On 2004 Apr 9 , at 10:25 AM, Mighty Chimp quoted an anti-metric person who wrote:
> Hey Euric, what about basketball?
> The court is 94 FEET long, the basket is 10 > FEET high, the three point line is 25 FEET > out, and the free throw line is 10 FEET out.
Tell him that the international basketball rules ARE metric, Euric!
I looked up the rules of basketball in the FIBA site (International Federation of Basketball). ALL it's rules regarding dimensions of the playing field and equipment etc. were given in metric. (Strangely I could not find the distances of fouls lines or any other marking on the court floor. I must have missed something.) Here are some of the dimensions I found. There were many more. All were totally metric.
Court size (minimums): length 32000 mm, width 19000 mm
Size of Backboards: width 1800 mm, height 1050 mm
Height of Backboard above floor: 3050 mm
Position of goal rim above bottom of backboard: 150 mm
Length of goal netting: 450 mm
Basket diameter 450 to 457 mm
Rigidity of rim: should be able to withstand a force of 1000 N without
permanently being bent more than 2%
Rigidity of backboard: Shall be rigid enough so that, when placed horizontally
(and supported in a particular way) that a "weight" of 50 kg shall not cause a
deformation of more than 3 mm
I note that all measurements were in millimetres. (Diagrams were included showing numbers but not units; it took a little hunting to be sure that the dimensions were assumed to be all in millimetres.) Certainly some for the dimensions could be conveniently re-expressed in other units such as the length and width of the court which could have been written as 32 m and 19 m.
I note too that the old feet and inches measurements of the original (American) basketball rules did reveal themselves in a few odd measurements, like the 3050 mm height of the backboard above the floor, which is very precisely 10 feet, and the maximum allowable rim diameter of 457 mm, which is very precisely 18 inches. But the rules gave each measurment ONLY in millimeres, wtith no reference to the feet and inch dimensions that they may have stemmed from.
I noted, too, and was surprised by the use of commas to separate larger numbers into groups of three digits (e.g.; 1050 mm was written as "1,050 mm"). This confused me at first because, being award of the European source, I intitally thought that the comma was a decimal marker. A familiarity with those sizes made it clear that "1,050 mm" must have meant 1050 mm (or written as 1 050 mm) and not 1.05 mm .
Regards, Bill Hooper Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA ======================== SIMPLIFICATION begins with SI ========================
