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Our Friend, The Meter

Posted by timothy on from the you-mean-people-like-nasa dept.

dbirchall writes "Upon hearing that SpaceShipOne reached 100km today, I did some hasty math based on the altitude in feet sttated by Scaled Composites in their press release, and was surprised to come up with a number under 100,000 meters. Fortunately, a friend pointed out that my inches-to-meters conversion was flawed. Some quick Googling determined that lots of people still have no idea how many inches are in a meter, even after some folks have had big problems because of conversion errors."

9 of 1,672 comments (clear)

  1. Conversion? by grasscutter · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Umm an inch is exactly 2.54 cm. And I think you can convert from there.

  2. umm... okay... by Onikuma · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Thanks for that announcement. Why anyone felt it was important to announce this to everyone on slashdot is beyond me.

  3. Re:Just Remember 2.54 by moondo · · Score: 0, Redundant

    thanks!
    now for everyone else in the world
    just remember... 1cm = 0.3936 inches
    so simple yo!

  4. Google is your friend! by gpoul · · Score: 1, Redundant

    You can't just read your mails at google now, you can also convert units there... and they got it right.

    Meter/Inch

    Inch/Meter

  5. The power of Unix... by Dwarkanath · · Score: 0, Redundant

    % units
    510 units, 54 prefixes
    You have: inch
    You want: meter
    * 0.0254
    / 39.370079

    Sheesh.

  6. Just Remember 0.3937 by 4A6F656C · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The other easy way is the conversion ratio of 0.3937 (1/2.54). To go from inches to centimetres you simply divide by 0.3937, or to convert from centimetres to inches simply multiply by the same.

  7. Re:It matters because by BillyBlaze · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Actually, our favorite search engine can do it for us.

  8. Hell, you guys can't even spell it right... by EnglishTim · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It's Metre.

  9. Google Says Your Wrong by beaverbrother · · Score: 0, Redundant

    According to a quick search, 328 491 feet = 100 124.057 meters.