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The Logic Behind Metric Paper Sizes
Oily Pakora writes "Those of us in the United States are so used to our Letter and Legal paper sizes. We've seen the A4 paper size option in our printer trays and in printer preference menus. Metric sizes used almost everywhere in the world, save for the US and Canada. Here is an interesting article that discusses all of the aspects of metric paper. For those who enjoy a bit of math, did you know that in the Metric paper system, the height-to-width ratio of all pages is the square root of 2? This means that you can place two sheets of A4 side-by-side and they will equal an A3 sheet exactly, and two sheets of A3 will equal an A2."
News?
That make me happy my rolling paper is not metric
-B
You can also put two 8.5x11 (Letter) sheets of paper side by side and it equals an 11x17 (Tabloid) sheet of paper...
Come-on really, Do I want to measure a piece of paper using the square root of two?
No, but it's very pleasant that an A3 page folded in half is exactly the same size as an A4 page. root-two is just the mathematical means to that end.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
PC Load Letter!? WTF does that mean?!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
That joke is in the title. From the "forty-rods-to-the-hogshead department."
There's also an Audi A4, and if you put two of those side by side, people say "Look, isn't that a coincidence".
I am of the firm belief that the metric system sucks. It is a global conspiracy created to cause the downfall of all things that we know and love. Upon careful examination it is clear that the metric system is at least indirectly responsible for most of the world's problems, including but not limited to:
* Government conspiracy
* Microsoft Windows
* Rap Music
* Hondas and their drivers
* Transistors
* Pokemon
* Jerry Springer
* Televangelism
* Toxic waste
* The Republicans
* The Democrats
* Defective and bogus hardware
* Wrenches that dont fit
* Starbucks coffee
* Communism
* Soccer
* The Euro
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
I can't deny it anymore.
I just read an article on metric pages and found it incredibly intresting.
At one point I said "Wow, Cool"
I think I've gone beyond 'geek'.
I feel dirty.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
Jeez, must be a slow day. I'll go search the net for something that was new 30 years ago and post it on Slashdot!
remember that two 8 1/2 x 11 sheets equal an 11 x 17 sheet and four 4 x 5 cards can fit on a 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. A ream of paper is 500 sheets and if you divide that by two, you get 250 sheets which really means nothing; I needed two extra facts for my post about math.
you can place two sheets of A4 side-by-side and they will equal an A3 sheet exactly,
More usefully, you can fold an a4 piece of paper in half and it will fit nicely in an a5 envelope.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
You don't get it. It keeps going, recursively. Two A4's equal an A3, and two A3's equal an A2, and so on. The deal is that the paper is in such proportion that all A* papers are in the exact same proportion. That's not true if you double a 8 1/2 by 11. The proportion there is .77272, while the proportion for a doubled sheet, 11x17 is .647059.
I'm betting the Golden Ratio comes into A4 paper somehow; anyone want to comment?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
This means that you can place two sheets of A4 side-by-side and they will equal an A3 sheet exactly, and two sheets of A3 will equal an A2."
And of course, 5 sheets of almost any metric sized paper folded into origami lions will inevitably merge to form Voltron, a robot so powerful that it will usually let it's enemies kick it's butt around for a good 15 to 20 minutes before it forms the blazing sword and finishes the fight.
For those of us living in A4-using lands, it's a real pain in the arse trying to set everything (especially in Windows) from Letter to A4! Then you think you have it susses and sure enough... "PC Load Letter" - aaargh!
;)
Do you have any idea how much trouble and stress you've caused by making Letter the default even with UK set as the country?
did you get a box of 11.69" envelopes to go with that?
Origin of the phrase "one for the road". In London, while on the way to the gallows, the cart would stop at each pub along the way. The criminal would be allowed a drink at every pub, almost always 'on the house' so that the soul would not come back to make due on a debt. Also, i suspect pity played a large role.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I think the metric system is like Open Source:
It's going to win in the long run -
simply because it's the logical way to go!
