Looks like Tuesday wlll be my last call here for a while, so here's some parting trivia for you. (Not directly electric related but what the heck!)

I guess most of you have heard the saying "A pint's a pound the world around."

Unfortuately that means that the world must end somewhere west of the British Isles, because a few of our "Imperial" measurements are slightly different than U.S. Customary units.

1 Imperial pint = 20 fl. oz. (not 16)

Thus the quart & gallon are correspondingly larger as well. (The U.S. gallon is actually the older unit, used in England several centuries ago.)

We also use the "long" ton of 2240 lb., the U.S. 2000 lb. ton being called a "short ton."

There are still 20 cwt to the ton, so our hundredweight is actually 112 lb.

We also have a measurement called the "stone," which is 14 lb. It's most often used by people giving their weight, so a Brit weighing, say, 158 lb. would be most likely to say he weighs 11 st. 4 lb. (Unless he's been Americanized like me, of course! [Linked Image])

Just thought you'd like another demonstration of how language differences could lead to confusion.

For an idea of the fight to keep our measurements, go here: www.footrule.org