I know some bright BTer will know…I have a dim recollection that a penny weighs ~ a gram – have just spent more time than I have surfing for it, with no luck. Can anybody help?
When one gets to be my age, most recollections are dim…Thanks!
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According to http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/index.cfm?action=coin_specifications, a penny weighs 2.5 grams. A nickel is 5 grams; I never thought about it before but it's interesting that the nickel is exactly twice the weight.
A dollar bill (or any U.S. paper money, for that matter) weighs about one gram.
Thanks! I told you memory got foggy...
I got a recipe for home made tiger balm off the internet that wants a gram of beeswax. Wouldn't want anybody to wonder why I needed to weigh a gram...
Maybe that's why I can't remember!
I can't remember a thing these days (and I'm only 37...) But, I've always known that a nickel weighs 5 grams and bills are one.Don't ask me why, besides my reasons for knowing haven't had any relevance for the last 10-15 years anyhow.Ask me how much a 12oz beer weighs.JT
>> ...a penny weighs 2.5 grams.That's the current production pennies, which are copper plated zinc. Old fashioned copper pennies are 3 grams, based on a sample of one 1980 model. The three bills I weighed were .98, .99, and 1.05 grams. 10 M&Ms weighed 8.8 grams.
Note that the gram is the weight of one cubic centimeter of water. The meter was computed during the French revolutionary period as being (if I'm figuring this right) one 3millionth of the distince between the pole and the equator. Since the penny is English in origin, and the English and the French hate each other's guts, any relationship between the two would be purely coincidental.
happy?
Dan,
Sorry to correct you, but the French have no guts. ;-)
But the snail-eating surrender-monkies do make great wine, purfume, and food. They helped America during her revolutionary period and the Eiffel Tower is an elegant thing of beauty. We Yanks can also thank them for the Statue of Liberty. I hope they never change; it gives the rest of us something to feel superior about. Vive la differance!
BTW, Pierre, I'm only kidding...
FWIW, I think a regular M&M (not Peanut M&M) weighs almost exactly 1 gram. Learned it in 4th grade, IIRC... go figure...
Edit: sorry, this was supposed to be directed to Kate.
Edited 3/24/2006 5:15 pm by torn
Brilliant! Thanks. My BIL is an M&M collector/nut...this is a great factoid to add to his collectiion!
The ONLY reason the French helped the Americans is that they hate the English (although I'm pretty sure they hate the US, too. If it wasn't for Jerry Lewis, they'd hate ALL Americans). May have also contributed to the problems between Germany and France, since the Hessians were on England's side.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Disdain does not equal hate. Fox and CNN tell a story, but not the whole story. A gram is the mass of one thousandth of a cubic meter of distilled water, weighed at sea level. If Nasa used the metric system, maybe they could calculate the forces required to accelerate and decelerate mass without constantly crashing into Mars....Oh, and kilonewtons to kilopascals is much easier than torque to psi...no calculator required if you remember that gravity is more or less constant @ 9.8 m/s sq.... The french fight for what they think is right, not what Bush and Haliburton think is right. Love the poutine.
The french fight for what they think is right, not what Bush and Haliburton think is right
To paraphrase Letterman, "I don't know why people are so surprised that the French won't fight to get Saddam out of Kuwait. Hell, the French wouldn't fight to get Hitler out of Paris!"
letterman..? who's that?
He the guy who told the american indians that any promise written on paper was true as long as the sun shone?...ah..of course, you think they got what they deserve because they never fought back hard enough...Try to remember that Poland never fought too hard against the blitz, and for the same reasons. Anyway might makes right.
What country are you from, Dare_Wade?
gonna send the troops, tex?
Just curious is all.
Why Tex! Y'all offend me. Just because I have been and worked all over the world, been to museums and libraries where egress was written in latin or german, why now that don't mean I don't live down the way from y'all. I just find it dangerous to repeat what you see on the tv. Go to france, tell a few of them good old boys what you think. Maybe you can still learn something.
So I guess you think Letterman is dangerous, huh?
And by the way, you're the one acting offensively and making bad assumptions at present. I didn't come here looking to pick a fight, and I've certainly directed nothing at you to warrant your insults.
Anyway, Letterman is a late-night comedy guy. And he's pretty liberal, too.
When I mentioned the French and Americans vs the English and Germans, I was referring to the Revolutionary War. That's the reason I called the Germans the Hessians. When did I say anything about the news? I don't know why you think you need to teach me about metric, I haven't said anything about not wanting to use it. FYI- NASA has people who can use metric effectively. The problem with the Mars lander (AKA Crasher) is that the technicians who did the calculations and the PM didn't check their units and the landers don't CONSTANTLY crash into Mars.A friend of mine from high school works at NASA, is originally from Czechoslovakia and his father was a professor of physics at the Univerisity of Prague. He was taking math and science classes at Marquette University when we were sophomores. Technically, 9.8 m/s² is the acceleration due to gravity. KN to KPa is no easier than torque to psi, the person doing the calculations just needs to pay attention. BTW, where does torque come into this? If the French fight for what they think is right, why is there so much racism there?
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
> If the French fight for what they think is right, why is there so much
> racism there?Far less racism in France than in the US, relatively speaking. Just a lot of pressure now, due to economics, and there's a Fench tradition to be revolting. ;)Torque was what crashed one of the Mars landers, since it was conveyed in English measurements that were interpreted as metric.My old physics professor (who was, as far as I could tell, apple-pie Americal) used to refer to the IPS system as the "miserable English system".
