im tired of grams and would rather use a teaspoon

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i just converted my d72 recipe to teaspoons/tablespoons
i will also convert my kbr/nacl/ silver emulsion to teaspoons ...
a cyanotype formula too

i have a feeling it won't be the end of the world

thanks again for your helps !
 

DREW WILEY

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How many cubits away is the moon? My college roomate went to work for NASA. He could do seven digit logarithms in his head, or cube roots from long numbers, but literally couldn't spell words like like "was" (waz) or "that" (thet). A typical Cal Tech physics grad.
 

Gerald C Koch

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Ah......but it was an European that did that (The father of the good old terror-weapon, the V2, Wernher Von Braun, I would assume the Brits know his work quite well).

After his death, it seems someone at NASA (ok one of their partners at Lockheed) decided it was a good idea to convert all the old German recipes to teacups and spoons and this was the result: http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
QUOTE]

Having
Ah......but it was an European that did that (The father of the good old terror-weapon, the V2, Wernher Von Braun, I would assume the Brits know his work quite well).

After his death, it seems someone at NASA (ok one of their partners at Lockheed) decided it was a good idea to convert all the old German recipes to teacups and spoons and this was the result: http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/

See? Just like the Caffenol stuff! A German gets it right and it works until someone starts messing around. :D

And here is another incident: http://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/30/us/jet-s-fuel-ran-out-after-metric-conversion-errors.html

I would hate to be on that flight ^^

SO, to avoid your house exploding; go with the metric units, true story. ^^

To be fair you must realize that American engineering is based on a huge amount of data all in English units. The chemical engineering Steam Tables alone where a book 3 inches thick. (The tables have since been converted to metric units.) Until there is time and money available to convert all this data we remain firmly fastened to the English system. As pointed out in the quote there is a danger when trying to mix and match systems. Having worked for NASA for several years at KSC I can say that NASA is a very conservative organization. Many years ago Congress directed that all software written for the government must be in a language called ADA. ADA was said to be "fail safe." Well NASA said yes and then promptly forgot about it. The shuttle launch software was all written in a process control language called GOAL. Even though there are several better languages available, GOAL was developed in house. Von Braun may have been the darling of the space race but if NASA said work in English units then he worked in English units.
 
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DREW WILEY

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So if you take a spoonful of hydroquinone crystals and place them all end to end, how many angstroms would that be?? I once sold Starrett tools to
machine shops and car dealers. Some of the bolts on import Brit cars had a mix of everything conceivable. Even the Whitworth system wasn't weird enough for them. Now you just punch a button on a caliper or micrometer and you can instantly switch back and forth between metric and English.
But simply moving a decimel point doesn't work very well on increments of twelve. That was probably based on some inbred knave living in a flea-infested hole in the sod who had six fingers on each hand.
 

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But simply moving a decimel point doesn't work very well on increments of twelve. That was probably based on some inbred knave living in a flea-infested hole in the sod who had six fingers on each hand.

Actually the old units were based on practical considerations. In English we have the unit of distance the furlong literally "furrow long." It is the distance that an ox can plow before he becomes winded and must rest. Well into the 19th century people in rural areas in France measured distances in a unit called the pipé ." This was the distance that a man could leisurely walk while smoking a bowlful of tobacco.

A system based on twelve does have an advantage. Twelve is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6 while ten is divisible only by 5. Our unit of foot with 12 inches is practical for building a house. This may account for its choice. During the Renaissance it was popular to indicate numbers based on sixty. Sixty has the factors 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. We still represent time in hours, minutes and seconds and represent angles in minutes and seconds. The original metric commission tried to change time and dates to decimal units. However this was just going too far for the common man. Languages can be divided into those that have special words for 11 and 12 and those that do not. In English we say eleven and while in Greek they say the equivalent of one and ten, two and ten.
 
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MattKing

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How many cubits away is the moon? My college roomate went to work for NASA. He could do seven digit logarithms in his head, or cube roots from long numbers, but literally couldn't spell words like like "was" (waz) or "that" (thet). A typical Cal Tech physics grad.
Somehow I don't think Drew and his roommate's college room was exactly "party central".
 

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Right now I'm a bit pissed off. I'm running the biggest Festool dealership in the Western US, and they've decided to convert the scales on some of their US products to Imperial scales rather than metric. This is an extremely diverse area and many of my customers came from Europe to begin with, while many others have UCB degrees. Now they're being lumped in with American "dummies". I remember the routine well. They tried to introduce the metric system in high school shop classes here fifty years ago. "How many pennies in a dime?" ... "ten"; "How many dimes in a dollar"..."ten"; How many millimeters in a centimeter?".... "Uh, duuhhh, twelve??" ... "Count your fingers, stupid!!!!!" "Uh, duhh... one, two, three,
fuhr, fibe, six, seben, hate, nine, ten, eleben, twelf". Bingo. Another inbred.
 

