[aslyfox]

I don't do math either.


But I worked as a civil engineer, a mechanic and a machinist.


Go 'figure'.

talent will tell

how many people can do simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, division any more

it is all calculators

the ability to do long division ?

read and write cursive ?

[aslyfox]

One SMU that is truly unique to the USA = the football field, as in "the sink hole was a big as half a football field!" As I've posted before, the failure to metricate the USA back in the 1970's or so was largely a consequence of the profound stupidity of first teaching children the English system, then teaching them how to convert to metric. Breathtakingly stupid approach. It's as if the people designing the curriculum had conspired to insure metrication would fail.

In the non-science major's basic biology (we called it "baby-bio") when teaching the metric system I'd sometimes challenge student's knowledge of the English system: . . .

How many inches in a rod?
. . .

How long is a furlong or a league (as in 20,00 under the sea or half a league, half a league, half a league onward)?

. . .

How is an acre defined? How many square feet, or square yards, or square miles is equivalent to an acre? . . . .

never can picture in my mind acres which can be any form

inches in a rod - I thought it was feet and don't forget the chain

furlong - don't forget horse racing Secretariat still holds the record I think

You Tube

You Tube

You Tube

You Tube

[WPRESTO]

talent will tell

how many people can do simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, division any more

it is all calculators

the ability to do long division ?

read and write cursive ?

A colleague who taught the bio-major intro bio (I almost never did) once took a survey of the students and found that over half of them had never been taught what are now called "math facts," some of which will be familiar to older Pentaxians as multiplication tables. I gather that the ubiquity of pocket calculators, their cheapness and reliability, lead many school districts to dispense with teaching the basic four functions as something that every adult should be able to do mentally. So I suspect that those students as children would join Winnie in not understand why Christopher Robin had to leave his friends because of something called "times two."

[Canada_Rockies]

A colleague who taught the bio-major intro bio (I almost never did) once took a survey of the students and found that over half of them had never been taught what are now called "math facts," some of which will be familiar to older Pentaxians as multiplication tables. I gather that the ubiquity of pocket calculators, their cheapness and reliability, lead many school districts to dispense with teaching the basic four functions as something that every adult should be able to do mentally. So I suspect that those students as children would join Winnie in not understand why Christopher Robin had to leave his friends because of something called "times two."

Ain't that the truth. From 1971 to 1992 (when my employer went bankrupt) I was a cost accountant. It was astonishing how many people couldn't see why a number was wrong. I'm talking gross scale differences between two numbers such as caused by not keying the decimal point between $ and ¢. They didn't even see that the number didn't make any sense.

[WPRESTO]

never can picture in my mind acres which can be any form

inches in a rod - I thought it was feet and don't forget the chain

furlong - don't forget horse racing Secretariat still holds the record I think

The rod does not convert neatly to other English units of length, it's 51/2 yards or 16.5 feet or 198 inches - go figure. I did not forget the chain, just did not mention it. In fairness, several of those units are either out of use or confined to particular applications and therefore particular people, for example furlongs to horse racing; pecks primarily I think to people who harvest & sell fruit, chains & nautical miles are of course mostly used at sea although I think that NASA uses nautical miles for altitude during rocket launches, only goldsmiths use Troy ounces but fluid ounces are sometimes used in cooking or specifying doses of medicine, but the relationship between either of these and avoirdupois ounces is at best obscure.

[Canada_Rockies]

The rod does not convert neatly to other English units of length, it's 51/2 yards or 16.5 feet or 198 inches - go figure. I did not forget the chain, just did not mention it. In fairness, several of those units are either out of use or confined to particular applications and therefore particular people, for example furlongs to horse racing; pecks primarily I think to people who harvest & sell fruit, chains & nautical miles are of course mostly used at sea although I think that NASA uses nautical miles for altitude during rocket launches, only goldsmiths use Troy ounces but fluid ounces are sometimes used in cooking or specifying doses of medicine, but the relationship between either of these and avoirdupois ounces is at best obscure.

Trivia, Walt: 16.5 feet is 5 meters. We may not have a direct conversion within English measurements, but it converts rather neatly to SI. (198*2.54 = 502.92 cm). You just taught me that the minimum focus distance on my M 400 is 1 rod. How cute is that?