If you look at the evolution of things, there have always been different ways of doing stuff, but in the end one of them won - simply because it was undeniably the best way to go - and the others lost out..
perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'
Square milimeters of paper:
Letter: 60322.46 mm^2 (215.9mm x 279.4mm)
A4: 62370 mm^2 (210mm × 297mm)
A4 - Letter = 2047.54, or about 3 and 3/16 square inches.
A4 is bigger.
Now is that a solid ounce, a fluid ounce, or an apothecary ounce?
Constant aspect ratio. You don't have to remake your posters/flyers depending on what sheet you intend to print on. 11/17 != 8.5/11. It also makes shipping easier. Basically the only reason to stick with imperial measurements is inertia, as always.
hmmm Original site must have been a vampire.. cause I don't see it in your mirror. ;o)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes in the above post.
if i remember corectly a "hogshead" is 63 gallons.
and a rod is 5.5 yards or 16.5 feets so....
damn your car is a gas guzzeler!
504 gallons to go 1 mile!
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
OOOoo! Look at me! I use the metric system!
I only know how to divide by ten!
Also according to that 2nd link,
Not sure what that means to a typical U.S. Citizen, but it appears the U.S. will be metric someday
Compare that with, say, the foot. 12 inches - easily divisible by 3, 4, and 6. Makes building that shit a lot easier :)
Same goes with volumes - it's easy to convert gallons to quarts to pints. You have to memorize more units (which I agree sucks), but it makes making that recepie easier when you realize you have more guests coming.
--
E_NOSIG
Because you can scale an A4 page down to A5 size and print two of them on each A4 sheet and they fit *exactly*. Saves paper.
If you are a *real* skinflint and have good eyes you can scale down to A6 and print double sided. It works quite well with a decent laser printer.
The reverse is true obviously if you want to scale up. You can tape (A4 usually because it's the most common) pages together to make A3, A2 and A1 sheets and it all fits together exactly.
Having said that, I kind of assumed that the same thing applied to US paper sizes. Surprised it doesn't.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
BTW the metric system sucks for times when you really do want to use fractions
Can you describe a few of these times? I'm being serious... as a novice work worker and DIY home improvement and maintenance guy, I find using mixed fractions very annoying. Yes, you get accustomed to them, but I hardly say that makes it acceptable (hey, people get accustomed to Windows crashing, and find it acceptable to have to reboot or reinstall - I'm not one of them).
Besides, it's not like you can't use fraction in metrics, either - so you say 1/2 cm instead of 5 mm, if it floats your boat.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Call me an incorrigible geek, but that little tidbit made me giddy.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
This happened years ago. I had a Chem. test and the question had something to do with densities - I can't remember. But the point is, I remembered that the density of water is one, all the units where metric, and calculating the density, volume, and mass were a no brainer with the metric system.
I once got into a friendly argument with an engineer over the merits of the metric system. His argument "Foot-Lbs. I know what that is - that's obvious! Newton - what the fuck is a Newton."
Honestly, US companies are genuinely converting to Metric, believe it or not. I work in a consultancy and work with a variety of clients, including a bunch in the worlds of science and medicine.
Since I design things (not code), I have to ask what units they want their things in - I remember one conversation with a wholly US based company going like this:
"What units do you want the database delivered in?"
- [SARCASM BOLD] "We are a scientific company.[/SARCASM BOLD]>
"Oh, right."
They made me feel pretty stupid for asking. I'd say across the product industry it's something like 50/50 right now.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
What if you have to divide by 5? or 8? How heavy is each patty then?
It's easy to pick the numbers you like. There are always numbers a given multiplier won't divide nicely to.
IMHO, the metric system is doomed in the US because it's not American. That's not meant to be funny, sarcastic, or anything other than a simple fact. Well, perhaps it's meant to be a comment on the American psyche...
but metric paper makes much better airplanes.