MattKing

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It seems to me that the most productive approach to this issue is:

1) look for formula where fine tolerances are not necessary (e.g. a washaid);
2) convert those formula to teaspoons;
3) enjoy the convenience.
 

DREW WILEY

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Hi, Matt... Well, some things were analogous to being around someone in the Big Bang Theory TV show, but not others. For one thing, he ended up making a staggering amount of money and retired in his mid-30's from boredom at NASA. He married a good lookin gal and moved his family way
out into the middle of high desert to get them totally away from technology. (He was involved in computer code dev prior to NASA). During that era
the only way to stay alive was to keep away from parties. Timothy Leary might have thought otherwise, but we all know his relation to space science.
 

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Important point from PE. When I say to measure by volume, I am assuming that you are using the proper chemical formulation. (I.E., monohydrate, anhydrous, etc.)
 

RalphLambrecht

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John I'd imagine your best bet is just to spend an afternoon measuring out teaspoons of each chemical you use and then weighing them. A few of each and then average it out. Should be close enough for your personal work - I expect you'll stick to grams for client stuff.
The trouble with other people's lists would be you have no idea the size of their spoons (they might be using real spoons out of the cutlery drawer) or whether they are heaped or level etc etc.
So if you have a set of dedicated volume measure spoons, so much the better.
I'd think that sugar or salt would work as an average chemical substitute for this
 

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The nations of the world can be divided into two groups. Those that use the metric system and those that put a man on the moon. Nuff said? :smile:

Except that in everyday life, the metric system is much more convenient than a man on the Moon.
 

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Speaking of the metric system there is a unit of feminine pulchritude, the Helen abbreviated H. According to Greek legend she was so beautiful that her face "launched a thousand ships." This leads us to a more conveniend unit the milliHelen, mH. Each unit is worth one ship. :smile: When I was in college the science and engineering students would rate women seen on campus in mH. "Look at that blond she's a least 700 mH."

Yeah but she was a troublemaker...
 

Jim Jones

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So if you take a spoonful of hydroquinone crystals and place them all end to end, how many angstroms would that be?? I once sold Starrett tools to
machine shops and car dealers. Some of the bolts on import Brit cars had a mix of everything conceivable. Even the Whitworth system wasn't weird enough for them. Now you just punch a button on a caliper or micrometer and you can instantly switch back and forth between metric and English.
But simply moving a decimel point doesn't work very well on increments of twelve. That was probably based on some inbred knave living in a flea-infested hole in the sod who had six fingers on each hand.
The old Rikuo motorcycle (made under Harley-Davidson license) I bought in Japan in 1960 had both metric and American threads. I suspect there was a mixture of Whitworth and American threads, thanks to mechanics making do with what they had. I still have a folding ruler calibrated in metric, English, and traditional Japanese units.
 

darkroommike

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Right now I'm a bit pissed off. I'm running the biggest Festool dealership in the Western US, and they've decided to convert the scales on some of their US products to Imperial scales rather than metric. This is an extremely diverse area and many of my customers came from Europe to begin with, while many others have UCB degrees. Now they're being lumped in with American "dummies". I remember the routine well. They tried to introduce the metric system in high school shop classes here fifty years ago. "How many pennies in a dime?" ... "ten"; "How many dimes in a dollar"..."ten"; How many millimeters in a centimeter?".... "Uh, duuhhh, twelve??" ... "Count your fingers, stupid!!!!!" "Uh, duhh... one, two, three,
fuhr, fibe, six, seben, hate, nine, ten, eleben, twelf". Bingo. Another inbred.

Good for you, now get all the lumber yards to convert 2x4's and paint gallons, etc, and 4x8 plywood to metric and then get the architects to quit designing walls on 16" centers. A lot of class construction in Europe was built on other measuring systems and folks just convert to metric on the sight. Festool is good stuff but you are fighting an uphill battle. (BTW calling you potential customers inbred idgits is a curious business plan, let us know how that works.)
 

DREW WILEY

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Uphill battle for sure, Iowa Mike. Handling up to three truckloads of machinery a week can be a headache, and my main helper is out for shoulder surgery. It's a been a bit quiet this morning so far; but it's not at all uncommon to do $20,000 and hour on Festool in an hour here. People either buy
it or go out of business. An arms race, basically. Sheer productivity. I help them make real money, then they have it to spend. But years ago when I started here, we had to sell lumber by board footage, all rote calculated with pencil and paper. Yeah, sure, multiplying and dividing units of twelve is real convenient.... Actually, quite a bit of paint is now coming in liter volumes. And I sure as heck hope the giant Bayer mfg plant down the block isn't
thinking in "spoonfuls" when they calibrate pill dosages. Might not work too well with Warfarin unless you're trying to kill rats.
 

DREW WILEY

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... and I forgot to add, nearly all plywood is now metric thickness. It has been for a couple of decades now.
 
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