Re: [Phys-l] unit conversions

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@mindspring.com>]

At 11:30 -0800 02/20/2009, David Appell wrote:
> "Bill Nettles" wrote:
> >  Like I tell my students, you have to pay attention to units and do 
> > the unit conversions.
>
> Here's something that will change your life:
>
> Go to Google and type "50 mph in km/sec" and hit return.
>
> It will tell you the answer. It will do nearly any unit conversion you
> can imagine. I don't think it's ever let me down once.
Nice. I hadn't thought of that, but it's very convenient. However, it 
not infallible. I tried a couple of random conversions and then I 
asked for 1000 kWh in Btu, which it gave me instantly. then I asked 
for 1 watt-hour in Btu, and instead of giving me an answer with the 
same mantissa as the previous question, I was steered to several 
sites which wanted to give me a tutorial on unit changes, but no 
result.

Nevertheless, I plan on using and advertising this neat Google 
feature as far and wide as I can. I often have problems with units 
that involve lots of zeros (like GWh and Quads and Bq and Ci, and the 
like, so this should be a reliable way to avoid some of my stupid 
unit converting mistakes.

Thanks for the tip.

Hugh

--
Hugh Haskell
mailto: hugh@ieer.org
mailto:hhaskell@mindspring,.com

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