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
Care to explain how interpreting English units as metric is torque (a turning or twisting force)?Far less racism? I don't know how it would be measured, either. Any surveys would be skewed, as would the answers from a lot of people. Also, what the French press is allowed to show will influence what we see, but from what I have seen, anti-Semitism is growing. The science community, as far as I have heard, prefers metric. I was pretty amazed that the lander crashed because of something as simple as transposing units.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
It was the torque (or actually moment of inertia or some such) that was reported in English but expected in metric. The torque was the result of the off-center course correction thrusters. They converted the major course correction values correctly but not the associated torque numbers (which indirectly produce a minor tweak on the course). This introduced a subtle error.Of course, the error should have been caught, as it was apparent for a couple of weeks prior to the crash that there was some sort of systematic error at work. But there's a human tendency to keep on doing what you have been doing even though it's obvious that something's wrong, ignoring any evidence of a problem. As a rule this doesn't affect scientists as much as most people, but in the heat of battle it does happen.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
I seem to remember that it was just the distance to the surface that caused the problem, where they were supposed to fire at a certain distance in miles and fired at the same number in Kilometers, instead. They should have stuck to one system instead of needing to convert. If everything had been English measurement, anything in metric would have immediately looked out of place. That thing was coming in hot!If they fired the thrusters, wouldn't they want them to affect the lander in a way that would allow it to decend without rotation? I understand the need to fire them relative to the lander's center of mass and that's the reason I asked.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
It was the main thruster that was used for the major course changes that was the problem, IIRC. The nature of the beast is that it's never perfectly centered, relative to the center of mass. (Though I may be misremembering and it may have been different thrusters, but the basic issue was as stated.)Anyway, anytime these thrusters were used a small delta needed to be added to another component of the velocity, when computing resulting trajectory, and that small delta was off. Not the sort of glaring thing that would pop right out.The problem occurred well before the vessel approached Mars. It was basically on the wrong trajectory approaching Mars and "flew into the ground", as the bus drivers like to say.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
Hi, High
"and the landers don't CONSTANTLY crash into Mars"
Only once each, right?
Ron
" A gram is the mass of one thousandth of a cubic meter of distilled water,"
Ummmmmmmmm
One gram = 1/1000th of a KILOGRAM. 1 litre of water weighs 1 kg. 1 litre = 1/1000th of a cubic meter. You're off by a factor of 1000.
==============
To digress, I'm still amazed at this overwhelming American disdain for the French. It really, really reflects poorly on Americans, but I guess the way people want to be seen. I'm sure that for every American joke about Hitler and Paris, there's a French joke about Bush and bin Laden. Turnabout is fair play, after all.
To digress, I'm still amazed at this overwhelming American disdain for the French. It really, really reflects poorly on Americans, but I guess the way people want to be seen. I'm sure that for every American joke about Hitler and Paris, there's a French joke about Bush and bin Laden. Turnabout is fair play, after all.
You're not alone. Painting any group of people with a broad brush gets under my skin. It's always been "fun" to take pot shots at others, but some of the traditional stereotypes of Poles, Italians, etc. were just a bit too extreme to be kept alive in public. But the French stereotypes are a little more political and a little less personal. I guess that's why people feel safer promoting them.
I don't know if it's real disdain or just a form of having fun at someone else's expense. As for me, I don't know nearly enough of them to make any statements about what they're ALL like The same goes for Mexicans, Canadians, Japanese, Americans (whatever that is)... etc. you get the idea. Nor do I really care what they're really like. Gee, they're probably as different from one to the next as we are. In fact, they're probably an awful lot like, um, PEOPLE.
-Don
the Eiffel Tower is an elegant thing of beauty
Of course, the French absolutely HATED it when it was first built. My encyclopedia says, "... despite long-continued protests, it ultimatly vindicated itself aesthetically."
Somewhere in my mind, I want to say that Alexander Eiffel was a Swede....
"Somewhere in my mind, I want to say that Alexander Eiffel was a Swede...."FWIW, The Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia lists Eiffel as being born in Dijon, France.Rich BeckmanAnother day, another tool.
One ten-millionth. The surveyor had great difficulty getting accurate data and the actual result was considerably in error.
Ah, yes, I must have looked at the diameter or the earth rather than the circumference.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
One ten-millionth. The surveyor had great difficulty getting accurate data and the actual result was considerably in error.
Not to defend the French or anything <g>, but how considerable was the error? Isn't the circumference of the earth about 24,900 miles? At 1.6 Km/mile, that converts to pretty near 40,000 klicks.
Might as well get this thread *completely* off topic. ;)
The main problem is that the earth isn't round.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
I'm sorry, I don't know. I read the account years ago and don't recall that much detail.
What street is that? My 'hood, a gram's a whole lot moren'a penny!
Forrest
lol mine tooDue to recent budget cuts the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off until further notice.
I'm amazed that none of you remembers those metric system commercials between your morning cartoons:
"... A Gram... about the weight of a single raisin,
about the same as a paper clip,
now isn't that amazin'?
So compare the weight of a paper clip or raisin to a penny = you'll have your answer!
Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
Sorry, my morning cartoons said nothing about metric. I started learning metric in about seventh grade- about 1969. I was also around to see people digging their heels in, saying they would never learn it. Must have closed their minds to anything new or they didn't want to learn it because it was foreign. Either way, I thought they were making a bad decision.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Thanks...I missed the cartoons, but those are useful items to remember. This has certaily turned out to be an interesting thread...Thanks, All!
edited for spelling
Edited 3/26/2006 4:20 pm ET by kate
I couldn't find "penny", but I found pennyweight:
1 pennyweight [troy] = 1.555 173 84 gramTry this:
http://joshmadison.net/software/convert/I almost feel like I'm hijacking this thread...
Edited 3/28/2006 4:17 pm ET by OverKnight