I received the 21 December Science magazine from AAAS today. In their NetWatch section they cite a conversion site, http://www.onlineconversion.com about which they say: In an epic snafu, the controllers of the Mars Climate Orbiter failed to convert English units of force into metric ones, one of several mistakes that sent NASA's $87 million spacecraft into oblivion 2 years ago (Science, 8 Ocotber 1999, pl. 207). Don't let your work go down in flames. This handy site performs conversions faster than St. Paul. From parsecs to hogsheads, the calculator handles some 5000 units of length, temperature, weight, speed, volume, time, power, and other measures. You can change metric to metric, English to metric, and for that retro thrill, metric to English. It does all that and more, apparently. It includes cooking measures, clothing sizes, motor oil grades, Roman numerals, etc. I invite you to check it out, but don't shoot the messenger (me!).
A couple of asides about the above site. It worked fine on my computer (linux OS) when I used Mozilla (v0.9.4) but not when I used Netscape (v4.78). Yes, Java and Javascript are enabled on both programs. Also, I inadvertently found that there is a www.onlineconversions.com (i.e., plural) that is "under construction". That's the wrong site. I received a copy of NIST's TechBeat (http://www.nist.gov/techbeat) yesterday as well and it touts a NIST site for cooking conversions. That site is http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/230/235/household.htm An anachronistic footnote below this table advises that "For all household purposes 1 milliliter may be considered as equal to 1 cubic centimeter." This tells me that this table is almost 40 years old (or more) and was devised before the liter was redefined in 1964 (abrogating a 1901 definition). During that era of non-equality, there was a difference of about 28 parts per million between the two. Jim -- James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston 10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street 843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424 http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
