rayge
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Post by rayge on Jun 1, 2022 8:28:02 GMT
And of course the origin of 'Imperial' measures was the avoirdupois system, which, as the name suggests, was created by those damn Frenchies.
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Post by osgood on Jun 1, 2022 11:01:27 GMT
Then we have acres, which is another unit I can't visualize. Here we use the hectare wich is roughly a football pitch. Now, that IS a sensible way of making units understandable.
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Jun 1, 2022 11:48:24 GMT
The are and the hectare are largely ignored in the UK in favour of square yards, square miles and acres. An acre was originally determined as the amount of land a mediaeval team of oxen could plough in a day, which turns out to be a strip one furlong (220 yards, or one-eight of a mile) long and one chain (22 yards, one eightieth of a mile) wide, which is not far off 200m x 20m or 4000 square metres. So a hectare is about 2.5 acres. A standard football pitch btw is 0.7 hectares, not a whole one, so an acre is roughly the size of half a football pitch. Or one six-hundred-and-fortieth of a square mile. Hope that helps
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Post by osgood on Jun 1, 2022 12:00:02 GMT
A standard football pitch btw is 0.7 hectares, not a whole one, so an acre is roughly the size of half a football pitch. Or one six-hundred-and-fortieth of a square mile. Hope that helps You're absolutely right, I should have said a football stadium including grandstands (Santiago Bernabeu is 1.067 hectares, just checked). It is a very standard measure for summer wildfires in the news here: "the surface burnt is equivalent to 2000 Santiago Bernabeu stadiums (stadia?)"
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Post by Markus on Jun 1, 2022 12:27:08 GMT
Awww, thought this was gonna be about stormtroopers.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2022 12:29:45 GMT
Well, will you look who it is now.
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Post by souphound on Jun 2, 2022 20:23:05 GMT
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Post by osgood on Jun 3, 2022 7:32:00 GMT
I vaguely remembered that. The details of the error in that wiki entry are worth reading.
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