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.......Because, just for a laugh, I decided to try a little
experiment today. I took a walk to where this signpost is and decided to
count the strides it took to Old Burdon village, the place the signpost points
out.
I reckon I have a stride of 75cm or 750mm! I counted the
strides and ended up with 658.
100 x 0.75m = 75 metres, thus:
658 x 75 =493.5. As I say, it was a (very) rough
experiment but, interestingly, only missed 500 metres by 6.5 metres; a fair bit
more accurate than the 500 yards on the revised signpost and a HELLUVA lot more
accurate than the unrevised version of 300 yards!
I'm not claiming anything like total accuracy here, given the
conditions the experiment was done in, but interesting nonetheless, don't you
think?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 6:37
AM
Subject: Re: [USMA:35123] Re: The
pitfalls of double conversion.
on
2005-11-03 03.56, Stephen Davis at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> "Can I suggest that since a yard is
roughly a pace - that you pace out the
> distance to find out
(approximately) how far it really is?"
>
> Well, I could try but
3 feet at a time is QUITE a pace :)
Dear Stephen,
You are
correct. The usual pace for armies is 750 millimetres. At 120 paces per
minute, this gives armies a marching rate of 90 metres per minute or 5400
metres per hour (5.4 km/h).
750 millimetres translate to about 2
feet and 6 inches so for most folk a 914.4 millimetre pace (3 feet or 1 yard)
is a bit of a stretch.
Notes:
1 The marching pace of
about 750 millimetres has been the standard since Roman times as it was a good
compromise between the paces of tall people and the paces of short
people.
2 The military marching speed is a little slower
than the normal speed of most walkers who walk at close to 100 metres per
minute (or 6 km/h). I think that the reason for this difference is that
military speed is chosen so that an army can walk at this speed all day (at
military marching speed for an eight hour day, an army can march a little more
than a marathon in a day) while most recreational walkers rarely walk for much
more than about an hour (6 km) at a time.
Cheers,
Pat
Naughtin
P O Box 305
Belmont 3216
Geelong
Australia
61 3
5241 2008
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.metricationmatters.com
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