Dear John,,
I have never thought of the approach of buying irrigation water by the
tonne, and apparently our agricultural leaders here haven't given it
any thought either.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see
http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY
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.
On 2010/06/12, at 20:08 , John M. Steele wrote:
Perhaps the water should be measured by mass. We know 1 mm on 1 m²
is a millitonne, so on a hectare, 10 t would be required. :)
From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]>
Sent: Fri, June 11, 2010 9:13:38 PM
Subject: [USMA:47729] Re: Volume in metric
On 2010/06/12, at 01:14 , Phil Hall wrote:
These remarks are prompted by the "Oil spill" thread which lead to
a discussion on units of volume.
The litre (or liter of you prefer) has, IMHO, a lot going for it as
a general purpose unit for most ranges. Its main advantage is the
avoidance of the superscripted 3 for plain text messaging. It is
also easily converted to cubic metres when that is required (just
divide by 1000). I have to say I don't like the dam³ that has been
suggested. I don't see why the megalitre or ML won't do just as well.
We then have:
1 m³ = 1 kL
1 dam³ = 1 ML
1 hm³ = 1 GL
1 km³ = 1 TL
Simple yes?
Dear Phil,
Having lived in a society where most of us very successfully use
this small set of units for all of our everyday tasks:
1000 millilitres = 1 litre
1000 L = 1 cubic metre
100 grams = 1 kilogram
1000 kilograms = 1 tonne
1000 millimetres = 1 metre
1000 metres = 1 kilometre
I find it hard to agree that it would be a good idea to introduce
the dam³, the hm³, and the km³ to Australians for everyday use.
In the specialist area of farming, and especially of irrigation
farming, the metric system units, kilolitre, megalitre and
gigalitre, have served us well. This is especially true for farm
water calculations.
You know the basic rule: one millimetre of rain on a 1 square metre
surface supplies a litre of water. Farmers expand this to 1
millimetre of rain on one hectare provides 10 000 litres (10 kL) of
water.
It follows that (say) 200 millimetres of irrigation water needed for
a vegetable crop on one hectare of land will need 3 000 000 litres
of water (300 millimetres x 10 000 litres); which would be ordered
from the irrigation water supplier as 3 megalitres.
By the way, you might not have seen this curious unit used by
Australian farmers and graziers: kilograms per millimetre-hectare
(kg/mm.ha). This is used to compare two pieces of farming land that
have different rainfall. As an example for cattle grazing a property
might produce 800 kilograms of beef from each hectare from a farm
where 540 millimetres of rain falls in a particular year.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide,
seehttp://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY
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/ to subscribe.
