Earlier in the week there were reports on the fires on NBC news. These were all that I saw, and everything was spoken in English units. The reporters were Americans (American accents) and when Australians were interviewed, no measurements were spoken. Thus to the American audience, the entire experience was English all of the way.
If an Australian had spoken metric, that part was edited out. I don't know how Americans would feel if they heard Australians speaking English but using metric units in normal speech. They may expect English units when speaking English and may become disoriented if that wasn't the case. Maybe someone else may have heard or seen differently on other news channels. Jerry ________________________________ From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Cc: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 7:55:17 PM Subject: [USMA:42986] Re: hectare in a fire Dear All, Recently I referred to the fact that the size of bush fires bush fires are estimated and reported in hectares in Australia. In response: On 2009/02/11, at 11:06 AM, STANLEY DOORE wrote: Hi Pat et al: Thanks Pat for the fires update. The fires there are getting TV time here in the US. This would be a good example of simplification if square kilometres was used instead of hectares. km^2 would be so much more understandable, useful and would require much less computation, especially those of us in the United States who are converting to the SI. Our prayers are with you all. Regards, Stan Doore The use of hectares works quite well for us in Australia. Basically, we use three area units for routine reporting of area measurements and estimates: square metres, hectares, and square kilometres. *Residential land and house internal sizes are measured in square metres *Farming land and bush fires are measured in hectares *Mapping is done in square kilometres These choices mean that all numerical reporting uses whole numbers without any need for fractions at all. No common or vulgar fractions and no decimals. Only specialists such as cartographers have a need to change from one level of accuracy and precision to another. The public seems to quite happily just jump from one frame of reference to the next without any need for conversion algorithms or conversion factors. With respect, Stan, I think that this might be what you are referring to when you say that square kilometres would be so much more understandable. This might be the case if you are focused on doing conversions but it is not relevant when no conversions are done or thought to be necessary (except for specialists). Please note that Australians are used to working in millimetres (only) for all buildings (from kitchen renovations to multi-storey buildings) and almost all manufacturing, so Australian people are quite used to working with large numbers. Even though they probably are not conscious of the reason, Australians benefit from the ease of working with whole numbers without fractions when they are considering the measurement of area on various scales. As I said the use of square metres, hectares, and square kilometres works pretty well for us. By the way, while I am on the subject of measuring area, I can only think of two examples where I have had a need to use square centimetres in the past 10 years. The first was when I wanted to estimate the mass of water in an aquarium. I measured the length and width to calculate the area of the base in square centimetres; and then used various depths of water in centimetres to calculate the volume at the various levels in cubic centimetres. From this I then calculated the mass of water using the idea that 1 cubic centimetre has a mass of 1 gram. Schools use square centimetres and cubic centimetres quite frequently, but I have not seen, or heard of them being used in any industrial or commercial settings. Schools also calculate cubic decimetres as the basis for the definition of a litre and for developing the relationship that a litre of water has a mass of a kilogram, but again, I have rarely seen this idea used in industry; the single example I can think of was for the estimation of the volume of water in a wool washing bath. Cheers, Pat Naughtin Geelong, Australia ----- Original Message ----- From: Pat Naughtin To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 5:36 PM Subject: [USMA:42978] Re: hectare in a fire Dear All, The good news is that the temperatures have dropped markedly in the last few days and forecasts are for similar lower temperatures, from the mid 20s to the low 30s, for the next week. There are even a few areas that might have 5 millimetres to 10 millimetres in the next 24 hours. This will give the fire fighters from our Country Fire Authority (CFA) a chance to first of all contain and then to 'blacken' the fires that are still active. Wendy and I and our son, his wife, and grandchildren are all fine and well out of the range of any of the initial 200 fire outbreaks; the closest was about 70 kilometres away. Our only family worry is that Wendy's sister and her family have a fruit orchard and a vineyard in a valley near one of the major fires and they have been immersed in smoke since Saturday; the worry is that the smoke will effect the fruit and the grapes as some of these were almost ready for harvest. Of these 200 original fires 11 of them were regarded as major fires and the 'urgent' messages coming from the radio emergency