25' 4" or 304" is 7.7216 m They were trying to do an American Standard notation 
7 m 72 cm 

Id put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we 
dont have to wait til oil and coal run out before we tackle that. I wish I had 
a few more years left. -- Thomas Edison♽☯♑


----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Vlietstra" <[email protected]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 2:00:05 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [USMA:49459] RE: Floods in Germany -- AP Reporting




A pity that AP cant do their times table either – when I went to school, 7 
metres equaled 700 centimetres, not 70! 






From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of 
John M. Steele 
Sent: 10 January 2011 17:02 
To: U.S. Metric Association 
Subject: [USMA:49457] Floods in Germany -- AP Reporting 





Germany is experiencing river flooding from a quick thaw and heavy snow melt. 





AP and the Washington Post do a typically terrible summary of the water level: 


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/10/AR2011011000658.html
 


Officials were watching flood levels on the Rhine river in the city of Koblenz 
on Monday that were expected to peak at 25 feet, 4 inches (7 meters, 70 
centimeters), and some low-lying parts of the city were under water. 



The BBC does better: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12149935 

Some low-lying areas of Koblenz are already under water and officials expect 
the waters to reach 7.7m (25ft) on Monday afternoon. The normal level is around 
2.4m, reports say. 



A German news source (English service) describes the water level in another 
town as 8.19 m, so they apparently work to the nearest centimeter. 



AP, you have a few things wrong: 

1) Since Germany is metric and obviously the source of the data, shouldn't the 
metric come first? 

2) Metric doesn't use mixed units, 7 m, 70 cm is wrong. Use 7.7 m or 770 cm. 

3) Assuming 7.70 m, 25 ft 4in is wrong. It rounds to 25 ft 3in, "about 25 feet" 
is better yet

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