[aslyfox]

I learned about rods and chains when examining old land titles

[WPRESTO]

Trivia, Walt: 16.5 feet is 5 meters. We may not have a direct conversion within English measurements, but it converts rather neatly to SI. (198*2.54 = 502.92 cm). You just taught me that the minimum focus distance on my M 400 is 1 rod. How cute is that?

A chain, used for surveying is 1/80th of a statute mile, 1/10th of a furlong, or 66 in length. It is divided into 100 links (7.92 inches each) or 4 rods. A rod is so defined as 1/4 of a chain. The "rod" was original a physical shaft of the defined length that was used to "step off" distances during a land survey.

An acre was originally defined as ten square chains, or a rectangular area that measures one chain by one furlong.

Because the chain was a land surveying unit from the outset, there is some logic to having a standard unit of land area - the acre - defined in terms of a standard unit and device (an actual chain) used to measure land to establish legal property boundaries and ownership rights.

[Racer X 69]

A chain, used for surveying is 1/80th of a statute mile, 1/10th of a furlong, or 66 feet in length. It is divided into 100 links (7.92 inches each) or 4 rods. A rod is so defined as 1/4 of a chain. The "rod" was original a physical shaft of the defined length that was used to "step off" distances during a land survey.

An acre was originally defined as ten square chains, or a rectangular area that measures one chain by one furlong.

Because the chain was a land surveying unit from the outset, there is some logic to having a standard unit of land area - the acre - defined in terms of a standard unit and device (an actual chain) used to measure land to establish legal property boundaries and ownership rights.

So the SMU isn’t usable anymore?

Guess I will have to eat my cookies then.

[zzeitg]

Beautiful series.

Wonderful shots. Now I feel I should have just got myself the 150-450 instead of 560

Thanks, guys!

I got this one, a "prime", because I figured a "zoom" wouldn't give as sharp an image. Silly me?

One need both... a long prime and a long zoom

DFA 150-450

[Racer X 69]

The rod does not convert neatly to other English units of length, it's 51/2 yards or 16.5 feet or 198 inches - go figure. I did not forget the chain, just did not mention it. In fairness, several of those units are either out of use or confined to particular applications and therefore particular people, for example furlongs to horse racing; pecks primarily I think to people who harvest & sell fruit, chains & nautical miles are of course mostly used at sea although I think that NASA uses nautical miles for altitude during rocket launches, only goldsmiths use Troy ounces but fluid ounces are sometimes used in cooking or specifying doses of medicine, but the relationship between either of these and avoirdupois ounces is at best obscure.

Chain and rod is a surveying measurement.

Maybe we should get @robtcorl over here to expound upon that set of measures.

[jacamar]

In the 70's I had to train my crew to move over to a metric chain.

[robtcorl]

Chain and rod is a surveying measurement.

Maybe we should get @robtcorl over here to expound upon that set of measures.

Sorry Racer, not much I can add about the old styles of measurement since I never used them.
When I started in surveying, in the mid 1960's, we used what we called a chain, but it was a solid 100 foot steel tape.
Then came electronic measuring devices, and GPS was coming on strong when I retired.

I recently found this and enjoyed it, others might too if they have a half hour to kill.
AETN - It Started Here: Early Arkansas and The Louisiana Purchase

[tim60]

Ain't that the truth. From 1971 to 1992 (when my employer went bankrupt) I was a cost accountant. It was astonishing how many people couldn't see why a number was wrong. I'm talking gross scale differences between two numbers such as caused by not keying the decimal point between $ and ¢. They didn't even see that the number didn't make any sense.

We saw the same with engineering students - no intuitive sense of the scale of things represented by numbers, such as whether 1kg or 1000kg sounds plausible. No intuitive sense of 'must go back and have another look whether I did it right'.


They did not like my line to reply to that kind of thing: "in engineering when you make a mistake there are dead people".

In litigation, I've had to go back through land records hundreds of years old. The thing I find amusing is how perplexed surveyors get when trying to figure out distances and area, trying to convert from ancient deeds to the "total station" approach. The problem is that the chains were laid on the ground, so every hill and dimple increased the distance measured, while laser based rangefinders are measuring a straight line through the air, point to point, resulting in a shorter measurement. The reason it confuses them is that there's no way to make the conversion mathematically, since every measurement in the old system conforms to the land surface being measured, and no two are alike. You have to actually to to the site and lay a measuring tape on the ground to figure out what the old deeds are saying. Assuming, of course, that the "sweet gum tree", "large hickory bush" or "stone" still exists, let along in the same location.