Innumerate?

[Makko]

How many electrons would it take to fill an Olympic pool or three London double-deckers!

[Varley]

As one must know, for accuracy, if the scrotal hair scale in use is the Scottish or Mexican, one must also know if the electron is calibrated to the imperial or metric standard of subatomic particles.

[BobClay]

Lot of people I know measure with a piece of string. It does sort of do the job on occasion.

Superstrings on the other hand are a tad more difficult to work with.

At 10 to the power of -33 cm in length (plus or minus a peck multiplied by a rood) it is tricky to find it again if you drop it. Made even more so by it's ability to be in two places at the same time, or to disappear into another Universe altogether and be replaced by an egg plant.

[Makko]

Sound like the little bits for my model kits, Bob! Now I know the secret, sub-atomic string assembly, not model glue. A bit of a bugger to paint though.
Rgds.
Dave

[Faxferryman]

Many years ago, my buddy, now a retired long serving C/E was asked by the lad we were drinking with (a car Mechanic) what sort of accuracy he worked to as a Marine Engineer
Well, you usually measure the job with a Micrometer, Mark it with chalk, then burn it off
Sounded good to me as a humble Turd Mate
Kev

[BobClay]

Interestingly when visiting a forum for my home town online I mentioned that on Saturday, after a bit of roof dancing and running up and down a ladder a few times trying to find a fault on an aerial (I'm a radio Ham .. HAH HAH !!) which is a bit harder for me these days as I'm a bit wobbly for that sh1t, I stated that when I'd finished I dropped half a bottle of gin (with tonic !! not straight. Very hot and sunny day.)

I was asked by one lady member if my half a bottle was from a 35cl or 50cl. (They do gin in litre bottles !! ... I didn't actually know that. )

I have gone metric in most things, but not drink. It's still pints and gills for me. Being adept at lying about my drinking to my GP, (also female) I replied 0.616 pints. I don't yet know if the forum lady believed me ... I'm bloody sure my GP didn't.

[promarine]

The thickness of a fly shit was very accurate at times, Andy

[Engine Serang]

In Hull Tech two fifths of fcuk all was the required degree of accuracy in all but Blackburn Aviation.

[Varley]

Does 'all' tend to infinity? If so then surely 0.4 of anything multiplied by 'all' must be a significant something.

[Makko]

You can also "shimmy" anything up! Just get a load of precut shims and Bob's your uncle!

I had to centre and level a thickener once in Hexham. While there is no "F" in scum skimmer, this one had one (old water treatment equipment joke)! No one from the service department was available. I was lent a "dinky" digital theodolite for the tower and the plant owner had rented a laser level/distance instrument but didn't know particularly what to do with it.

Fun and games on a freezing Saturday morning. While I got the shims right in thickness and had a handy drawing for them to be cut from A-316, it was only when we came to install them that I realized that they had to be installed on the diagonally opposite leg to what I had calculated! All went well and the client was pleased.

It was only when I got to a nearby pub to get something to eat prior to my drive home that I realized I was in the first stages of hypothermia. I had never imagined that the NE was colder in winter than Loch Striven in July!

To cap it off, the missus wanted to go to Sainsbury's when I arrived back but, in the rush, no one had brought a door key. We had to break in!

Rgds.
Dave

[promarine]

When the Chief or the 2nd ask you to adjust valve a smidgen, you didn't query it and ask, do you mean gnats whisker or a gnats cock or maybe just a small tweak, were they all the same measurement? I don't know, maybe gnats whisker is smaller than a smidgen and bigger than a tweak? but thinking about it maybe gnats cock was the biggest. (depending on how the gnat felt at the time !) But whatever term we chose always seemed to the right amount. Andy

[Engine Serang]

As an ardent Brexiteer and a committed European I will not accept any Treaty Boris has signed unless the use of the BSF Thread is made compulsory before 2025. As I sit here typing my eyes are scanning my bookshelves for my Zeus Tables. Zeus Tables are our Gatling Gun with which to defend our engineering heritage from the simplistic and corrupt European imposter. Our war cry and slogan will be "55 degrees is here to stay".

