Today I learn that Americans do not even use the nautical miles. You are not happy to have an imperial ton of non divisible units you also need to have fucking homonyms?
I think the most insane combination of units can be found in aviation. They use feet for altitude but nautical miles for distance, then they use knots (nautical miles per hour) for horizontal velocity, but for vertical velocity they use feet per minute.
The nautical mile comes from the measure of 1 second of arc (°,mn,s) of longitude over the earth. Hence British nautical and French nautical mile conversion were slightly different as they were not defined at the same latitude.
That explains why the people who designed the meter found it logical for it to represent a portion of Earth's circumference (1/10 000 000 of the equator-pole distance)
There is the imperial/customary/international foot defined as 0.3048 m, and the surveyor's foot defined as 1200/3937 m (aka .304800609601219202438404 m)
22 Comments
zaphod@sopuli.xyz · 22 pts · 223d
1.852km.
irq0@infosec.pub · 12 pts · 223d
Are those some non-metric kilometres I don't know about?
mkwt@lemmy.world · 30 pts · 223d
Nautical miles. The mile that's actually useful.
keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr · 17 pts · 223d
Today I learn that Americans do not even use the nautical miles. You are not happy to have an imperial ton of non divisible units you also need to have fucking homonyms?
zaphod@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 223d
I assume americans in the navy use nautical miles.
keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr · 14 pts · 223d
Imagine using nautical kilometers, road kilometers, space kilometers, imperial kilometers, protestant kilometers...
Now please tell me there are no nautical feet, yards, inches and furlongs
zaphod@sopuli.xyz · 12 pts · 223d
I think the most insane combination of units can be found in aviation. They use feet for altitude but nautical miles for distance, then they use knots (nautical miles per hour) for horizontal velocity, but for vertical velocity they use feet per minute.
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social · 6 pts · 223d
Just last week I found this unit right here and I still haven't stopped chuckling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-candle
mkwt@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 223d
Well, and then you need a US customary mass unit when you're designing the things.
Introduce the slug, not to be confused with a pound-mass (lbm), which is distinct from pound-force (lbf).
And then you can start building inertial moments in slug-ft^2.
leftascenter@jlai.lu · 7 pts · 223d
The nautical mile comes from the measure of 1 second of arc (°,mn,s) of longitude over the earth. Hence British nautical and French nautical mile conversion were slightly different as they were not defined at the same latitude.
keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr · 2 pts · 222d
I did not know their origin, that's hilarious.
That explains why the people who designed the meter found it logical for it to represent a portion of Earth's circumference (1/10 000 000 of the equator-pole distance)
Kornblumenratte@feddit.org · 2 pts · 222d
There is the imperial/customary/international foot defined as 0.3048 m, and the surveyor's foot defined as 1200/3937 m (aka .304800609601219202438404 m)
source
Well, to be fair, there has been, the surveyor's foot was deprecated in 2023.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 222d
No, but there are fathoms and leagues
Stitch0815@feddit.org · 1 pts · 223d
untorquer@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 222d
There's a lot of miles in this world...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_(disambiguation)
Also see the comparison table in the main entry
ruuster13@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 223d
Is there a deeper meaning to this than a cool image with anti-American undertones? Did he say something about miles?
5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 223d
took the bait
ruuster13@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 223d
Is bait the name of macron's d***? Because yeah I'll take it
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 222d
Is that like biting the onion?
Little8Lost@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 223d
Thank you for this masterpiece i can take out whenever i need to ask what a mile is
Ceruleum@lemmy.wtf · 4 pts · 222d
About a kilomile.
otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 222d
...about tree fiddy
Puddinghelmet@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 217d