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Thousandth of an Inch

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Re: Thousandth of an Inch

#61
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's a bit of weird disjoint. Almost a tacit admission, in fact. I've heard that in some crazy parts of the world - say 95% of the planet - it's base-10 all the way down . Makes you wonder if they're on to something with that kind of whacky scheme. Hopefully it works out for them.

How do they measure out ⅓ and 1/6 and 1/12 using only base 10?

“Only base 10” is already the measure of choice where it matters most for most Americans: gas, money, ammunition. It works just fine.

Re: Thousandth of an Inch

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the GP's point was that "fluid ounce" is a measure of volume, not mass or weight. If you're measuring a liquid whose density is different from water, a fluid ounce won't weigh anywhere near an ounce. "degrees" is an interesting one, as it's really just another word for "amounts" or "units" or "subdivisions". 100 degrees centigrade is 100 amounts of centigrade. Or actually Celsius, as "centigrade" means "100 s…

> I think the GP's point was that "fluid ounce" is a measure of volume, not mass or weight. If you're measuring a liquid whose density is different from water, a fluid ounce won't weigh anywhere near an ounce. Yes, and equally so, if you are measuring a substance other than water, the milliliter will have a different mass than a gram.

But "millilitre" isn't named after a unit of weight.

A fluid ounce of mercury doesn't weigh an ounce. But a millilitre of mercury still takes up one one-thousandth of a litre, which is itself one one-thousandth of a cubic metre.

Re: Thousandth of an Inch

#63
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sophisticated wild-ass guess: Film and sheet thicknesses are often specified in mils, and PCBs are essentially fancy sheets of stuff laminated together. My unsophisticated wild-ass guess about why they persevere: Like Fahrenheit, it so happens that mils as a scale intuitively correspond to sizes of trace we care about. A 5 mil trace is pretty run of the mill for signals. 20 mils for most IC supply traces. 3 mils i…

People in metric countries just learn to be comfortable with decimals. So you end up with trace widths like 0.5mm or 0.3mm and you just get used to it. I think the intuition argument is often just a post hoc assumption for things that we are actually just familiar with.

The intuition argument is pretty weak.

Thinking about it a little harder, I think the reason is simply institutional inertia, same as for every other industry that retains inch-pound-second based systems.

Re: Thousandth of an Inch

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the GP's point was that "fluid ounce" is a measure of volume, not mass or weight. If you're measuring a liquid whose density is different from water, a fluid ounce won't weigh anywhere near an ounce. Yes, and equally so, if you are measuring a substance other than water, the milliliter will have a different mass than a gram.

But "millilitre" isn't named after a unit of weight. A fluid ounce of mercury doesn't weigh an ounce. But a millilitre of mercury still takes up one one-thousandth of a litre, which is itself one one-thousandth of a cubic metre.

Funny thing, "millimeter of mercury" is a unit of pressure, but "millimeter" is a unit of distance.

"Fluid ounce" is a unit of volume, but "ounce" is a unit of mass.

"Pound" (or "kilogram") is a unit of mass, but "pound force" (or "kilogram force") is a unit of force.

I understand the argument, it's just not a very compelling argument. Explaining the argument one more time is not really convincing. If I'm going to embark on a mission to remove ambiguity from measurement systems, my first choice would be to abolish the use of KB=1024 bytes. The "fluid ounces" and "ounces" thing just does not seem like it poses as much of a problem.

Addendum: I'm also not trying to be contrarian here, and I'm not trying to advocate for some kind of supremacy of US customary units over SI. Most countries have some form of non-SI customary units still in use and some amount of SI adoption. The SI units are preferred for lots of reasons, but it's not like the various systems of customary units are illogical or nonsensical. There's an explanation and a logic behind them, like how US customary volumetric units follow powers of 2, or how a "mile" is a thousand paces (nice round power of 10). The ounce / fluid ounce relationship is has the same physical explanation as the gram / milliliter relationship, because they are both approximations for the density of water, as a reference point. Neither relationship is exactly the density of water, because the respective units have been redefined, and the density of water is now something you look up which happens to have a value close to 1.0 with those particular choices of units. Just as the meter was originally defined as one millionth of the Earth's meridian, the mile was originally one thousand paces, and after standardization, neither fact is true.

Again, I can understand why people want to advocate for SI, but that doesn't mean that customary units are illogical or nonsensical.