[Varley]

Shimmy. This is the plumbers' equivalent of the anaesthetists' titration. A fag packet guesstimate of the likely material needs and then feed it in until the job is just done and not much more.

Gatling is not one of ours but of our cousinage across the pond (further across FTBO E-S). Maxim was ours, if we ignore birthplaces, mausoleumed at West Norwood (close to the fabulous, for the electrically bent horology enthusiast, Clockworks gallery).

Zeus is now a metrificated publication.

55 degrees? Significant, I google, in sewage digesting technology but three of them were also American.

[BobClay]

I should have been born 197 parsecs from here, on a planet going around Betelgeuse. Nice warm sun, bit of excitement first thing in the morning ... (has the Sun gone supernova yet ?) ... no midges or shims or string or flat cap peaks or machine guns.


Oh and of course Whitworth threads.

[Dartskipper]

The mention of a fag packet in Varley's post #38, (the use of # being common on the Western Shores of the North Atlantic to signify a numerical value as in "number 38"), reminded me of a neighbour when I was a mere lad. He was an enthusiastic motor mechanic, having taken a course in car mechanics at evening classes. If he couldn't find his set of feeler gauges, he would use the flap of a cardboard cigarette packet instead to set the gap on the spark plugs. I seem to remember him saying that Senior Service packets gave an accurate setting, in preference to Weights or Woodbines,

[Malcolm G]

The handle end of an old fashioned nail file is 15thou near as dammit. The business end could also be used to clean points.
Also made an emergency screwdriver and lock pick.
Probably get arrested for having one today.

[Makko]

VW Beetle points could be set using a match packet, the ones they used to give out in restaurants/bars/hotels.
Rgds.
Dave

[BobClay]

If ever there was a Heath Robinson idea it was 'points' on an ignition system. My Triumph Trident had three sets of points, one for each cylinder. The upside of this you did away with the need for a distributer, the downside is it's still a godawful mechanical switch.

We can only offer thanks to whatever deity you worship for electronic systems, which themselves were a bit Heath Robinson when they got started.

The quicker electronics, right down to quantum electronics, does away with mechanical crap, the better.

(Retreats to Nuclear Bunker .... )

[Makko]

Bob,
I went to Cotton Valley Wastewater Works to view four machines which had been supplied with a view to refurbishment and modernizing.

They were sludge/scum collectors, running on rails along a 100m tank, 30m across.

There was one central drive motor with chain drive to a single drive shaft from which chain drives drove the traction wheels. Obviously, they were known to "crab" and would derail, even falling into the tank! The traverse distance was controlled by a microswitch which incorporated a very complex watch type mechanism to count the distance. The control panel was bespoke, hard wired and relay controlled with big "Tardis" like lights, knobs and controls. I found that: a) I could get a replacement microswitch, but it cost 23,000 quid!;b)The guy who designed/built the control panel had retired about 25 years earlier!

Ripping everything out, installing a master and slave tracking motor and installing a PLC to control everything cost about 7000 quid!

So, I am in agreement with you! Modern electronics, off the shelf, plug and play is, in my mind, a wonder of the modern world.

Rgds.
Dave

[E. von Hoegh]

Originally Posted by Tim Gibbs

I have just heard on the news that Covid-19 infections have increased by three quarters. Does that mean that if they increase by another quarter, Covid-19 infections will have increased by one?

No. One third.

[E. von Hoegh]

Originally Posted by Makko

VW Beetle points could be set using a match packet, the ones they used to give out in restaurants/bars/hotels.
Rgds.
Dave

And if you took the points off the peak of the cam, dragging the striker strip of the matchbook betwixt the contacts would like as snot get it running.

[Harry Nicholson]

I still use a useful fluid measurement I picked up off a lab technician - it is the SG, the standard glug.
Mam used to buy milk by the gill. But she was old fashioned - she declared that I was 'As awkward as Dick's iron hat band'. It's still a mystery who Dick was, and why his hat band was of iron.

[BobClay]

My Old Dear was Irish, born on a hill farm in Co Limerick. One of her favourite sayings was: 'Sod em I call em.'
Not a measure of distance as far as I could tell, but a measure of something I think we all know about.