Accurate and consistent measurement is fundamental to modern life, and in few branches of human activity is it more important than in sport - including, of course, the Olympic Games. This is the message given by Andrew Wallard, the President of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) to mark World Metrology Day (article suggested by Martin Vlietstra).
The Local Authority Coordinators of Regulatory Services (LACORS) have recently announced that they are launching a nationwide project to deal with inaccurate hospital weighing scales. The project follows studies which found hospital staff using inaccurate and unsuitable scales to calculate dosages of medication for patients.
According to a BBC report the Spanish government is proposing a new clothing sizes initiative which conflicts with the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) proposal described in MetricViews last year. If this report is true it threatens to undermine the progress that had been made toward a Europe-wide sizing system for clothes.
Many families in the UK will roast a turkey on Christmas day. Preparing a traditional Christmas dinner challenges most people as they are cooking much larger quantities of food than normal. As a result thawing and cooking times are much longer than normally experienced. Failure to thaw or roast properly may lead to food poisoning which is one of the worst things that could happen at Christmas.
One of the claims sometimes made by defenders of imperial weights and measures is that they are “natural”. The metric system (they may say) is all very well for science and technical matters, but for everyday life imperial units like the foot conform to the human scale and are more natural – unlike the arbitrary metric unit, the metre. We examine this argument.
Defenders of imperial units sometimes claim that using units from different systems simply contributes to the richness of our language and culture. People use whichever units are appropriate to the context (they argue). Two examples of this viewpoint were published in the Independent recently. However, the Independent declined to publish a response sent by the Chairman of UKMA. We therefore reproduce the correspondence here – together with further comment.
Todays TV news carried a leading story that units of alcohol will be appearing on all bottles, cans cartons etc of alcoholic drinks. People were asked in the street what they thought of this move. Several people asked, what’s a unit?
The National Blood Service are understandably concerned that not enough people are coming forward to donate blood. There are, no doubt, a variety of reasons why people are inhibitied from doing so, e.g. can’t spare the time, nervousness about the procedure etc.
I wonder though whether the information about the amount of blood taken at each session may be a factor.
(Article by Phil Hall)
Tesco is phasing out ‘kcal’ from the nutrition information on food products. Only ‘kJ’ will be used. (Information provided by Philip Bladon, and edited by Derek Pollard). (more…)
How should the alcohol content of drinks be measured? - asks M-V