Not quite. The saying actually refers to the trip from the prison to the Tyburn Tree in London. The prisoner to be hanged would be given drink to calm him down for the hanging. The closest pub to the place of hanging that lay upon the route was a mile away. The prisoner would have a drink at this last pub, and then be given a drink to have on his way to the gallows. Interestingly, this is also the origin of "on the wagon" as one of the guards travelling with the prisoner was not allowed to enter the pubs with him. So couldn't drink, and had to stay on the wagon.
Some lovely linkage:here, here and here.
We Build Beautiful Websites
except that the US apparently sanctioned the metric system in 1886, and the American Bureau of Standards made the metric system it's standard in 1964. (nice timeline here ). There've been various attempts to further adopt in more recent history, but basically the US doesn't want to change. The metric system is nonexistant as far as general use is concerned. The only "off the top of my head" metric use I can think of are 2 L bottles of coke. nothing else gets metric treatment.
This number is otherwise known as the "golden ratio", it was discovered back in classical Greece and it was known to be the most aesthetically pleasing of all ratios. The Parthenon in Athens was built so that its length and width were dictated by this ratio, it was also used by many Renaissance artists to draw the human body so it seems "perfect".
It is impossible of cause to prove mathematically that this ratio is the best looking of all irrational numbers any more than it is possible to prove mathematically who is the most attractive human, however it's endurance seems to suggest that it has some base to it. It has links with Fibonacci numbers, it also is encountered when drawing regular pentagrams and decagons.
Due to the aesthetically pleasing nature of this ratio I think it would be fairly cool to have a series of paper sizes based on this ratio for artistic uses, rather than the practical but bland "A" series or the fairly pointless American and Canadian series.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I was once talking with some of family and I happened to say something like: 'It was 2 meters from me...' Immediately, one of my uncles interjected a joking comment about how I was the 'product' of the 'new' Math. We then proceeded to go off on a tangent about the merits of the two systems and how expensive it would be to switch to metric.
At that point though, I was struck by how his comment was loaded with negative connotation, which obviously did not stem simply from an aversion to the cost of a hypothetical switch to metric. I realized that the source of his distaste for metric was really just the instinctive reaction social animals use to build communities. The 'Us Vs. Them' filter that we all use to clump ourselves into social groups.
From this perspective, a human perspective, it makes complete sense to have differing systems of measurement. There would be obvious advantages if we all spoke the same language, but no one is proposing that we make everyone learn Chinese (quit being ethnocentric!). Even if everyone DID speak Chinese, people would still use their native languages at home, en familia. Why? Because the stratification of languages helps us to identify our social groups. In this way, we're 'The people who use miles', and they're/you're 'The people who use kilometers'. Communities, when you come down to it, are just sets of these bifurcations.
Taking all that into consideration, I've thrown in with the english system curmudgeons. Why? For the same reason I'm in favor of driver's tests in 16 languages. Because being human ain't about being efficient, it's about communities.
The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
As an American physicist, I use SI units for work, but happily use US units for everything else. I don't know why it just pisses off the rest of the world that we like Farenheit, inches, etc. WHO CARES! Why doesn't Europe get ONE FREAKING TYPE OF ELECTRICAL PLUG!
I found it funny that the article predicted the US switching, as I really don't see it happening.
Can anyone tell me why any A4 paper I get in Europe has a purple tinge to it? I find that very annoying.
Gee, I just learned that if you take a sheet of A3 and cut it in half, that's A4.
If you take a D-size sheet of drafting paper,
cut into halves, you have two sheets of C-size drafting paper
cut into quarters, you have four sheets of B-size drafting paper, aka quarto
cut into eight pieces, you have eight sheet of A-size, aka letter, aka octavo.
The metric sizes preserve aspect ratio, the english sizes do not.
