At 2003-01-03 06:30 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Cup, pint, quart, half-gallon, gallon -- binary! More rational than decimal, if you're likely to be multiplying and dividing by 2. (As in, doubling or halving a recipe.)
Nobody forbids you to express the amount of liters in the binary system:
bin = dec 1 1 litre 0.1 = 0.5 litre 0.01 = 0.25 litre 0.001 = 0.125 litre
Or why not introduce the 'neg-2log-litre', being the negative base 2 logarithm of the amount of litres as a new unit:
0 neg-2log-litre = 2^ 0 litre = 1 litre 1 neg-2log-litre = 2^-1 litre = 0.5 litre 2 neg-2log-litre = 2^-2 litre = 0.25 litre 3 neg-2log-litre = 2^-3 litre = 0.125 litre
Makes more sense than cup, pint, quart, half-gallon, gallon. I think that especially housewives would welcome this new system!
You could abbreviate the unit to 'noglitre', 'nlit', 'nll' or 'decibel-litre'.
By the way, it's already in use in European paper formats: A3, A4, A5 etc.
Perhaps we could also abbreviate the volumes units to: L0, L1, L2, L3.
Hi bartender, L1's of beer and a happy new year for everyone on this list!
;-)
Greetings, Jaap