service were more or less continuous through 24 hours of the day. Currently we still have about 35 fire locations that are still active and 3 of these are still major fires. There are still 'urgent' messages and 'alert' messages being issued from the CFA on a regular basis. Senior fire officers are now delivering hopeful messages of confidence that they will be able to control the remaining fires within the next week or two.. As usual our CFA has done a fantastic job. As have all of our other community groups who have supported the work of the fire fighters. People like the Country Women's Association (CWA), who suddenly turn up at remote locations in the middle of the bush on the edge of a major fires with generators for electricity, urns to boil water for tea and coffee, and the wherewithal for making thousands of sandwiches to give the fire fighters sustenance during the meal breaks that can happen at any time of day or night. Could I suggest that you tune to the streaming radio station of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). This is a government radio station that normally broadcasts popular music and talk-back radio on political and legal issues, but when we have bush fires it changes to our emergency radio service. You will find this radio service at http://www.abc.net.au/melbourne and the reason I am suggesting that you do this is so that you can appreciate at a personal level the outpouring of support that has not only come from ordinary people in the Australian community but also from the international community. The stories that you will hear will amaze and inspire you. I feel immensely proud to be part of the community of Victoria at this sad time. As you probably know, the CFA of the state of Victoria has very good relationships with the states of California and Washington in the USA. It is not unusual for fire fighters from California and Washington to come here to help us with extended fires and for some of our 'fireys' to help out in the USA. Another feature of this emergency fire service is that the reports from ordinary citizens are invariably given in metric units. It has been the policy of fire fighters here to use metric units since the 1970s and the stated reason for this was fire fighters' safety. In the Rural Fire Service (RFS) of the state of New South Wales it has been a 'reportable offence' to use old pre-metric measures at a fire location since the early 1970s. It took longer for the general community to adopt this practice but this in now widely accepted. Cheers, Pat Naughtin Geelong, Australia On 2009/02/08, at 11:18 AM, Pat Naughtin wrote: Dear All, As I advised yesterday we were in for a hot dry day with low humidity yesterday; the prediction was for 44 °C. It turned out that the temperature at the Avalon airport near Geelong was the hottest place in the state. The temperature there reached 46.9°C at 15:00 with winds gusting between 10 km/h and 60 km/h. See http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDV60801/IDV60801.94854.shtml Fortunately for us there were no bush fires within 50 kilometres of Geelong, but more than 200 fires were reported from other parts of the state of Victoria — 11 of these are regarded as major fires burning areas of up to 30 000 hectares — these fires are still active. One of the government owned radio stations (Australian Broadcasting Commission or ABC 774) becomes an emergency information service under these circumstances. You can listen to a streaming of this service from http://www.abc.net.au/melbourne where you will notice that almost all dimensions supplied use metric units including hectares for the size of fires. The exceptions come from some few people who phone in to the talk-back components. The fire services have, since the 1970s, regarded using old pre-metric measures as a reportable offence since it puts volunteer fire fighters lives at risk to use multiple methods of measurement. I think that the ABC does an excellent job of providing this emergency bush fire information - you might like to listen for a while to see how we manage this kind of service in Australia. By the way, as I listen to the radio, I think of hectares like this: 1I hear of a fire that is estimated as 165 hectares 2I take the square root of the number: sqrt (165) = 13 (approx.) 3Multiply 13 by 100 = 1300 metres. 4I think of this is a fire that, as a square, would be about 1.3 kilometres by 1.3 kilometres. Let me repeat this for one of the larger fire that is estimated to be 30 000 hectares 1I hear of a fire that is estimated as 30 000 hectares 2I take the square root of the number: sqrt (30 000) = 170 (approx.) 3Multiply 170 by 100 = 17 000 metres. 4I think of this is a fire that, as a square, would be about 17 kilometres by 17 kilometres. A square in this particular case works well enough because these fires were burning with north-westerly winds before a cool change arrived from the south-west in such a way that one edge of some large fires changed to the front of the fire. We are fortunate that the south-westerly change has meant that the temperature today has dropped for the western half of the state to the mid 20s. The lower temperatures mean higher humidity so these weather factors should be helpful to the roughly 3000 mostly volunteer fire fighters. Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected] or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
