Please... Make it stop!

[CapsicumDreams]

I remember the spokes(wo)man for an electricity wholesaler in Australia being interviewed on TV who continually got power and energy mixed up.


Utterly infuriating from the _representative_ of an energy provider. That was her whole job, to be the conduit of info between her employer and the public.


And she couldn't get one of the simplest definitions correct.

[Wireless1]

Not to dilute this thread any further, but my favorite is the “fluid ounce”.

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by BillKny

A new pop up add has appeared (or at least new to me...) promising me:

"6000 Amps per day."

This just hurts my eyeballs and raises my blood pressure.

Besides the insanely inflated nature of the claims... (I think he is trying to promise 72kW-hours of energy per day.... Yeah... Right!) Who would buy an electrical generating device from somebody who doesn't even know what an Ampere is????

I can deal with amp-hours/day or watt-hours/day. Anyone who talks about amps/day doesn't know what they're talking about and I'm certainly not spending my money with them.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by Auspicious

I can deal with amp-hours/day or watt-hours/day. Anyone who talks about amps/day doesn't know what they're talking about and I'm certainly not spending my money with them.

That's easy divide by 24.

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by Cadence

That's easy divide by 24.

amps and amp-hours are different.

amps/hour is a measure of the acceleration of charge which has no realistic application at all, and certainly none to the energy balance on a boat.

[JebLostInSpace]

On the one hand, I'm about to post a mostly irrelevant reply to this post. On the other hand, units are fun!

I really enjoy English/imperial units and traditional units of measure, even though they make math harder. I love the idea that people just invented units that were convenient for the use they had for those units, and I also love the idea that my country refuses to change our standard units now, even though the applications have drastically changed.

How many on here understand the difference between an SI mile and a nautical mile? Who knows why sailors use fathoms for depth? Grains for weight? One gallon for wine, and another, different gallon for milk? Why is a pint of beer in the UK different from a pint of beer in the US? I measure the ambient temperature in Fahrenheit, because then I know that 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot. But I'd never choose to calculate engine efficiency at different temperatures that way - it would be annoying.

Sure, advertising amps/day is stupid, but now we get to talk about fun ways of measuring things! So thanks, dumb advertisers - I get to be a nerd on the internet for a few minutes because of you

And now, a few choice XKCD's about units, cause that's the kind of nerd I am.

https://xkcd.com/526/
https://xkcd.com/687/
https://xkcd-time.fandom.com/wiki/Cueball_(unit) (cueball is the name of the main stick-figure character in these comics)
https://xkcd.com/394/
https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/



Sorry not sorry

[flightlead404]

Originally Posted by Montanan

PLEASE Let us get this straight, once and for all.

The foot-pound force (symbol: ft⋅lbf, ft⋅lbf, or ft⋅lb) is a unit of work or energy in the engineering and gravitational systems in United States customary and imperial units of measure. It is the energy transferred upon applying a force of one pound-force (lbf) through a linear displacement of one foot. The corresponding SI unit is the joule.

Whereas a pound-foot (lbf⋅ft or lb. ft.) is a unit of torque (a pseudovector). One pound-foot is the torque created by one pound of force acting at a perpendicular distance of one foot from a pivot point. Conversely one pound-foot is the moment about an axis that applies one pound-force at a radius of one foot.

The value in SI units is given by multiplying the following approximate factors:

One pound (force) = 4.448 222 newtons
One foot = 0.3048 metre.
This gives the conversion factor:

One pound-foot = 1.35582 newton metres.
The name "pound-foot", intended to minimize confusion with the foot-pound as a unit of work

1 Pound-foot (lb-ft) is equal to 1.355817952 newton-meters (N-m).

FYI.

The newton (symbol: N) is the International System of Units (SI) derived unit of force.

One newton is the force needed to accelerate one kilogram of mass at the rate of one metre per second squared in the direction of the applied force. The units "metre per second squared" can be understood as change in velocity per time, i.e. an increase of velocity by 1 metre per second every second.

For torque, one could also use pound-inch, or ounce-inch, but never, NEVER, foot/pounds, or meter/newtons.

What's the SI equivalent for an angstrom-slug?

[flightlead404]

Originally Posted by Auspicious

amps and amp-hours are different.

amps/hour is a measure of the acceleration of charge which has no realistic application at all, and certainly none to the energy balance on a boat.

Unless you're designing a Bussard Ramjet ofc

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by flightlead404

What's the SI equivalent for an angstrom-slug?

It's gotten deeper and deeper hasn't it? And that's not water depth.

[Montanan]

Well I drink to this! A bit of bar or pub trivia.

The imperial pint consists of 20 imperial fluid ounces and the US liquid pint is 16 US fluid ounces. The imperial fluid ounce is about 4% smaller than the US fluid ounce. ... In the United Kingdom, the imperial pint is the mandatory base unit for draught beer and cider.

[JebLostInSpace]

Originally Posted by Montanan

Well I drink to this! A bit of bar or pub trivia.

The imperial pint consists of 20 imperial fluid ounces and the US liquid pint is 16 US fluid ounces. The imperial fluid ounce is about 4% smaller than the US fluid ounce. ... In the United Kingdom, the imperial pint is the mandatory base unit for draught beer and cider.

Are you drinking your pint in an English pub or a metric one?

[JebLostInSpace]

Originally Posted by flightlead404

What's the SI equivalent for an angstrom-slug?

I googled angstrom-slug and am still none the wiser on what that is. Could you teach me please and I'll add it to my ever growing list of units trivia?

[David Mathis]

You're complaining? You're fortunate that you've been offered such a deal. The rest of us have to get by on 120V 30/50 amp systems. Perhaps you can make a trade. Offer them your secret formulas for making gasoline from fresh water and diesel fuel from the ocean. Do they mail the 6000 amps to you or are they delivered by FedEx?

[hpaabor]

I get a company offering me a fleece lined leather bomber jacket at a ridiculously low price. I investigate the company and find that it has no real address or phone number and that reviews are fake. Great looking website otherwise. I report it as fake and get a brand new one the next day. This goes on and on. Being retired and in no particular rush - I am a cruising sailor I keep trying to figure out what is going on. Apparently there are web creating engines that will grind out these web sites by the hundreds. My question is what is the purpose? Getting my credit card number is my only guess. I am curious how folks like Paypal and Facebook can participate in what can only be a fraudulent enterprise without so much as an oops.

[Buzzman]

Originally Posted by jmschmidt

How about "Feet/Pound" or "Feets/Pound or even Feets/Pounds for torque. Since the word "feet" is plural none of these make any sense at all. Torque (for 200 years) is measured in "foot/pounds" you morons who mostly write ads for car manufacturers.

And the reason for this is that it is the force of one pound acting on a lever of one foot in length. Torque is one pound-foot, or several pound-feet, written lb-ft.

For more on these esoteric measurements, see here:

https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/...he-difference/