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PostPosted: December 14, 2016, 3:21 pm 
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In a recent discussion on the arbitrary nature of measurements units, after attacking Fahrenheit, we delved into inches to feet standing alone in the ever intuitive 'base 12' system for measuring length. During this, we recognized the fact that the 5280 feet in a mile is also divisible by 12. Deciding that this cannot be coincidence, and that the 'base 12' system of measure needs to be expanded, we have officially named this new 12 foot unit of measure, the foot-foot. So in case you were wondering, there are 440 foot-feet in a mile...And now you know, the rest of the story.

:leave:

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PostPosted: December 14, 2016, 6:52 pm 
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My head hurts! :ack:

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PostPosted: December 14, 2016, 7:39 pm 
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That's not as much fun as the inch. Wasn't it once defined as "3 barley corns laid end-to-end"? I always liked that one. Then there are 12 inches to the foot, so 12 x 3 = 36 barley corns, end-to-end. What could be simpler? There's no fooling with defining things like the meter, which is something completely outside our experience, and initially defined to "be equal to one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator (the quadrant of the Earth's circumference), measured along the meridian passing through Paris."

Now that's just silly. Everyone knows the earth is flat. Long live barley corns!

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PostPosted: December 14, 2016, 10:41 pm 
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Driven5 wrote:
In a recent discussion on the arbitrary nature of measurements units, after attacking Fahrenheit, we delved into inches to feet standing alone in the ever intuitive 'base 12' system for measuring length. During this, we recognized the fact that the 5280 feet in a mile is also divisible by 12. Deciding that this cannot be coincidence, and that the 'base 12' system of measure needs to be expanded, we have officially named this new 12 foot unit of measure, the foot-foot. So in case you were wondering, there are 440 foot-feet in a mile...And now you know, the rest of the story.

:leave:

And would you measure that distance with, a foot meter?

I researched a 1916 plat of survey once. It used rods, links, chains, feet and maybe some other units of measure all in the same description. Strange

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PostPosted: December 16, 2016, 4:13 pm 
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Location: BC, Canada. eh?
So I'm guessing that under that system, torque would be measured in...uh...um...pound-pounds per foot-feet, perhaps? :shock: :lol:

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PostPosted: December 16, 2016, 4:59 pm 
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Well, I suppose if there were 16 pounds in a pound-pound, then yes. Although being a torque, it would technically be pound-pounds-foot-feet, without the 'per'...Or more commonly lb-lb-ft-ft. Subsequently, 1 lb-lb-ft-ft would be equal to 192 lb-ft. :mrgreen:

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PostPosted: December 16, 2016, 7:59 pm 
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Not wishing to suggest that we are too close to the truth, but when I was studying ship structures we were in the transition to metric, so we still did some calculations in 'British' units as well. In those pre-digital days, every little reduction in calculation helped so when calculating sectional inertia we used the handbook dimensions of steel sections, in inches of course, but the distances from the (assumed) neutral axis in feet - we were after all calculating the sectional inertia of a fairly big structure. So instead of the expected units of in**4 from my strength of materials class, we got in**2ft**2.

Made your head hurt the first time, but you can get used to anything. Maybe that's why I still use whatever side of the tape measure is more convenient. Carried to the extreme, I once had to scale a ship general arrangement to fit into the body of a report: a millimetre to the foot worked really well, but I recall a certain amount of verbal abuse from my boss.

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PostPosted: December 18, 2016, 5:26 pm 
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I did clay model where 1 cm = 10 inches. Very intuitive, I find.

Fact with units is people need 1 or 2 digit integers to feel comfortable- how tall is your ceiling in your home? Just over 8' I suspect. That's more useful to a human brain than 244cm


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