How to save billions of dollars.

[Crusader]

In The Netherlands we stopped using the 1 and 2 eurocent coins. Not officially, they're still legal in every way and form, but we just stopped using them. Most companies have a sticker on their door stating they will round up or down to €0,05 increments.


With this, I am pleased.

*reads lengthy pete story*

Ummm...


Celcius and Centegrate rule! They're easy to understand and usable in everyday situations. I don't understand yards and feet and whatnot. 1000mm=100 cm=1dm=1m. 1000M= 1km. etc.

No, then that other, inferior system, I've looked this up:
36 inch=3 feet=1 yard.
5,280 feet = 1,760 yards = 1 mile
errrrr..... why?


0'C is when water freezes. 100'C is when water boils. I mean, what could be easier? I honestly don't know what Fahrenheit is based on, so I'm going to look it up now.

The zero point is determined by placing the thermometer in brine: he used a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride, a salt. This is a frigorific mixture which automatically stabilizes its temperature at 0 °F. A mixture of ice and water also stabilizes, either freezing or melting at 32 °F,[6] though Fahrenheit did not use this point in defining his temperature scale. The third point, 96 degrees, was the level of the liquid in the thermometer when held in the mouth or under the armpit of his wife. Fahrenheit noted that, using this scale, mercury boils at around 600 degrees.

Later, work by other scientists observed that water boils about 180 degrees higher than the freezing point and decided to redefine the degree slightly to make it exactly 180 degrees higher.[5] It is for this reason that normal human body temperature is 98.6 on the revised scale (whereas it was 96 on Fahrenheit's original scale).[7]

According to a letter Fahrenheit wrote to his friend Herman Boerhaave,[8] his scale was built on the work of Ole Rømer, whom he had met earlier. In Rømer’s scale, the two fixed reference points are that brine also freezes at 0 degrees and water boils at 60 degrees. He observed that, on this scale, water freezes at 7.5 degrees. Fahrenheit multiplied each value by four in order to eliminate fractions and increase the granularity of the scale (resulting in 30 and 240 degrees, respectively). He then re-calibrated his scale between the freezing point of water and normal human body temperature (which he observed to be 96 degrees); he adjusted the scale so that the melting point of ice would be 32 degrees, so that 64 intervals would separate the two, allowing him to mark degree lines on his instruments by simply bisecting the interval six times (since 64 is 2 to the sixth power).[9]

Wow. You have a temperature scale based on some dude's wife's armpit temperature. Cool, didn't know that. But how is practical in any way? I mean, how often do you think 'wow, it's the temperature where a mixture of water, ice and some salt stabalises." as opposed to "Ah, it's the temperature where water boils"

I'm gonna stick to the metric and centegrate systems, thankyouverymuch. At least they are logical and easy to use.