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Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 2003 09:01:47 -0800
Reply-To:     Alistair Bell <albell@UVIC.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Alistair Bell <albell@UVIC.CA>
Subject:      F/ ok one last Friday Funny, "project Metrication"
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

I couldn't help myself :)

Alistair

-=---------------

Project Metrication

In view of the continued movement toward metrication, we should be eliminating archaic English measurements from our calculations. One such measurement which is used a great deal in project planning is the "milestone", derived from two English measurements, the mile (a unit of distance) and the stone (a unit of mass equal to 14 pounds*). Converting to metric equivalents, we find:

1 mile = 1.609344 km = 1609.344 m 1 stone = 14 lbs = 6.350288 kg

so that

1 milestone = 10219.80447 kg-m

or, approximately (if approximations are not too abhorrent to practitioners of such an exact science as project planning):

1 milestone ~ 10K kilogram-meters

This suggests derived measurements: project momentum (milestones per second) and project force (milestones per second squared).

Even if metrication is not a priority, there is still a more elegant reformulation of the milestone as:

1 Milestone = 28,672 dram-furlongs

Since "dram-furlong" is a somewhat cumbersome appellation, I suggest "damlong" as an abbreviation. Then we could refer to projects which take "2 damlong."

* OK, I know that pounds are weight and kilograms are for mass. Gimme a break! [:-), Anticipated nit-pick department]

- Richard Hoffman


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