Category Archives: Uncategorized

Stream of Metric Consciousness

Posted on by

By The Metric Maven

A coffee klatch denizen, NY Joe, kindly brought me a book titled The Macmillan Dictionary of Measurement. It has over 4250 entries and Joe was sure I’d find it interesting reading. He was right, there are many interesting aspects of the book that caught my attention, and some not in a good way. One entry took me by surprise and would have been a nice addition to my DBTC chapter Multiple Metric Systems and Metrology. There I point out the existence of the MKS (meter-kilogram-second), CGS (centimeter-gram-second) and MTS (meter-tonne-second) systems. I encountered an entry about the crinal in this dictionary, which I reproduce below:

Yes, the DKS decimeter-kilogram-second system!? I’ve encountered this system no where else in my research over the years. One might almost think it a joke, but then I’ve seen the seemingly unending historical pre-metric units, and many of them also appear to be jokes. My favorite reference has a crinal in it, and the first definition is 1 decinewton. Indeed, let’s just rid ourselves of the prefix cluster around unity. This is unit proliferation, pure and simple.

I also learned that base ten logarithms, like that used to define the decibel, are called Briggs logarithms after the early British mathematician Henry Briggs (1561-1631). In 1616 he drew up the first base ten logarithm tables. Who knew? For those who find British Thermal Units too straightforward, there is also the CHU or centigrade heat unit, equal to the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 pound of water by 1 degree celsius. That is a serious pigfish definition. It is also known as the pound-calorie. The international angstrom is a unit of length, but it is defined with a red line in the cadmium spectrum, at a temperature of 15 C and a pressure of 760 mm of mercury which is 6438.4696 international angstroms. “It is very nearly the same as an ANGSTROM UNIT (10-10 m).” What? very nearly the same? Why not call it “the horseshoe?” We also encounter a prefixed angstrom called a milliangstrom. We need a unit that is 10-13 m in length? There is also the kip, which is a: “Little-used unit of mass for measuring the load on a structure equal to 1,000 pounds avdp. (half a short ton). It was named after the first letters of kilo imperial pound.” This is serious pigfish on parade. Shoe sizes are defined, but mondopoint does not have an entry, or a single mention in the dictionary. I have written about mondopoint here and here.

The dictionary even relates a unit called the eric:

Eric [comparative values] In medieval Ireland, the blood money paid by a murderer or accidental killer (to his family) to the victim’s family in full and complete satisfaction for the death, so that no further punishment or obligation would be imposed or sought.

There is also “the finger.” As we know a hand is about 100 mm in width. Four fingers of width implies a finger would be about 20 mm (25 if the world made sense). Of course in old timey movies we see western characters order two or three fingers of alcohol, which is not exactly independent of the size of the glass.

This dictionary has very little use for milli. Millimeters and milliliters appear depreciated for centimeters and centiliters. When millimeters do appear it is often with mixed fractions.

The dictionary has the Kilotonne, which is a metric prefix applied to a Megagram which is actually a Gigagram as I point out in my essay A Kilotonne is how much in metric? The dictionary lists (with lower case of course) a megabar, megabit, megacurie, megadyne, megahertz, megajoule, megaparsec, megarad, megaton, megavar, megavolt, megawatt, and megaohm, but no Megagram! Clearly the authors of this reference, need to become a bit more acquainted with the metric system in my view. They proudly have listed tonne and kilotonne, but no megatonne, or gigatonne. Both of these nested concatenated prefix “units,” which are megamegagrams or gigamegagrams are seen constantly in reporting about global warming and elsewhere, rather than using Teragrams or Petagrams, which are properly expressed, and devoid of the archaic pre-metric “ton”, which only serves as a thumb to suck, or a skirt to hold are absent. Of course the dictionary also has metric ton and tonne

One day while using public transit to meet with me over brunch, Sven noted a fellow wearing a tee shirt like the one below:

Over the years, there has been a meme of sorts that indicates that spelling is somehow a measure of something that is intellectually indicative about a person. As I’ve pointed out, we have a number of Shakespeare’s signatures, and no two are spelled the same. The two people who wrote this book identify themselves on the dust jacket: “[one]….is a packager who produces popular dictionary and reference books in the fields of science, semantics and medicine” and “[the other]…is an editorial consultant who specializes in religion, foreign languages, place-names, and music.” They both spend an inordinate amount of time defining collective nouns, such as a murder of crows, murmuration of starlings, or a muster of peafowl. These are not exactly precisely defined units or values. The reference is indeed written like what one would expect from specialists in language, who I’m sure can spell, but have no metrology background.