Re: Thousandth of an Inch

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "millilitre" isn't named after a unit of weight. A fluid ounce of mercury doesn't weigh an ounce. But a millilitre of mercury still takes up one one-thousandth of a litre, which is itself one one-thousandth of a cubic metre.

Funny thing, "millimeter of mercury" is a unit of pressure, but "millimeter" is a unit of distance. "Fluid ounce" is a unit of volume, but "ounce" is a unit of mass. "Pound" (or "kilogram") is a unit of mass, but "pound force" (or "kilogram force") is a unit of force. I understand the argument, it's just not a very compelling argument. Explaining the argument one more time is not really convincing. If I'm going to em…

> Explaining the argument one more time is not really convincing.

Sorry, I wasn't explaining again because I thought you weren't convinced of my point. Based on your previous reply, I thought you hadn't understood my point. Because if you had, the "well, a millilitre of other liquids doesn't weigh the same either" seems like a complete non-sequitur. I couldn't figure out what point you would be trying to make with that comment if you had understood me. (Knowing that you did, I'm still not sure? Like... so what?)

Re: Thousandth of an Inch

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing, "millimeter of mercury" is a unit of pressure, but "millimeter" is a unit of distance. "Fluid ounce" is a unit of volume, but "ounce" is a unit of mass. "Pound" (or "kilogram") is a unit of mass, but "pound force" (or "kilogram force") is a unit of force. I understand the argument, it's just not a very compelling argument. Explaining the argument one more time is not really convincing. If I'm going to em…

> Explaining the argument one more time is not really convincing. Sorry, I wasn't explaining again because I thought you weren't convinced of my point. Based on your previous reply, I thought you hadn't understood my point. Because if you had, the "well, a millilitre of other liquids doesn't weigh the same either" seems like a complete non-sequitur. I couldn't figure out what point you would be trying to make with th…

I guess my response is also "so what?"

If you measure a liquid other than water, then a fluid ounce does not weigh an ounce... so what?

Even water, the density is 1.0 oz/fl oz, but that's as many significant figures as you get. You would often want more significant figures, even in non-scientific contexts.

Re: Thousandth of an Inch

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Explaining the argument one more time is not really convincing. Sorry, I wasn't explaining again because I thought you weren't convinced of my point. Based on your previous reply, I thought you hadn't understood my point. Because if you had, the "well, a millilitre of other liquids doesn't weigh the same either" seems like a complete non-sequitur. I couldn't figure out what point you would be trying to make with th…

I guess my response is also "so what?" If you measure a liquid other than water, then a fluid ounce does not weigh an ounce... so what? Even water, the density is 1.0 oz/fl oz, but that's as many significant figures as you get. You would often want more significant figures, even in non-scientific contexts.

> If you measure a liquid other than water, then a fluid ounce does not weigh an ounce... so what?

So that makes "fluid ounce" a bad name. Because it doesn't measure ounces of fluid.

Re: Thousandth of an Inch

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my response is also "so what?" If you measure a liquid other than water, then a fluid ounce does not weigh an ounce... so what? Even water, the density is 1.0 oz/fl oz, but that's as many significant figures as you get. You would often want more significant figures, even in non-scientific contexts.

> If you measure a liquid other than water, then a fluid ounce does not weigh an ounce... so what? So that makes "fluid ounce" a bad name. Because it doesn't measure ounces of fluid.

Ok, I had assumed you knew what fluid ounces were. Yeah, that assumption doesn’t make sense since it’s not used outside the US and a couple other countries.

A fluid ounce is 29.5735 mL.

The “fluid ounce”, being a measure of volume, can be used to measure fluids.

Re: Thousandth of an Inch

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "millilitre" isn't named after a unit of weight. A fluid ounce of mercury doesn't weigh an ounce. But a millilitre of mercury still takes up one one-thousandth of a litre, which is itself one one-thousandth of a cubic metre.

Funny thing, "millimeter of mercury" is a unit of pressure, but "millimeter" is a unit of distance. "Fluid ounce" is a unit of volume, but "ounce" is a unit of mass. "Pound" (or "kilogram") is a unit of mass, but "pound force" (or "kilogram force") is a unit of force. I understand the argument, it's just not a very compelling argument. Explaining the argument one more time is not really convincing. If I'm going to em…

"mmHg" is also on my list of units that are stupid. :P

Likewise I understand your argument (yes, of course I know "fluid ounce" is a unit of volume and "ounce" is a unit of weight), I just think naming a unit of volume after a unit of weight is dumb.

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