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From: arnet@cv.hp.com (arne thormodsen)
Subject: Re: degrees Celsius
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Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 00:35:20 GMT
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Ric (ricmor@bigfoot.com) wrote:

: To illustrate, few people currently object to a seven day week or a twelve
: month year, a 360 degree circle or a 60 minute hour or a 24 hour day,
: although most of these numbers are arbitrary.  These systems are ancient,
: and no calamities have occurred as a result of their nondecimality.  Is it
: possible that the same is true for nondecimal temperature scales?...

Ahh, but calamities have occured.  Consider my roommate in graduate school
who built an elaborate and expensive vacuum apparatus out of aluminum
and then needed to "bake it out".  He looked up the melting point of Al and
then put the apparatus in a lab oven to bake.  The next day he opened the
oven and found a melted puddle of metal in the bottom.  The problem (if you
hadn't guessed yet) was that the US published engineering book he got the
melting point out of was in F, while the oven was calibrated in C.

--arne


: RicM
: ABD, Hispanic Linguistics
: Department of Spanish and Portuguese
: Ohio State University, USA
: ricmor@bigfoot.com