Often people ask me to talk about old archaic pre-metric units, but I have no interest in doing so. There are so many “metric” and “pigfish” sub-optimal units to discuss, and then plead for people stop using; I want to concentrate on them. I encourage people to switch-over to pure efficient metric, without the tonne, micron, angstrom, or other “exceptions.” If you want to know about archaic or obsolete units that no one has ever heard of, consult John Quincy Adams. Relating numbers in the most meaningful manner possible begins with good streamlined metric usage.

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.

is essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page.

That Very Special K

Posted on by

By The Metric Maven

Special K

In my teenage years, I, like many of my contemporaries would stop at an A&W Drive Inn for a root beer and food. One day my friend Rick asked one of the car hops, “what does A&W stand for?” The car hop looked puzzled and indicated she didn’t know. It became an oft-used way to attempt to initiate a conversation with the car hops, who were exclusively female in those days. Not one of them knew the answer.

My youngest sister began working at an A&W during my High School years, and when she had the misfortune to have me as a customer, I asked the question. She looked at me with a countenance which indicated how sophomoric, obvious, and slightly irritating the question was. Then she replied “Allen and Wright.” I was dumbfounded; she was the first to know. “How did you know I asked?” Her instant reply was “It’s on the checks.”

Another question is “what does the K in Special K stand for?” The Wikipedia page on Special K is of no help. Never fear, because on the internet you can always find an “answer”—no matter how much of an urban legend it might be. The first offering is that it stands for Kalium, which is Potassium, and was the essential nutritional addition that was touted as an important part of your healthy diet. What is the symbol for Potassium in the periodic table of the elements? Why K of course!—a capital K! Well, when folk origins are offered, they can be interesting, or prosaic. The internet then alternatively claim’s the K is for Vitamin K! A more down-to-Earth suggestion is that, well, the K stands for Kellogg’s, the manufacturer, and eponymous identifier for one of the Kellogg brothers.

That’s a lot of capital K’s to sort out, and as you might have guessed this essay is about the strange and illogical use of lower case and upper case k in the metric system. The idea that a lower case k should be used for Kilo, whereas all magnifying prefixes above Kilo, are upper case, makes exactly zero sense. It makes such little sense, that I’ve seen it in a high school chemistry textbook defined as capital K, which in the odd BIPM universe would be a “typo.” I see speedometers on the dashboards of Japanese bullet trains that have Km/hr, and other examples where the intuitive usage, capital K, is implemented, rather than the ecclesiastical usage.

When I challenged the use of lower case k as the prefix symbol for Kilo, Metric Bishops scampered out of the woodwork with justifications for this confusing usage. I was told that the lower case k was to remind everyone that SI is essentially the mks system, and so the kilogram is the base unit, and not the gram. This seemed one of the least useful reminders ever. So the kilojoule kJ, kilometer km , kilosecond ks , kilonewton kN—and so on—must all also be lower case? They are not base units. But Megajoule MJ, Gigameter Gm, Terasecond Ts, Petanewton PN and so on are all upper case? This seems absurd. No, this is absurd. It appears ad hoc and post hoc to me, and not deliberative.

Other Metric Bishops chime in with what they see as a better argument. Well, if you use capital K, it could be confused with temperature in Kelvin. Sometime back I understand the degree was taken away from K for temperature, which makes the muddle worse in my view, rather than improving it. I also have never liked the name Kelvin. Naming measurement units after scientists is essentially a national conceit. I’ve elaborated on my dislike of eponymous units in my essay Eponymous Measurement Units and Planet George. Centigrade was a perfectly non-anthropomorphic name, that was changed to Celsius after it had long been an accepted label. I would like to use milligrade, and go back to a non-person unit name for everyday temperature, and eliminate one more centi. Oh, no, no, no, we can’t use K for a prefix and for temperature!—that would be wrong—a Metric Bishop asserted. Strangely the reuse of mm for milli and meter does not cause any concern, but two upper case K’s do? Well, it has all been put in the sacred text say the Bishops, and what is done is done.

I had not given much thought about what manner of heresy might work to free metric from the dogma of the special K for Kelvin, when the answer popped right up unexpectedly. I was reading an essay about the absolute temperature scale titled “The Height of Up” in View from a Height by Isaac Asimov. Asimov states:

As I’m not for the “convention” Dr. Asimov mentions, I will go with degrees A for Absolute temperature scale. It seems to me that the term “absolute scale” is more self-explanatory than is “Kelvin scale,” and in my view unit names that suggest the meaning of a unit serve engineering and science better than the last names of historical humans. I’m sure the Metric Bishops can’t see any way that we could change from this anthropocentric nomenclature as it is “too late,” but I think it is never too late to make a rational change, like switching over to the metric system in the US. If you need a human based virtual last name to go with degrees A, then let’s go with my favorite candidate, degrees Asimov.

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.

this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page.