincident with the meridian of longitude passing through Paris), the circumference of the Earth is about 40,000 km or about 200,000 furlongs.
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