this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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I'm surprised there aren't more suggestions which use intentionally-similar abbreviations. The American customary system is rich with abbreviations which are deceptively similar, and I think the American computer memory units should match; confusion is the name of the game. Some examples from existing units:
We already have a confusing abbreviation:
Bvsb. One is bits, one is bytes.It's a pretty drastic difference. One Gb per second is only 125 MB per second. Don't mess up your capitalization!
It's for this reason I sometimes spell out the Bytes or bits. Eg: 88 Gbits/s or 1.44 MBytes
It's also especially useful for endianness and bit ordering: MSByte vs MSbit
The knot is non-SI but perfectly metric and actually makes sense as a nautical mile is exactly one degree meridian. kn also doesn't clash with kN, Newtons are always written with capital N. Capitalisation generally matters. No standard abbreviation exists for nautical miles but definitely don't use nm because ~~newton~~nano metres.
That is, if you take all those colonial units out of there suddenly you're left with SI units and things that work well with SI units.
Oh and a pint is 500ml, a pound is 500g, a hundredweight is 50kg (because 100 pound), and a teaspoon is rather approximate because everyone outside of North America will use an actual spoon you stir tea with. The important part is not the precise amount but distinguishing it from "a pinch" etc. I guess by extension ounces should be 25ml and 25g. While we're at it: An inch is 25mm, and a foot an even 1/3rd of a metre while a yard is exactly one metre.
Did you know that a Newton metre is about exactly one chocolate bar metre? The work it takes to lift it in about standard gravity, that is. Very intuitive.
t for ton is a quirk in SI, you can use Mg if you want. There's also other SI-adjacent strangeness such as the hectare, which is one hecto-are: While SI has meters for length and litres for volume somehow the are isn't official for area.
Since as you mentioned Newtons are
Nnotn, Newton meters areNm.nmmeans nanometer.yep brainfart too many newtons in the sentence before that
I do admire the nautical mile for being based on something which has proven to be continually relevant (maritime navigation) as well as being brought forward to new, related fields (aeronautical navigation). And I am aware that it was redefined in SI units, so there's no incompatibility. I'm mostly poking fun at the kN abbreviation; I agree that no one is confusing kilonewtons with knots, not unless there's a hurricane putting a torque on a broadcasting tower...
We can invent one: kn-h. It's knot-hours, which is technically correct but horrific to look at. It's like the time I came across hp-h (horsepower-hour) to measure gasoline energy. :(
In defense of the American national pride, I have to point out that many of these came from the Brits. Though we're guilty of perpetuating them, even after the British have given up on them haha
I'm a dual-capable American that can use either SI or US Customary -- it's the occupational hazard of being an engineer lol -- but I went into a cold sweat thinking about all the awful things that would happen with a 25 mm inch, and even worse things with 3 ft to the meter. Like, that's not even a multiple of 2, 5, or 10! At least let it be 40 inches to the meter. /s
I like to explain to other Americans that metric is easy, using the hectare as an example. What's a hectare? It's about 2.47 acre. Or more relatable, it's the average size of a Walmart supercenter, at about 107,000 sq ft.
1 hectare == 1 Walmart
Quite standard, actually. If you buy a fridge over here it'd say something like "150 kWh/a", which is 17.12 Watts, which is how much the fridge uses on average. People don't pay for Watts, though, but for kWh, that's what's on the bill so kWh/a is way more practical if you want to convert to €/a. Also if you put more than one number in Watts in the docs civilians might get confused, ideally the only one you put there is connection power.
I actually have no idea. I know that it's what farmers pick up women with but I have no real mental image of how much it is. 100m, sure, make that a square but it's still somehow without meaning.
Blame the Swedes, or more precisely Carl Edvard Johansson, inventor and manufacturer of gauge blocks. Before that the US and Brits had slightly incompatible definitions of inches and he split the difference pretty much in the middle and rounded a bit and ended up producing 25.4mm gauge blocks, and only after that industry even started to be precise and actually adhere to proper measures -- without wide availability of reference gauge blocks that was impossible. He should've rounded just a bit further.