In the U.S., at least, horses are definitely measured in "hands" of 4
inches, plus inches. For example, 15-2 (often confusingly written 15.2 as
though it were a decimal) means 15 hands and 2 inches. For a typical horse,
the difference between height measured in "English" hands of 10.2 cm and
"metric" hands of 10 cm is only about an inch. The horse's height is
measured at the withers, the highest part of the back at the base of the
neck. However, it is difficult to measure this to inch precision, let alone
centimeter precision, so the difference between the two "hands" is probably
insignificant. I have seen Continental European horse books with heights
given in "hands" point something, but don't know if they were really metric
hands and decimals or English hands and inches. If they were really
decimals, one would have expected the Europeans to use a comma, not a
period.
In any event, I have found that "hands" are a wonderful way of getting
students comfortable with SI. Almost every full-grown person has a hand that
is 10 cm wide at some point. A liter is then a cubic hand, and a kilogram is
a cubic hand of water. I have often lamented that the founders of the metric
system didn't make the base unit about a decimeter long instead of a meter,
and while they were at it, give it a one-syllable name, like "met." If they
had also retained the original mass unit (grave = 1 kg), instead of
switching to the thousand-times-smaller gram, and the original decimal time
units, most of our metrication difficulties would be solved. It is ironic
that the principal defects of SI are the metric base units.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pat Naughtin
>
> I was under the impression that this was an international
> decision (to have
> horses measured in hands of 100 mm). I think this is important when you
> decide whether a particular event is for ponies or for horses.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Pat Naughtin CAMS
> Geelong, Australia
>
> on 2001-03-23 12.31, James J. Wentworth at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > The hand is used in equine circles. Didn't the Australians officially
> > change their definition of the hand from 4" to 100 mm
> (particularly in the
> > horse racing industry)? That would have made my old one-eyed mare about
> > 13.5 hands (1.35 m) tall. She was a chunky gal, though, at a
> buxom 500 kg.
> >
> >
> > Jason
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Nat Hager III <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: U.S. Metric Association <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 3:57 PM
> > Subject: [USMA:11770] RE: Fw: Joan Pontius [Yahoo! Clubs:
> Metric America]
> >
> >
> >>
> >>>> Now I know you're all going to groan, but what we need is to
> >>> re-introduce
> >>> the measure called *the hand*. Granted, the hand is now 4 inches or
> >>> something,
> >>
> >> Actually there already is such a unit. It's called the 100 mm
> module, and
> >> it's darn handy! 300 mm is 3 "hands" stacked on top of one
> another, and
> > 50
> >> mm is half a "hand". Some people also like to think in 25 mm modules,
> >> which they call an "inch", but that's just a quarter "hand".
> And when you
> >> get to fine work individual millimeters work well, and they're just a
> >> hundredth of a "hand".
> >>
> >> So long as you're comfortable using 100 mm as the base unit for "hand",
> > you
> >> never use fractions or decimals.
> >>
> >> Nat
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
