Jim:
Please pay attention: pee-ess-eye is LONGER than
pee-aye, and NOT any shorter than key-pee-aye. Let's be fair and compare apples
with apples.
I am sorry that I did not make my point clearer.
But we agree elsewhere.
Have fun.
Stan
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 06 Apr 01, Saturday 17:18
Subject: [USMA:36428] Re: SI units
long?
At 1 04 06, 02:54 PM, Stan Jakuba wrote:
1. First, one must
distinguish the term "unit" from "measurement." Contrary to the discussions,
to express a measurement (a unit and a value) in SI is almost always
shorter.
To illustrate:
-- 5 psi, 5 Pa - SI is shorter (compare "p.s.
i." (3) with "p.a." (2). Or lb/ft^2, or in.Hg vs. Pa).
--
5,000 psi, 5 kPa - SI is shorter (compare "five thousand p.s.i." with
"five k.p.a." ). Notice that "thousand" is longer than "kilo." So is
"thousandth" vs."milli" or "ten to the sixth" vs. "mega."
....
Endless
examples. The opposites are rare by comparison.
I don't
agree with this at all. It's trivial to come up with
counter-examples:
five ounces versus five milliliters
five
pee-ess-eye versus five kilopascals (or, really, thirty five
kilopascals)
quarter mile versus two hundred fifty meters (or a quarter
kilometer)
etc.
When you add fractions, as Pat Naughtin has pointed
out, colloquial units can get longer. But, as I pointed out, at least halves,
quarters and eights will be used with metric, right or wrong.
However,
I seem utterly incapable of getting my main point across: metric names WILL be
abbreviated. It has already happened and it will continue to happen. And it
will happen entirely haphazardly, as no international body seems to care to
deal with it.
2. Shortening of
(already short) SI measurements for colloquial purposes has been done in all
countries and languages of the world - from the very beginning, I'd guess.
It seems a reflection on our "English language superiority complex" that we
do not recognize this to exist.
A less nefarious
explanation would be simply that, since most Americans do not use metric
units, they have never heard the various shortened names for SI units.
In fact, there
are sometimes several slang expressions for a unit/measurement. They may
differ from one region in the country to another, among teenagers vs.
adults. etc. It is of no consequence to the "purity of SI" except that it
confuses tourists and, mainly, people who learn metric from what others do
instead of from what BIPM says.
This is a refreshingly
laissez faire point of view! I think I'll adopt it and drop this entire
subject.
Jim
Jim Elwell, CAMS
Electrical Engineer
Industrial
manufacturing manager
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
www.qsicorp.com
|
