Weight English measures

The weights and measures emp%ed in this hook are chiefly those of the Prench decimal syrtem. The following Tables, pnblislted by Messrs. De la Ine and Co., will enable the student to convert these into their English equivalents whenever this may he necessary. 

Most of the problems in this book use the English measures of length, volume, and weight. But metric measures are very important to know, because of the great incidence of foreign travel and trade with other countries that use metrics. 

Eventually, ancient rules of thumb gave way to more carefully defined units. The metric system was adopted in France in 1799 and the British Imperial System of units was established in 1824. In 1893, the English units used in the United States were redefined in terms of their metric equivalents the yard was defined as 0.9144 meter, and so on. But English units continue to be used in the United States to this day, even though the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 stated that it is the declared policy of the United States...to designate the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce. ... 

No such uniformity of weights and measures existed on the European continent. Weights and measures differed not only from country to country but even from town to town and from one trade to another. This lack of uniformity led the National Assembly of France during the French Revolution to enact a decree (May 8, 1790) that called upon the French Academy of Sciences to act in concert with the Royal Society of London to deduce an invariable standard for all of the measures and all weights. Having already an adequate system of weights and measures, the English... 

Conversion of French into English weights and measures. S3 Theorith. 84... 

The arbitrarily chosen standard of length of the metric system. It is the distance between two marks on a platinum-iridium bar kept at constant temperature at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris. For conversion to the English system, Im equals 39.37in., 1cm equals 39.37 x lO in., etc. 

The weights and measures used by Bayen and Lavoisier are compared with the metric standards as follows (the French and English grains were different) ... 

The two systems of units with which you are probably most familiar are the English system (foot, gallon, pound, etc.) and the metric system (meter, liter, kilogram, etc.). Although there has been an increase in the use of metric units in the United States in recent years, English units still are used commonly. For many years scientists recorded measurements in metric units, but in 1960, the General Conference on Weights and Measures, the international authority on units, proposed a revised metric system for universal use by scientists. We wiU use both metric and revised metric (SI) units in this book. 

Avoirdupois is a French word, meaning to weigh. The old English system of weights and measures is referred to as the Avoirdupois System, or U.S. Customary Weights and Measures, to differentiate it from the Metric System. 

I.e., forty-two pounds. A stone (English measure of weight) equals fourteen pounds. 

Two systems of units are used today in the U.S. the traditional English (ES) and the SI (Syst me International d Unites), towards which the country is moving, albeit slowly. (The SI system was introduced in 1960 by the General Conference of Weights and Measures, an international body that meets every six years in Paris.)... 

The density of a substance is its weight per unit of volume. The unit of volume in the English system of measurement is 1 cubic foot or 1 f. To find the density of a substance, you must know its weight and volume. You then divide its weight by its volume to find the weight per unit volume. 

The English chemist John Dalton became one of the most famous scientists of the eighteenth century. Although he was known to the public for one idea, that chemical compounds were formed when the atoms of one element joined with the atoms of another, there was much more than this to Dalton s theory. He revolutionized chemistry by emphasizing that atoms have relative weights and that these relative weights can be measured. 

Water hardness was important long before modern methods of measuring it were established and for this reason it is reported in rather parochial ways. Thus the English system records it as grains of calcium carbonate per litre, and this Medieval unit of weight is 65 mg. The Ameri-... 

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