Posts by John Waterworth

They said what? Quotes of the Year

Wasted Brain Cells

Please don't do this too me again. The quotes are funny, but you should have added a couple of words explaining who Nicky Haslam is. I didn't recognise the name, so looked him up. I now know that he is an ancient aristocratic ponce ... sorry, Ponsonby. I was so pissed off at this waste of my time that I will probably remember the name forever. One day I might even make myself look a right tart in a quiz - "Nicky Haslam? Oh yeah, he's an interior designer and his middle name is Ponsonby."

El Reg fires up online standards converter

Some More Practical Units

I love this! Units are so much easier when they mean something.

The speed of sheep is funny, but too obscure. The traditional units are:

-- tortoise (0.02 m/s for typical pet) - "the drunken C-lister moved only slightly faster than a pet tortoise"

-- walk (1.5 m/s brisk) - "the lava came towards us about as fast as we could walk away from it"

-- jet (299 m/s A380) - "to get into a low orbit, Branson need to travel 25 times faster than a passenger jet"

You also need some better units of energy as a Norris Linguini composite unit is hard to grasp. The traditional newspaper story units are:

-- match (1kJ) - "the new LA diet contained the daily energy equivalent of two matches"

-- kettle (380 kJ is enough for a good pot of tea) - "recycling Chris Moyles saved the energy of 63 boiled kettles every day!"

-- car (65 GJ) - "that's enough energy to run a car for a year!"

-- hiroshima (63 TJ) - "Krakatoa exploded with the force of 12,000 hiroshima bombs"

Force is a tricky one as we have little direct sensation of small forces a little sensation of large ones. But recent pub conversations have used:

-- door (30N on average)

-- golf (7kN force of driver on ball)

-- jet engine (338kN Roll Royce Trent 900)