Re: off topic Question of the day..
On Thu 14 Jul 2016 at 11:21:25 (-0500), Dennis Wicks wrote:
> Doug wrote on 07/10/2016 10:22 PM:
> >I've seen several places where this definition is shown, so it must be correct.
> >If you Google
> >for paper weight, there will be at least one site that mentions paper weight in
> >pounds and
> >also in grams / cm-squared, which may make sense to the Europeans reading this but
> that would be square-cm.
> >not to me!
>
> I'm with you!
>
> Personally, I have never seen a sensible justification for switching
> from one arbitrary measurement system (foot, pound, quart) to
> another arbitrary measurement system (meter, gram, liter).
Is that the International Foot or the US Survey Foot, the Avoirdupois
Pound or the Troy Pound, the Imperial Quart or the US Quart?
But you're just comparing the units here, not the system which also
includes how the units relate to one another. There's a multiplicity
of multiples to with any non-metric system, which we had to learn
at school. 12, 3, 220, 8 for distances, 16, 16, 14, 8, 20 for weight,
4, 2, 4, 2, 4 for volume. That's before you looked at areas, 4840, 640,
and volumes, 2219.36 cu in per bushel. No, we didn't have to learn
that last one.
> BTW: one inch now equals 2.54 cm *exactly*, in case you haven't been
> keeping up! (Used to be approx 2.54 cm.) This is what I mean by
> arbitrary. Don't like the conversion ratio? Then just change it!
The problem with measuring paper by weight is of course that the
amount weighed is never unambiguously specified, and varies
according to what sort of paper is being specified. That's why
I said you need to serve an apprenticeship in printing, so you
can tell whether the paper is bond, cover, Bristol or book,
amongst others... And you have to hope that your supplier uses the
normal basis weight, which is not actually fixed, only conventional.
Cheers,
David.
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