PD, I was a tad tongue in cheek and suggesting that Crazy was much older, even than you and I. His Avatar pic is actually quite dated

I have often wondered why the decimetre is so rarely used. In fact I have not seen it so. Given the loss of the ‘foot’ the decimetre is a handy alternative, in fact about a hand width rather than a foot length. There is too big a gap between the centimetre and the metre.

The other 2 units rarely used are the decametre and hectometre. I know they exist to fill in some gaps in the metric scale but it’s a pity some of them don’t get some use.

Edit: Whooooops…. didn’t know you were there Crazy. Nice to see you laughing

Crazyhorse wrote:In my school “daze” I don’t think we even had plastic pipe

Yes they were still laying sewerage in vitreous clay pipes. Whilst I was at school at Lyndhurst the town was connected to mains water. The system also included Carcoar, Mandurama and Canowindra. The backbone was laid in ASBESTOS pipe.

Old Techo wrote:PD, I was a tad tongue in cheek and suggesting that Crazy was much older, even than you and I. His Avatar pic is actually quite dated

I did not note that. I have switched avatars off to save download capacity. He is rather old, isn’t he.

I have often wondered why the decimetre is so rarely used. In fact I have not seen it so. Given the loss of the ‘foot’ the decimetre is a handy alternative, in fact about a hand width rather than a foot length. There is too big a gap between the centimetre and the metre.

The only place I have seen decimetres, apart from texts, is our school rules had were calibrated in them. I can happily live with the large gap between mm and metres. It saves confusion when reading engineering and architectural drawings. With the big gap in the dimensions you have little need to include the unit after the dimensions. I consider centimetres to only be of use for primary school kids and house wives.

Thank you all for your contribution. I flunked kindy, broke my finger while I was finger painting..

Cheers
Max.
OGF

PeterD wrote:[I consider centimetres to only be of use for primary school kids and house wives.

Dunno if they are much good to them either.

My use of them is only when going back to basic physics. Rule-of-thumb stuff handy to know on a desert island. 1 cubic cm = 1 millilitre = 1 gram of water. From that handy things can be extrapolated.

I like OT’s 78% trick. I must try and remember that one

Don’t go back to school and do a Dogging ticket, you’ll get all your answers wrong using the pi formula’s

They had me calculating everything to do with circles as a square then multiplying by 0.79 to take the corners off and get an approximate answer

Crazyhorse wrote:In my school “daze” I don’t think we even had plastic pipe

Yeah even garden hoses were “best India rubber” and outlasted the owner
Gas pipes were Lead from memory, copper pipes were all joined with threaded fittings and used damned sparingly, Waste pipes from under the sink to the cast iron or terracotta sewer pipes were also lead. Water came in screwed gal pipes. Electricity came in copper wires that were “cotton insulated” and if you needed conduit it was all metal… Electronic appliances didnt have circuit boards and you could fix your own wireless because you simply looked to see what “valve” was not glowing….
Water came out of a tap and was generally safe to drink….
And telephone lines were just amazing they came in individual wires, 2 per line and went like that overhead all the way to the exchange in vast masses on poles with ceramic insulators…

I remember asking my teacher in maths class what the meaning of “Decimetres” was on my ruler…