Carl: First, the pronunciations are air and hektair.
Second, you're right. Hectare is certainly a useful unit -- for farmers, real estate people, etc. Are is less useful, in that smaller areas are just as easily expressed in square meters. (It's possibly easier, for example, to say "ten fifty square meters" than "ten point five ares" -- more syllables, admittedly, but it rolls of the tongue more easily and uses a less obscure unit.) Both are (a) and hectare (ha) are accepted for use with SI and neither is actually deprecated. Third, cubic millimeter is a new one to me. (Obviously it exists [by definition], but I've never seen it actually used.) Perhaps you meant milliliter, which is the same as cubic centimeter. Fourth, knowing nothing about your calculator, I don't know whether acre is a typo or actually and acre. If the calculator is all metric, it's obviously are. If it's a conversion calculator, it's probably on the FFU side of the equation. Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On >Behalf Of Carl Sorenson >Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 11:20 >To: U.S. Metric Association >Subject: [USMA:21856] Re: Dual labeling, hectares > > >David Owen wrote: >>The metric system would catch on faster if its evangelists were more >>sensitive to other traditions, and less unbending about deviations >>from theoretical consistency. > >I couldn't have said it better myself. I think all USMA members should >engrave this on a plaque and post it in a place they will see often. > >My XML page has moved to http://ssp-web.lib.byu.edu/measurement/ and it >now includes an option to specify significant figures. I can't >guarantee that the site will always be up. > >I have a question about the hectare. According to NIST at >http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/outside.html, the hectare is one of >the "units outside the SI that are currently accepted for use with the >SI, subject to further review" whose "continued use is not encouraged." >The hectare seems to me to be a very useful unit. It seems more >practical for some purposes than square kilometers and square meters for >the same reason that the liter is more practical than cubic meters and >cubic millimeters. > >I presume that a hectare is 100 "ares" and an "are" is 100 square >meters. Is this correct? How is this unit pronounced? I have a >calculator with a conversion chart that refers to "acre" rather than >"are". Is this a typo? > >Carl >
