Confusion of the English Language

[Mike_Dumond]

Paul, your teacher was probably thinking of the year 2080. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[looch]

Miligram and kilogram - I've never heard centigram. I'm sure you've heard of a Mustang "Five-O," or any other engine displacement value being referred to in litres. Again, in Europe it's cubic centimetre. I'm only guessing here, and I'm open to criticism but I think measuring volume of an empty space using a liquid measurement is not accurate. Wouldn't that value change depending on air pressure? I guess there's a standard somewhere like "water at sea-level" or at a certain KPa.

You may have heard of the Fiat cinquecento (pronounced chink-weh-shen-toe). This means 500 and indeed the tiny engine in this thing is 500 cc's or 1/2 a litre (or 5 decalitres for your nutty math teacher).

I've been quite messed up by the whole thing. I was in school when they decided to implement the metric system. I understand temperature expressed in Celcius but not Farenheit. Short distances like an inch or 1/16" I comprehend much better than 1mm or 1.5 centimetres. I know that a mile is far and a kilometre about half that. I weigh 180lbs - no idea how many kilos that is.

I've got the very small, very useful (and very free) program on my desktop called "Convert." I'd be completely lost without it.

 

[patrickg]

pbenven, A volume is a volume is a volume. Engine "displacement" is the VOLUME the engine displaces and is essentially invariant for most practical applications. If you took that volume of a gas equal to the displacement of an engine it would of course be subject to the gas laws (Charles and Boyles) as all gasses are and be changed by changes in pressure and or temp. The engine displacement wouldn't change if the engine were in outer space or just driven up Pike's Peak.

Although it would be interesting to see a car advertised in Denver as the model formerly known as the 5 liter 'stang but due to truth in advertising is being sold as a 4.7 liter (just guessing the correction for altitude, not calculated).

Actually I find there is not so very much confusion in the English language as there is in American!

Pray to the deity of your choice... but row toward shore!

Patrick

 

[looch]

I hear you. It just seems to me that liquid volume measurements should be used when you actually have liquid to measure, and not to figure out how much liquid a container would hold.
In my (rather twisted) mind, it would be more correct to say that a litre of water will fit inside a 1000 cc bottle.