If you really want to bang your head against the wall at how man can't agree on anything, take a look at the concept of long and short scales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales Anyone who has worked with big numbers and old data just loves this one.
73, Drew KO4MA
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Robertson [email protected] Sent: Apr 23, 2010 7:30 AM To: Idle-Tyme [email protected] Cc: AMSAT-BB [email protected], Sil - ZL2CIA [email protected] Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Arecibo on 432 MHz Moon Bounce (some calculations)
Just to add to this discussion of decimal separators, my Canadian province of New Brunswick is bilingual, and therefore has overlapping French-speaking and English-speaking school boards. Those in the French schools and the 30% of the English who have opted to be taught in French immersion express pi as 3,14, while in English education they express it as 3.14. I always do a double-take when I see the comma there in my kids' homework, but they are very comfortable with using either system depending on the language of discussion.
73, Bruce VE9QRP
On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 4:58 PM, Idle-Tyme [email protected] wrote:
Wow that's all messed up? I'm 52 and this is the very first time i have ever seen anything like this and i have been dealing with science worldwide all my life. wow.
Joe
The Original Rolling Ball Clock Idle Tyme Idle-Tyme.com http://www.idle-tyme.com
On 4/22/2010 1:14 PM, Sil - ZL2CIA wrote:
Idle-Tyme wrote:
On 4/21/2010 8:25 PM, i8cvs wrote:
Comma or no comma, shouldn't matter 1000 mega watts or 1,000 Mega watts is still one thousand million watts! NOT one thousands watts. true?
The Original Rolling Ball Clock Idle Tyme Idle-Tyme.com http://www.idle-tyme.com
Hi Idle-Tyme
I don't agree with your statement:
1000 mega watt are one thousand million watt 1,000 mega watt or 1.000 mega watt is only one million watt because zero after the comma means nothing like 1,0000000000000 is still one million watt or 1 MW
NO! it's a comma, not a decimal point! it's one thousand, one thousand written 1000 or 1,000 is still one thousand they are exactly the same.
That's only true in the English speaking world, and this is the cause of the confusion in this debate.
In the Netherlands (and most of Europe), you would write one thousand million watts as 1.000 megawatts.
The decimal indicator in Europe is a comma. For example, 1,5 means one and a half 1.000.000 means one million.
Sil (ex PA3HIL)
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