Actually, it has to do with apple pie. Since there is nothing more American than apple pie, the apple pie recipe is considered sacred. It has been passed down from generation to generation since the start of this glorious nation. Unfortunatly, it has been passed down on the female side of our ancestry, and we men have been telling our women that:
|------| = 10 inches, when in fact
|---------| = 10 inches.
This has caused them to become totally confused with regard to units of measure, and they are thus unable to convert imperial to metric units. Thus, if we were to switch to using the metric system, we would no longer be able to bake apple pies, a situation we are just not willing to accept.
I'll be ready, cause I saw the movie in school, 'splaining that we'd be all metric by 1976
weird thing is, i saw that same movie in 1987
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
The metric sizes preserve aspect ratio, the english sizes do not
The sizes of paper you use are not English. In England, and the rest of this country, we use the international standard that includes A4. I suspect that you can buy other standards but I have no idea whatI would have to do if I needed "letter" or "legal" size paper.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Does this apply to Volumes?!?! cut a D-Cup size bra to get 2 C-cCup size bra?!?!
504 gallons to go 1 mile!
Yep, sounds like a True American car to me.
" this is also the origin of "on the wagon" as one of the guards travelling with the prisoner was not allowed to enter the pubs with him. So couldn't drink, and had to stay on the wagon."
I followed your link to "The Idler" and that site tells a different tale about the origin of "on the wagon," quoted below:
--
"Incidentally this also is the origin of 'on the wagon', after finishing his drink from the last tavern before the gallows, the prisoner would be put 'on the wagon' for the last time, destined never to drink again before his death."
No, but since you ask:
The number is the measurement below the bust.
an A-cup is a 1-inch difference between the measurement below the bust versus around the bust.
B-cup is 2 inches, C-cup is 3 inches, etc.
DD is the same as E, DDD is the same as EE which is the same as F. This holds valid through an H cup. After that, the interval is 2 inches, with the doubled letter being the in-between value.
This, H-cup is 8", and I-cup is 10", and a 9" difference would be an HH-cup.
The largest bra size manufactured without a special order is a size 60N.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
If Fermat had used American paper, we wouldn't have had to wait 350 years for a proof of his last theorem.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Recall that industrial mass production is essentially a 20th century invention, and that by the 1940's it still had not really spread beyond the U.S. and Europe. In World War II, most European industrial capacity was destroyed at one point or another, providing a clean slate to rethink standards for every industry, and to adopt logical standards with no switchover cost.
After WWII, Europe wisely went to the metric system. Developing countries wisely adopted it as well. But the U.S., with its factories intact (and now back to making cars and vacuum cleaners) was saddled (and remains cursed with) with tremendous switching costs. The expense in lost customers and supplier confusion is too great for a company in most industries to unilaterally change. And agreements to change all at once are very hard to achieve.
Empirical evidence:
Newer US major industries (e.g. semiconductors) usually work in metric
(As noted elsewhere) US science is in metric; because switchover costs are lower scientists could switch almost right away.
Well-meaning attempts to effect a switch have been ignored by industry (because of the cost)
US industries with a big international component are often metric (bicycle manufacture)
I suppose the conclusion to draw is that the US is unlikely to switch until either something destroys its industrial factories, or the "old" unswitched industries become so dwarfed by new metric ones that it is actually cheaper for them to change.
maybe its strictly designed for slingshot use. Probably take down a medieval castle with that thing.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Consequently, I speculate that his vehicle must be an aircraft carrier...operating on land. My only question is, where the hell does he park it?
If it's still fully equipped and armed, then the correct answer is:
Wherever he wants to.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Yeah... and there's countries that aren't part of the US, too.
:-/
It's called "The Rest Of The World". You'll find we do a lot of things differently here, if you ever bother to look.
Um. Sorry. Bad day.
Yeah... and there's countries that aren't part of the US, too.
Not for long...
What?
we saw a movie that warned us about the dangers of Trench Foot - it was made around the time of WWII, in the US.
My first day in the army was the 3rd of December, 2001. Ahem.