Smoots & other units

I learned a couple things.?ÿ Mostly stupid things, but still things I was ignorant of, like barleycorns and shoe sizes.

I was on a trip to visit my Son in Boston. He bought us a tour bus trip around town. Crossing the Harvard Bridge I pointed out the Smoot Mark's and started explaining...the tour guide told me to hush up 'Cruz it was his job to tell the story...

DDSM

I know what a Smoot is.?ÿ Still confused as to exactly what a vara is in Texas.

@mike-marks

Here you go..

Texas Vara

@mike-marks

A Vara was legally established to be exactly 33 and 1/3 inches long in June of 1919

Where's Kent at when you need him...

@dougie

It depends on which State you are in, Texas is NOT the center of the Universe, despite what some (but not all) Texans appear to believe.

:d

Posted by: @dougie

@mike-marks

A Vara was legally established to be exactly 33 and 1/3 inches long in June of 1919

?ÿ

Which isn't helpful when you are retracing a survey done before 1919 that used a different length vara.?ÿ

And often a rod wasn't 16.5'.

A buddy of mine grew tired of learning all of the weird units involved with surviving Engineering physics and related classes.?ÿ He decided velocity should be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.?ÿ A furlong is one-eighth of a mile and a fortnight is two weeks.?ÿ Put another way, how many miles would something have traveled in 112 days.

?ÿ

Anyone ever head of stokes??ÿ They are the unit for measuring kinematic viscosity.?ÿ Meanwhile, dynamic viscosity is measured in pascal-seconds.?ÿ Please don't ask me to define the difference between kinematic and dynamic viscosity and how that relates to SAE numbers on oil containers.

@mightymoe

Don't forget roods which would seem to be misspelled rods.

And meters were given to us by the...ƒ??ƒ??ƒ??.French!

?ÿ

I don't know why the furlong doesn't get more respect. First the name, the best name in measurement units. And it's 10 chains long, not too far for Grandpa to get the mail but far enough to seem like something substantial. And best of all a furlong long by a chain wide is exactly 1 acre.

@loyal

That's right Loyal; the Universe is dynamic; ever expanding; the center is constantly changing. But generally, it's just a little bit north of Puyallup.

@holy-cow

Leave it to the spelling police!

@paden-cash That looks like a California Vara to me... 🙂  

@mightymoe

the French chaired an international cluster of eggheads. 

and did a fine job. 

A friend was having difficulty, and wasnƒ??t sure how long a rod was, so he asked me.

I said, ƒ??well I donƒ??t remember how long a rod is in feet.ƒ?

ƒ??really?ƒ?

ƒ??all I can remember is itƒ??s 1/4 chain.ƒ??ÿ

And then his head exploded. We were talking about questions on the test we had both just sat for. I think he got it wrong. 15 ft isnƒ??t ƒ??close enoughƒ??.

so, are HectoPascals really just mb? And whatƒ??s up with mmHg? My T2 is Mils, and I like it.?ÿIƒ??m happy that Celsius and centigrade are both just C.

microns are now micrometers??ÿ

@aliquot

He didn't ask when, he just wanted to know EXACTLY what a Vara was; in Texas...

????

@dougie

I always considered the word "vara" to be a variation of the term variable, and a close cousin to "it depends."

😎