Because A0 is defined as having an area of exactly 1 square meter, the paper density (GSM or grams per square meter) maps directly to the weight of the sheet.
>A0 = 1 meter square.
>Standard office paper = 80 gsm
>Therefore, one sheet of A0 = 80 grams.
>Since A4 is 1/16th of an A0, a single sheet of standard A4 paper weighs 5 grams.
I rarely need to use a scale for postage. If I have a standard envelope (~5g) and 3 sheets of paper (15g), I know I'm at 20g total. It turns physical shipping logistics into simple integer arithmetic. The elegance of the metric system is that it makes the properties of materials discoverable through their definitions.
Keep dimes and ramp up production of half dollars. Then we can just drop the second decimal place and standardize pricing everything in 0.1 dollar increments.
The fact that quarters are still somewhat commonly used in machines (vending machines, parking meters, laundry) is probably the biggest practical obstacle.
What I've learned from the penny retirement is that people are deeply distrustful of simple high school level statistics! Millions of people have angrily seethed that somehow stores are or will be using the penny retirement to rob them, despite knowing that most transactions have an unknowable amount of different items, and sales tax, so attempting to manipulate prices to gain a statistical advantage out of rounding would be incredibly difficult and would yield a pitiful return. Let alone how the cash transaction share is declining every year.
Do you mean in the zinc mining and Coinstar? Pennies have been a bizarre ritual for years, wherein the government made zinc worth less than its pre-minted value, distributed them to banks nationwide, banks in turn to stores, stores using them once to give meaningless amounts of money to customers, customers in turn immediately throwing them on the ground or at best eventually dumping them into a coinstar, and coinstar returned those to banks.
Nothing of value was going on there. I'd rather pay any zinc miners and coinstar drivers who have been displaced to play video games all day while still saving all those resources, fuel, and most of all, time.
I’m in New Zealand and haven’t had a wallet in a decade, never using cash.
Theoretically one should carry a drivers licence when driving but it’s never come up and I have a photo of it thats worked with police before.
(I would have made a gag about a 7g replacement nickel, but you people have already used up the team "quarter" for different denomination. Although the idea of a new 40 cent coin called an "eight ball" amuses me...)
"Measure the mass of an eyelash with a DIY microbalance" by Applied Science https://youtu.be/ta7nlkI5K5g
The person deciding to use nonstandard "GSM" as a unit instead of the proper "g/m²" needs to feel stupid...
(But arguably what whoever decided on "gsm" should have done was to just use "g", with the "per square metre" left implicit.)
GSM basically only ever appears in print. If someone DOES ask "what does 120 gram mean here?" the clarification is going to be "Oh that's grams per square meter" and not "Oh that's gee es em"
I should mention GSM is also probably an americanism. I'm in the EU and out of the five packs of different kinds of art paper four are labeled in g/m2, and one has no labeled weight at all. None of them are marked in GSM as that abbreviation only works in english, while g/m2 works in all languages.
Of the four reams of paper/card I have at home, two are labelled in "gsm", one is "g.m⁻²", and one uses both "g/m²" and "gsm" in different places. Weirdly, it seems that the specialist stuff is more likely to use "gsm" than the everyday 80 g/m² A4.
"gsm", or even more so "GSM", belongs to the reign of abbrevations and put my brain on the wrong track
The shorthand "gsm" is a completely standard alternative in some industries.
I work in advanced composites. Different weights and weaves of technical fabrics such as carbon fiber, kevlar, fiberglass, etc. are always specified in "gsm". For example, some common fabrics would be a "Carbon Fiber 3K 200gsm Twill" or a "High Modulus 12K 380gsm Carbon Fiber Plain Weave". (the "3K" and "12K" refer to the number of carbon fiber strands in each yarn in the weave, and the "Twill" and "Plain Weave" refer to the pattern in which the yarns are woven into a fabric.)
I'm sure "gsm" came to be commonly used instead of the more scientific "g/m²" or "g/m^2" because no one is doing that kind of math about the materials, and it is a lot easier to type "gsm" vs either of the other two which require at least a Shift for the caret or getting out the superscript font attribute.
mph, kph, cps, etc
The symbol for molar is just the "M". "mol" denotes the Avogadro constant.
0.8 megamolar = 800,000 teeth? That, uh, seems pretty wide for an interdental brush.
...was using a scale for postage a concern? If you're shipping things on the order of three sheets of paper, you're way below any conceivable threshold. USPS charges a flat rate on letters under 370 grams!
If you're sending 1,700 pieces of looseleaf paper in a box... just weigh the box.
Thankfully I just had a scale, but I can see this being helpful when you don't.
In Europe, the typical flat rate is up to 100g for standard letters. And that's 20 sheets, which is not a particularly unusual letter to send.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogram
On a related subject I just discovered that sending a letter in Denmark now costs a minimum of $4.50.
In the UK the limit for a letter is 100 grams:
24 by 16.5 by 0.5 cm for the standard 1st class letter. So you could send an A5 booklet made of less than 20 sheets of A4 (80 g/m^2) paper as a standard letter.
If the postage is short, our lovely privatised Post Office holds the letter and makes the recipient pay the excess.
Back on thread: Repeatedly fold an A0 sheet of paper in half. How many folds can you do? A ream (500 sheets) of 80 g/m^2 paper is about 2.5cm thick. (good when teaching geometric progressions).
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUF5esTscZI
edit: fat-fingered CPG, thanks @ProllyInfamous
----
My favorite CGP Grey video is Metric Paper..., which explores the vast (but limited) world we live in, from plancs to observable universe.
[•] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUF5esTscZI>
Before generative AI videos, this had been what I considered "the most psychedelic experience one can have without doing drugs." It's still a trip...
Off-topic but as a non-native English speaker, TIL what svelte means lol. I often get exposure of new words first from a product name. Same happened with Chrome.
See also C series. Thankfully largely a moot point now.
App is about halfway down this page, https://www.fischersports.com/rc4-podium-rd-worldcup-strd/U0... under 'find your size' and is powered by https://volumental.com/
Nitpick: typo in the dimensions for A3.
Better than an average square, better than an average ruler.
Letter paper, credit card, banknote, business card, etc.
»einen Bogen Papier zu finden, bey dem alle Formate … einander ähnlich wären. … Die kleine Seite des Rechtecks muß sich nämlich zu der großen verhalten wie 1:√2 oder wie die Seite des Quadrats zu seiner Diagonale. Die Form hat etwas angenehmes und vorzügliches vor der gewöhnlichen.«
I remember when I first got into metal work and wanted to get some tapping drills.
There are a plethora of standards when you start looking into it. For what I make though if I use metric I really only need one, ISO Coarse.
Metric is just well thought out and easier.
Screw sizes and drill sizes should have been sized by a ratio, like resistor values. But that would have been a pain for manual machining.
Domestic drill sets don't seem to be designed for tapping holes but if you stick to M3, M6 and M10 the tapping sizes do correspond with the 2.5, 5 and 8.5mm drills[1].
I guess if it was based on a ratio system you would need special tapping drills for all of them.
e.g. M4 needs a special 3.3mm tapping drill already.
1. According to my trusty Zeus tables.
When I spread my index finger and middle finger, not entirely as far as they can go, but rather far, that's 10 centimetres.
Thumb to pinky is 22 centimetres. These two are often precise enough for me.